Epic Poetry Reading, Albany Poets Word Fest
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2013/02/25/epic-poetry-reading-albany-poets-word-fest/
February 25, 2013 at 7:18 am
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2013/02/25/epic-poetry-reading-albany-poets-word-fest/
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Epic Poetry Reading, Albany Poets Word Fest |
"If you were at the [April 21] 2012 Albany Word Fest Open Mic at the Albany Public Library you will remember Frederick Glaysher and his epic poem The Parliament of Poets. His work certainly wowed the crowd at the library with the performance and the words themselves."
February 25, 2013 at 7:18 am
3 people like this
www.brainpickings.org
February 25, 2013 at 5:44 am
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William Butler Yeats on Modern Poetry: A Rare 1936 BBC Recording |
On October 11, 1936, the BBC invited William Butler Yeats to share a meditation on modern poetry.
February 25, 2013 at 5:44 am
1 person likes this
Two Reviews of The Parliament of Poets
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2013/02/25/two-reviews-of-the-parliament-of-poets/
February 25, 2013 at 5:16 am
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2013/02/25/two-reviews-of-the-parliament-of-poets/
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Two Reviews of The Parliament of Poets |
"Most of the contemporary poets and critics claim that epic is not suitable for our modern age. But Frederick Glaysher has proven them wrong..." "I found this book to be up to the standards set by Homer..."
February 25, 2013 at 5:16 am
6 people like this
Ratul Pal, Goodreads, "Most of the contemporary poets and critics claim that epic is not suitable for our modern age. But Frederick Glaysher has proven them wrong."
February 22, 2013 at 6:47 am
11 people like this
Proves them wrong and becomes an inspiration for many others.
February 22, 2013 at 6:57 am
Quoted from https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/14948780-ratul-pal
February 22, 2013 at 7:25 am
Wtshehan, LibraryThing, "I found this book to be up to the standards set by Homer."
February 22, 2013 at 5:48 am
3 people like this
United Nations "is a reflection, a mirror, of the world as it is," says Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson, but his job is to slowly move toward "what the world should be."
"[W]e should realize that in today's world the good international solution -- let's say climate, migration -- the good international solution is, or at least should be seen as, a national interest,"
https://www.thenation.com/blog/173004/more-ever-we-need-un
February 21, 2013 at 4:21 pm
"[W]e should realize that in today's world the good international solution -- let's say climate, migration -- the good international solution is, or at least should be seen as, a national interest,"
https://www.thenation.com/blog/173004/more-ever-we-need-un
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More Than Ever, We Need The UN | The Nation |
An interview with UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson.
February 21, 2013 at 4:21 pm
4 people like this
Nationalism is merely a cover for international corporatism.
February 21, 2013 at 5:29 pm
One could make a good argument for it. The world is still stuck where it was after WWI... with nationalism as the sacred god, with everything sacrificed to it. World leaders continue to foolishly ignore what our experience has demonstrated twice, in the most horrific of terms, about nationalism...
I've been wanting to write an essay on nationalism for a long time, but it has been difficult to get to, given all that I'm involved with. For decades, really, I've repeatedly read and thought of Tolstoy and Tagore's essays on nationalism. In the meantime, see "The Victory of World Governance," in my book The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture. https://fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
I've been wanting to write an essay on nationalism for a long time, but it has been difficult to get to, given all that I'm involved with. For decades, really, I've repeatedly read and thought of Tolstoy and Tagore's essays on nationalism. In the meantime, see "The Victory of World Governance," in my book The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture. https://fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
February 21, 2013 at 5:41 pm
The structure itself of the international "order" works against resolving our endemic problems. At the end of each world war, leaders had the searing insight into what ailed the world and the will to attempt to change it. Both times that will has atrophied... long threatening another collapse.
Together, from the moon, we can see it.
Together, from the moon, we can see it.
February 22, 2013 at 6:19 am
Read a free chapter, BOOK I, at Barnes & Noble or at Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Parliament-Poets-Epic-Poem-ebook/dp/B00AAQCCU0
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-parliament-of-poets-frederick-glaysher/1112448232?ean=2940015752236
February 17, 2013 at 7:28 am
https://www.amazon.com/Parliament-Poets-Epic-Poem-ebook/dp/B00AAQCCU0
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-parliament-of-poets-frederick-glaysher/1112448232?ean=2940015752236
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The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem |
Available in: NOOK Book (eBook), Hardcover. The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem, by Frederick Glaysher, takes place partly on the moon, at the Apollo 11 landing site, the Sea of Tranquility. Apollo, the Greek god of poetry, calls all the
February 17, 2013 at 7:28 am
2 people like this
As a free PDF: PDF.
February 20, 2013 at 4:26 am
"177 tanks holding nuclear waste at the Hanford site; Gov. Inslee says 149 are single shelled, like the leaking one. Worse, they've outlived their 20-year life expectancy... losing between 150 and 300 gallons of radioactive waste each year."
https://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/02/16/172183881/nuclear-waste-seeping-from-container-in-hazardous-wash-state-facility
February 17, 2013 at 6:15 am
https://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/02/16/172183881/nuclear-waste-seeping-from-container-in-hazardous-wash-state-facility
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Nuclear Waste Seeping From Container In Hazardous Wash. State Facility : NPR |
Gov. Jay Inslee gets the call that between 150 and 300 gallons of toxic sludge are leaking from a single-shelled tank every year. There are dozens of these tanks holding waste that have outlived their life spans.
February 17, 2013 at 6:15 am
Hanford Nuclear Reservation...
February 17, 2013 at 6:15 am
The related article is worth reading too. "The leaks have come from Tank T-111, built between 1943 and 1944 to hold 530,000 gallons of hot stuff. It currently holds approximately 447,000 gallons of highly radioactive sludge. Inslee said there has been some suggestion that the leak has been going on for years, not weeks. “This is an extremely, extremely toxic material,” Inslee said."
"In two weeks, noted Inslee, a sweeping, across-the-board sequestration will cut spending in all federal agencies — unless Congress acts to head it off. It will force some layoffs at Hanford, noted the governor, and “could conceivably stop the remediation effort at some of these tanks.”:
https://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/2013/02/15/hanford-tank-leaking-perfect-radioactive-storm-inslee/
"In two weeks, noted Inslee, a sweeping, across-the-board sequestration will cut spending in all federal agencies — unless Congress acts to head it off. It will force some layoffs at Hanford, noted the governor, and “could conceivably stop the remediation effort at some of these tanks.”:
https://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/2013/02/15/hanford-tank-leaking-perfect-radioactive-storm-inslee/
February 17, 2013 at 6:17 am
Mali Martha Lightfoot, FYI
February 17, 2013 at 6:19 am
Yes, and at Savannah River Site they have the same problem with the old single-walled tanks as well.
February 17, 2013 at 9:11 am
It's so appalling that Hanford and other sites just go on forever without any real resolution...
February 17, 2013 at 10:57 am
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon > "We need national leaders to think globally. We need a stronger sense of collective responsibility. And we need the United States..." in a wide-ranging talk and interview with Christiane Amanpour.
https://www.cfr.org/un/sorensen-distinguished-lecture-united-nations-conversation-ban-ki-moon/p29959
February 14, 2013 at 10:21 am
https://www.cfr.org/un/sorensen-distinguished-lecture-united-nations-conversation-ban-ki-moon/p29959
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Sorensen Distinguished Lecture on the United Nations: A Conversation with Ban Ki-moon |
United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon discusses the challenges and responsibilities facing the international community today.
February 14, 2013 at 10:21 am
2 people like this
Frederick, is this intended to be satire? I would like it to be true but the world is so crazy these days I no longer know.
February 14, 2013 at 10:24 am
I can understand the impulse and suppose we could all just throw up our hands in despair... but that would not solve our problems, which are only getting worse. I choose Ban Ki-moon and efforts to remind the world of its fiery history and currently dire situation, on many fronts... believing no matter how dark it may seem human beings have the capacity, even if it means rising out of the ashes, to remake ourselves and chart a new course. That's what the UN was about at the end of WWII. Let's not do nothing but wait for WWIII or complete climate collapse--I'm with those who'd rather try now for the good of us all. I believe, together, from the moon, we can see it...
February 14, 2013 at 10:32 am
Thanks. Sorry.
February 14, 2013 at 10:36 am
I believe if we change our thinking, we will change our leaders, and we will change the world... No need to be sorry. It's human to despair... and pick ourselves up and go on, and strive to create a better world.
February 14, 2013 at 10:37 am
At its best, the UN is trying, who else is?
February 14, 2013 at 10:38 am
The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem takes place partly on the moon, at the Apollo 11 landing site, the Sea of Tranquility.
Apollo calls all the poets of the nations, ancient and modern, East and West, to assemble on the moon to consult on the meaning of modernity. The Parliament of Poets sends the Persona on a Journey to the seven continents to learn from all of the spiritual and wisdom traditions of humankind. On Earth and on the moon, the poets teach him a new global, universal vision of life.
Ratul Pal, Goodreads, "Most of the contemporary poets and critics claim that epic is not suitable for our modern age. But Frederick Glaysher has proven them wrong...."
Apollo calls all the poets of the nations, ancient and modern, East and West, to assemble on the moon to consult on the meaning of modernity. The Parliament of Poets sends the Persona on a Journey to the seven continents to learn from all of the spiritual and wisdom traditions of humankind. On Earth and on the moon, the poets teach him a new global, universal vision of life.
Ratul Pal, Goodreads, "Most of the contemporary poets and critics claim that epic is not suitable for our modern age. But Frederick Glaysher has proven them wrong...."
February 14, 2013 at 5:46 am
2 people like this
New UN report says human trafficking found in 118 countries, majority of victims are women
"millions of people trafficked for sexual exploitation and forced labor: They come from at least 136 different nationalities, have been detected in 118 countries, and the majority of victims are women though the number of children is increasing."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/new-un-report-says-human-trafficking-found-in-118-countries-majority-of-victims-are-women/2013/02/12/0ecefec2-7576-11e2-9889-60bfcbb02149_story.html
February 14, 2013 at 4:08 am
"millions of people trafficked for sexual exploitation and forced labor: They come from at least 136 different nationalities, have been detected in 118 countries, and the majority of victims are women though the number of children is increasing."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/new-un-report-says-human-trafficking-found-in-118-countries-majority-of-victims-are-women/2013/02/12/0ecefec2-7576-11e2-9889-60bfcbb02149_story.html
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New UN report says human trafficking found in 118 countries, majority of victims are women |
UNITED NATIONS — A new U.N. report paints a grim picture of the millions of people being trafficked for sexual exploitation and forced labor: They represent at least 136 different nationalities, have been detected in 118 countries and the majority of victims are women though the number of children i...
February 14, 2013 at 4:08 am
2 people like this
It is a global scandal.
February 14, 2013 at 7:31 pm
Yes, it really is, and there are cases of the same thing happening in the US. A few years ago in Detroit there was a crime syndicate that was bringing in East European women who were locked up and forced into prostitution. It's probably happened or is happening elsewhere in the US too.
February 15, 2013 at 5:51 am
It happens in the UK too https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19984615 There are those who say the problem is exaggerated for political reasons: https://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/20/trafficking-numbers-women-exaggerated
February 16, 2013 at 1:06 am
How sad and tragic, whatever the numbers... Thanks for the links, Anne.
February 16, 2013 at 6:47 am
Thanks for the links.
February 16, 2013 at 8:31 am
"If you were at the 2012 Albany Word Fest Open Mic at the Albany Public Library you will remember Frederick Glaysher and his epic poem The Parliament of Poets. His work certainly wowed the crowd at the library with the performance and the words themselves."
https://albanypoets.com/2013/02/frederick-glayshers-the-parliament-of-poets/
February 13, 2013 at 1:25 pm
https://albanypoets.com/2013/02/frederick-glayshers-the-parliament-of-poets/
| https://albanypoets.com/2013/02/frederick-glayshers-the-parliament-of-poets/ |
February 13, 2013 at 1:25 pm
1 person likes this
Community
February 13, 2013 at 7:19 am
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Voices of Women Worldwide - India |
Welcome to Voices of Women Worldwide - India promoting and sharing stories about the country and inviting you to visit...
February 13, 2013 at 7:19 am
Centenary Edition > Robert Hayden, Collected Poems. A Liveright book.
Can now be pre-ordered. April 1, 2013 publication date.
https://books.wwnorton.com/books/Collected-Poems/
February 12, 2013 at 5:21 pm
Can now be pre-ordered. April 1, 2013 publication date.
https://books.wwnorton.com/books/Collected-Poems/
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Collected Poems | W. W. Norton & Company |
An exquisite body of work celebrating the centennial of one of the most important African-American poets of the twentieth century.
February 12, 2013 at 5:21 pm
4 people like this
Reginald Dwayne Betts, FYI
February 13, 2013 at 3:41 am
Zen Groups Distressed by Accusations Against Teacher
“Because of their long history with Zen practice, people in Japan have some skepticism about priests,” Ms. Schireson said. But in the United States many proponents have a “devotion to the guru or the teacher in a way that could repress our common sense and emotional intelligence.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/world/asia/zen-buddhists-roiled-by-accusations-against-teacher.html
February 12, 2013 at 3:41 am
“Because of their long history with Zen practice, people in Japan have some skepticism about priests,” Ms. Schireson said. But in the United States many proponents have a “devotion to the guru or the teacher in a way that could repress our common sense and emotional intelligence.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/world/asia/zen-buddhists-roiled-by-accusations-against-teacher.html
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Zen Buddhists Roiled by Accusations Against Teacher |
An independent council of Zen leaders has said that the Buddhist teacher Joshu Sasaki sexually harassed female students.
February 12, 2013 at 3:41 am
1 person likes this
Appalling how organized religion, East or West, can become evil in basically the same revoltingly human ways... Idealizing Buddhism, or whatever, can neglect its actual history and flawed trajectory through this world. This article is interesting to me, too, because it's often females who are preyed upon by the priestly castes... well, not to mention, children, with uniformly abusive and tragic results.
February 12, 2013 at 5:56 am
"...imagine Catholicism without priests. A priestless Catholicism, Wills argues, would more truly mirror early Christian practice than modern Catholicism."
https://www.newrepublic.com/article/112294/gary-willss-why-priests-reviewed-kevin-madigan#
February 11, 2013 at 4:53 pm
https://www.newrepublic.com/article/112294/gary-willss-why-priests-reviewed-kevin-madigan#
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Why Do We Have Priests Anyway? |
Early Christianity had no priests. So how did the Pope and priests become central and indispensable?
February 11, 2013 at 4:53 pm
1 person likes this
This is true of most religions.
February 11, 2013 at 9:46 pm
IndieBound
https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780982677889
February 11, 2013 at 8:54 am
https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780982677889
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The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem | IndieBound |
Store Locator | The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem
By Frederick Glaysher
(Earthrise Press, Hardcover, 9780982677889, 294pp.) American Booksellers Association
February 11, 2013 at 8:54 am
1 person likes this
Join me on Google+
https://plus.google.com/u/0/101034665675885529190
February 11, 2013 at 8:20 am
https://plus.google.com/u/0/101034665675885529190
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Frederick Glaysher - Google+ |
Frederick Glaysher - Gazing from the moon, we see one Earth, without borders, Mother Earth, her embrace encircling one people, humankind. - On the Moon, for Apollo - Rochester, Michigan USA - I'm an epic poet, rhapsode, poet-critic, and the author or editor of several books. Just released in Novem...
February 11, 2013 at 8:20 am
Join me on Twitter > Together, from the moon, we can see it...
https://twitter.com/fglaysher
February 11, 2013 at 6:12 am
https://twitter.com/fglaysher
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Frederick Glaysher (fglaysher) on Twitter |
The latest from Frederick Glaysher (@fglaysher). Epic poet and poet-critic. Gazing from the moon, we see one Earth, without borders, Mother Earth, her embrace encircling one people, humankind. Rochester, Michigan USA
February 11, 2013 at 6:12 am
1 person likes this
Albany Poets News > Frederick Glaysher’s “The Parliament of Poets”
"If you were at the 2012 Albany Word Fest Open Mic at the Albany Public Library you will remember Frederick Glaysher and his epic poem The Parliament of Poets. His work certainly wowed the crowd at the library with the performance and the words themselves.... We just got word that the epic is now finished and is available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Google Play."
https://albanypoets.com/2013/02/frederick-glayshers-the-parliament-of-poets/
February 10, 2013 at 6:53 am
"If you were at the 2012 Albany Word Fest Open Mic at the Albany Public Library you will remember Frederick Glaysher and his epic poem The Parliament of Poets. His work certainly wowed the crowd at the library with the performance and the words themselves.... We just got word that the epic is now finished and is available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Google Play."
https://albanypoets.com/2013/02/frederick-glayshers-the-parliament-of-poets/
| https://albanypoets.com/2013/02/frederick-glayshers-the-parliament-of-poets/ |
February 10, 2013 at 6:53 am
2 people like this
By Ratul Pal (Bangladesh) [his review now on Kobo]
★★★★★ January 25, 2013
Most of the contemporary poets and critics claim that epic is not suitable for our modern age. But Frederick Glaysher has proven them wrong. He has shown that if a poet has true dedication, if he has unshakable belief in humanity, spirituality and overall progress of human beings, if he hasn't al... ...more
https://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/The-Parliament-of-Poets/book-o0H_nhEHWkqOyyVMFD1LWg/page1.html
February 10, 2013 at 6:29 am
★★★★★ January 25, 2013
Most of the contemporary poets and critics claim that epic is not suitable for our modern age. But Frederick Glaysher has proven them wrong. He has shown that if a poet has true dedication, if he has unshakable belief in humanity, spirituality and overall progress of human beings, if he hasn't al... ...more
https://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/The-Parliament-of-Poets/book-o0H_nhEHWkqOyyVMFD1LWg/page1.html
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The Parliament of Poets |
<p> <em>The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem</em>, by Frederick Glaysher, takes place partly on the moon, at the Apollo 11 landing site, the Sea of Tranquility.</p> <p> Apollo, the Greek god of… read more at Kobo.
February 10, 2013 at 6:29 am
3 people like this
I will try to read it .i am not very good in ebook reading,not habituated....
February 10, 2013 at 6:34 am
It can be easier than one might think. Kobo has a very effective "app" or application for ereading books that you can download for free and not have to pay for physical shipping around the world. The ebook of The Parliament of Poets is identical to the printed copy. Kobo, too, has global connections through Hong Kong and Australian backers who are working hard to become a global ebook store.
February 10, 2013 at 6:42 am
Epic Poet, Rhapsode
Open to Invitations to Read from my Epic Poem
Anywhere on Earth by Arrangement
I'd welcome invitations to read from The Parliament of Poets. To reach humanity, by arrangement, I am willing to travel anywhere on Earth for an audience willing to listen. I will tailor the reading selections from my epic to the particular local culture, as well as the length of the reading. The various BOOKS of the epic suggest the possibilities since they're set in Europe, the UK, Russia, ancient Israel, the Middle East, Turkey, China, Japan, India, Cambodia, Burma, Tibet, Africa, South America, and, of course, on the Moon!
https://www.linkedin.com/in/fglaysher
February 10, 2013 at 6:05 am
Open to Invitations to Read from my Epic Poem
Anywhere on Earth by Arrangement
I'd welcome invitations to read from The Parliament of Poets. To reach humanity, by arrangement, I am willing to travel anywhere on Earth for an audience willing to listen. I will tailor the reading selections from my epic to the particular local culture, as well as the length of the reading. The various BOOKS of the epic suggest the possibilities since they're set in Europe, the UK, Russia, ancient Israel, the Middle East, Turkey, China, Japan, India, Cambodia, Burma, Tibet, Africa, South America, and, of course, on the Moon!
https://www.linkedin.com/in/fglaysher
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Frederick Glaysher | LinkedIn |
View Frederick Glaysher's professional profile on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the world's largest business network, helping professionals like Frederick Glaysher discover inside connections to recommended job candidates, industry experts, and business partners.
February 10, 2013 at 6:05 am
2 people like this
Albany Poets News > Frederick Glaysher’s “The Parliament of Poets”
"If you were at the 2012 Albany Word Fest Open Mic at the Albany Public Library you will remember Frederick Glaysher and his epic poem The Parliament of Poets. His work certainly wowed the crowd at the library with the performance and the words themselves.... We just got word that the epic is now finished and is available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Google Play."
https://albanypoets.com/2013/02/frederick-glayshers-the-parliament-of-poets/
February 8, 2013 at 8:24 am
"If you were at the 2012 Albany Word Fest Open Mic at the Albany Public Library you will remember Frederick Glaysher and his epic poem The Parliament of Poets. His work certainly wowed the crowd at the library with the performance and the words themselves.... We just got word that the epic is now finished and is available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Google Play."
https://albanypoets.com/2013/02/frederick-glayshers-the-parliament-of-poets/
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February 8, 2013 at 8:24 am
10 people like this
Congratulations!
February 8, 2013 at 8:31 am
Thanks Michael Nwagbegbe! I appreciate hearing from you. Biren Trivedi, you too.
February 8, 2013 at 8:34 am
Congratulation,someday I will read your full Epic poetry.In this age I can not read much from the Internet....
February 8, 2013 at 10:25 am
Mamata Das, Thank you, Mrs. Das. I'd love to have you read it sometime. Actually, it's on Flipkart in India. For some reason their search engine does always turn it up, so here's the link (it pulls in a different cover image but will take you to my book):
https://www.flipkart.com/parliament-poets-epic-poem/p/itmdg6h4pdby5kep?pid=9780982677889&ref=0d54a1fb-5380-44f2-8ad5-29b48f9095d4&srno=s_2&otracker=from-search&query=frederick%20glaysher
https://www.flipkart.com/parliament-poets-epic-poem/p/itmdg6h4pdby5kep?pid=9780982677889&ref=0d54a1fb-5380-44f2-8ad5-29b48f9095d4&srno=s_2&otracker=from-search&query=frederick%20glaysher
February 8, 2013 at 12:30 pm
Interest
February 7, 2013 at 5:49 pm
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Ragnarök |
In Norse mythology, Ragnarök (, or ) is a series of future events, including a great battle foretold to ultimately...
February 7, 2013 at 5:49 pm
"Everyone has signed off on human rights – the charter and conventions – so I don't think it's for want of laws, but perhaps we need a set of metrics recognising the different places people are at. We need to put in more checks and balances … [finding] a constructive way of approaching this without throwing stones is more helpful. It's so simple and logical that it [rights] has to be at the centre, but how do you implement it?"
https://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2013/feb/01/un-panel-going-gold-targets-development
February 5, 2013 at 5:18 am
https://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2013/feb/01/un-panel-going-gold-targets-development
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UN panel 'going for gold' to devise new targets for development |
Deeper conversations with African civil society groups promised as panel member outlines to Liz Ford bold agenda covering human rights and inclusive growth
February 5, 2013 at 5:18 am
2 people like this
That is the important question
February 5, 2013 at 10:43 am
"What does time's decaying leave undiminished?
Our parent's age, worse than their parents', brought forth
us, who are still worse, who soon will breed
descendants even more degenerate."
--Horace, Odes III.6 (tr J. P. Clancy)
Our parent's age, worse than their parents', brought forth
us, who are still worse, who soon will breed
descendants even more degenerate."
--Horace, Odes III.6 (tr J. P. Clancy)
February 4, 2013 at 5:11 am
8 people like this
"Thus, what appears in the vision is the imagery of the collective unconscious."
--Carl Jung, The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature, "Psychology and Literature."
--Carl Jung, The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature, "Psychology and Literature."
February 3, 2013 at 11:48 am
8 people like this
Thank you, Mariko-san!
What a thrill to see a letter in hiragana and kanji about my epic! I really appreciate your sending her a copy. I hope she enjoys it.
February 3, 2013 at 7:31 am
What a thrill to see a letter in hiragana and kanji about my epic! I really appreciate your sending her a copy. I hope she enjoys it.
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Timeline Photos |
February 3, 2013 at 7:31 am
5 people like this
@Frederick Glaysher, I've tagged you in this post but hidden from the timeline; on your wall it looked too sober. I tagged myself in; the post was in the album. So I had to hide it to repost!?
February 3, 2013 at 7:26 am
Oh, okay. I was wondering. I don't think it looks "sober." For me, what a thrill to see a letter in beautiful hiragana and kanji about my epic! I really appreciate your sending her a copy, Mariko san. May I share it on my wall?
February 3, 2013 at 7:29 am
Yes, PLEASE do!!!
February 3, 2013 at 7:30 am
Carl Jung, The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature, "Psychology and Literature."
"To grasp its meaning, we must allow it to shape us as it shaped him. Then we also understand the nature of his primordial experience. He has plunged into the healing and redeeming depths of the collective psyche, where man is not lost in the isolation of consciousness and its errors and sufferings, but where all men are caught in a common rhythm which allows the individual to communicate his feelings and strivings to mankind as a whole." 105.
"To grasp its meaning, we must allow it to shape us as it shaped him. Then we also understand the nature of his primordial experience. He has plunged into the healing and redeeming depths of the collective psyche, where man is not lost in the isolation of consciousness and its errors and sufferings, but where all men are caught in a common rhythm which allows the individual to communicate his feelings and strivings to mankind as a whole." 105.
February 3, 2013 at 6:12 am
4 people like this
Carl Jung, The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature, "Psychology and Literature."
"In this way the work of the artist meets the psychic needs of the society in which he lives, and therefore means more than his personal fate, whether he is aware of it or not. Being essentially the instrument of his work, he is subordinate to it, and we have no right to expect him to interpret it for us. He has done his utmost by giving it form, and must leave the interpretation to others and the future. A great work of art is like a dream.... A dream never says 'you ought' or 'this is the truth.' It presents an image in much the same way as nature allows a plant to grow, and it is up to us to draw conclusions." 104.
"In this way the work of the artist meets the psychic needs of the society in which he lives, and therefore means more than his personal fate, whether he is aware of it or not. Being essentially the instrument of his work, he is subordinate to it, and we have no right to expect him to interpret it for us. He has done his utmost by giving it form, and must leave the interpretation to others and the future. A great work of art is like a dream.... A dream never says 'you ought' or 'this is the truth.' It presents an image in much the same way as nature allows a plant to grow, and it is up to us to draw conclusions." 104.
February 3, 2013 at 5:32 am
11 people like this
Carl Jung's support for a Human Science that transcends the physical and social sciences!
February 3, 2013 at 12:09 pm
Carl Jung, The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature, "Psychology and Literature."
"His life cannot be otherwise than full of conflicts, for two forces are at war within him: on the one hand the justified longing of the ordinary man for happiness, satisfaction, and security, and on the other a ruthless passion for creation which may go so far as to override every personal desire. If the lives of artists are as a rule so exceedingly unsatisfactory, not say tragic, it is not because of some sinister dispensation of fate.... A person must pay dearly for the divine gift of creative fire." 102.
"His life cannot be otherwise than full of conflicts, for two forces are at war within him: on the one hand the justified longing of the ordinary man for happiness, satisfaction, and security, and on the other a ruthless passion for creation which may go so far as to override every personal desire. If the lives of artists are as a rule so exceedingly unsatisfactory, not say tragic, it is not because of some sinister dispensation of fate.... A person must pay dearly for the divine gift of creative fire." 102.
February 3, 2013 at 5:19 am
1 person likes this
"India’s “virtual middle class.” ...like China and Egypt."
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/opinion/sunday/friedman-the-virtual-middle-class-rises.html
February 3, 2013 at 5:09 am
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/opinion/sunday/friedman-the-virtual-middle-class-rises.html
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The Virtual Middle Class Rises |
The access to technology has expanded the expectations of many Indians, and others around the world.
February 3, 2013 at 5:09 am
This is an interesting read and very optimistic, but seems to assume the existence of a largely homogeneous group categorized in this article as the 'middle class'. This is actually not the case. We are speaking of a deeply divided group with no clearly defined unifying characteristic. What defines the 'middle class'? Is it wealth, access to education, caste? Traditionally, members of the upper caste in India have monopolized all privileges but today, the middle class is a more mixed bag (fortunately!). However, apart from a relentless drive towards upward mobility (in a country riven by caste and communal conflict and characterized by deep-rooted corruption wealth is the great equalizer) that cuts across all differences, I do not see anything else that binds. It is true that the recent rape in Delhi triggered widespread protests among the middle class and that this is a positive trend. But we must also accept that this class is just as culpable as the rest of India for the bias against women that operates at all levels. A study published in the Lancet in 2011 reveals that the abortion of girls had actually increased in the first ten years of this century compared to the 1990s and that well-to-do, educated women were more likely to abort their girl children. This is not to say that Indian society is not changing, but to point out that it would be naive to see the middle class as modernisers unified by certain core moral beliefs. The truth is much more complex.
February 5, 2013 at 1:43 am
I respect your incisive intellect and critique. I think you're right, too, that there's a tendency in the US media to optimistically project a "middle-class" on India and elsewhere, only to begin to wake up, a little, when, say, the Muslim Brotherhood takes over... As you know so much better than I, India is a very complex and conflicted culture, like other countries. I'm familiar with some of the figures you rightly quote.
Have you ever read Nirad C. Chaudhuri's Thy Hand, Great Anarch!: India, 1921 – 1952, bemoaning the decadence of Bengal and Hindi-speaking northern India, England and the West, including Canada and the United States? It's an interesting and provocative point of view, as well. I mention him in my essay Decadence, East and West, on my blog.
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2013/01/23/decadence-east-and-west/
Have you ever read Nirad C. Chaudhuri's Thy Hand, Great Anarch!: India, 1921 – 1952, bemoaning the decadence of Bengal and Hindi-speaking northern India, England and the West, including Canada and the United States? It's an interesting and provocative point of view, as well. I mention him in my essay Decadence, East and West, on my blog.
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2013/01/23/decadence-east-and-west/
February 5, 2013 at 4:37 am
“When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent. The term is not a slur; it is a technical label.” Barzun puts it brilliantly, and I enjoyed your persuasive and entirely valid argument.
I have read Thy Hand, Great Anarch and yes, it is both interesting and provocative. The other writer that I think of is Iris Murdoch whose remarkable and utterly compelling Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals I have just finished reading. The question she addresses seems to me to be a fundamental one. With the decline of religion and the lack of any clear notion of universal human nature from which to infer ethical values, can we speak of morality at all? Also, what is art without concepts such as 'truth' and 'value'? To put it rather crudely, if I know that a novel, poem or piece of criticism refers to nothing outside of itself, why speak or write at all? Before I say 'My mother is off to the market', I would like to know if my mother is indeed 'off'' and whether or not language adequately conveys this meaning. The notion of 'play', enjoyable as it is, does nothing to allay my considerable anxiety on this point! I push too far, of course, and am only half serious, but all this just to make my point ;-)
I have read Thy Hand, Great Anarch and yes, it is both interesting and provocative. The other writer that I think of is Iris Murdoch whose remarkable and utterly compelling Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals I have just finished reading. The question she addresses seems to me to be a fundamental one. With the decline of religion and the lack of any clear notion of universal human nature from which to infer ethical values, can we speak of morality at all? Also, what is art without concepts such as 'truth' and 'value'? To put it rather crudely, if I know that a novel, poem or piece of criticism refers to nothing outside of itself, why speak or write at all? Before I say 'My mother is off to the market', I would like to know if my mother is indeed 'off'' and whether or not language adequately conveys this meaning. The notion of 'play', enjoyable as it is, does nothing to allay my considerable anxiety on this point! I push too far, of course, and am only half serious, but all this just to make my point ;-)
February 5, 2013 at 8:43 pm
My book The Grove of the Eumenides addresses much of that. I suggest, around the globe, we've lived beyond that stage... as in Decadence, East and West.
February 6, 2013 at 7:34 am
'Decadence' is a good word.
February 6, 2013 at 9:11 am
Carl Jung, The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature, "Psychology and Literature."
"Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is 'man' in a higher sense--he is 'collective man,' a vehicle and moulder of the unconscious psychic life of mankind. That is his office, and it is sometimes so heavy a burden that he is fated to sacrifice happiness and everything that makes life worth living for the ordinary human being." 101.
"Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is 'man' in a higher sense--he is 'collective man,' a vehicle and moulder of the unconscious psychic life of mankind. That is his office, and it is sometimes so heavy a burden that he is fated to sacrifice happiness and everything that makes life worth living for the ordinary human being." 101.
February 2, 2013 at 6:11 am
11 people like this
It's the greatest gift and the greatest misery. One is trapped, one is free.At the same time.
February 2, 2013 at 7:10 am
A lot of this is true, and of course one hesitates to disagree with someone like Jung, but he is leaving out all the effort and will and personal drive that creates works of art.
February 2, 2013 at 7:15 am
Yes, and out of that struggle and conflict, a deeper insight and vision can grow than otherwise would... yet I feel too that Jung overstates the case a little in the direction of romantic cliches. Artists and poets are not mere automatons, as Richard suggests.
February 2, 2013 at 7:18 am
Yes, now thats the pity of it when all the effort is romanticized. at one point its the innate urge but then onwards it's sheer grit.
February 2, 2013 at 7:19 am
That would be the shamanic hangover.
February 2, 2013 at 7:19 am
That would also explain why people would like to be gifted works of art, as if it's not work, but an ecstatic flourish or something.
February 2, 2013 at 7:21 am
I definitely agree with that... "sheer grit"! A rich complexity, and mystery... one hesitates to throw the weight too much in either direction. In writing my epic poem, there were times when I truly felt I was in something like a trance... the Muse said "go in that direction," despite my rational plans... and I knew I could but obey, all the better for the poem...
February 2, 2013 at 7:23 am
Not at all the "modern" aesthetic, usually, but what my experience felt like...
February 2, 2013 at 7:24 am
I think Jung is right, by implication, that the artist must surrender to that...
February 2, 2013 at 7:25 am
Absolutely. it's a very tenacious balance. I'm a painter. Times when im too'aware' i risk wringing my "juice' (for want of a better word) dry - it loses its soul. on the other hand, im aware that the soul of that bit of work did not emerge from the void. it emerged from conscious thought and channeling of thought processes, or call it a deliberate awareness if you will.
February 2, 2013 at 7:26 am
...there's yet choice and free will involved, I think, call it a test of the artist, before Saraswati.
February 2, 2013 at 7:27 am
If choice and free will was not involved it would have been an insult to the profession. A stance and an opinion does form the body of the work.
February 2, 2013 at 7:29 am
Yes, me too. Often I read and study something for months and years, and then, inexplicably, cooking on the back burner, so to speak, something comes together, and there it is, just pours out in a passage, a poem, chunk of essay or passage... I don't believe the rationalistic conceptions of the mind and soul do justice to what's involved.
February 2, 2013 at 7:30 am
The trance that Jung talks about is nothing but subconscious processing of information, likes and dislikes, predilections, but in the waking state.
February 2, 2013 at 7:31 am
What this rationalization does not explain is why, say, a child of three would prefer looking at colours or illustrations for hours at a time over everything else. (im talking of myself) . What moulds one's mind at such an early age, when the child has apparently not been exposed to too many influences? And this was before TV
February 2, 2013 at 7:34 am
To me, there's a problem in Jung's psychological approach, with psychology itself ultimately as a conception of human nature and life, though I think Jung's is one of the best. It doesn't run deep enough into the human soul and historical past. It too suffers from the modern divorce from history that Jung criticized.
Manjari Chakravarti I try to suggest this in my essay, Decadence, East and West. Philip Rieff was especially sensitive to this shortcoming in regards to Freud.
Manjari Chakravarti I try to suggest this in my essay, Decadence, East and West. Philip Rieff was especially sensitive to this shortcoming in regards to Freud.
February 2, 2013 at 7:35 am
You raise an interesting point about the child responding so early. It makes me think of my own early interest in stories and poetry, far beyond my own family's ability to satisfy what my mature understanding would require. Every scrape and shard, or anything leading in the right direction, was eagerly grasped onto, with no really conscious conception of where I was headed, but in retrospect it seems to me so clear...
February 2, 2013 at 7:42 am
Tagore and a town called Shantiniketan
https://travel.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/travel/where-a-poets-vision-lives-on-in-india.html
February 2, 2013 at 6:08 am
https://travel.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/travel/where-a-poets-vision-lives-on-in-india.html
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Where a Poet’s Vision Lives on in India |
In 1901, Nobel Prize winner Rabindranath Tagore founded a school north of Kolkata. More than 100 years later, it has thousands of students. Here’s what happened in between.
February 2, 2013 at 6:08 am
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Have you visited the pace?Very interesting place to see.And if you go there in the end of January there will be a Mela(village fair) going on,Rabindra nath arranged this Mela for village people to exibit and sale their art work
February 2, 2013 at 9:55 am
No, I've never been there... Though I've often read about it.
February 2, 2013 at 11:08 am
I'd like to, but don't know how that could ever be. Just in my imagination!
February 2, 2013 at 11:16 am
Really it is a dream like expirence.If you visit at all come in the winterseason because summer is too harsh in that area.In this picture you can see classes are going on in the open. This is a very common scene there.All the students are bound to take dance or music as their subject of study......if you go there in the time of any of their festival,you will see students-teachers roaming through the streets singing and dancing....so nice a view,you will never forget.But if you really want to go, go fast,because the atmosphere there is detoreorating very fast,urbunism is taking place of simplicity.......again' decadence', your favorite subject
February 3, 2013 at 2:08 am
Okwy and Kamar Hamza,
Here's an essay by Frederick Glaysher, a Facebook friend and academic. I find it very interesting. I hope you guys read it, a bit long @ about 5,000 words. Deals with some of the stuff that bothers one, like the intellectual assumptions Africans make without thinking, and then some. Thanks for sharing, Frederick.
- Ra.
February 2, 2013 at 5:09 am
Here's an essay by Frederick Glaysher, a Facebook friend and academic. I find it very interesting. I hope you guys read it, a bit long @ about 5,000 words. Deals with some of the stuff that bothers one, like the intellectual assumptions Africans make without thinking, and then some. Thanks for sharing, Frederick.
- Ra.
| Decadence, East and West |
The scholar Jacques Barzun provides our initial definition of decadence, taken from his brilliant historical survey, From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present, 500 years of Western Cultural Life (2000): “All that is meant by decadence is ‘falling off.’” His discussion ranges over Western art, musi...
February 2, 2013 at 5:09 am
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SHE IS KALPANA CHAWLA (JULY1,1961-FEBRUARY 1,2003) ,THE FIRST INDIAN AMERICAN ASTRONAUT AND FIRST WOMAN IN SPACE.SHE FIRST FLEW ON SPACE SHUTTLE COLUMBIA IN 1997 AS A MISSION SPECIALIST AND PRIMARY ROBOTIC ARM OPERATOR....................
.........................IN 2003 CHAWLA WAS ONE OF SEVEN CREW MEMBERS KILLED IN THE SPACE SHUTTLE COLUMBIA DISASTER .
...................THE DAY WAS 1ST FEBRUARY ...............
...............THIS IS A RESPECT TO HER FROM A SPACE LOVER..............
February 1, 2013 at 2:22 pm
67 people like this
wow great !!hats off to her
February 2, 2013 at 3:36 am
descent to remember her!
February 2, 2013 at 3:39 am
THANK U ..YEENACKSHI AND ASHANTI...
February 2, 2013 at 3:42 am
My hearty respect to her...May her Soul RIP...
February 2, 2013 at 3:49 am
THANK U..
February 2, 2013 at 3:49 am
we r proud of u Kalpana...we Indians Salute u
February 2, 2013 at 3:51 am
THANK U...
February 2, 2013 at 3:53 am
Nice :^)
February 2, 2013 at 4:04 am
hmmm h_h great job
February 2, 2013 at 4:12 am
THANK MY DEAR JINNY AND LINDSEY....
February 2, 2013 at 4:36 am
Oh.... nice.
February 2, 2013 at 4:44 am
Yes, one of India's heroes, the US, and the world's!
February 2, 2013 at 5:20 am
Nice......grt job
February 2, 2013 at 10:56 am
thank u Koushik, Frederick Glaysher and Ranjan Basak...
February 2, 2013 at 1:16 pm
O: to dream them; brave warriors in space!
February 2, 2013 at 11:47 pm
A great example of bravery.salute her.. Thanks to give this information abt kalpana..@nilotpal
February 2, 2013 at 11:53 pm
God bless her departure soul
February 3, 2013 at 1:28 am
nice
February 3, 2013 at 3:29 am
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The Rushdie Affair and the Hand of the Congress |
Cynical Congressmen and supine litfest organisers script a dangerous farce
February 1, 2013 at 12:29 pm
"Rushdie was served up by the JLF just in time, and he was abandoned by the very people who invited him."
"Well, actually there was no real danger to their safety. And since when has literature become a question of numbers? Is, then, the business of the festival more important than the idea of literature?"
https://www.openthemagazine.com/article/nation/the-rushdie-affair-and-the-hand-of-the-congress
February 1, 2013 at 12:23 pm
"Well, actually there was no real danger to their safety. And since when has literature become a question of numbers? Is, then, the business of the festival more important than the idea of literature?"
https://www.openthemagazine.com/article/nation/the-rushdie-affair-and-the-hand-of-the-congress
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The Rushdie Affair and the Hand of the Congress |
Cynical Congressmen and supine litfest organisers script a dangerous farce
February 1, 2013 at 12:23 pm
2 people like this
Free speech is under attack everywhere in India and we are often only too eager to blame the 'other', whoever this may be. It's essential to recognize our own complicity and take responsibility, at least for ourselves. True, we can neither prevent politicians from politicizing the issue and nor can we stop attacks from self-appointed custodians of Indian 'values', but can we really afford to overlook what happened to Ashish Nandy in Jaipur and to Salman Rushdie in Kolkata? Do we just discuss this in hushed tones behind closed doors and then continue with the party in the spirit of the show must go on? Surely, more is at stake here than lit fests and the authors and readers who look forward to them. We are inevitably led to the question of what kind of 'literature' is being promoted, why, and more importantly, whether or not we, as citizens, believe in the idea of free speech.
February 2, 2013 at 2:35 am
"The day before I was due to travel to Calcutta we were informed that the Calcutta police would refuse to allow me to enter the city," he said in a statement.
"If I flew there, I was told, I would be put on the next plane back. I was also told that this was at the request of the chief minister."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-21289355
February 1, 2013 at 10:14 am
"If I flew there, I was told, I would be put on the next plane back. I was also told that this was at the request of the chief minister."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-21289355
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Rushdie visit 'blocked by state' |
Author Sir Salman Rushdie accuses West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee of authorising police to stop his visit to Calcutta earlier this week.
February 1, 2013 at 10:14 am
2 people like this
To be frank, I'm rather relieved that Rushdie could not ultimately present himself to the book-fair crowd or any other section of the citizens, precise because of the past experience that I have of Rushdie's encounter with this city and its literature enthusiasts! Last time he made a speech in the presence of national luminaries from the academia, media etc. at the G.D. Birla Sabhagriha auditorium and at the end of the speech ( indeed a life time experience!) when the audience was allowed to ask the author questions they wanted to ask, it was more than amply evident that they knew nothing in excess of the Fatwa and the forced exile! A shame unforgettable ! Thanks to our smart chief Minister, she has prevented a painful repeat of that disaster!
February 1, 2013 at 11:03 am
not left with a choice of a better CM. alas! the earlier one flew Taslima off.
February 1, 2013 at 11:04 am
ha ha ! uncanny ! but helps feel that we are alive. Abhijit Mukherjee sir.
February 1, 2013 at 11:12 am
It has been considerable successes on the part of Rushdie and Naipaul in portraying us without really spending much ink through their writings. Our mere reaction to what they stand for has been enough to have a thorough idea about our state of being. Observe the proud book-fair crowd and you will realize !
February 1, 2013 at 11:12 am
Sorry to hear further how things stand... in this regard. I used to assign a few articles to my students by Taslima more than fifteen years ago, when she was first under duress, so that may peg me in Calcutta, deepening on which side you prefer!
February 1, 2013 at 12:08 pm
But I think Rushdie is a much greater writer than Tasleema. No way we can bracket the two - except the fact that both have been victims of culture police.
February 1, 2013 at 7:02 pm
The issue in this thread is not literary quality or relative merits Sandipan, it is the refusal and inability of this city to rely on debates. Words actually mean nothing anymore, people apparently refuse to be drawn into the complexities of reason, identity, integration and similar aspects that words may have a role to introduce to us. We are apparently a bunch of aggressive tribesmen under respective warlords crying for blood! May be, after 35 years of Communist rule this is a natural fall out.
February 1, 2013 at 9:05 pm
The latest, according to the organizers, is that Rushdie was never sent an invite, he just made the whole thing up! It's one thing to give in to pressure but at least have the honesty and courage to own up. To invite an author and then accuse him of lying because one is unable to host him is contemptible. Will definitely be giving the Book Fair a miss this year!
February 1, 2013 at 9:09 pm
I guess once a city is branded cosmoploitan, and it comes to the knowledge of its inhabitants,enabling them to take pleasure in the fact that they all are inborn 'cosmopolitans', as matter of chance than choice, such things are likely to happen.Many other reason may be traced out.But it came to mind first, as Abhijit Mukherjee sir referred to 'book fair crowd'.It may be relevant that Kolkata cine theatres once used to release Hollywood classics; present stat shows that distributors ( of English and other language films; I'm not talking about fashionable film fests attened by the same mob for a fortnight ) are hopeless about any prospect in Kolkata.I have a hunch, if we take the sales stat of Bookfair things will become clearer.The pattern may be a blunt slap on cosmoploitan claims.
February 1, 2013 at 11:15 pm
Cosmopolitan and Kolkata? I think not much of cosmopolitanism is left now, I absolutely agree with Abhijit Mhkherjee, except the last sentence. We have seen bans imposed on artistes and their works under other regimes in India. As our political parties play to the votebank politics (increasingly after the start of the coalition era), I wonder whether we at all deserved the Westminster model. Dr Rajendra Prasad's famous lecture at the Constituent Assembly sounds hollow now.
February 2, 2013 at 1:02 am
Every community, majority or minority, has a lunatic fringe. But what is distressing is the centralization of that discourse of lunacy in matters political as well as cultural in this worst of times. I can't better sum it up than Abhijit Mukherjee sir's spirited lines " We are apparently a bunch of aggressive tribesmen under respective warlords crying for blood! May be, after 35 years of Communist rule this is a natural fall out."
February 2, 2013 at 4:17 am
Thank you, everyone for your comments and educating me further on all this. Sad to hear... If such has not always been the case, let's hope that people can choose to work to improve things. Perhaps I sound like an ignorant foreigner, but what's the alternative? Nothing lasts forever in this world, if people decide they want change.
February 2, 2013 at 5:07 am
It makes me wonder...how deeply do we want change and how much are we willing to give up for it? We, in India, seem to be suffering from a deep-rooted fear and cynicism, one that we also use to mask and justify our own inability to speak up or act. The government, politicians, 'extremists' and 'fanatics' are all held responsible while we see ourselves as the poor, suffering victims of increasingly vicious attacks. To effectively participate in change, we must look beyond such polarities and reclaim agency. This means that things cannot continue as they are at the moment and that we may well have to suffer the consequences. It is not, by any means, an easy choice to make as it involves a willingness to acknowledge our own involvement and take responsibility, but this, for me, constitutes the crux of the problem. Sorry to butt in on a debate that has been closed; this is my very last point. ;-)
February 2, 2013 at 11:40 pm
I don't think you're "butting in" at all. Your comments seem quite relevant to the article and associated problems. Actually, I just read an editorial in the New York Times that you might find interesting that seems related, about "India’s “virtual middle class.” ...like China and Egypt." See my wall.
February 3, 2013 at 5:14 am
Thanks, I will.
February 3, 2013 at 6:34 am
The outrage is justified. Nevertheless, let us not lose sight of the fact that Rushdie was going there for a commercial exercise. "Writers must make a living too" arguments notwithstanding, because Rushdie has made more than enough of a living. I was sorely disappointed when he decided to allow the making of the film, a film which at least in trailer looks rather Hollywood. There is, of course, an argument to be made that something like that needs to be filmed in order to garner a larger audience, but I think that argument is bumkum, just as Rushdie's claim that the movie has the same emotional power as the book is bumkum. (Does the movie garner the same kind of outrage? somehow I doubt it, very very much.) All of which is a long-winded way of saying that if Rushdie, himself, no longer stands for some things that he (appears to have) stood for once upon a time -- not giving in to the (commercial) establishment -- then really that is far more disturbing, discomfiting, distressing and sad to me than the typically idiotic response from the WB authorities and the "protest" groups.
February 3, 2013 at 7:53 am
And also on the business of Calcutta, I spend a seriously disappointing 4 weeks there last June -- the intellectual decline, and the increase in general rudeness (ex: "gaen deya" for those who understand what that means; and pushing and shoving for no reason, including at one point being hit by a parking car - on purpose) -- even in 3.5 years I hadn't been was shocking to the say the least.
February 3, 2013 at 7:55 am
And as for the Jaipur Lit Fest: considering that Chetan Bhagat is often a headliner there, I for one was glad that Rushdie didn't make it. (Saved himself an ignominy there, I thought.) Of course not glad for what that says about my "honorable" countrymen.
February 3, 2013 at 8:02 am
I am caustic, I know; I guess still young enough to keep holding on to certain ideals. So there. :)
February 3, 2013 at 8:03 am
Carl Jung, The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature.
"Since the expression can never match the richness of the vision and can never exhaust its possibilities, the poet must have at his disposal a huge store of material if he is to communicate even a fraction of what he has glimpsed, and must make use of difficult and contradictory images in order to express the strange paradoxes of his vision.... Nothing is missing in the whole gamut that ranges from the ineffably sublime to the perversely grotesque." 97.
"Since the expression can never match the richness of the vision and can never exhaust its possibilities, the poet must have at his disposal a huge store of material if he is to communicate even a fraction of what he has glimpsed, and must make use of difficult and contradictory images in order to express the strange paradoxes of his vision.... Nothing is missing in the whole gamut that ranges from the ineffably sublime to the perversely grotesque." 97.
February 1, 2013 at 6:36 am
6 people like this
Carl Jung, The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature.
"However dark and unconscious this night-world may be, it is not wholly unfamiliar. Man has known it from time immemorial, and for primitives it is a self-evident part of their cosmos. It is only we who have repudiated it because of our fear of superstition and metaphysics, building up in its place an apparently safer and more manageable world of consciousness in which natural law operates like human law in a society. The poet now and then catches sight of the figures that people the night-world--spirits, demons, and gods; he feels the secret quickening of human fate by a suprahuman design, and has a presentiment of incomprehensible happenings in the pleroma. In short, he catches a glimpse of the psychic world that terrifies the primitive and is at the same time his greatest hope." 95-6.
"However dark and unconscious this night-world may be, it is not wholly unfamiliar. Man has known it from time immemorial, and for primitives it is a self-evident part of their cosmos. It is only we who have repudiated it because of our fear of superstition and metaphysics, building up in its place an apparently safer and more manageable world of consciousness in which natural law operates like human law in a society. The poet now and then catches sight of the figures that people the night-world--spirits, demons, and gods; he feels the secret quickening of human fate by a suprahuman design, and has a presentiment of incomprehensible happenings in the pleroma. In short, he catches a glimpse of the psychic world that terrifies the primitive and is at the same time his greatest hope." 95-6.
February 1, 2013 at 5:52 am
8 people like this
Carl Jung, The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature.
"In works of art of this nature--and we must never confuse them with the artist as a person--it cannot be doubted that the vision is a genuine primordial experience, no matter what the rationalists may say. It is not something derived or secondary, it is not symptomatic of something else, it is a true symbol--that is, an expression for something real but unknown. The love-episode is a real experience really suffered, and so is the vision. It is not for us to say whether its content is of a physical, psychic, or metaphysical nature. In itself it had psychic reality, and this is no less real than physical reality. Human passion falls within the sphere of conscious experience, while the object of the vision lies beyond it. Through our sense we experience the known, but our intuitions point to things that are unknown and hidden, that by their very nature are secret. If ever they become conscious, they are intentionally kept secret and concealed, for which reason they have been regarded from earliest time as mysterious, uncanny, and deceptive. They are hidden from man, and he hides himself from them out of religious awe, protecting himself with the shield of science and reason."
"In works of art of this nature--and we must never confuse them with the artist as a person--it cannot be doubted that the vision is a genuine primordial experience, no matter what the rationalists may say. It is not something derived or secondary, it is not symptomatic of something else, it is a true symbol--that is, an expression for something real but unknown. The love-episode is a real experience really suffered, and so is the vision. It is not for us to say whether its content is of a physical, psychic, or metaphysical nature. In itself it had psychic reality, and this is no less real than physical reality. Human passion falls within the sphere of conscious experience, while the object of the vision lies beyond it. Through our sense we experience the known, but our intuitions point to things that are unknown and hidden, that by their very nature are secret. If ever they become conscious, they are intentionally kept secret and concealed, for which reason they have been regarded from earliest time as mysterious, uncanny, and deceptive. They are hidden from man, and he hides himself from them out of religious awe, protecting himself with the shield of science and reason."
February 1, 2013 at 5:14 am
9 people like this
Carl Jung, The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature
"But this question forces itself upon us when we turn to the visionary mode. We are astonished, confused, bewildered, put on our guard or even repelled; we demand commentaries and explanations. We are reminded of nothing in everyday life, but rather of dreams, night-time fears, and the dark, uncanny recesses of the human mind. The public for the most part repudiates this kind of literature, unless it is crudely sensational, and even the literary critic finds it embarrassing. It is true that Dante and Wagner have made his task somewhat easier for him by disguising the visionary experience in a cloak of historical or mythical events, whcih are then erroneously taken to be the real subject matter. In both cases the compelling power and deeper meaning of the work do not lie in the historical or mythical material, but in the visionary experience it serves to express."
"But this question forces itself upon us when we turn to the visionary mode. We are astonished, confused, bewildered, put on our guard or even repelled; we demand commentaries and explanations. We are reminded of nothing in everyday life, but rather of dreams, night-time fears, and the dark, uncanny recesses of the human mind. The public for the most part repudiates this kind of literature, unless it is crudely sensational, and even the literary critic finds it embarrassing. It is true that Dante and Wagner have made his task somewhat easier for him by disguising the visionary experience in a cloak of historical or mythical events, whcih are then erroneously taken to be the real subject matter. In both cases the compelling power and deeper meaning of the work do not lie in the historical or mythical material, but in the visionary experience it serves to express."
February 1, 2013 at 4:52 am
5 people like this
What do you mean by CM?
February 1, 2013 at 11:04 am
sorry.the comment was accidentally misplaced; meant to be in the thread concerning Rushdie's Kolkata visit that didn't take place. CM : Chief Minister.
February 1, 2013 at 1:09 pm
No problem. I figured it out.
February 1, 2013 at 1:16 pm
Saul Bellow > "In the American moral crisis, the first requirement was to experience what was happening and to see what must be seen." The Dean's December (1982).
February 1, 2013 at 3:59 am
3 people like this
“I think we’re in danger of seeing a new dark age come over the mental life of the country. It is a very serious matter.” — Saul Bellow, The Dean’s December (1982).
January 31, 2013 at 6:30 pm
6 people like this
"A man is not complete when he lives in a world of statistical truth. He must live in a world of his biological truth. Man has always lived in the myths. And we think we are able to be born today and to live in no myth, without history, that is a disease, that's absolutely abnormal, because man is not born every day. He is, was, born in a specific historical setting, with specific historical qualities, and therefore he is only complete when he has a relation to these things. It is just as if he were born without eyes and ears, when you are growing up with no connection with the past. From the establishment of natural science, you need no connection with the past, you can wipe it out, and that is a mutilation of the human being." --Carl Jung
January 31, 2013 at 6:10 pm
8 people like this
'Primitive consciousness', 'racial memory' Jungian connotative terms for universal consciousness of man.Artificial boundaries are man made.
January 31, 2013 at 8:25 pm
Yes, universal consciousness, human consciousness. I believe Jung is right. Modernity has forgotten that without the language of the great myths, we human beings cannot even understand who and what we are, global now...
February 1, 2013 at 3:49 am
Carl Jung > "Thus, what appears in the vision is the imagery of the collective unconscious."
February 1, 2013 at 5:40 am
yes.
February 1, 2013 at 6:55 am
"We need more understanding of human nature, because the only real danger that exists is man himself. He is the great danger, and we are pitifully unaware of it. We know nothing of man, far too little. His psyche should be studied, because we are the origin of all coming evil." --Carl Jung
January 31, 2013 at 5:32 pm
5 people like this
This is also the great lesson of religion. Good and evil. Metaphor for the internal struggle. The devil (or the potential for the devil) is within so watch out.
January 31, 2013 at 9:57 pm
Ravana and the devil are the great metaphors of what we are and can become at our worst... The modern, secular metaphors of Hitler and Stalin do not go deep enough into our psyche, nor resonate sufficiently with the past to help us understand ourselves, when compared with a tale like the Ramayana.
February 1, 2013 at 3:56 am
"A man who prizes golden moderation
stays safely clear of the filth of a run-down
building, stays prudently out of a palace
others will envy."
--Horace, Odes II.10 (tr J. P. Clancy)
stays safely clear of the filth of a run-down
building, stays prudently out of a palace
others will envy."
--Horace, Odes II.10 (tr J. P. Clancy)
January 31, 2013 at 4:57 am
4 people like this
"Everywhere, around the globe, where nihilism has performed its paradoxically salutary function of clearing the ground, it yet suppresses the universal at precisely the time when humanity needs it the most, to save ourselves from self-destruction. Benda’s vision, though, like that of Barzun, Milosz, Chaudhuri, and Rieff, the ancients, Plato, Ibn Khaldun, Vico, and Washington, is not ultimately a despairing one. All of them evoke the possibility and time when, as Benda writes, “a handful of men at desks” are “able to succeed,” once again, in helping “humanity believe that the supreme values are the good things of the spirit.” Now on our laptops, uploading to our blogs and global social networks."
Frederick Glaysher, "Decadence, East and West." blog, The Globe
Frederick Glaysher, "Decadence, East and West." blog, The Globe
January 30, 2013 at 6:57 am
4 people like this
"Even as early as 1928, Benda realized they were beyond the reach of rational argumentation, locked away in their loathing and intolerance of moral and spiritual categories of thought and would not tolerate any such perspective. Sunk deep into a state of intellectual, moral, and spiritual decadence, holding humanity in their death grasp, many loathe even the very idea of morality and spirituality. Although Benda’s understanding comes out of the lesser universalism of the Catholic Church, he is right when he states, “The nature of moral action is precisely that it creates its object by affirming it.”
Frederick Glaysher, "Decadence, East and West." blog, The Globe
Frederick Glaysher, "Decadence, East and West." blog, The Globe
January 30, 2013 at 5:16 am
3 people like this
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2013/01/23/decadence-east-and-west/
January 30, 2013 at 5:20 am
"In 1928, Julien Benda, the Frenchman and author of The Betrayal of the Intellectuals, was one of the earliest observers of the rise of modern nihilism and its pernicious affect upon literature and culture. Leveling a particularly prescient critique of Nietzsche and Marx, Benda wrote that of such decadent men of letters, it was hard “to imagine them turning against the tide of their intellectual decadence and ceasing to think that they display a lofty culture when they sneer at rational morality” (155)."
Frederick Glaysher, "Decadence, East and West." blog, The Globe
Frederick Glaysher, "Decadence, East and West." blog, The Globe
January 30, 2013 at 3:52 am
4 people like this
Marx was no nihilist; rather, I think he was closer to a romantic humanist.
January 30, 2013 at 4:11 am
I can respect that one might argue that, and I follow the line of thinking. In my opinion, he turned to violence in the Manifesto, setting out the path that others took. The blood they shed is on his hands. There's nothing "romantic" about that, but cynical reduction of everything in human existence to the material, as he had done in his dissertation, just as much as in corrupt capitalism--both are based on the repudiation of moral and spiritual values, as with Nietzsche. Benda saw and understood all of that in The Betrayal of the Intellectuals. Subsequent history since 1928 has only continued to demonstrate the veracity of his insight into modernity.
January 30, 2013 at 4:19 am
In a speech at The Hague, Marx was quite clear that in England, Holland, and the U. S., the working class could achieve its aims without recourse to violence. The speech has been translated by Tucker as "On the Possibility of Nonviolent Revolution."
January 30, 2013 at 4:27 am
I would say the relentless attempts of some American academics and intellectuals to resurrect and revive Marx constitutes a failure of judgment and responsibility, given the vast slaughter around the globe that Marxism perpetrated on over a 100 million people. Both Marxism and unbridled capitalism have miserably failed, and not to realize it is quixotic romanticism, whether Left or Right...
January 30, 2013 at 4:34 am
Blaming Marx for Stalin and Mao is like blaming Einstein for nuclear weapons or Edward Teller.
January 30, 2013 at 4:38 am
I've heard the argument many times. It is an old one. Another of the common attempts to defend the indefensible. It is an historical fact that Marx advocated violence in the Manifesto, tainting everything thereafter. True believers, whether Marxists or capitalists, or fundamentalists of any sort, for that matter, choose fantasy over reality. Marxism has always produced a very ugly reality, as has capitalism at its worst.
January 30, 2013 at 4:43 am
It is clear that you have the beginnings of a negative critique of capitalism and socialism, but to you have a positive program? Or is it you who is the nihilist?
January 30, 2013 at 4:49 am
As an epic poet and poet-critic, my books all address both the deficiencies of Marxism and unrestrained capitalism, while, I would like to think, articulating a global, universal vision for humanity. Not Utopia, but a moral, humane vision congruent with the past of human experience, but looking forward to the future.
I invite you to read a free chapter of my epic poem, BOOK I, The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem:
PDF.
I invite you to read a free chapter of my epic poem, BOOK I, The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem:
PDF.
January 30, 2013 at 4:56 am
Thank you. I will have a look. ...and I invite you to read my book-length poem, if you can find it (it is out of print). It's called IT FELL FROM THE SKY, IT MUST BE OURS: A POEM FOR PEACE WITH JUSTICE (Blitz: Dhaka, 2006).
January 30, 2013 at 5:00 am
McCabe Library at Swarthmore College has a copy, if you still have University Research Library borrowing privileges.
January 30, 2013 at 5:03 am
Thanks for mentioning it, I'll check it out. I enjoyed the chat...
January 30, 2013 at 5:03 am
So did I.
January 30, 2013 at 5:18 am
Book review, by Ratul Pal, Rajshahi University, Rajshahi, Bangladesh
"Most of the contemporary poets and critics claim that epic is not suitable for our modern age. But Frederick Glaysher has proven them wrong. He has shown that if a poet has true dedication, if he has unshakable belief in humanity, spirituality and overall progress of human beings, if he hasn't already surrendered himself to the ugliness of decadence, it is possible for him to write an epic, even in modern age...."
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/512201388
January 29, 2013 at 8:37 am
"Most of the contemporary poets and critics claim that epic is not suitable for our modern age. But Frederick Glaysher has proven them wrong. He has shown that if a poet has true dedication, if he has unshakable belief in humanity, spirituality and overall progress of human beings, if he hasn't already surrendered himself to the ugliness of decadence, it is possible for him to write an epic, even in modern age...."
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/512201388
|
a review of The Parliament of Poets, An Epic Poem |
Most of the contemporary poets and critics claim that epic is not suitable for our modern age. But Fredrich Glaysher has proven them wrong. He has shown that if a poet has true dedication, if he has unshakable belief in humanity, spirituality and overall progress of human beings, if he hasn't alread...
January 29, 2013 at 8:37 am
9 people like this
Erland Anderson, Perhaps you'll forgive me and understand why I cannot but reflect that almost the first response I've heard of and received about my epic poem is from a fresh, young mind in Bangladesh, uncorrupted by the sophistries of literary and academic "theory" from Oxford and Cambridge, Harvard and Yale, my alma mater The University of Michigan, and so on... a young man who loves literature and poetry and can *respond* to it without all the decadence of modernity getting in the way. This recognition is worth more than *anything* the corrupt New York Times Book Review, The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, or even TLS was able to achieve!
As far as I'm concerned, if I am the first epic poet to write in the English language in 345 years, and I realize it's for others to judge, to which I'd add those fit to judge, not those whose heads are full of disgusting, dehumanizing "theories" and politicization, Ratul Pal has surpassed all of them. He retains what they have lost. The ability to recognize something new and the integrity to try to speak words worthy of it, and bring it to the attention of the *polis*, if you will, the people, other readers! That is the role of the critic that the Berlin Painter 2,500 years ago wrought on his matchless amphora. That is what literature and criticism has often lost in the United States of America. The proper relationship of the poet and writer to the critic and reader. I feel it incumbent upon me to acknowledge that Ratul Pal has shamed all of them by demonstrating superior discernment and judgment, which are not contingent upon some sheepskin from one of the decadent old world institutions.
If my epic poem is ever eventually judged to be the first global, universal epic poem, I shall remain grateful and indebted to him, and I am thrilled that a young man on the other side of the world, in Bangladesh, first realized it!
As far as I'm concerned, if I am the first epic poet to write in the English language in 345 years, and I realize it's for others to judge, to which I'd add those fit to judge, not those whose heads are full of disgusting, dehumanizing "theories" and politicization, Ratul Pal has surpassed all of them. He retains what they have lost. The ability to recognize something new and the integrity to try to speak words worthy of it, and bring it to the attention of the *polis*, if you will, the people, other readers! That is the role of the critic that the Berlin Painter 2,500 years ago wrought on his matchless amphora. That is what literature and criticism has often lost in the United States of America. The proper relationship of the poet and writer to the critic and reader. I feel it incumbent upon me to acknowledge that Ratul Pal has shamed all of them by demonstrating superior discernment and judgment, which are not contingent upon some sheepskin from one of the decadent old world institutions.
If my epic poem is ever eventually judged to be the first global, universal epic poem, I shall remain grateful and indebted to him, and I am thrilled that a young man on the other side of the world, in Bangladesh, first realized it!
January 29, 2013 at 8:59 am
Bina Biswas Nishat Haider Tarun Tapas Mukherjee Meer Mushfique Mahmood Vidyadhar Steinbake Sourav Adhikary et al.
January 29, 2013 at 9:10 am
Ratul Pal, Hisham M Nazer, Manjari Chakravarti, Ruma Chakravarti, Abdullah Khan, Vishwanath Bite
January 29, 2013 at 4:16 pm
Swaran Singh, Pradip Ray, Rati Saxena, Chandra Shekhar Dubey, et al.
January 29, 2013 at 4:40 pm
'The Parliament of Poet' is a superb experiment in its form,content,point of view and message. Let's not forget that literature can neither be created,nor read and appreciated in isolation.
January 30, 2013 at 7:36 am
Thank you, Chandra Shekhar Dubey, for your good words. I'm not entirely sure what you mean in your last sentence. Could you explain a little more what you're thinking? Have you read The Parliament of Poets?
January 30, 2013 at 7:40 am
I mean the basic ethos of world literature which reflects unified sensibility.'Parliament of Poets' as I have understood addresses this basic ethos of literature reflecting different traditions,cultures of the world in the language of humanism .It has cosmic vision.The last line in my comment is meant for the detractors of this epic poem.
January 30, 2013 at 8:08 am
Okay, I think I follow you. It was and is my hope to articulate a unifying vision of humanity, without suggesting any exclusive uniformity, but remaining open to the fullness and diversity of human reflection and experience. Of course, I had to try to carefully select, since it would be impossible to include literally everything, but I hope I successfully broadened the scope through metaphor, analogy, and the catalogues, other devices. It sounds like you read it?
January 30, 2013 at 8:20 am
yes.It's art.Of course,symbols,metaphors , analogy and other devices have successfully achieved this artistic unity.
January 30, 2013 at 8:25 am
I appreciate your saying so. Since you've read it, I wonder if you'd be willing to write even a brief review of it? On Goodreads, too, Amazon.in or Flipcart? Wherever you might feel inspired to post or published it?
January 30, 2013 at 8:29 am
Sure.Glad to do so.
January 30, 2013 at 8:34 am
Thank you. I'd like very much to hear what you think... to whatever length you want, short or long.
January 30, 2013 at 8:38 am
Though I have not read the entire work, but from my limited reading I can assert that "The Parliament of Poets" is an eloquent and powerful epic which is fairly ambitious in scope, lofty in thought and sublime in its language.
January 30, 2013 at 2:56 pm
Nishat Haider, Thank you for your good opinion. You used the word that I've always striven for since reading when young *Longinus*, "On the Sublime"! I hope someday you'll read the rest... Can I encourage you by mentioning BOOK IX includes Rumi and Attar, along with other Sufis and mystics, ending at Fatehpur Sikri? :)
January 30, 2013 at 4:35 pm
"...modern Western culture has been in free-fall for over a hundred years, arguably even longer. Whether high or low, such is the story of Western civilization, and, to the extent that it became modern civilization, its decadence has long been passed around the world, into the vitals of every regional civilization on the face of the earth. Together, we have all sunk into the dark pit of cynicism, frivolity, and despair, “fallen off” into nihilism." ~Frederick Glaysher, from 'Decadence, East and West'
January 29, 2013 at 7:55 am
"Fortunately, perhaps, the Internet and Post-Gutenberg publishing have been developed by science and technology just at the moment when the spirit requires new channels through which to flow, circumventing the decadent bastions of much of the American university, especially its vitiated English departments, and its corrupt cultural institutions and influence, global now, toward a fourth world of universality."
Frederick Glaysher, "Decadence, East and West." blog, The Globe
Frederick Glaysher, "Decadence, East and West." blog, The Globe
January 29, 2013 at 7:54 am
5 people like this
I would include among the "corrupt cultural institutions and influence" such overly trusted arbiters of literary and cultural opinion as,
The New York Times, Sunday Book Review
Advertising Rates (circulation: 2,003,247)
One Full Page, centerspread*: $81,100
*Applies to a Sunday Book Review ad which is also repeated in the weekday section.
The New York Review of Books (circulation: 135,468)
2013 Advertising Rates
Full page
$14,950
TLS, The Times Literary Supplement (circulation: 30,834)
Full Page mono £2,992
Full colour: 12.5% premium on mono rates
I have been unsuccessful in discovering the rates at The Guardian. My guess is that it is on the order of The New York Times, and so forth, for many other publications.
Who pays those rates? The corrupt New York publishers and others who monopolize the cultural landscape, all of which now are mega-corporations who are as corrupt as Wall Street, and do not serve the best interests of neither the national cultures nor the globe. To be clear, the conventional publishers *bribe* those who control the major outlets for book reviews to take note of the schlock they shovel in their direction. Protestations to the contrary are as false and deceitful as those in Congress who take bribes from the lobbyists of the gun manufacturers, Wall Street, and others. This is part of the DECADENCE that has world culture grasped by the throat...
The New York Times, Sunday Book Review
Advertising Rates (circulation: 2,003,247)
One Full Page, centerspread*: $81,100
*Applies to a Sunday Book Review ad which is also repeated in the weekday section.
The New York Review of Books (circulation: 135,468)
2013 Advertising Rates
Full page
$14,950
TLS, The Times Literary Supplement (circulation: 30,834)
Full Page mono £2,992
Full colour: 12.5% premium on mono rates
I have been unsuccessful in discovering the rates at The Guardian. My guess is that it is on the order of The New York Times, and so forth, for many other publications.
Who pays those rates? The corrupt New York publishers and others who monopolize the cultural landscape, all of which now are mega-corporations who are as corrupt as Wall Street, and do not serve the best interests of neither the national cultures nor the globe. To be clear, the conventional publishers *bribe* those who control the major outlets for book reviews to take note of the schlock they shovel in their direction. Protestations to the contrary are as false and deceitful as those in Congress who take bribes from the lobbyists of the gun manufacturers, Wall Street, and others. This is part of the DECADENCE that has world culture grasped by the throat...
January 29, 2013 at 8:07 am
The corrupt corporate gatekeepers of the kingdom of letters are as corrupt as Murdoch. It's a long story, we've all been reading it for decades. Why do readers place any trust in these people?
Time Warner,
Random House,
Penguin Putnam,
Harper Collins,
Holtzbrinck Publishing Holdings,
Simon & Schuster...
Hachette
Macmillan
Time Warner,
Random House,
Penguin Putnam,
Harper Collins,
Holtzbrinck Publishing Holdings,
Simon & Schuster...
Hachette
Macmillan
January 29, 2013 at 8:15 am
The New York Times self-righteously railed against authors on Amazon who bought book reviews from individuals and fly-by-night "companies," but their own corrupt practices are no better. While I don't approve of some writers buying reviews, basically the same thing is done by all of the publications above when they allow corporate publishers to buy reviews in their pages, as is done too in other newspapers and magazines. Add to this the decadence and nihilism constricting the thinking of cultural elites in the West, and the scope of the modern problem should begin to become apparent:
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/business/book-reviewers-for-hire-meet-a-demand-for-online-raves.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/business/book-reviewers-for-hire-meet-a-demand-for-online-raves.html
January 29, 2013 at 8:27 am
Critics do not own the Tradition. Poets, writers, and artists are the fiduciary agents of the Tradition. Critics have too often lost and forgotten what their role is in the culture, secondary, and should go back to the 2,500-year-old Berlin Painter’s Rhapsode Amphora, meditating long and hard, on their knees, in their offices, begging the gods to help them remember and understand it.
Frederick Glaysher, "Decadence, East and West." blog, The Globe
Frederick Glaysher, "Decadence, East and West." blog, The Globe
January 29, 2013 at 7:14 am
7 people like this
So, no one owns the tradition.
January 29, 2013 at 7:27 am
East and West, the gods...
January 29, 2013 at 7:29 am
Poets and critics are but servants of the Tradition, before which all are judged, many, if not all, in the end, found wanting... to one degree or another, as viewed from on high.
January 29, 2013 at 7:31 am
Rhapsode Amphora, by the Berlin Painter
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2012/03/16/rhapsode-amphora-berlin-painter/
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2012/03/16/rhapsode-amphora-berlin-painter/
January 29, 2013 at 7:41 am
During the last thirty years, the American academy has often betrayed the deepest principles of the Tradition and of civilization. Every imaginable form of intellectual decline, decadence, and banality has long been the daily gruel served up for its students, debasing and corrupting the entire culture, spreading around the globe.
January 29, 2013 at 6:25 am
1 person likes this
New Delhi, India > uRead, now has all my books online. Free Shipping in India.
https://www.uread.com/author/frederick-glaysher
January 29, 2013 at 5:26 am
https://www.uread.com/author/frederick-glaysher
|
frederick glaysher author - Books - 24x7 online bookstore uRead.com |
frederick glaysher Books Buy & Search Online @ uRead.com. Great Discounts, Free shipping on frederick glaysher Books: Biggest Online Book Store India. Buy frederick glaysher online : Author
January 29, 2013 at 5:26 am
In “Questions for the Third Millennium,” in 1991, Milosz provided a significant insight into the evolving way out of the malaise, the resolution of the severing of the unity of being and consciousness into artificially separated realms, writing about quantum mechanics that it
“restores the mind to its role of a co-creator in the fabric of reality. This favors a shift from belittling man as an insignificant speck in the immensity of galaxies to regarding him again as the main actor in the universal drama—which is a vision proper to every religion (Blake’s Divine Humanity, Adam Kadmon of the Cabbalah, Logos-Christ of the Christian denominations).”
Google Frederick Glaysher, "Decadence, East and West." blog, The Globe
“restores the mind to its role of a co-creator in the fabric of reality. This favors a shift from belittling man as an insignificant speck in the immensity of galaxies to regarding him again as the main actor in the universal drama—which is a vision proper to every religion (Blake’s Divine Humanity, Adam Kadmon of the Cabbalah, Logos-Christ of the Christian denominations).”
Google Frederick Glaysher, "Decadence, East and West." blog, The Globe
January 29, 2013 at 5:09 am
With the Troy-area Interfaith Group and the Reform Bahai Faith, I attended the 14th Annual World Sabbath, January 27, 2013, at the Hindu Bharatiya Temple, Troy, Michigan. A "beautiful coming together of Metro Detroit’s diverse community to champion World Peace and the building of respect and understanding."
https://www.worldsabbath.org/
January 29, 2013 at 4:54 am
https://www.worldsabbath.org/
|
World Sabbath — Religious Reconciliation |
The mission of this interfaith World Sabbath is to teach our diverse population in Metro Detroit that the work of building a community of justice, equality, respect and peace is a calling that we all share.
January 29, 2013 at 4:54 am
The Bharatiya Temple of Metropolitan Detroit
https://www.bharatiya-temple.org/
https://www.bharatiya-temple.org/
January 29, 2013 at 4:56 am
Salman Rushdie > "The world of Islam has to enter the modern world. It has to learn how to live in the modern world. This world in which information is free, in which people do not live according to, let's say, the cultural codes of Arabia in the 7th century. And you can see that there's a great desire among the young people. At some point, in order to thrive, those countries have to modernise their ideas, their thinking, their institutions and they have to offer their people more liberty."
https://www.indianexpress.com/news/there-are-things-in-india-that-have-got-much-worse-particularly-in-the-area-of-free-expression/1066028/0
January 29, 2013 at 3:50 am
https://www.indianexpress.com/news/there-are-things-in-india-that-have-got-much-worse-particularly-in-the-area-of-free-expression/1066028/0
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‘There are things in India that have got much worse, particularly in the area of free expression’ -. |
‘There are things in India that have got much worse, particularly in the area of free expression’ - In this Walk the Talk on NDTV 24x7, author Salman Rushdie, who is in India to pr
January 29, 2013 at 3:50 am
4 people like this
Sourav Adhikary, Sorry, I should have "Shared" it instead of copy and pasted the link from the article! Anyway, I appreciate your bringing it to *our* attention!
January 29, 2013 at 4:03 am
My pleasure, Mr Glaysher.
January 29, 2013 at 4:04 am
"Polio eradication is a proving ground, a test," Bill Gates told the BBC. "It will reveal what human beings are capable of and suggest how ambitious we can be about our future." "I can say without reservation that the last mile is not only the hardest mile; it's also much harder than I expected,"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21207601
January 28, 2013 at 4:29 pm
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21207601
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Bill Gates: The world can defeat polio |
Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates says eradication of polio "will reveal what human beings are capable of, and suggest how ambitious we can be about our future".
January 28, 2013 at 4:29 pm
1 person likes this
Fracking, read it, it's appalling...
January 28, 2013 at 8:37 am
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Timeline Photos |
January 28, 2013 at 8:37 am
2 people like this
Love
January 27, 2013 at 4:09 am
Oh... It is also happening in developed world and that's too in U.S.A.
January 27, 2013 at 4:11 am
What I meant to say was .. Love your work actually.. It's a complete tragedy of epic proportions that Fracking is allowed and cannot be stopped... It calls for extreme strategies and a 'new World Order' of the people!!!!!!!! A universal declaration of the facts, the issue and a ban. Then distributed as a demand of the people all across the globe so that everybody has the same document sent to all around each persons locality. That then is the creed/lore and has the endorsement of all science and environment groups. Good luck .. We will work on it in Ozz I hope soon. Good speed
January 27, 2013 at 4:18 am
<3
January 27, 2013 at 4:21 am
Happening right in my old PA home town....such a beautiful place being torn apart by fracking - and the PA government being beholden to the frackERS instead of their constituents. Not only that - a family friend had their water completely contaminated bya fracking well on an adjoining property. They worked for several years to get compensation and once they did, they're told to keep everything quiet....so these companies know they're doing great damage (and we're not even considering what tey're doing to the roads - there was a spill recently in one of the creeks - and so much more) yet trying to hush everyone up so they can continue making money. So So Sad.
January 27, 2013 at 5:33 am
My favorite anti fracking site run by a 3 legged -dog near my old hometown in PA - who was actually dumped herself by one of the fracking workers. Lucky Ada was picked up by a really nice human! https://adamaecompton.wordpress.com/
January 27, 2013 at 5:34 am
see if those scum bags in Washington and big oil would drink that!!!
January 27, 2013 at 6:00 am
Fracking not only wrecks the landscape, but drives residents out. I had lived in Susquehanna county all my life. With the state of PA laying down at the economically-boisterous feet of these oils companies, the resident are forced to put up with unsavory gas-line workers, environmental hazards, ruined roads, and the like. My family was forced out of our home we rented because the rent rate skyrocketed. Born and raised in SusqCo, and will not return because the almighty dollar is more important to the corrupt elite than is maintaining a solid cultural, ethical and communal population.
January 27, 2013 at 6:38 am
Thankyou Yoko for raising awareness. THEY SHOULD BAN FRACKING and use alternative sources of power - hydro, wind, solar, methane, dynamo, any thing rather than this it's HORRIFIC
January 27, 2013 at 6:52 am
What is fracking?
January 27, 2013 at 6:52 am
Once you put something in the ground and it creates a problem, you have a problem that wont go away .................. ever.
January 27, 2013 at 7:02 am
@Carl N. Nardi Sr., check out the FB page but what you really need to do is watch the movie ....https://www.facebook.com/gaslandmovie?ref=ts&fref=ts
January 27, 2013 at 7:31 am
We need more people in this world like you. Keep doing what you do.
January 27, 2013 at 10:07 am
Shell oil is starting to put pro mining for Shale gas commercials on TV, desensitizing at work
January 27, 2013 at 11:26 am
James Sardone monsanto did it all over the place when they were voting in CA whether or not to label. They even went so far as to hire a marketing company that represented themselves as a very Green Party/Democratic looking group and sent out mailers to CA residents showing the NO box checked on Prop 37 to subtly say to people if you believe in green or Obama (whose picture was on the top of the mailer) then you better vote NO on Prop 37.
January 27, 2013 at 12:16 pm
James Sardone check it outhttps://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=363963353694228&set=pb.166428626781036.-2207520000.1359317880&type=3&theater
January 27, 2013 at 12:20 pm
Breaking up the Beatles was way worse than cracking.
January 27, 2013 at 12:40 pm
Gandhi, please
January 27, 2013 at 12:44 pm
I love what you stand for Yoko! You rock, I'm there in wairua (spirit)!
January 27, 2013 at 1:21 pm
Yoko, thank you for helping raise awareness about the raping of this beautiful country. Corbet is the one who gave the biggest green flag to drill. He doesn't care because he is now one of the richest men in Pennsylvania because of the go-ahead he gave. The petroleum companies that own the politicians and are part of the military industrial complex, who also own most of our government, have laws made to help their profits are responsible. They also don't care as they don't care about the casualities of the (very profitable) war machine they run. I wish I had a solution as to how to stop all this psychopathic profit and power motivated people wrecking our planet and destroying our societies for personal gain.
January 27, 2013 at 1:28 pm
Thank you Yoko...
January 27, 2013 at 2:05 pm
Why aren't the people the ones to make these decisions instead of politicians? These things need to be voted on by the citizens that will have to live in devastated areas, not the greed mongers just trying to make a buck.
January 27, 2013 at 2:12 pm
Thank you !
January 27, 2013 at 2:45 pm
Gasland is a great film to watch to learn about this toxic travesty.
January 27, 2013 at 4:15 pm
I agree! Watch Gasland. Some of the fracking victims lit their tap water on fire.
January 27, 2013 at 4:27 pm
He shouldnt be allowed to make the decision without checking it out first
January 27, 2013 at 5:17 pm
You GO Yoko!!!!
January 27, 2013 at 5:48 pm
People are making these decisions. Every time they buy or use carbon fuel, they choose. Every time they drive to town instead of walking or using public transport, they choose. Every time they turn on central heating or leave lights on, they choose. And every time they vote, they choose.
January 27, 2013 at 11:13 pm
Thank you Yoko.
January 28, 2013 at 12:53 am
<3
January 28, 2013 at 6:56 am
When I see him...I see his father behind those eyes! Nice to see you both out in public and staying active in the community.
January 28, 2013 at 6:59 am
When it comes to quick and easy profit, there is no "moral mirror". Just dollar $ign$.
Mme. Ono, I have some ideas for fermenting various wastes into short-chained hydrocarbons and short-chained alcohols. If you know someone who is interested in this alternative (if not that green) energy source, let me know.
It is no the stopping a process, it is the coming up with a viable alternative that really matters. I think I have one, within the current technologies, and at the volumes capable of making product sufficient to make the process profitable.
Mme. Ono, I have some ideas for fermenting various wastes into short-chained hydrocarbons and short-chained alcohols. If you know someone who is interested in this alternative (if not that green) energy source, let me know.
It is no the stopping a process, it is the coming up with a viable alternative that really matters. I think I have one, within the current technologies, and at the volumes capable of making product sufficient to make the process profitable.
January 28, 2013 at 11:31 am
Thanks for sharing the photo. This is a big deal. Spread the word.
January 28, 2013 at 2:19 pm
Thanks Yoko!
January 29, 2013 at 7:26 am
What is fracking? Can't follow links or watch videos
January 30, 2013 at 12:13 am
Yoko,most Americans gave up waiting for politicians to act on their behalf. Fracking is good for business and politicians,that's what it's all about. Money. It's the "American Way".
January 30, 2013 at 1:09 am
Any story that includes that fuckin ant-american,anti-semite susan saranden has to be bullshit. The president has No energy plan! How do americans have money to feed themselves and pay for education when they have to worry about paying high gas and electric bills.not everyone can be on welfare,and section 8!"
January 30, 2013 at 2:52 am
Watch FrackNation
January 30, 2013 at 3:52 am
American electric cars run on electricity, Duh! Where does the U.S. Get there electricity from, over 60% from coal!!
January 30, 2013 at 5:08 am
Hey GAAAAARY! Gotta tell you,draw the line on all that foul language.Focus on the ISSUE,NOT an INDIVIDUAL!
January 30, 2013 at 3:33 pm
Ok sorry
January 30, 2013 at 7:32 pm
Like I give a tinker's damn what Yoko Ono and Susan Sarandon think about something.
February 4, 2013 at 6:24 pm
I am with you on that one Kenny
February 4, 2013 at 7:38 pm
Ibn Khaldun - "Writing largely of the cities and desert dynasties of the Maghrib, Northern Africa, the great Islamic historian Ibn Khaldun makes much the same observations, in the 14th Century, in An Introduction to History:
“Senility is a chronic disease that cannot be cured or made to disappear because it is something natural, and natural things do not change…. Many a politically conscious person among the people of the dynasty becomes alert to it and notices the symptoms and causes of senility that have affected his dynasty..."
Frederick Glaysher, "Decadence, East and West." blog, The Globe
“Senility is a chronic disease that cannot be cured or made to disappear because it is something natural, and natural things do not change…. Many a politically conscious person among the people of the dynasty becomes alert to it and notices the symptoms and causes of senility that have affected his dynasty..."
Frederick Glaysher, "Decadence, East and West." blog, The Globe
January 28, 2013 at 8:13 am
6 people like this
"I'm afraid we are taking out all imaginative reading and creativity in our English classes."
Corporate drones, now the shameless goal of American "education." I was the kid reading Catcher in the Rye in the lobby in high school before class started, and in the back of the room hidden behind the textbook during it!!! Exactly what the corporations want, pliant and unquestioning robots, not human beings who can think and talk back!
January 28, 2013 at 7:16 am
Corporate drones, now the shameless goal of American "education." I was the kid reading Catcher in the Rye in the lobby in high school before class started, and in the back of the room hidden behind the textbook during it!!! Exactly what the corporations want, pliant and unquestioning robots, not human beings who can think and talk back!
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Catcher in the Rye dropped from US school curriculum - Telegraph |
Schools in America are to drop classic books such as Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and JD Salinger's Catcher in the Rye from their curriculum in favour of 'informational texts'.
January 28, 2013 at 7:16 am
5 people like this
...a sign of decadence in its own way as well, marking a further loss of the appreciation of the tradition of humane letters in creating and shaping civilization.
January 28, 2013 at 7:28 am
i was told i couldn't teach it to my high school students, eight or nine years ago, so i bought a class set and we read it independently all the same.
January 28, 2013 at 7:35 am
Our Honors syllabus has recently excluded Tolstoy. HAHAHAHA!
January 28, 2013 at 7:37 am
I think students will be looser for this descision,these two are really good books.....my special favorite is 'To kill a Mokingbird'...it talks so nicely about student-teacher relationship....
January 28, 2013 at 7:40 am
Tolstoy! OMG... arrrggg. We're all doomed!
January 28, 2013 at 7:42 am
Yes, Atticus Finch stands up and does the right thing, in life's complexity, under extreme conditions.
January 28, 2013 at 7:48 am
The problem is Atticus Finchs are an endangered species now. Who would stand up against this corporate snafu? It feels like we are all hollow men.
January 28, 2013 at 8:07 am
Yes, you make me think of Bhopal and elsewhere... here in Michigan there have been some major disasters too.
January 28, 2013 at 8:09 am
True Frederick Glaysher sir. Those who stood up against the Bhopal gas tragedy were either wiped off the table, so to say, or bought. Human, all too human! Nietzsche sometimes provides us the answer which the Enlightenment fails to do, unfortunately.
January 28, 2013 at 8:27 am
Well, Nietzsche is not one of my heroes... I believe there have been and are human beings who stand up for the right thing and cannot be bought. Rare, I'll admit, but part of the human family too. It may be around the globe we have all chosen somehow to go along with the powers that be too much, naively trusting them, thinking they'll take care of us, when they're only taking care of themselves. It seems clear now that we're all trying to wake up and chart a different course forward...
January 28, 2013 at 8:32 am
This is criminal. Feels like a conspiracy. Who is in charge here?
January 28, 2013 at 8:37 am
Not the people, in my opinion, but the oligarchs and ignoramuses who manipulate the whole system through lobbying, corporate greed, and gerrymandering, etc., for their own financial gain.
January 28, 2013 at 8:40 am
Precisely.
January 28, 2013 at 8:53 am
Partly, too, I would say, is that there is a role played by right-wing fundamentalist Christians who think this is the way to take back control of education and "re-Christianize America." The irony is they're destroying it, polarizing everything, thereby hamstringing it, really. Some of the same people who distort the textbooks through selection committees in Texas. Many of the enormously wealthy people funding all kinds of right-wing actions like this are coming from that perspective. Liberals really don't have a unifying, coherent vision with which to oppose them...
January 28, 2013 at 8:58 am
Sad ! Imagination that captivates adolescence, is the most productive one as far as development of human faculties is concerned.
January 29, 2013 at 2:24 am
Sourav Adhikary, I definitely agree you... for young people to have that experience of the imagination coming alive over a book is incalculable for their development. Here in the US, education is run by elected school boards of people often with very poor educational backgrounds, politicized in various ways and with fundamentalist Christian mentalities or conservative right-wing thinking. Without exaggeration, they're destroying the entire educational system in Michigan and throughout the US. A very sad and dire situation...
January 29, 2013 at 4:02 am
Perhaps, it's long been so in many, if not all, places; power trying to devour education & culture and manipulate public opinion in way that fits it.Not something to feel good about, of course.
The nuances, that you paricularly attribute to this age and its institutions, accelerates it.
The nuances, that you paricularly attribute to this age and its institutions, accelerates it.
January 29, 2013 at 4:12 am
Alas, I wish it all were only a projection of my own imagination... and not out there. To my mind, much of the problem does go back to the cultural vacuum that nihilism has created and the surrogates that modernity has proven so fertile in producing. "Acceleration" runs throughout 20th Century literature in English from Henry Adams to our time... I believe there may be a way to rechannel it. Those who have bought into that bill of goods find it extremely difficult to think any such thing could be possible... so we're back with *mind* making its own reality, and careening in self-destructive directions. I maintain the power of the Imagination can change the course of civilization, East and West. It seems to me that perhaps some in the former are a little more open to the possibility...
January 29, 2013 at 4:23 am
I appreciate your observation.Curious how you see the developments in self-destructive societies in Islamic world, where, to my limited knowledge, Nhililism as an idea is not welcome, but reflects itself in many recent actions?
January 29, 2013 at 4:32 am
If you read my essay Decadence, East and West, I try to explain how Islamic fanaticism is in fact just as nihilistic, ultimately, as other varieties. It can seem counter-intuitive, but I argue such is the case, as well as with Christian and other brands of the "back to Ayodhya" impulse.
January 29, 2013 at 4:40 am
"All modern people, in Jacques Barzun’s sense, have “fallen” into decadence. Christians are not exempt, nor the members of any other faith, many of whom are caught, to varying degrees, in various “backward,” fundamentalist movements and flights into fantasies of by-gone days, evangelicals and otherwise, none of which are tenable in the modern world. All such movements are a sign of decadence. The fullness of human experience cannot be repudiated and result in a satisfying vision of our time. The “graying out” of the mainline Christian denominations demonstrate decadence as well, by construing Christ’s teachings in terms of doctrines, what Tolstoy called “sorcery,” and tending to the flock of plutocrats that often support them, not the poor Christ cared about. Christian fundamentalism and fanaticism are essentially rearguard nihilistic flights into the past. Humankind can only go forward, together, into the permanent pluralism of our quotidian experience, of what is universally human and Divine. From the moon, together, we can see it."
Frederick Glaysher, "Decadence, East and West." blog, The Globe
Frederick Glaysher, "Decadence, East and West." blog, The Globe
January 28, 2013 at 6:47 am
6 people like this
Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence?
January 28, 2013 at 6:53 am
The full title of Jacques Barzun's book is From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present, 500 years of Western Cultural Life (2000). I quote "fallen" from him but the rest of the passage is my writing. Full essay at
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2013/01/23/decadence-east-and-west/
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2013/01/23/decadence-east-and-west/
January 28, 2013 at 6:56 am
Yes, I have that bookmarked :)
January 28, 2013 at 6:57 am
Oh, okay. Wasn't sure what you meant. :)
January 28, 2013 at 6:57 am
I have the FDTD book. Read an initial portion of it some three years ago, then under departmental pressure had to keep it away. Now after reading your essay I think I will give it a second try. Thanks for bringing it up :)
January 28, 2013 at 6:59 am
I'm curious, why would your department pressure you not to read it? Seems odd to me. It's really the single most profound work of cultural and intellectual history written in English of probably the entire 20th Century. I can't think of anything that compares with it in scope and depth!
January 28, 2013 at 7:04 am
Barzun's book is a scholarly secondary work. My book The Grove of the Eumenides tells much the same story but with a focus largely on literature and poetry, as a poet-critic.
January 28, 2013 at 7:24 am
hahahah, don't know what will happen if any of my professors see this comment, but they included John Thorn's 'A History of England' (which, despite of its being not-that-grand a book for history, was better than the ones recommended in our syllabus) upon my accidental recommendation (I went to the course teacher asking him to check the book if it is helpful or not, and the next year they included it in the syllabus). Probably Ratul has told you already as he communicates with you frequently, each year we are given such a load that reading them (and there is the obligation of 'understanding' them) leaves not much time for any other books. No, it's not like that they discouraged us from reading Barzun, but probably some of them haven't even heard his name :)) That's the problem. And moreover I don't know why we are only taught the History of England, excluding the rest of Western Tradition, where the language of literature is similarly English. For example we have read Joyce, Wilde, Swift, Shaw, Yeats, but no Irish History. Likewise no Greek, French or German History!
January 28, 2013 at 7:32 am
I went through something similar long ago, a focus on English history and literature as all there is. Even back in the 1970s I sense "world literature" was more than the European focus that it turned out to be. Maybe in fairness to your professors there's only so much that can be covered in class, and they're hoping for depth versus breadth, so every student has to learn to run their own study on the side... and best they can. Seriously, in 340 pages, versus Barzun's more academic several hundred, I cover not only Western literature but also Japanese, Chinese, and Indian. The Grove of the Eumenides is really the account of my study for my epic poem. Eumenides is also on flipkart and elsewhere online. It would take you much deeper, too, into the epic.
January 28, 2013 at 7:41 am
Hisham M Nazer Another book worth reading some day is Allan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students, 1987. Basically intellectual history with a strong emphasis on Greek literature and the "great books" in general. Ultimately, though, like Barzun's book, it too is symptomatic of the decline it and Barzun critique... how could it be otherwise? Yet both seek to ask the right questions and move towards the future.
January 28, 2013 at 8:20 am
"Ibn Khaldun shares with Plato and Vico all the classic observations of decadence in a civilization: luxury, the excessive desire for and valuing of material goods, leading to moral corruption of the individual and society, the loss of spiritual qualities, characteristics, and morals, that safeguard the individual and social order, and the collapse into disorder, violence, and barbarism. The Greek polis or city, the Italian city-state, the Islamic dynasties, have become the world, with all our global problems and dilemmas leading back to the corrupt and suppurating soul, wandering lost, in the nihilistic landscape and spiritual vacuum of modernity."
Frederick Glaysher, "Decadence, East and West." blog, The Globe
Frederick Glaysher, "Decadence, East and West." blog, The Globe
January 28, 2013 at 5:52 am
3 people like this
“How does the historian know when Decadence sets in? By the open confessions of malaise, by the search in all directions for a new faith or faiths…. To secular minds, the old ideals look outworn or hopeless and practical aims are made into creeds sustained by violent acts….”
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2013/01/23/decadence-east-and-west/
January 27, 2013 at 4:50 pm
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2013/01/23/decadence-east-and-west/
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Decadence, East and West |
The scholar Jacques Barzun provides our initial definition of decadence, taken from his brilliant historical survey, From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present, 500 years of Western Cultural Life (2000): “All that is meant by decadence is ‘falling off.’” His discussion ranges over Western art, musi...
January 27, 2013 at 4:50 pm
2 people like this
Morris Dickstein, FYI, if interested.
February 5, 2013 at 3:44 am
Thanks for the tip. Will read.
Morris
Morris
February 5, 2013 at 11:53 am
"The splitting apart of science and religion, throughout modernity, has increasingly widened the gap between humane, spiritual principles and beliefs and the relentlessly stripped-down nihilism that has firmly sunk its grip into the soul of man. From the withdrawal after the Wars of Religion in Europe, typified by Thomas Sprat’s famous 1722 account, in The History of the Royal Society, of scientists withdrawing into their own realm, the divide has widened, carrying modern culture ever further away from the moderating influence of the moral and spiritual imagination, constituting a decline into an ever-worsening dehumanization and alienation from the deepest springs of human nature. When humanists, such as Barzun and Milosz, make this criticism, it is not of science and technology, that is, systematic knowledge and the study of the natural world and its application, but of the hubris involved in imagining such valuable material advances render unnecessary a compatible development in moral and spiritual growth, required for humanity to protect itself from the misuse of its own increased knowledge and discoveries. All of which explains the frequent contemporary sense, often felt in our time, of things being extremely complex and out of control, in a frightening state of affairs and decline, despite the highly sophisticated development of material culture."
Frederick Glaysher, "Decadence, East and West." blog, The Globe
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2013/01/23/decadence-east-and-west/
January 27, 2013 at 11:56 am
Frederick Glaysher, "Decadence, East and West." blog, The Globe
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2013/01/23/decadence-east-and-west/
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Decadence, East and West |
The scholar Jacques Barzun provides our initial definition of decadence, taken from his brilliant historical survey, From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present, 500 years of Western Cultural Life (2000): “All that is meant by decadence is ‘falling off.’” His discussion ranges over Western art, musi...
January 27, 2013 at 11:56 am
4 people like this
Scientific inquiry and the insight of greater knowledge is a spiritual process, how did we lose this in the West?
January 27, 2013 at 4:57 pm
Evening, Edmund, A very long process, Descartes and all of that. I refer to Thomas Sprat and the Royal Society, a very conscious recognition that the natural sciences were going in a different direction, and so forth...
January 27, 2013 at 4:59 pm
Edmund Bolella My book The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture traces it in detail, if you want the long version!! :)
https://fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
https://fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
January 27, 2013 at 5:03 pm
I suspect every age has its malaise, and we look for rational reasons why we spot this ennui and neurosis.
January 27, 2013 at 5:13 pm
Every age has its problems, but not malaise. Barzun, Socrates, Ibn Khaldun, Vico, Philip Rieff and others are addressing a much deeper crisis. Chaudhuri, in India, cited in my essay, points out that “The really dangerous aspect of decadence in human communities is the insensibility to it which it always creates.”
January 27, 2013 at 5:17 pm
"The Italian Giambattista Vico, writing in the 18th Century, in his book The New Science, noted the same process of decline into luxury and the decadence of “each man thinking only of his own private interests,” and ultimately returning through the choice of self-destruction to “primitive simplicity”:"
Google Frederick Glaysher, "Decadence, East and West." blog, The Globe
Google Frederick Glaysher, "Decadence, East and West." blog, The Globe
January 27, 2013 at 7:23 am
4 people like this
Never apologize for being sensitive or emotional. Let this be a sign that you've got a big heart aren't afraid to let others see it. Showing your emotions is a sign of strenght!!!
January 27, 2013 at 6:39 am
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Timeline Photos |
January 27, 2013 at 6:39 am
5 people like this
Just as long as you don't shoot anyone because you were emotional!
January 27, 2013 at 7:28 am
Nothing like a non sequitur...
January 27, 2013 at 7:29 am
"Showing your emotions" is rather unspecific I think. Sorry I'm all up for great quotes while I think the heart of it is in the right place, it comes off as rather flimsy... Gosh I'm so nit-picky!
January 27, 2013 at 9:51 am
Lighten up...
January 27, 2013 at 10:59 am
"Socrates’ point is that in the decadent “luxurious state” the emphasis has all been placed on the material, far beyond the necessities of life. Those who “will not be contented” desire more and more things. Much later, in Book IX, Socrates asks his interlocutor, “is it not generally true that” men who are “concerned with the service of the body partake less of truth and reality than those that serve the soul?” Expanding on this question, Socrates summarizes for Glaucon,"
Google Frederick Glaysher, "Decadence, East and West." blog, The Globe
Google Frederick Glaysher, "Decadence, East and West." blog, The Globe
January 27, 2013 at 6:21 am
12 people like this
Spot-on.
January 27, 2013 at 6:41 am
Bingo.
January 27, 2013 at 7:01 am
Good ol' Socky! Love it.
January 27, 2013 at 9:03 am
"This entire process of decline into decadence was noted and expounded by the ancients, foremost among commentators, by Plato, in The Republic, written approximately in 380 BCE, about twenty-five years after the collapse of Athenian democracy into tyranny, wherein Socrates describes the “luxurious city” in a “fevered state,” compared with a healthy one:"
Google Frederick Glaysher, "Decadence, East and West." blog, The Globe
Google Frederick Glaysher, "Decadence, East and West." blog, The Globe
January 27, 2013 at 5:08 am
5 people like this
"By now, the story is an old one. We all know it by rote. Artists, poets, philosophers, and scholars have rubbed it deep into our souls for decades, as have the media on their lower cultural levels, print, radio, and film. The Dark Vision is the Truth of Life. Modernity has intoned with Nietzsche “God is dead.” The theaters of the absurd have dramatized it in endlessly boring detail. All kinds of crud have been smeared on museum walls lest we fail to see it. Cacophony has droned it into our heads. No one of intellectual respectability dare deny it, East or West. As Lionel Trilling confided to his diary in 1948, we have become “assimilated to the literal contents of the art we contemplate [so] that our contemplation of cruelty will not make us humane but cruel; that the reiteration of the badness of our spiritual condition will make us consent to it.” We become the “adversary culture.” Such are the a priori assumptions and propaganda of modern decadence."
--Frederick Glaysher, "Decadence, East and West." From my blog, The Globe.
--Frederick Glaysher, "Decadence, East and West." From my blog, The Globe.
January 26, 2013 at 6:31 am
8 people like this
when ideas are neglected by those who ought to attend to them - that is to say, those who have been trained to think critically about ideas - they sometimes acquire an unchecked momentum and an irresistible power over multitudes of men that may grow too violent to be affected by rational criticism. Over a hundred years ago, the German poet Heine warned the French not to underestimate the power of ideas: (Isaiah Berlin)
January 26, 2013 at 7:40 am
Thanks for the fine quotation from Isaiah Berlin, one of my favorite historians since I first read The Crooked Timber of Humanity...
January 26, 2013 at 7:45 am
Mine too
January 26, 2013 at 7:50 am
Isaiah Berlin, in his essay "The Decline of the Utopian Ideas in the West," quoting Kant, "Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made."
January 26, 2013 at 10:55 am
You are right, Frederick Glaysher
January 28, 2013 at 1:34 am
...which isn't cynicism or despair, but a just weight of what is involved, what those who refuse to relinquish a humane vision of the world must always struggle for--not Utopia, but a human edifice rising above the undergrowth.
January 28, 2013 at 5:28 am
"Philip Rieff, in My Life Among the Deathworks, emphasizes that the way is barred through the conventional doors of the academy and its associated cultural institutions, to which I’d add, its publications, whether book or journal, including wider circulation magazines, such as The New York Times Book Review, The New York Review of Books, Harper’s, TLS, The Guardian, and other such monopolizing arbiters of cultural opinion in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. I recall that Czeslaw Milosz often criticized American small press literary magazines for their intellectual and spiritual vacuity."
--Frederick Glaysher, "Decadence, East and West." From my blog, The Globe.
--Frederick Glaysher, "Decadence, East and West." From my blog, The Globe.
January 25, 2013 at 1:09 pm
2 people like this
I don't understand. Whose way is barred? Philip's? Those whose work is judged inferior? Whose?
January 25, 2013 at 2:06 pm
Jefferson Carter, Maybe torn a bit out of context here and in part... from an essay I've just written. Rieff notes that "Third world elites [ie., as in nihilists] will not allow the development, or redevelopment, of such a reading elite. Our new age elite cannot and will not tolerate such authority (195).” Rieff therefore finds their "standards" of judgment wanting...
Decadence, East and West
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2013/01/23/decadence-east-and-west/
Decadence, East and West
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2013/01/23/decadence-east-and-west/
January 25, 2013 at 2:17 pm
"Fortunately, perhaps, the Internet and Post-Gutenberg publishing have been developed by science and technology just at the moment when the spirit requires new channels through which to flow, circumventing the decadent bastions of much of the American university, especially its vitiated English departments, and its corrupt cultural institutions and influence, global now, toward a fourth world of universality."
--Frederick Glaysher, "Decadence, East and West." From my blog, The Globe.
--Frederick Glaysher, "Decadence, East and West." From my blog, The Globe.
January 25, 2013 at 8:02 am
3 people like this
Classic signs of decadence ...cynicism, triviality, formalism, "language," discourse, theooorryy, etc., all garb for the underlying nihilism, the usual products of the decadent academic mind.
January 25, 2013 at 8:58 am
"Part of modernity’s litany is that religious feeling and belief are always wrong, arrogantly failing or refusing to recognize the vast extent to which “Enlightenment” thinking and its offspring, such as Marxism, has and can lead to cruelty and violence. The notion that stripping humanity of “religion” will produced Utopia is woefully unlessoned by history. Another one of modernity’s reflex actions, which works against its finding a resolution to our modern problems, before it is too late on so many fronts, is its tendency to react like a bull, confronted with a red cape, when it hears words such as “religion,” “spiritual,” and “God.” It thinks it understands the meaning of those words, when it doesn’t, having lost the meaning, often generations ago, and rejects making any effort to understand that perhaps significantly new definitions are being used or have evolved, instead of the caricatures it prefers. All of this is part of why we live in such an endangered moment of world history, armed to the teeth with enough megatonnage to easily kill more than a billion people, without the moral, humanizing restraint that religion cultivates. All sides, as currently conceived and constituted, are inadequate for providing an alternative to such carnage and a common basis or vision for a secure social order."
--Frederick Glaysher, "Decadence, East and West." From my blog, The Globe.
--Frederick Glaysher, "Decadence, East and West." From my blog, The Globe.
January 25, 2013 at 6:57 am
7 people like this
I couldn't have said it better.
January 25, 2013 at 7:10 am
Ours is a pretense of invincibility as if nothing is beyond our comprehension, and therefore solution to or at least explanation of it. And this litany of modern invincibility, as you have rightly mentioned, has relegated religion to secret belief not to be acknowledged to the public. And here we stand split and fragmented, fearing to acknowledge what we really are to be one with other half-baked moderns. Kudos for this write-up.
January 25, 2013 at 9:36 am
"Beginning with I. A. Richards in the 1920s through the New Critics and onward through post-structuralism and Deconstruction, the Age of Criticism has served well neither the literary Tradition nor the culture. During the last thirty years, the American academy has often betrayed the deepest principles of the Tradition and of civilization. Every imaginable form of intellectual decline, decadence, and banality has long been the daily gruel served up for its students, debasing and corrupting the entire culture, spreading around the globe. Critics do not own the Tradition. Poets, writers, and artists are the fiduciary agents of the Tradition. Critics have forgotten and lost what their role is in the culture, secondary, and should go back to the 2,500-year-old Berlin Painter’s Rhapsode Amphora, meditating long and hard, on their knees, in their offices, begging the gods to help them."
--Frederick Glaysher, "Decadence, East and West." From my blog, The Globe.
--Frederick Glaysher, "Decadence, East and West." From my blog, The Globe.
January 25, 2013 at 6:13 am
4 people like this
I'll bookmark it read it Frederick Glaysher! Sounds fascinating.
January 25, 2013 at 6:17 am
Thoroughly researched and a brilliant essay on the state of the world today. I do like the optimistic end. There is hope for the future.
January 25, 2013 at 6:36 am
I think so... always, but not if people sit by and do nothing, allowing the greedy and selfish to run things only for the benefit of themselves. To really oppose them the good have always required a vision of life that brings them together along humane lines of selflessness and compassion. From the moon, I believe we human beings can see the vision we need...
January 25, 2013 at 6:43 am
That vision may be in most people's mind but to put it into practice and challenge the 'leaders/special interest' is much harder as most power is with them and it can be difficult to persuade people to look beyond their own self interests.
January 25, 2013 at 6:51 am
A few quotes from 'Tirukkural' written in 2nd C BC - to 5thC AD by Thiruvalluvar- "Who neither spend their wealth nor give,
Amidst their millions, in want they live". (1006)
Amidst their millions, in want they live". (1006)
January 25, 2013 at 7:02 am
You're so right. Poetry and art are capable of reaching deeper into the human psyche than the everyday language of prose and the conventional media.
I invite you to read a free chapter of my epic poem set on the moon, BOOK I, The Parliament of Poets:
PDF.
I invite you to read a free chapter of my epic poem set on the moon, BOOK I, The Parliament of Poets:
PDF.
January 25, 2013 at 7:02 am
Words so true... modern materialism and extreme capitalist ideology have too often worked against that kind of open-handed benevolence.
January 25, 2013 at 7:04 am
"Modern Western culture has been in free-fall for over a hundred years, arguably even longer. Whether high or low, such is the story of Western civilization, and, to the extent that it became modern civilization, its decadence has long been passed around the world, into the vitals of every regional civilization on the face of the earth. Together, we have all sunk into the dark pit of cynicism, frivolity, and despair, “fallen off” into nihilism."
--Frederick Glaysher, "Decadence, East and West." From my blog, The Globe.
--Frederick Glaysher, "Decadence, East and West." From my blog, The Globe.
January 25, 2013 at 5:08 am
6 people like this
Sadly true.
January 25, 2013 at 5:37 am
why ?
January 25, 2013 at 5:39 am
Haroon Chhajan, If interested, read the full essay for the answer at
Decadence, East and West
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2013/01/23/decadence-east-and-west/
Decadence, East and West
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2013/01/23/decadence-east-and-west/
January 25, 2013 at 5:45 am
thanks dear, Frederick Glaysher ...!
January 25, 2013 at 5:47 am
Manjari Chakravarti, Thanks, I appreciate your interest!
January 25, 2013 at 5:55 am
You are welcome, Frederick. i have read your essay, and need to read it once more before i venture to say anything upon it....very illuminating.
January 25, 2013 at 6:02 am
Thank you for saying so. I'd be pleased to hear your thoughts after further reflection.
January 25, 2013 at 6:05 am
There's some of that... and it can be disconcerting for other people to hear those who have been oppressed to begin to speak up and demand that they too be treated as human beings. To my mind, a deeper measure of love and compassion are needed on all sides.
January 25, 2013 at 7:32 am
I'm afraid, Jivan Lal sir, such a religion seems only a figment of imagination, given the rampant and intense expression of religious fanaticism that has begun to gnaw at the vitals of democracy in recent times. Are we really up to it? Can we really think of a world like the one you envisage?
January 25, 2013 at 9:57 am
Rape in the USA.
January 24, 2013 at 6:51 pm
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A Rape a Minute, a Thousand Corpses a Year |
We have far more than 87,000 rapes in this country every year, but each of them is invariably portrayed as an isolated incident. We have dots so close they're splatters melting into a stain, but hardly anyone connects them, or names that stain.
January 24, 2013 at 6:51 pm
Enough food for thought to last a fortnight. Thank you Frederick Glaysher, for casting light in dark places.
January 24, 2013 at 7:27 am
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Decadence, East and West |
The scholar Jacques Barzun provides our initial definition of decadence, taken from his brilliant historical survey, From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present, 500 years of Western Cultural Life (2000): “All that is meant by decadence is ‘falling off.’” His discussion ranges over Western art, musi...
January 24, 2013 at 7:27 am
"Decadence, East and West"
"The scholar Jacques Barzun provides our initial definition of decadence, taken from his brilliant historical survey, From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present, 500 years of Western Cultural Life (2000): “All that is meant by decadence is ‘falling off.’” His discussion ranges over Western art, music, religion, and literature, documenting and critiquing the many figures, changes, and evolutions up to the reigning vision of our time, which he succinctly epitomizes while defending the term of his assessment: “When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent. The term is not a slur; it is a technical label.” "
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2013/01/23/decadence-east-and-west/
January 24, 2013 at 5:09 am
"The scholar Jacques Barzun provides our initial definition of decadence, taken from his brilliant historical survey, From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present, 500 years of Western Cultural Life (2000): “All that is meant by decadence is ‘falling off.’” His discussion ranges over Western art, music, religion, and literature, documenting and critiquing the many figures, changes, and evolutions up to the reigning vision of our time, which he succinctly epitomizes while defending the term of his assessment: “When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent. The term is not a slur; it is a technical label.” "
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2013/01/23/decadence-east-and-west/
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Decadence, East and West |
The scholar Jacques Barzun provides our initial definition of decadence, taken from his brilliant historical survey, From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present, 500 years of Western Cultural Life (2000): “All that is meant by decadence is ‘falling off.’” His discussion ranges over Western art, musi...
January 24, 2013 at 5:09 am
7 people like this
George Washington, 1796, “Farewell Address”:
“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”
“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”
January 23, 2013 at 7:33 am
7 people like this
Vico, The New Science:
“For religions alone can bring the peoples to do virtuous works by appeal to their feelings, which alone move men to perform them; and the reasoned maxims of the philosophers concerning virtue are of use only when employed by a good eloquence for kindling the feelings to do the duties of virtue” (426).
“For religions alone can bring the peoples to do virtuous works by appeal to their feelings, which alone move men to perform them; and the reasoned maxims of the philosophers concerning virtue are of use only when employed by a good eloquence for kindling the feelings to do the duties of virtue” (426).
January 23, 2013 at 6:38 am
2 people like this
Personally I have always held (or strongly suspected) that all religion motives from an emotional sense of the sublime. Yet cannot religion also motivate from the same emotions all types of collective cruelty?
January 23, 2013 at 9:11 am
I'd say that the emotional awe of the sublime, the experience of the divine, is one thing, while the emotional impulse to "collective cruelty" is another. The former, properly understood and guided, leads to humility, selflessness, and service of other human beings because one who has experienced the transcendent realizes others, too, are a creation of the Divine.
The emotional fanaticism that leads to cruelty, whether religious or secular, is based on a sense of exclusivism run amok, that denies the humanity of the other, including the others' spirituality. Along those lines, the emotions and "reason" of the officially atheist regimes of Marxism and communism demonstrated their inability to value the unique spiritual value of the individual and responded by murdering over a 100 million people during the 20th Century.
Part of modernity's litany is that religious emotion is always wrong, failing or refusing to recognize the vast extent to which "Enlightenment" thinking and its offspring, such as Marxism, has and can lead to cruelty and violence as well. The notion that stripping humanity of "religion" will produced Utopia is woefully unlessoned by history. All of this is part of why we live in such an endangered moment of world history. All sides, as currently conceived, are inadequate for providing a basis for a secure social order.
The emotional fanaticism that leads to cruelty, whether religious or secular, is based on a sense of exclusivism run amok, that denies the humanity of the other, including the others' spirituality. Along those lines, the emotions and "reason" of the officially atheist regimes of Marxism and communism demonstrated their inability to value the unique spiritual value of the individual and responded by murdering over a 100 million people during the 20th Century.
Part of modernity's litany is that religious emotion is always wrong, failing or refusing to recognize the vast extent to which "Enlightenment" thinking and its offspring, such as Marxism, has and can lead to cruelty and violence as well. The notion that stripping humanity of "religion" will produced Utopia is woefully unlessoned by history. All of this is part of why we live in such an endangered moment of world history. All sides, as currently conceived, are inadequate for providing a basis for a secure social order.
January 23, 2013 at 11:15 am
“If you’re a woman in distress, the last thing you want to do is go to the police,” said Vrinda Grover
In case after case, the police have used their powers to deliver abused women into the hands of their abusers.
“I have no faith in the police. If you have money or connections, you can get justice. If you don’t, forget it.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/23/world/asia/for-rape-victims-in-india-police-are-often-part-of-the-problem.html
January 23, 2013 at 3:36 am
In case after case, the police have used their powers to deliver abused women into the hands of their abusers.
“I have no faith in the police. If you have money or connections, you can get justice. If you don’t, forget it.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/23/world/asia/for-rape-victims-in-india-police-are-often-part-of-the-problem.html
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For Rape Victims in India, Police Are Often Part of the Problem |
In many rape cases, the police spend more time seeking reconciliation, even marriage, between the attacker and the victim, instead of demanding an investigation.
January 23, 2013 at 3:36 am
8 people like this
The 12 minute video is well worth watching, very informative:
https://nyti.ms/ULQhbM
https://nyti.ms/ULQhbM
January 23, 2013 at 3:54 am
Somehow, this sounds very familiar.
January 23, 2013 at 6:11 am
In the video, the woman being interviewed mentions that the dynamics of rape are much the same in the USA... so, alas, there it is. In some ways, not much better over here.
January 23, 2013 at 6:15 am
January 22, 2013 at 5:49 pm
1 person likes this
Robert Lowell > "I'm sure that writing isn't a craft, that is, something for which you learn the skills and go on turning out. It must come from some deep impulse, deep inspiration. That can't be taught, it can't be what you use in teaching. And you may go further afield looking for that than you would if you didn't teach."
January 22, 2013 at 5:37 pm
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Timeline Photos |
January 22, 2013 at 5:37 pm
6 people like this
Indian billionaire Cyrus Poonawalla. > Polio Shot to Undercut Glaxo
The company “could really revolutionize the polio endgame,” said WHO’s Aylward. “They are potentially the most exciting game in town.”
https://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-01-21/billionaire-horse-breeder-s-polio-shot-to-undercut-glaxo#p1
January 22, 2013 at 5:04 pm
The company “could really revolutionize the polio endgame,” said WHO’s Aylward. “They are potentially the most exciting game in town.”
https://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-01-21/billionaire-horse-breeder-s-polio-shot-to-undercut-glaxo#p1
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Billionaire Horse Breeder’s Polio Shot to Undercut Glaxo |
Indian billionaire Cyrus Poonawalla, founder of the world’s biggest maker of vaccines, will slash the price of polio immunization and introduce shots for diarrhea and pneumonia, undercutting Pfizer Inc. and GlaxoSmithKline Plc.
January 22, 2013 at 5:04 pm
1 person likes this
Martin Luther King > "the war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit."
"If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over."
https://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/21/king-obama-drones-militarism-sanctions-iran
January 22, 2013 at 11:50 am
"If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over."
https://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/21/king-obama-drones-militarism-sanctions-iran
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MLK's vehement condemnations of US militarism are more relevant than ever |
Glenn Greenwald: His vital April 4, 1967 speech is a direct repudiation of the sophistry now used to defend US violence and aggression
January 22, 2013 at 11:50 am
2 people like this
Ibn Khaldun, 14th Century Islamic historian, An Introduction to History:
“From all these customs, the human soul receives a multiple stamp that undermines its religion and worldly well-being....”
“All this is caused by excessive sedentary culture and luxury. They corrupt the city generally in respect to business and civilization. Corruption of the individual inhabitants is the result of painful and trying efforts to satisfy the needs caused by their luxury customs; the result of the bad qualities they have acquired in the process of satisfying those needs; and of the damage the soul suffers after it has obtained them. Immorality, wrongdoing, insincerity, and trickery, for the purpose of making a living in a proper or an improper manner, increase among them. The soul comes to think about making a living, to study it, and to use all possible trickery for the purpose. People are now devoted to lying, gambling, cheating, fraud, theft, perjury, and usury. Because of the many desires and pleasures resulting from luxury, they are found to know everything about the ways and means of immorality, they talk openly about it and its causes, and give up all restraint in discussing it, even among relatives and close female relations, where the Bedouin attitude requires modesty and avoidance of obscenities. They also know everything about fraud and deceit, which they employ to defend themselves against the possible use of force against them and against the punishment expected for their evil deeds. Eventually, this becomes a custom and trait of character with most of them, except those whom God protects” (285-287).
“From all these customs, the human soul receives a multiple stamp that undermines its religion and worldly well-being....”
“All this is caused by excessive sedentary culture and luxury. They corrupt the city generally in respect to business and civilization. Corruption of the individual inhabitants is the result of painful and trying efforts to satisfy the needs caused by their luxury customs; the result of the bad qualities they have acquired in the process of satisfying those needs; and of the damage the soul suffers after it has obtained them. Immorality, wrongdoing, insincerity, and trickery, for the purpose of making a living in a proper or an improper manner, increase among them. The soul comes to think about making a living, to study it, and to use all possible trickery for the purpose. People are now devoted to lying, gambling, cheating, fraud, theft, perjury, and usury. Because of the many desires and pleasures resulting from luxury, they are found to know everything about the ways and means of immorality, they talk openly about it and its causes, and give up all restraint in discussing it, even among relatives and close female relations, where the Bedouin attitude requires modesty and avoidance of obscenities. They also know everything about fraud and deceit, which they employ to defend themselves against the possible use of force against them and against the punishment expected for their evil deeds. Eventually, this becomes a custom and trait of character with most of them, except those whom God protects” (285-287).
January 22, 2013 at 8:08 am
8 people like this
Thank you for your friendship request Frederick. Pleased to accept. M.
January 22, 2013 at 8:23 am
Thank you for "friending" back! Nice to "meet" you.
January 22, 2013 at 8:24 am
not at all, how did you hear about me?
January 22, 2013 at 8:26 am
And art, to my limited knowledge, is also trickery, sort of a corruption of the original. That is, an original idea gets crisscrossed and corrupted a welter of numerous other ideas. No single philosophy--religious or secular--can explain this 'trickery'. Art is a much-married thing, yet corrupted divinely.
January 22, 2013 at 9:39 am
Uttam Kumar Guru, Mmm, you raise important issues. I would say that art is a representation of reality, a re-presentation of it. By its very nature and definition, art is an artefact, a creation, not the thing itself. Far from corrupting reality, except in decadent art and periods, true art, art at its best, clarifies and heightens reality, deepens its understanding and perception, illuminates the consciousness with a deeper perception of what it means to be human, which helps the soul to move out of the self and reestablish a relationship with the Divine.
January 22, 2013 at 10:41 am
'Corrupting' & 'heightening' reality too, some may say, could be judged through the prism of relativism.Though, I guess, the idea may not enthuse you much. @Frederick Glaysher
I appreciate the way you put it: 're-presentation'.
I appreciate the way you put it: 're-presentation'.
January 22, 2013 at 11:24 am
Right about that! ha, ha. ...a matter of what the artist believes the goal of art is. The nuances around the word "corrupting" are too negative, characteristic, I'd argue, of decadent periods of decline. A higher conception of art unabashedly expects more of itself.
January 22, 2013 at 11:30 am
touché !
January 22, 2013 at 11:32 am
When it comes to defending art, watch out! ...I'll turn to a rapier, if necessary! :)
January 22, 2013 at 11:33 am
an art indeed!
January 22, 2013 at 11:34 am
...one I really don't possess, so relax!
January 22, 2013 at 11:35 am
:)
January 22, 2013 at 11:36 am
LOL
January 22, 2013 at 11:36 am
"becomes a custom and trait of character with most of them, except those whom God protects” (285-287)." Is Ibn Khaldun a type of proto -Calvinist? Did he believe some where pre-destined to fall into decadence and others were protected based on the mystery and sovereignty of God?
January 22, 2013 at 2:15 pm
Edmund Bolella, Ibn Khaldun is usually consider one of the great Islamic historians and has had a significant impact on many Western thinkers. If memory serves, Daniel Bell, if you're familiar with him, cites Ibn Khaldun in The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, and so forth, as do many historians and sociologists, up there with Vico and Weber. As a Muslim, he's not really in the "proto-Calvinist" camp at all, though the Quran and Islamic scholarship and culture often characteristically use such expressions as "except those whom God protects.” I believe the polarity to that is the notion in Islamic philosophy, just as prevalent, that although God has pre-knowledge, man does not, and hence free will from his own perspective and experience. The idea of God's inscrutable benevolence exists, too. All this is in the Sufi poets, as well, Rumi, Attar, et al.
January 22, 2013 at 4:05 pm
Ibn Khaldun, 14th Century Islamic historian, An Introduction to History:
“Senility is a chronic disease that cannot be cured or made to disappear because it is something natural, and natural things do not change.... Many a politically conscious person among the people of the dynasty becomes alert to it and notices the symptoms and causes of senility that have affected his dynasty. He considers it possible to make that senility disappear. Therefore, he takes it upon himself to repair the dynasty and relieve its temper of senility. He supposes that it resulted from shortcomings or negligence on the part of former members. This is not so. These things are natural to the dynasty. Customs that have developed prevent him from repairing it. Customs are like a second nature....”
“Group feeling has often disappeared (when the dynasty has grown senile), and pomp has taken the place it occupied in the souls of men. Now, when in addition to the weakening of group feeling, pomp, too, is discontinued, the subjects grow audacious vis-a-vis the dynasty. Therefore, the dynasty shields itself by holding on to pomp as much as possible, until everything is finished....”
“At the end of a dynasty, there often appears some show of power that gives the impression that the senility of the dynasty has been made to disappear. It lights up brilliantly just before it is extinguished, like a burning wick the flame of which leaps up brilliantly a moment before it goes out, giving the impression it is just starting to burn, when in fact it is going out” (245-6).
“Senility is a chronic disease that cannot be cured or made to disappear because it is something natural, and natural things do not change.... Many a politically conscious person among the people of the dynasty becomes alert to it and notices the symptoms and causes of senility that have affected his dynasty. He considers it possible to make that senility disappear. Therefore, he takes it upon himself to repair the dynasty and relieve its temper of senility. He supposes that it resulted from shortcomings or negligence on the part of former members. This is not so. These things are natural to the dynasty. Customs that have developed prevent him from repairing it. Customs are like a second nature....”
“Group feeling has often disappeared (when the dynasty has grown senile), and pomp has taken the place it occupied in the souls of men. Now, when in addition to the weakening of group feeling, pomp, too, is discontinued, the subjects grow audacious vis-a-vis the dynasty. Therefore, the dynasty shields itself by holding on to pomp as much as possible, until everything is finished....”
“At the end of a dynasty, there often appears some show of power that gives the impression that the senility of the dynasty has been made to disappear. It lights up brilliantly just before it is extinguished, like a burning wick the flame of which leaps up brilliantly a moment before it goes out, giving the impression it is just starting to burn, when in fact it is going out” (245-6).
January 22, 2013 at 6:39 am
5 people like this
Giambattista Vico, 18th Century, in The New Science:
"But if the peoples are rotting in that ultimate civil disease and cannot agree on a monarch from within, and are not conquered and preserved by better nations from without, then providence for their extreme ill has its extreme remedy at hand. For such peoples, like so many beasts, have fallen into the custom of each man thinking only of his own private interests and have reached the extreme of delicacy, or better of pride, in which like wild animals they bristle and lash out at the slightest displeasure. Thus no matter how great the throng and press of their bodies, they live like wild beasts in a deep solitude of spirit and will, scarcely any two being able to agree since each follows his own pleasure and caprice. By reasons of all this, providence decrees that, through obstinate factions and desperate civil wars, they shall turn their cities into forests and the forests into dens and lairs of men. In this way, through long centuries of barbarism, rust will consume the misbegotten subtleties of malicious wits that have turned them into beasts made more inhuman by the barbarism of reflection than the first men had been made by the barbarism of sense. For the latter displayed a generous savagery, against which one could defend oneself or take flight or be on one’s guard; but the former, with a base savagery, under soft words and embraces, plots against the life and fortune of friends and intimates. Hence peoples who have reached this point of premeditated malice, when they receive this last remedy of providence and are thereby stunned and brutalized, are sensible no longer of comforts, delicacies, pleasures, and pomp, but only of the sheer necessities of life. And the few survivors in the midst of an abundance of the things necessary for life naturally become sociable and, returning to the primitive simplicity of the first world of peoples, are again religious, truthful, and faithful. Thus providence brings back among them the piety, faith, and truth which are the natural foundations of justice as well as the graces and beauties of the eternal order of God” (424).
"But if the peoples are rotting in that ultimate civil disease and cannot agree on a monarch from within, and are not conquered and preserved by better nations from without, then providence for their extreme ill has its extreme remedy at hand. For such peoples, like so many beasts, have fallen into the custom of each man thinking only of his own private interests and have reached the extreme of delicacy, or better of pride, in which like wild animals they bristle and lash out at the slightest displeasure. Thus no matter how great the throng and press of their bodies, they live like wild beasts in a deep solitude of spirit and will, scarcely any two being able to agree since each follows his own pleasure and caprice. By reasons of all this, providence decrees that, through obstinate factions and desperate civil wars, they shall turn their cities into forests and the forests into dens and lairs of men. In this way, through long centuries of barbarism, rust will consume the misbegotten subtleties of malicious wits that have turned them into beasts made more inhuman by the barbarism of reflection than the first men had been made by the barbarism of sense. For the latter displayed a generous savagery, against which one could defend oneself or take flight or be on one’s guard; but the former, with a base savagery, under soft words and embraces, plots against the life and fortune of friends and intimates. Hence peoples who have reached this point of premeditated malice, when they receive this last remedy of providence and are thereby stunned and brutalized, are sensible no longer of comforts, delicacies, pleasures, and pomp, but only of the sheer necessities of life. And the few survivors in the midst of an abundance of the things necessary for life naturally become sociable and, returning to the primitive simplicity of the first world of peoples, are again religious, truthful, and faithful. Thus providence brings back among them the piety, faith, and truth which are the natural foundations of justice as well as the graces and beauties of the eternal order of God” (424).
January 22, 2013 at 5:56 am
5 people like this
"I could see now poets of the Book,
Job of tested patience, long suffering;
Dante, the man who had been to Hell,
Milton, who justified the ways of God,
song of the conquering evolution
of the soul, the battle of good and evil,
choosing through the free will, God's holy gift;
Rumi's Indian brother, reincarnated,
Kabir, weaver of a Muslim-Hindu cloth,
warp and woof of the One, free of duality;
Vyasa, Kalidasa, and Tagore,
all had come from their ashrams to the moon."
Book I, The Argument, p.27
The Parliament of Poets
By Frederick Glaysher
What a heavenly setting for an epic poem! Prathap Kamath Prabhat Jha Hisham M Nazer Ajish Vijayan Sonia Singh Jawaid Danish Sukumar Roy Gupta Sayantan Sulbha Devpurkar and others
Job of tested patience, long suffering;
Dante, the man who had been to Hell,
Milton, who justified the ways of God,
song of the conquering evolution
of the soul, the battle of good and evil,
choosing through the free will, God's holy gift;
Rumi's Indian brother, reincarnated,
Kabir, weaver of a Muslim-Hindu cloth,
warp and woof of the One, free of duality;
Vyasa, Kalidasa, and Tagore,
all had come from their ashrams to the moon."
Book I, The Argument, p.27
The Parliament of Poets
By Frederick Glaysher
What a heavenly setting for an epic poem! Prathap Kamath Prabhat Jha Hisham M Nazer Ajish Vijayan Sonia Singh Jawaid Danish Sukumar Roy Gupta Sayantan Sulbha Devpurkar and others
January 21, 2013 at 7:02 pm
Helen Caldicott > "medical and ecological impacts of the multiple meltdowns at Fukushima"
https://m.soundcloud.com/flashpoints/flashpoints-daily-newsmag-01-8
January 21, 2013 at 3:26 pm
https://m.soundcloud.com/flashpoints/flashpoints-daily-newsmag-01-8
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January 21, 2013 at 3:26 pm
1 person likes this
Yuri Kageyama, Masahide Morita Mariko Shimizu, Helen Caldicott talks about Fukushima from about 5 minutes in, for a total of about 30 minutes only.
January 21, 2013 at 3:29 pm
Each person has a different view on the effects of Fukushima Daiichi, and the government seems to have be successful in not revealing all the data related with the nuclear power plants' explosions.
January 21, 2013 at 3:46 pm
Another results by disintegration by scientific and technological advances. The scientists are not all united, nor the science and technology communication is not really appreciated by the ordinary people.
January 21, 2013 at 3:48 pm
Frederick, thank you for the link.
As you might anticipate, things have been getting worse that we imagined.
Last night I came to know the sea contamination level was much higher than I imagined.
It has been said that strontium is around 1/1000 of caesium or cesium.
However, according to the Japan Coast Guard, they checked and found 17%～62% level
of strontium against the level of 100% of cesium in the sea on Chiba.
Strontium 90 will affect the immune systems of young females, which increase potentials
of deformities. Helen Caodicott talks about this, doesn't she?
There are many video clips available on YouTube how damaging the effects of radiation
and radioactive substances could be on embryos; the damaged genes---gene expressions
are totally different from normal ones---have been producing many unprecedent deformities
and deficiencies, It is simply appalling and hideous. However, what could one do, when
the deformities and dysfunctions are ordinary? Helen Caldicott refers to the secluded village.
I imagine the people want to remain there not being annoyed by any normalcy.
Last night I read the news that UN set the level up to 100msv per year.
The global standard level was up to 1msv/y. Soon after the meltdowns of Fukushima Daiichi,
the government set the level up to 20msv per year. It was later increased to 100msv per year.
Remember the court case of those 13 children pleading to be evacuated from Fukushima?
One of the reasons they rejected the children was based on the level of 100msv/y, which had
been supported by Prof. Shyunichi Yamashita the vice president of the Fukushima Medical Univeristy.
I had the impression that UN had adjusted the level accordingly to the one they agreed at the
IAEA held in Fukushima on 15the December. The IAEA chaiperson Amano and Fukushima president
Sato signed the treaty. Mr Sato has been hospitalized. It is assumed that his immune systems had been
deteriorated because of radioactive matters.
It has been too clear or almost transparant that some academic people or sientists are far from
conscientious. So are politicians. People should stop relying on those scientists and politicians
and learn for themselves.
As you might anticipate, things have been getting worse that we imagined.
Last night I came to know the sea contamination level was much higher than I imagined.
It has been said that strontium is around 1/1000 of caesium or cesium.
However, according to the Japan Coast Guard, they checked and found 17%～62% level
of strontium against the level of 100% of cesium in the sea on Chiba.
Strontium 90 will affect the immune systems of young females, which increase potentials
of deformities. Helen Caodicott talks about this, doesn't she?
There are many video clips available on YouTube how damaging the effects of radiation
and radioactive substances could be on embryos; the damaged genes---gene expressions
are totally different from normal ones---have been producing many unprecedent deformities
and deficiencies, It is simply appalling and hideous. However, what could one do, when
the deformities and dysfunctions are ordinary? Helen Caldicott refers to the secluded village.
I imagine the people want to remain there not being annoyed by any normalcy.
Last night I read the news that UN set the level up to 100msv per year.
The global standard level was up to 1msv/y. Soon after the meltdowns of Fukushima Daiichi,
the government set the level up to 20msv per year. It was later increased to 100msv per year.
Remember the court case of those 13 children pleading to be evacuated from Fukushima?
One of the reasons they rejected the children was based on the level of 100msv/y, which had
been supported by Prof. Shyunichi Yamashita the vice president of the Fukushima Medical Univeristy.
I had the impression that UN had adjusted the level accordingly to the one they agreed at the
IAEA held in Fukushima on 15the December. The IAEA chaiperson Amano and Fukushima president
Sato signed the treaty. Mr Sato has been hospitalized. It is assumed that his immune systems had been
deteriorated because of radioactive matters.
It has been too clear or almost transparant that some academic people or sientists are far from
conscientious. So are politicians. People should stop relying on those scientists and politicians
and learn for themselves.
January 21, 2013 at 6:16 pm
Very sobering news... I'm afraid that reporting and information over here in the major media has not been what one would expect for such a major disaster either. Caldicott has been one of the most consistently concerned, informed people, from the beginning, I think.
January 21, 2013 at 6:40 pm
As Caldicott says, the Media does not cover what is crucial of the issue.
She mentions the Guardian and the ignorance the paper has shown.
The other day I was also disappointed at the Guardian about the comfort women issue; one
might try to say to oneself this is a propaganda thing. But the guy linked the Guardian page
for me was supposed to be intellectual. Alas, the deceiving and imprinting power of the media !
She mentions the Guardian and the ignorance the paper has shown.
The other day I was also disappointed at the Guardian about the comfort women issue; one
might try to say to oneself this is a propaganda thing. But the guy linked the Guardian page
for me was supposed to be intellectual. Alas, the deceiving and imprinting power of the media !
January 21, 2013 at 7:01 pm
I've mentioned Arnie Gundersen in the past. There are several videos on Japan that are very informative about what's really happening at Fukushima:
https://www.fairewinds.org/
https://www.fairewinds.org/
January 22, 2013 at 6:47 am
Socrates speaking to Glaucon:
“Then those who have no experience of wisdom and virtue but are ever devoted to feastings and that sort of thing are swept downward, it seems, and back again to the center, and so sway and roam to and fro throughout their lives, but they have never transcended all this and turned their eyes to the true upper region nor been wafted there, nor ever been really filled with real things, nor ever tasted stable and pure pleasure, but with eyes ever bent upon the earth and heads bowed down over their tables they feast like cattle, grazing and copulating, ever greedy for more of these delights, and in their greed kicking and butting one another with horns and hoofs of iron they slay one another in sateless avidity, because they are vainly striving to satisfy with things that are not real the unreal and incontinent part of their souls.”
“You describe in quite oracular style, Socrates, said Glaucon, the life of the multitude.”
Plato, The Republic. Book IX.
“Then those who have no experience of wisdom and virtue but are ever devoted to feastings and that sort of thing are swept downward, it seems, and back again to the center, and so sway and roam to and fro throughout their lives, but they have never transcended all this and turned their eyes to the true upper region nor been wafted there, nor ever been really filled with real things, nor ever tasted stable and pure pleasure, but with eyes ever bent upon the earth and heads bowed down over their tables they feast like cattle, grazing and copulating, ever greedy for more of these delights, and in their greed kicking and butting one another with horns and hoofs of iron they slay one another in sateless avidity, because they are vainly striving to satisfy with things that are not real the unreal and incontinent part of their souls.”
“You describe in quite oracular style, Socrates, said Glaucon, the life of the multitude.”
Plato, The Republic. Book IX.
January 21, 2013 at 7:24 am
11 people like this
The saying describes modern people and their behaviour exactly....
January 21, 2013 at 7:32 am
That which is flesh cannot satisfy that which spirit.
January 21, 2013 at 7:37 am
Gordon W. Bryson, Thank you for sharing my post. To clarify, lest I be misunderstood and misrepresented, all modern people, in Jacques Barzun's sense, have "fallen" into decadence. Christians are not exempted, nor the members of any other faith, many of whom are caught in various "backward," fundamentalist movements, evangelical and otherwise, none of which are possible in the modern world. All such movements are a sign of decadence. The "graying out" of the mainline Christian denominations demonstrate decadence as well by construing Christ's teachings in terms of doctrines, what Tolstoy called "sorcery," and the plutocracy that often supports them, not the poor Christ cared about... There are parallels to this decline into materialism that Socrates suggests in all of the world's religions.
Humankind can only go forward, together, into what is universally human and Divine. From the moon, together, can see it...
To understand what I'm saying, I invite you to read a Free chapter, BOOK I, from The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem:
PDF.
Humankind can only go forward, together, into what is universally human and Divine. From the moon, together, can see it...
To understand what I'm saying, I invite you to read a Free chapter, BOOK I, from The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem:
PDF.
January 21, 2013 at 8:43 am
Frederick, I wouldn't go as far as you do. I don't believe that all modern people are fallen into decadence, nor do I feel as Socrates does that people are necessarily wrapped up in the carnal. Getting back to the "pure spirit" is not necessarily where I would go, although I love the quote and love Socrates' belief in the aspirations or man to reach the divine. Not completely secular, I would exempt many of the people I worked with in the Friends Society or in the Congregational Church who were tied up in making the lives of man gradually better each day even if those around them reviled them. I agree that fundamentalist movements in the US, particularly the new Catholic Church that is headed by the most conservative of all pontiffs are signs of decadence as they are devoted to maintaining their institutions (necessarily things) instead of their people. A brief glance at the sad state of the child abuse by priests will clarify what I mean about preferring things over people. I do not believe that every step man takes is a step towards decadence. I also do not believe that every step man takes is a step forward (as examples I offer predator drones and Paris Hilton). I enjoyed the quote. I am respectful of Socrates, but I do not agree with him, even if I quote him.
January 24, 2013 at 7:47 am
I respect your conscience and nuanced qualifications. I'll stick with Socrates and Barzun... For the full argument see https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2013/01/23/decadence-east-and-west/
January 24, 2013 at 7:55 am
As with the quote that I selected from you, I love the article but feel that there is a nuanced response to the situation dealt with in the post. I'd be remiss if I didn't recommend Postman's Technopoly, particularly the beginning in which there is a discussion of what it will mean for man to begin to use writing. The bargain is made because writing is such a strong technology, but man loses many things with his taking of the tool, memory, intensity of concentration, and shared music. Man takes writing and loses those things. Likewise, as our tools and other things become better and better, we lose more and more. Our increasing loss of memory and children's ADD perhaps owe their more frequent occurrence to computers, which supply most of the information we used to commit to memory and endless stimulation that makes the classroom incurable stale and boring. However, I agree with Dewey and Rorty. We do not need to be owned by our machines, shrewd as they are, but we can learn to use them and to value ourselves. As my recent quotes imply, I believe that the active left (not the cultural left that Rorty identifies as the nihilists you are bemoaning) is the key to hope and progress in the present world. Ultimately, I do not think it is productive to lament what we have lost in trade. It is more instructive to learn how we can use the new world that eternally springs at our door. I refer to Hopkins' God's Grandeur:
THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; 5
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; 10
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; 5
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; 10
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
January 24, 2013 at 8:31 am
I'm familiar with the argument. My critique runs much deeper... Jacques Barzun, paraphrased, "It's a joy to be alive!"
January 24, 2013 at 8:36 am
Your post Frederick Glaysher sir and Gordon W. Bryson's comments remind me of a sloka in the Bhagvada Gita:
Indriananang hi charatng janmanohanubidhiyate
Tadasya harati pragnang bayurnabamibhambashi. (67: 2nd Chapter)
It means, “The senses of people given to sensual pleasures are constantly ravished and pulled invariably by the very senses much like the ships pulled towards their doom by tempests.”
Indriananang hi charatng janmanohanubidhiyate
Tadasya harati pragnang bayurnabamibhambashi. (67: 2nd Chapter)
It means, “The senses of people given to sensual pleasures are constantly ravished and pulled invariably by the very senses much like the ships pulled towards their doom by tempests.”
January 24, 2013 at 9:50 am
I somehow missed your quotation until today. Fine choice from the Gita.
January 28, 2013 at 5:50 am
“It is not merely the origin of a city, it seems, that we are considering but the origin of a luxurious city.... But if it is your pleasure that we contemplate also a fevered state, there is nothing to hinder. For there are some, it appears, who will not be contented with this sort of fare or with this way of life, but couches will have to be added thereto and tables and other furniture, yes, and relishes and myrrh and incense and girls and cakes—all sorts of all of them. And the requirements we first mentioned, houses and garments and shoes, will no longer be confined to necessities, but we must set painting to work and embroidery, and procure gold and ivory and similar adornments, must we not?
Plato, The Republic. Book II. Socrates speaking to Glaucon.
Plato, The Republic. Book II. Socrates speaking to Glaucon.
January 21, 2013 at 6:54 am
7 people like this
“How does the historian know when Decadence sets in? By the open confessions of malaise, by the search in all directions for a new faith or faiths.... To secular minds, the old ideals look outworn or hopeless and practical aims are made into creeds sustained by violent acts....”
--Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present, 500 years of Western Cultural Life (2000).
--Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present, 500 years of Western Cultural Life (2000).
January 20, 2013 at 8:28 am
4 people like this
Frederick, your postings are excellent and so very thought provoking. Regarding decadence, there seems to be a problem of definition based on historical context. The Reformation would have been seen as decadent due to changes in the understanding of revelation, a Reformed view of divorce, and the abandoning of consecrated chastity as a spiritual ideal. In retrospect, it is seen by many as a great leap forward. Is Bazun suggesting that was the beginning of the end and we have been in decline since?
January 22, 2013 at 2:19 pm
Thank you, Edmund Bolella, I'm pleased to know you find worthwhile things in my posts. I'm mulling over the "meat," if you will, of an essay I'm working on, "Decadence, East and West." Should have it done in the next few days or so, I hope. I've been thinking about it for years, so I'm eager to get it done, and move on! :)
You bring up a good point about definition. Everyone's decadence is someone else's most glorious period in human history! I readily concede that much to human nature. :) Barzun, though, has a broader perspective, I think. His book is quite fascinating and handles an enormous amount of cultural time and material. He begins with Luther, basically the 95 Theses... Barzun was not a fundamentalist, basically self-described as an agnostic, if memory serves, and more objective in tone, along cultural and intellectual historical terms. For instance, he's not reminiscent of some Catholic thinkers, wanting to return to the Golden Age of the 13th Century, or writing from any framework like that. Nevertheless, he marshals a very strong critique of where the 20th Century ended up, on all fronts... I highly recommend his book. There's been nothing to replace it at the same intellectual level, in my opinion. We're still in the same trough...
You bring up a good point about definition. Everyone's decadence is someone else's most glorious period in human history! I readily concede that much to human nature. :) Barzun, though, has a broader perspective, I think. His book is quite fascinating and handles an enormous amount of cultural time and material. He begins with Luther, basically the 95 Theses... Barzun was not a fundamentalist, basically self-described as an agnostic, if memory serves, and more objective in tone, along cultural and intellectual historical terms. For instance, he's not reminiscent of some Catholic thinkers, wanting to return to the Golden Age of the 13th Century, or writing from any framework like that. Nevertheless, he marshals a very strong critique of where the 20th Century ended up, on all fronts... I highly recommend his book. There's been nothing to replace it at the same intellectual level, in my opinion. We're still in the same trough...
January 22, 2013 at 4:23 pm
As Lionel Trilling confided to his diary in 1948, we have become “assimilated to the literal contents of the art we contemplate [so] that our contemplation of cruelty will not make us humane but cruel; that the reiteration of the badness of our spiritual condition will make us consent to it.” That is, we become the “adversary culture.”
January 20, 2013 at 7:45 am
5 people like this
Of quantum mechanics, Czeslaw Milosz wrote that it “restores the mind to its role of a co-creator in the fabric of reality. This favors a shift from belittling man as an insignificant speck in the immensity of galaxies to regarding him again as the main actor in the universal drama–which is a vision proper to every religion (Blake’s Divine Humanity, Adam Kadmon of the Cabbalah, Logos-Christ of the Christian denominations). From "Questions for the Third Millennium," NPQ 1991.
January 20, 2013 at 6:59 am
3 people like this
Again, in terms of vision, "...the nature of science and scientism, as well as the “two cultures.”
January 20, 2013 at 7:29 am
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January 19, 2013 at 2:29 pm
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Throughout much of my epic, I also grapple with the implications of quantum mechanics and modern physics... I think the language of poetry is the best tongue with which to do that.
January 20, 2013 at 7:27 am
MOLECULE .........
January 20, 2013 at 11:45 am
Referring not to the developing world but to the post-Christian and post-religious one of nihilism, Philip Rieff writes,
"What the third world needs, but refuses to admit. There is a desperate need for an elite that carries an interdictory sense, a reading elite that carries illuminative certainties. Third world elites will not allow the development, or redevelopment, of such a reading elite. Our new age elite cannot and will not tolerate such authority" (195).
Philip Rieff. My Life Among the Deathworks: Illustrations of the Aesthetics of Authority, 2006 (195).
"What the third world needs, but refuses to admit. There is a desperate need for an elite that carries an interdictory sense, a reading elite that carries illuminative certainties. Third world elites will not allow the development, or redevelopment, of such a reading elite. Our new age elite cannot and will not tolerate such authority" (195).
Philip Rieff. My Life Among the Deathworks: Illustrations of the Aesthetics of Authority, 2006 (195).
January 19, 2013 at 2:27 pm
4 people like this
Perhaps I am misunderstanding, but how does the reading elite with an interdictory sense not become a type of Magisterium that manipulates and corrupts the text for venal, worldly concerns? This is also the problem of reading and the cognitive process of reading we have from both post-modern views and psychology.
January 19, 2013 at 2:45 pm
I share your point of view on this and grant any "reading elite" can, to varying degrees, become oppressive. I think Rieff's real point is in relative to what he calls the "third world" elite, i.e., not the developing world, but the triumphant reading elite, if you will, of Marx, Freud, Derrida, et al., who privilege the negative, Nietzsche's "transvaluation of values" which undermines everything, as another passage from Rieff on my wall suggests... So Rieff is looking for a new cycle, shall we say... tired of the now ancient regime of nihilism. Post-modernism fooled around with moving beyond that; Rieff is serious. So am I...
January 19, 2013 at 2:53 pm
...I'd argue there's more restraint in transcendence, any form of it, when it's healthy, because it is predicated on humility, not that the arrogant and fanatical don't rise to the fore from time to time, upsetting the social order.
January 19, 2013 at 2:55 pm
...I'd add, too, Rieff's reflections in this passage especially apply to the university and intellectual media, which, until the advent of the Internet, the secularized reading elite controlled with an iron grip.
January 19, 2013 at 3:05 pm
Edmund Bolella, Incidentally, I published an essay last spring in an Indian Journal in Kolkata, about the poet Tagore, with connections to the Unitarian Universalist Church, there and in the US, if interested, which expands on some of the ideas we've discussed here: If interested, I uploaded my essay to my own server:
https://fglaysher.com/images/The_Poet's_Religion_of_Rabindranath_Tagore.pdf
https://fglaysher.com/images/The_Poet's_Religion_of_Rabindranath_Tagore.pdf
January 20, 2013 at 6:23 am
Peter Boullata, FYI
January 20, 2013 at 6:27 am
Edmund Bolella, As another afterthought, if you follow my thinking through this, the connections with India being important, I'd say there's now a way to recover the "historic documents and traditions," if you will, requiring some change and reassessment, as the nature of all things do, preferable to "graying out" and so forth... If interested, read my essay on Tagore and UU, and then let's chat some more.
January 20, 2013 at 7:41 am
Mark Hoelter, Peter Boullata FYI...
January 20, 2013 at 11:39 am
“A race is on between disintegration and construction. And each aspect is related to the other. The advances of science and technology have further eroded the religious imagination. For that reason, believers and non-believers are in the same boat because the quality of the imagination does not depend upon what you believe, but how that imagination is conditioned by technological civilization and science. ...when the world is deprived of clear-cut outlines, of up and down, of good and evil, it succumbs to a peculiar nihilization.”
Czeslaw Milsoz, New Perspectives Quarterly, "A Dialogue of Cultures." 1999.
Czeslaw Milsoz, New Perspectives Quarterly, "A Dialogue of Cultures." 1999.
January 19, 2013 at 8:44 am
6 people like this
Interesting quotation ... Indeed this is not always the same. some believers are stuck to a constant and immuable realities that will never welcome any technological or scientifical condition. In some points believers and non bilievers are in the same boat, but in others points that are pillars in religions like Islam, the believers and non bilievers will never share the boat.
January 19, 2013 at 9:15 am
Like all the great religions, in modern times, Islam too has at times fallen into fanaticism and fantasy, mistaking a backward, retrograde movement for the real thing. Islamo-fascism is a form of nihilism all of the great Sufi poets would have repudiated. They would never have mistaken it as a boat in which they could have traveled toward the Simorgh...
January 19, 2013 at 10:17 am
Yes I said not always the time and not about the 5 pillars.....as for fanatism, fantasy or islamo-fascism.. this is your personal view about Islaam and your personal view may not be as actual as you may think.... Most of the time nowadays if people talk about religion ...they reffer to Islaam...directly or indirectly...to come back to tthe point Iconfess that Never will islaam welcome the technological and scientifical imagination within the 5 pillars of Islaam... Maybe the scientists will need these 5 pilars so as to have some light upon their researches....
January 19, 2013 at 10:25 am
The quation is good,but I think Mr.Yahya is right
January 19, 2013 at 10:28 am
Yahya Drame, The famous hadith states, "Seek knowledge even unto China," but Islam stopped following that injunction centuries ago, unfortunately, as it has fallen, for some, not all Muslims, into fanaticism. Many observers, historians, and others have remarked that very little of scientific worth or innovation has been produced in Islamic countries for a very long time. I would argue, too, as some Muslims have said, the majority are closer to the Sufis than the Wahhabis. Modern nihilism has taken many forms, with Islam having its own... though I consider Christian fundamentalism and fanaticism as essentially a rearguard nihilistic flight into the past as well. To that extent, what happened to Islam in the modern world has been a global decline. Hinduism, too, has had its backward conservative movements into the past, as an attempt to deal with the modernity that Milosz identifies as "peculiar" to our time.
January 19, 2013 at 11:41 am
(A Personal Favorite) "The theological perspective of participation actually saves the appearances by exceeding them. It recognizes that materialism and spiritualism are false alternatives, since if there is only finite matter there is not even that, and that for phenomena really to be there they must be more than there. Hence, by appealing to an eternal source for bodies, their art, language, sexual and political union, one is not ethereally taking leave of their density. On the contrary, one is insisting that behind this density resides an even greater density – beyond all contrasts of density and lightness (as beyond all contrasts of definition and limitlessness). This is to say that all there is only is because it is more than it is.
This perspective should in many ways be seen as undercutting some of the contrasts between theological liberals and conservatives. The former tend to validate what they see as the modern embrace of our finitude – as language, and as erotic and aesthetically delighting bodies, and so forth. Conservatives, however, seem still to embrace a sort of nominal ethereal distancing from these realities and a disdain for them. Radical orthodoxy, by contrast, sees the historic root of the celebration of these things in participatory philosophy and incarnational theology, even if it can acknowledge that premodern tradition never took this celebration far enough. The modern apparent embrace of the finite it regards as, on inspection, illusory, since in order to stop the finite vanishing modernity must construe it as a spatial edifice bound by clear laws, rules and lattices. If, on the other hand, following the postmodern options, it embraces the flux of things, this is an empty flux both concealing and revealing an ultimate void. Hence, modernity has oscillated between puritanism (sexual or otherwise) and an entirely perverse eroticism, which is in love with death and therefore wills the death also of the erotic, and does not preserve the erotic as far as an eternal consummation. In a bizarre way, it seems that modernity does not really want what it thinks it wants; but on the other hand, in order to have what it thinks it wants; it would have to recover the theological. Thereby, of course, it would discover also that that which it desires is quite other than it has supposed” ― John Milbank, Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology.
This perspective should in many ways be seen as undercutting some of the contrasts between theological liberals and conservatives. The former tend to validate what they see as the modern embrace of our finitude – as language, and as erotic and aesthetically delighting bodies, and so forth. Conservatives, however, seem still to embrace a sort of nominal ethereal distancing from these realities and a disdain for them. Radical orthodoxy, by contrast, sees the historic root of the celebration of these things in participatory philosophy and incarnational theology, even if it can acknowledge that premodern tradition never took this celebration far enough. The modern apparent embrace of the finite it regards as, on inspection, illusory, since in order to stop the finite vanishing modernity must construe it as a spatial edifice bound by clear laws, rules and lattices. If, on the other hand, following the postmodern options, it embraces the flux of things, this is an empty flux both concealing and revealing an ultimate void. Hence, modernity has oscillated between puritanism (sexual or otherwise) and an entirely perverse eroticism, which is in love with death and therefore wills the death also of the erotic, and does not preserve the erotic as far as an eternal consummation. In a bizarre way, it seems that modernity does not really want what it thinks it wants; but on the other hand, in order to have what it thinks it wants; it would have to recover the theological. Thereby, of course, it would discover also that that which it desires is quite other than it has supposed” ― John Milbank, Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology.
January 19, 2013 at 1:02 pm
Thank you Edmund Bolella, an interesting point of view. I would take "This is to say that all there is only is because it is more than it is," as the basic affirmation of the Shema writ large (though not as lucidly). The loss of the symbolic dimensions of the erotic is also interesting to me, in a way the same thing, and what I have also tried to work with... All the transcendent traditions had that once... now everything erotic has become pornography. I don't recall Milosz ever reflecting on the idea, in quite the same way, but I think he would have understood the point.
January 19, 2013 at 1:10 pm
“...a poetry that was built upon a constant negation of precisely the literature which arranged life according to the applications of sacred knowledge. In effect, literature had nothing more to teach.... A vast shift occurred that led from the forms of application of living models of command in sacred writings to another saturated with more or less explicit negations, of which the most obvious were the negations of Nietzsche and of Freud, who therefore became the most influential theorists, or anti-theorists, of the third or anti-culture”.
Philip Rieff. My Life Among the Deathworks: Illustrations of the Aesthetics of Authority, 2006 (205).
Philip Rieff. My Life Among the Deathworks: Illustrations of the Aesthetics of Authority, 2006 (205).
January 19, 2013 at 6:27 am
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Literature ALWAYS has more to teach.
January 19, 2013 at 8:01 am
True enough, in your sense. Rieff means another...
January 19, 2013 at 8:07 am
I'm listening.
January 19, 2013 at 8:11 am
?
January 19, 2013 at 8:11 am
Means another how?
January 19, 2013 at 8:13 am
I think Rieff lays it out pretty straightforward...
January 19, 2013 at 8:16 am
Then why the inference that "my" sense is different than his?
January 19, 2013 at 8:17 am
I thought it was. Did I misread you?
January 19, 2013 at 8:18 am
He is describing the replacement of the traditional intellectualism (Freud, Marx, Nietzche, et al) with the modern scientific and empiricist intellectual, is he not? The old bailiwick seemingly had nothing left to teach...whether or not his description of this dispensationalism is accurate, my point being that literature ALWAYS has more to teach.
January 19, 2013 at 8:25 am
Mmm, no, I don't think so, Keith. Philip Rieff is a very deep critic and mind, cultural sociologist of sorts, Jewish background. Fair to say, quite opposed to empiricism, etc. Okay, I follow, you, and of course on a literal level, and I think your criticism approaches Rieff here from that direction, literature does ALWAYS move on, in starts and fits, though, in this context, I'd say... much of Rieff's point. My Life Among the Deathworks is largely about modern art, painting, with asides like this into poetry and lit,, the culture broadly.
January 19, 2013 at 8:30 am
Sorry, then, you were right...I misinterpreted it. Still fascinating, at any rate.
January 19, 2013 at 8:34 am
Yeah, builds up a very profound framework within which to view modern painting and art in the book. His 1960s book The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith after Freud basically argued against and overturned Freud... he eventually went into decades of silence, writing several books that were only published after his death.
January 19, 2013 at 8:37 am
There are many who think that Freud is no longer relevant, but anyone who shares insight into human thought and behavior must value his contributions.
January 19, 2013 at 8:42 am
I believe it is fair to say that Rieff ceased genuflecting before Freud in the 1960s, with his book The Triumph of the Therapeutic...
January 20, 2013 at 6:57 am
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January 18, 2013 at 12:26 pm
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January 18, 2013 at 11:38 am
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January 18, 2013 at 11:42 am
"Anyway, I became an apostate to Hinduism, and aired that arrogantly even before my elders.... I not only persist in my disbelief in Hindu religious tenets, but have gone further and lost faith in all the great established religions. I did not reject Hinduism as religion in order to believe in Buddhism, Christianity, or Islam. My recovery of faith is not recantation. It became necessary with a painful realization of the inability to live in hope without it. I began to suffer for my loss of faith almost with the loss itself, and yet remained incapable of going back to any of the existing forms of it."
--Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Thy Hand, Great Anarch!: India, 1921 - 1952. Epilogue, 939-40.
--Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Thy Hand, Great Anarch!: India, 1921 - 1952. Epilogue, 939-40.
January 18, 2013 at 9:01 am
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Afterlifer, shcmaterlife....
January 18, 2013 at 9:42 am
Jefferson, With all respect for your own conscience, I believe Chaudhuri would consider that kind of thinking characteristic of the decadence he critiques.
January 18, 2013 at 9:49 am
So am I doomed, Frederick?
January 18, 2013 at 9:50 am
Why would you think that? That kind of thing belongs to the past, I would say. It's one of the caricatures that shed little light on the subject.
January 18, 2013 at 9:53 am
Jefferson Carter, As an afterthought, actually, I've just written a short piece that has a few relevant paragraphs, starting with "Much of the literary world has become closed off in doctrinaire nihilism..." on to comments about Richard Dwakins by Peter Higgs. Skip the part on Tagore, if he's too much the "mystic" East:
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2013/01/15/tagore-and-literary-adaptation/
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2013/01/15/tagore-and-literary-adaptation/
January 18, 2013 at 11:35 am
Mr.Chaudhary was right in some points,but I want to tell the world the original theory of Hinduism was not bad.It was not aritualistic Religion at the beginning,later the prists supported by the Kings made it like this.And at present politicians are making it worst.I am a Hindu by birth and a proud one,I don't do any rituals,but try to stick to its original teachings
January 19, 2013 at 7:41 am
And about Tagore,he was a revolutionary character,and very powerfull one.....what he could do we ordinary people can not
January 19, 2013 at 7:44 am
Nice to "meet" you here on FB. I respect all that and have written a lot along those lines. Last year I published an essay on Tagore in Rupkatha Journal that discusses much of what you suggest, if interested:
"The Poet’s Religion of Rabindranath Tagore," published spring 2012, in Rupkatha (Kolkata, India). https://rupkatha.com/v3n4.php
"The Poet’s Religion of Rabindranath Tagore," published spring 2012, in Rupkatha (Kolkata, India). https://rupkatha.com/v3n4.php
January 19, 2013 at 7:46 am
The link seems to be down at the moment. They must be having some trouble or something.
January 19, 2013 at 7:49 am
Tagore is a character in my epic poem, an excerpt of which has just been published in Kolkata, India > Excerpt from Book IV. Rupkatha Journal, Volume IV, Number 2, 2012. Tagore and the Persona, at Kurukshetra:
"We soon were over a plain, a wide field,
where two vast armies were ranked to battle,
legions on either side for war..."
https://rupkatha.com
"We soon were over a plain, a wide field,
where two vast armies were ranked to battle,
legions on either side for war..."
https://rupkatha.com
January 19, 2013 at 7:51 am
Mamata Das, For probably some technical reason, Rupkatha Journal is still off the Internet. If interested, I uploaded my essay to my own server:
https://fglaysher.com/images/The_Poet's_Religion_of_Rabindranath_Tagore.pdf
https://fglaysher.com/images/The_Poet's_Religion_of_Rabindranath_Tagore.pdf
January 20, 2013 at 6:14 am
Thank you Fredrick,i sure I will try to read it
January 20, 2013 at 6:16 am
Hi Fredrick,I have read your essay published in Rupkatha from your server....I really like it.What surprised me is that you have studied throughly Rabindra Nath's own writting about rreligion.....and tried to explain that ttheory in your own words,which I think many Bengalies never tried.Thanks for your effort and understanding.We,Bengalies inherited him automatically and never put any extra effort to find his inner thinking.As for Hinduism,we have learnt one or two things from it.It says God is 'EKAMEBADWITYAM'and it further says 'SO AHAM'.......means 'He is the only one and that is me'.It also.says HE IS OMNI PRESENT,OMNISHIENT,OMNIPOTENT.....I think that is the best description of the 'ULTIMATE POWER'
January 21, 2013 at 7:29 am
Thank you, Mrs. Das for reading my essay on Tagore and commenting. I appreciate your observations and quoting that some of the great insights of the Upanishads. I particularly think highly of what is often translated into English, "Thou Art That." Actually, as I mentioned, Tagore is a character in my epic poem, which I've just published. Unfortunately, the editor of Rupkatha.com has informed me his server is still down, but I've also published a different excerpt you might enjoy in Mumbai, India > Excerpt (2nd) from Book IV. The Criterion: An International Journal in English, Vol. III. Issue. IV (December 2012). In the Himalayan foothills, Shiva Nataraja.
"Tagore then spoke. “You have heard Krishna, now
Lord Vishnu’s eighth incarnation, Shiva.
He will come down to us from Mt Kailash..."
https://www.the-criterion.com/
Or direct PDF: https://www.the-criterion.com/V3/n4/Frederick.pdf
"Tagore then spoke. “You have heard Krishna, now
Lord Vishnu’s eighth incarnation, Shiva.
He will come down to us from Mt Kailash..."
https://www.the-criterion.com/
Or direct PDF: https://www.the-criterion.com/V3/n4/Frederick.pdf
January 21, 2013 at 7:37 am
Read it just now , as a poetry ,liked it very much .But I have 1/2 question.....Why suddenly Tagore?What is the context of his meeting with you,there is no explanation.May it is ok for you all(high intellect people),but for us ordinary people who love poetry but not very well read it is a little confusing.Another question ...how can I send it to my son?Poetry is hie passion,though he is an Engineer.He works as assosiate professor in an University in Chicago
January 21, 2013 at 7:56 am
That piece is just an excerpt. Tagore appears throughout a couple of chapters of my epic. Read a Free chapter, BOOK I, The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem:
PDF.
For your son, you could buy a copy from Barnes and Noble, or from Amazon, and just give them his address in terms of where to mail it. In India, flipkart.com sells it. Thank you for your interest!
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-parliament-of-poets-frederick-glaysher/1112448232
PDF.
For your son, you could buy a copy from Barnes and Noble, or from Amazon, and just give them his address in terms of where to mail it. In India, flipkart.com sells it. Thank you for your interest!
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-parliament-of-poets-frederick-glaysher/1112448232
January 21, 2013 at 8:03 am
Mamata Das, Sorry to bother you, but I want to let you know that I just put online a copy of Tagore in my epic at Kurukshetra for you. The journal apparently has major computer problems but the identical file is here: Rupkatha_Poetry_V4N2_2012
https://fglaysher.com/images/Rupkatha_Poetry_V4N2_2012.pdf
https://fglaysher.com/images/Rupkatha_Poetry_V4N2_2012.pdf
January 22, 2013 at 1:31 pm
"What I am speaking about is true decadence, for during those years everything about us was decaying, literally everything ranging from our spiritual and moral ideals to our material culture, and nothing really live or organic arose to take their place. I have never even read about such a process as I have passed through: it was unadulterated decadence."
--Nirad C. Chaudhuri, The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian, 1951, p. 364.
--Nirad C. Chaudhuri, The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian, 1951, p. 364.
January 18, 2013 at 8:17 am
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"Not less paradoxical is the fact that the latest decadence in history, which is universal, has its centre of diffusion in the United States.... But decadence today is not exclusively American, nor is it like the manifestations of decadence previously known. It is an absolutely new form of decadence...." P. 133- 134.
January 18, 2013 at 8:22 am
“The really dangerous aspect of decadence in human communities is the insensibility to it which it always creates.”
--Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Thy Hand, Great Anarch!: India, 1921 - 1952. Chapter XXIV.
--Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Thy Hand, Great Anarch!: India, 1921 - 1952. Chapter XXIV.
January 18, 2013 at 7:51 am
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To my mind, this is Chaudhuri's deepest insight into the inner workings of modernity...
January 18, 2013 at 8:11 am
“But even the highest intellects of today do not see the darkness as I see it. They do not admit that there is any cultural or social decadence. This is due in the first instance to the insensibility to decadence which any historical movement of decadence always creates.... In such ages the general habit of intellectuals is to refuse to face all realities, and their incurable disposition is to impose a pattern of words on all reality. This disease is universal in the world of today.”
--Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Thy Hand, Great Anarch!: India, 1921 - 1952. Page 962.
--Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Thy Hand, Great Anarch!: India, 1921 - 1952. Page 962.
January 18, 2013 at 6:47 am
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Published in 1988.
January 18, 2013 at 6:52 am
When one is in darkness long enough, their eyes adjust and they take it for light.
January 18, 2013 at 8:00 am
That's it! Ah, humanity...
January 18, 2013 at 8:02 am
The fact is whoever can think deeply, imposes a pattern, for the data, the raw material is too heterogeneous.
January 18, 2013 at 8:02 am
I respect the opinion, Apurbajyoti Majumdar, but don't share it. Indeed, as an idea, I think that is precisely what Chaudhuri rightly criticizes, for it's one of the typical formulas used to avoid facing "all realities."
January 18, 2013 at 8:05 am
When you get down to it, intellectualism is an attempt to customize reality, so by nature, it is both subjective and relative.
January 18, 2013 at 8:09 am
Chaudhuri himself imposes an idea of, say Bengal, which is hardly borne out by data. I suppose not to see details of reality and to theorise is the propensity which marks European philosophers from the English. Keith Linwood Stover says much the same thing I said. It is impossible to make meaning of anything unless one knows why one is looking at the data.
January 18, 2013 at 8:18 am
While I absolutely agree with Chaudhuri's observations, who is defining the "social and cultural decadence?" I believe such things defy quantification, at least in the empirical sense. While one can certainly measure crime and safety statistics, economic conditions and health and welfare numbers, Chaudhuri's quote is a judgment of civilizational VALUES. Physical conditions are always easier to measure than moral ones.
January 18, 2013 at 9:26 am
“When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent. The term is not a slur; it is a technical label.” “All that is meant by decadence is ‘falling off.’”
--Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present, 500 years of Cultural Life (2000).
--Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present, 500 years of Cultural Life (2000).
January 18, 2013 at 5:41 am
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Finally found my copy buried in my library under a huge stack of books on the floor! The correct subtitle is "1500 to the Present, 500 years of Western Cultural Life."
January 18, 2013 at 7:57 am
But the fight, always, is who gets to define "absurd" and "normal."
January 18, 2013 at 8:24 am
I believe Barzun would have thought that that in itself demonstrates a form of decadence.
January 18, 2013 at 8:27 am
“Both left- and right-wing ideologies, in any case, are now so rigid that new ideas make little impression on their adherents.” The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy, Christopher Lasch. 1994
January 18, 2013 at 3:24 am
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Much of the literary world has become closed off in doctrinaire nihilism and rhetoric, cocooned in the Myth of the Enlightenment, clutching to its chest its Goddess of Reason, ignoring the extent to which these ideas have led or participated in many of the most bloody upheavals of modernity, around the globe, and lie at the core of many of our continuing dilemmas. Intellectual rigidity and closed-mindedness supplant the search for truth. In this sense, there’s little difference between the “truth” of the complacent cultural elite and various fundamentalists that they castigate. Most cultural organs and publications are fanatically devoted to the secular god of modernity. Like the worst of Christian fundamentalists that many enjoy caricaturing, lumping all people of spiritual sensibility together with them, liberals and progressives, in and out of the university, can be just as closed off to other visions of life and human possibility.
January 17, 2013 at 7:56 am
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This is to be expected in this age of post-postmodern relativism. At least those with a spiritual or religious bent have a fixed point on their compass. For most who believe in a God or Supreme Creator, their perspective begins and ends in a deity (Alpha and Omega). Those who profess to have no belief are left to worship the self, or science or empiricism itself. Hence, the relativistic worldview held by so many. The supreme irony is that in an age where technology aids the exchange of unlimited information, nihilism runs rampant...the idea that there is no individual or collective meaning, purpose or significance to this earthly existence. You are right when you say "Intellectual rigidity and closed-mindedness supplant the search for truth." Many fail to understand that truth and consensus reality are not synonymous.
January 17, 2013 at 8:19 am
I couldn't agree more. The irony is that a significant part of the modern problem is its inheritance of the notion of *exclusive truth* from the religious tradition it castigates the most--Christianity! Somewhere between Voltaire and Nietzsche, modernity conceived of itself taking over the cultural landscape, allowing no other perspectives legitimate intellectual credentials and respectability.
That process only worsened throughout the 20th Century, declining into the unmitigated decadence of Deconstruction, all types of nihilism, formalism, and cynicism. Just when the world needs the most a humanizing sense of meaning, purpose, and unity, to protect itself from self-destruction, Nada becomes sacrosanct.
I argue, around the world, we have lived beyond that, East and West, know and sense, at the most profound levels, by intimation, if you will, we must recover the deeply human, spiritual traditions of the past, not by going backwards into fundamentalism, but forward into universality. From the moon, together, I believe we can see it.
That process only worsened throughout the 20th Century, declining into the unmitigated decadence of Deconstruction, all types of nihilism, formalism, and cynicism. Just when the world needs the most a humanizing sense of meaning, purpose, and unity, to protect itself from self-destruction, Nada becomes sacrosanct.
I argue, around the world, we have lived beyond that, East and West, know and sense, at the most profound levels, by intimation, if you will, we must recover the deeply human, spiritual traditions of the past, not by going backwards into fundamentalism, but forward into universality. From the moon, together, I believe we can see it.
January 17, 2013 at 8:32 am
The book I recently recommended to you by Edward Feser, "The Last Superstition," blames this dark age on the modernists (Dawkins, Hitchens and Dennet, et al) who have so emphatically denied the very classical truths which have survived and resonated through the ages. He uses, as his main thesis, a quote by Aquinas: "A small error in the beginning of something is a great one at the end."
Not only does Feser take on the modernists, but also Hobbes, Hume, Kant and a host of others, simply by reiterating the great truths of first principles as established by Aristotle and Aquinas (and to a lesser degree, Plato and Augustine).
Says Feser: "...sexual libertinism and contempt for religion as public, mass phenomena constitute the final victory of reason, twin fruits of the modern scientific worldview. { "What is needed to counteract the anti-religious and libertine madness of the present time is not crude populism or short-term political strategizing, but a rethinking of the relevant issues back to first principles. If you are someone who agrees that these developments constitute a kind of madness and want to understand how we have reached such a low point in the history of our civilization, you will want to read this book.
"I should make it clear at the outset that this is not a defense of an amorphous ecumenical something called "religion," but only and specifically of the classical theism and traditional morality of Western civilization, which, I maintain, are superior--rationally, morally,and socio-politically superior--to absolutely every alternative on offer. Nor am I suggesting merely that these founding elements of our civilization be permitted, hat in hand, to maintain a "place at the table" of some great multicultural smorgasbord alongside the secularist liberalism that seeks to abolish them. I hold instead that they ought to be restored to their rightful place as the guiding principles of Western thought, society and politics, and that, accordingly, secularism ought to be driven back into the intellectual and political margins whence it came."
To Feser's credit, he admits that his book is as polemical as it is philosophical, but his clarification of Western philosophy alone, both classical and modernist, is worth the entertaining of his occasional intellectual conceits.
Not only does Feser take on the modernists, but also Hobbes, Hume, Kant and a host of others, simply by reiterating the great truths of first principles as established by Aristotle and Aquinas (and to a lesser degree, Plato and Augustine).
Says Feser: "...sexual libertinism and contempt for religion as public, mass phenomena constitute the final victory of reason, twin fruits of the modern scientific worldview. { "What is needed to counteract the anti-religious and libertine madness of the present time is not crude populism or short-term political strategizing, but a rethinking of the relevant issues back to first principles. If you are someone who agrees that these developments constitute a kind of madness and want to understand how we have reached such a low point in the history of our civilization, you will want to read this book.
"I should make it clear at the outset that this is not a defense of an amorphous ecumenical something called "religion," but only and specifically of the classical theism and traditional morality of Western civilization, which, I maintain, are superior--rationally, morally,and socio-politically superior--to absolutely every alternative on offer. Nor am I suggesting merely that these founding elements of our civilization be permitted, hat in hand, to maintain a "place at the table" of some great multicultural smorgasbord alongside the secularist liberalism that seeks to abolish them. I hold instead that they ought to be restored to their rightful place as the guiding principles of Western thought, society and politics, and that, accordingly, secularism ought to be driven back into the intellectual and political margins whence it came."
To Feser's credit, he admits that his book is as polemical as it is philosophical, but his clarification of Western philosophy alone, both classical and modernist, is worth the entertaining of his occasional intellectual conceits.
January 17, 2013 at 9:03 am
I respect his and your conscience, Keith, if his account reflects your thinking too. My book-length poem The Bower of Nil grapples with all that in the classic philosophical tradition of Christianity and Western civilization, East as well. Based on the blurb account you've probably copied and pasted, I would say, *there is no going backwards*! The volumes that have argued "recovery," "restoration," etc., are innumerable!
In that regard, I emphatically agree with Nietzsche and modern Nihilism, which at least has cleared the ground so that we might reassess where we are and how we must proceed.
But all that is prose... life has blithely sailed on, rewriting the script! ...undermining the ground out from under everyone, theists and nihilists. From the moon, in the language of poetry, that rarefied tongue, we can find the words that speak the Truth that we have all come to live, together! East and West!
In that regard, I emphatically agree with Nietzsche and modern Nihilism, which at least has cleared the ground so that we might reassess where we are and how we must proceed.
But all that is prose... life has blithely sailed on, rewriting the script! ...undermining the ground out from under everyone, theists and nihilists. From the moon, in the language of poetry, that rarefied tongue, we can find the words that speak the Truth that we have all come to live, together! East and West!
January 17, 2013 at 9:18 am
If you really want to understand what I'm trying to convey, beyond tidbits on Facebook, read my books:
Books Available Worldwide
https://fglaysher.com/order_books.html
Books Available Worldwide
https://fglaysher.com/order_books.html
January 17, 2013 at 9:33 am
I admire Feser's willingness to go against the modern current. I also applaud his recognition that truth resonates over time, as opposed to knowledge and empiricism, which expand and contract with time.
Philosophy is a tool we utilize to shape perspective, but as all things are in a perpetual state of becoming, then truth needs be a moving target. It is hard to frame an existential worldview when all things are not only in a state of decay, but in a state of perpetual flux as well.
I'm not certain that I share Feser's take on sexual libertinism, as it seems to contradict so much of his belief in man's morality being shaped by natural law. The biological imperative of life is simply more life, so sexual behavior to me is as much an extension of that as it is morality.
I have but two chapters left to read in Feser's book, and what speaks to me most deeply is his articulation of first and efficient causes. It is far easier for me to swallow modern science's ideas of the universe's genesis and evolution if the teleological and ontological designs are understood. The theory of an "Unchangeable Changer" or an "Unmovable Mover" are far more compelling to me than the contrasts of comparative world religions. I regret to say that in terms of East-West harmony, I don't share your optimism. Other than in Eden, has man's own nature ever allowed him to exist and co-exist peacefully? No. And in this age of homocentrism, I see only spiritual retrograde rather than renaissance.
Philosophy is a tool we utilize to shape perspective, but as all things are in a perpetual state of becoming, then truth needs be a moving target. It is hard to frame an existential worldview when all things are not only in a state of decay, but in a state of perpetual flux as well.
I'm not certain that I share Feser's take on sexual libertinism, as it seems to contradict so much of his belief in man's morality being shaped by natural law. The biological imperative of life is simply more life, so sexual behavior to me is as much an extension of that as it is morality.
I have but two chapters left to read in Feser's book, and what speaks to me most deeply is his articulation of first and efficient causes. It is far easier for me to swallow modern science's ideas of the universe's genesis and evolution if the teleological and ontological designs are understood. The theory of an "Unchangeable Changer" or an "Unmovable Mover" are far more compelling to me than the contrasts of comparative world religions. I regret to say that in terms of East-West harmony, I don't share your optimism. Other than in Eden, has man's own nature ever allowed him to exist and co-exist peacefully? No. And in this age of homocentrism, I see only spiritual retrograde rather than renaissance.
January 17, 2013 at 9:39 am
I have found that life is so busy, that I have to trade my time. My Facebook preoccupation, for better or worse, has robbed me of reading time. So real-time dialectics are important to me, not that anything is a suitable substitute for reading. Unlike academia, real-time discourse forces one to distill the essence of their ideas in order to exchange them with others. So I thank you, Frederick, for being my social media friend and for sharing your hard-won insights.
January 17, 2013 at 9:44 am
They lose sight of the fact the very process of writing and rational discernment is a spiritual undertaking.
January 17, 2013 at 9:54 am
Keith Linwood Stover, St. Augustines Press... I read wheelbarrows full of books like Fesser's when I was young, with no exaggeration. Speaking for my own conscience, it's all headed in the wrong direction, trying to *recover* exclusivism, 13th Century Christianity, Judaism, decidedly Catholic, though there are Protestants still pedaling backwards too... Thank God for modernity! But, alas, it has declined into sterile rigidity and nihilism, but not before clearing the ground. Keith, my epic would make this clear for you.
Edmund Bolella, I definitely agree with that... which by definition must be a *search for truth* and understanding, lived, the only way it can be, *forward*. In our day and age, God Himself, if you will, has moved and mixed humanity into unprecedented affiliation. Unity cannot be achieved as in the isolated pasts of the various traditions that thought they had the *exclusive* truth--but only forward into the universality of truth, the oneness of all of the religions and wisdom traditions, of humanity itself.
From the Moon, together, humanity can see that, has seen it, stood transfixed before it, needs to understand it to a deeper level... Sir, I invite you to read my epic poem, The Parliament of Poets:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-parliament-of-poets-frederick-glaysher/1112448232?ean=9780982677889&itm=2&
Edmund Bolella, I definitely agree with that... which by definition must be a *search for truth* and understanding, lived, the only way it can be, *forward*. In our day and age, God Himself, if you will, has moved and mixed humanity into unprecedented affiliation. Unity cannot be achieved as in the isolated pasts of the various traditions that thought they had the *exclusive* truth--but only forward into the universality of truth, the oneness of all of the religions and wisdom traditions, of humanity itself.
From the Moon, together, humanity can see that, has seen it, stood transfixed before it, needs to understand it to a deeper level... Sir, I invite you to read my epic poem, The Parliament of Poets:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-parliament-of-poets-frederick-glaysher/1112448232?ean=9780982677889&itm=2&
January 17, 2013 at 10:33 am
I don't consider monotheism to be "exclusivism," Frederick. Truth is available to all. What are the words of men...ANY men, compared to those of God? Homocentrism implies the belief that the universe revolves around man instead of God.
January 17, 2013 at 10:37 am
Cerebrations... abstractions. We're all looking at the Elephant from different directions ...holding on to various parts. The Whole is other than its parts. For a wider perspective, take a trip to the Moon!
January 17, 2013 at 10:41 am
No abstractions here, only the transcendent: there is an impenetrable mystique to existence which no man can penetrate. This is why empirical knowledge without spiritual perspective is useless, just as is logic without intuition. Existence is both physical and metaphysical.
January 17, 2013 at 10:44 am
Well, yes, I agree with all that... and then there are some minds whose works stand out above the foam: Job, Dante, Milton, etc. (insert your favorite list of philosophers and poets, whoever).
January 17, 2013 at 10:53 am
"But all that is prose... life has ("and ever shell", said the O cean) blithely sail on. The moon language need never find the words that speak the Truth, she rather beam with purity"
January 17, 2013 at 11:20 am
Hi Kathleen Wright, If I follow your creative reworking of my words, I think I'd say, yes... even all everyday abstractions, no matter how sophisticated, are NOT an *experience* of the Moon. To say even that, is to descend from on high... to the quotidian vocabulary of our time. Hence, I'd highly recommend that friends read the original because all prose translations are inadequate and prosaic by definition. :)
January 17, 2013 at 11:31 am
Sir, me thinks thee thinks too much on what is rite. Of passage can be high or low, but certain the Yun Moon is great ever still, without constraints that you measure. Indeed, she is resting, begs silence, her treasure. In turn she'll reveal at her leisure!
January 17, 2013 at 11:46 am
Not sure I follow your doggerel, but if I get the drift right, I probably would have to say it's an older phase of the moon, similar in a sense to those previously discussed in this thread. Presumably Facebook's feature dragged in the wrong moon for you...
January 17, 2013 at 11:53 am
"All looked beside Kalidasa, at Tagore,
standing where he belonged, long white hair and beard,
old, dressed in a humble, simple, flowing robe.
In his eyes and presence, a spirit felt,
a shining aura of his inner soul."
Book IV The Argument
Frederick Glaysher's The Parliament of Poets : An Epic poem
standing where he belonged, long white hair and beard,
old, dressed in a humble, simple, flowing robe.
In his eyes and presence, a spirit felt,
a shining aura of his inner soul."
Book IV The Argument
Frederick Glaysher's The Parliament of Poets : An Epic poem
January 16, 2013 at 7:19 am
Toru Dutt (March 4, 1856 – August 30, 1877) was an Indian poet who wrote in English. Early life. She remained in Calcutta till November 1869...
January 16, 2013 at 6:52 am
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Bina Biswas |
'Muse I, as I see him stride.
Darkness deepens. Fades the light.
Now his gestures to mine eyes
Are august; and strange, - his height
Seems to touch the starry skies.'
January 16, 2013 at 6:52 am
11 people like this
From her poem "The Sower"
January 16, 2013 at 7:01 am
She was avery good poet,and compared to that time very strong minded
January 19, 2013 at 7:58 am
Yes, from this one poem, she's someone I intend to read more about, as soon as I can.
January 19, 2013 at 7:59 am
Indian Charlotte Bronte
January 19, 2013 at 8:02 am
Now THAT turns me off! Are you sure?
January 19, 2013 at 8:03 am
may be not! My words are not final
January 19, 2013 at 8:03 am
The full poem is a very fresh image, through her own experience. One that made me think of other poems...
January 19, 2013 at 8:04 am
Very common in Indian poetry those times
January 19, 2013 at 8:05 am
At My Funeral
Say, he has returned to the Moon,
that far height, out of reach for us,
until we, too, like all fragile things,
meet on that plane, high above the Earth.
Copyright ©2013 Frederick Glaysher
Say, he has returned to the Moon,
that far height, out of reach for us,
until we, too, like all fragile things,
meet on that plane, high above the Earth.
Copyright ©2013 Frederick Glaysher
January 16, 2013 at 6:45 am
11 people like this
Bina Biswas
January 16, 2013 at 6:47 am
Ah! This one!
January 16, 2013 at 7:04 am
Beautiful lines Fredrick,may be for my funeral too!
January 19, 2013 at 7:57 am
Hah, ha, ha! :) Oh, let's hope not for either of us, for a long time! God be willing... Thank you, though.
January 19, 2013 at 7:57 am
Much of the literary world has become closed off in doctrinaire nihilism and rhetoric, cocooned in the Myth of the Enlightenment, clutching to its chest its Goddess of Reason, ignoring the extent to which these ideas have led or participated in many of the most bloody upheavals of modernity, around the globe, and lie at the core of many of our continuing dilemmas...
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2013/01/15/tagore-and-literary-adaptation/
January 16, 2013 at 5:56 am
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2013/01/15/tagore-and-literary-adaptation/
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Tagore and Literary Adaptation |
I would argue, the more expansive the scope, the more necessary to his craft, that the poet will find himself compelled to lean on the tradition to reach his audience, educate it, realizing readers cannot be assumed to follow the sweep and depth of his own study, unless he pays tribute to the origin...
January 16, 2013 at 5:56 am
5 people like this
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2013/01/15/tagore-and-literary-adaptation/
January 15, 2013 at 4:42 pm
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Tagore and Literary Adaptation |
I would argue that the more expansive the scope of the vision, the more necessary to his craft, the poet might find himself compelled to lean on the tradition to reach his audience, educate it, realizing readers cannot be assumed to follow the sweep and depth of his own study unless he pays tribute ...
January 15, 2013 at 4:42 pm
3 people like this
Education
January 15, 2013 at 10:17 am
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Bhatter College, Dantan |
January 15, 2013 at 10:17 am
Much of the literary world has become closed off in its doctrinaire nihilism and rhetoric, cocooned in the Myth of the Enlightenment, clutching to its chest its Goddess of Reason, ignoring the extent to which these ideas have led or participated in many of the most bloody upheavals of modernity, around the globe...
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2013/01/15/tagore-and-literary-adaptation/
January 15, 2013 at 7:02 am
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2013/01/15/tagore-and-literary-adaptation/
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|
Tagore and Literary Adaptation |
I would argue that the more expansive the scope of the vision, the more necessary to his craft, the poet might find himself compelled to lean on the tradition to reach his audience, educate it, realizing readers cannot be assumed to follow the sweep and depth of his own study unless he pays tribute ...
January 15, 2013 at 7:02 am
5 people like this
Pradip Ray, I owe you another thank you...
January 15, 2013 at 8:17 am
Shared thanks
January 16, 2013 at 12:55 am
Bina Biswas, And I owe you for "lease on life"! I just stole that outright! :)
January 16, 2013 at 4:21 am
:)
January 16, 2013 at 4:50 am
A well-written article. Sharing this. In one of my stories an American girl who is translating Jibanananda Das into English comes to Calcutta. And she feels like this. “Sylvia has never seen a city of such absolute contrasts. In the midst of its birthing process from the womb of a dying city, a new city has stopped half-way, as it were, in utter embarrassment.” (translated from Bengali) When I wrote this sentence, the lines that probably worked in my mind through distant associations were these: “Wandering between two worlds, one dead,/ The other powerless to be born,/ With nowhere yet to rest my head,/ Like these, on earth I wait forlorn.” I read these lines in college but they remained with me for thirty-five years. Will somebody call me a plagiarist? I am writing this because you mentioned “Dover Beach” in the other thread & I was suddenly reminded of Matthew Arnold whose “Scholar-Gipsy” ranks with “Nightingale’, “Immortality Ode”, “Ancient Mariner”, “Rabbi Ben Ezra” & the “Byzantium” poems in my mind as my most favorite English poems.
January 16, 2013 at 11:54 pm
Pradip Ray, Writers can rest assured there will always be someone who will accuse them of one thing or another. All we can do is put that out of mind and concentrate on getting the work out, hoping in the long run it will take care of itself and find friends who will help explain it to the literal-minded and benighted...
January 17, 2013 at 4:45 am
Good news for India & the world!
India passes 2-year mark without a polio case
https://world.time.com/2013/01/13/how-india-fought-polio-and-won/
January 14, 2013 at 4:37 pm
India passes 2-year mark without a polio case
https://world.time.com/2013/01/13/how-india-fought-polio-and-won/
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How India Fought Polio — and Won | TIME.com |
A sprawling country with a massive population pulled off one of the greatest public-health coups in history
January 14, 2013 at 4:37 pm
7 people like this
https://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/11/lessons-from-india-how-to-promote-the-polio-vaccine-in-pakistan/
January 14, 2013 at 4:38 pm
"They are happy, three times over,
who are held by a tie that remains unbroken,
whose love no bitter words divide,
and who never are parted before their last day."
--Horace, Odes I.13 (tr J. P. Clancy)
who are held by a tie that remains unbroken,
whose love no bitter words divide,
and who never are parted before their last day."
--Horace, Odes I.13 (tr J. P. Clancy)
January 14, 2013 at 1:36 pm
9 people like this
"He who postpones the hour of living rightly is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses." -Horace
January 14, 2013 at 1:49 pm
Yet of course Horace admitted,
"I am a poet of parties, battles of virgins
valiantly fighting off boys with their manicured nails." Odes I.6, etc...
I take I.13 as evidence, at least, that he knew what it was he was missing out on.
"I am a poet of parties, battles of virgins
valiantly fighting off boys with their manicured nails." Odes I.6, etc...
I take I.13 as evidence, at least, that he knew what it was he was missing out on.
January 14, 2013 at 1:55 pm
Magazine
January 14, 2013 at 5:36 am
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Chitrolekha International Magazine on Art and Design |
January 14, 2013 at 5:36 am
I respect these young men for coming up with a creative and humorous way to speak out and defend women in India. Young men in the US should get over their macho hang ups and learn from them!
January 14, 2013 at 4:50 am
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Timeline Photos |
January 14, 2013 at 4:50 am
5 people like this
gr8 job
January 14, 2013 at 12:20 am
Good :)
January 14, 2013 at 12:21 am
Gr8 indeed!
January 14, 2013 at 12:21 am
grt yar
January 14, 2013 at 12:22 am
guts
January 14, 2013 at 12:22 am
Hats off....
January 14, 2013 at 12:23 am
Salut dem n they all r real men..
January 14, 2013 at 12:23 am
@rushwit-mr.pls edit ur cmnt bcz ur cmnt is wrng we grls behave properly nly
January 14, 2013 at 12:24 am
#Respect
January 14, 2013 at 12:24 am
Peace of mind!!....
January 14, 2013 at 12:28 am
Respect
January 14, 2013 at 12:29 am
Nice.1
January 14, 2013 at 12:32 am
haan to tu kya chahti h main b y kru.......:D @ Shruti pillai
January 14, 2013 at 12:33 am
Salute to these courageous MEN
January 14, 2013 at 12:34 am
hats off..
Great job..
:)
Great job..
:)
January 14, 2013 at 12:34 am
gud to knw there are still some humanity left on earth...
January 14, 2013 at 12:34 am
brilliant thought man....hats off...
feeling really happy cos "good people are still there"....great...
feeling really happy cos "good people are still there"....great...
January 14, 2013 at 12:34 am
U all R real man..;)
January 14, 2013 at 12:35 am
Gud 1
January 14, 2013 at 12:35 am
Respect !!!!
January 14, 2013 at 12:35 am
main to waise b unki bhot rspct krta hu....... mere side me b koi khadi ho jaye na akr to b main ni dekta,,sochta hu k wo kya sochegi........(tharki kahin ka)....:D
January 14, 2013 at 12:37 am
respect only if others had thought like this too
January 14, 2013 at 12:38 am
respect
January 14, 2013 at 12:39 am
With respect, a very gud job
January 14, 2013 at 12:41 am
kyu dekna chahiye.....????!!!!:D
January 14, 2013 at 12:42 am
Hats off guyz...u vl make india proud
January 14, 2013 at 12:44 am
There's no anything to do with dress in rapeing even the women in sarries get raped ! Its the inner demon of man's menality that does this !
January 14, 2013 at 12:44 am
Hats off to bagulurit men ! Keep up the good work !
January 14, 2013 at 12:45 am
haan haan.... thik h...
January 14, 2013 at 12:47 am
really awesome way to tell narrow minded bastards. hats off guyz!
January 14, 2013 at 12:47 am
Thankyou guys
January 14, 2013 at 12:49 am
I salute them :)
January 14, 2013 at 12:55 am
Fantastic!
January 14, 2013 at 12:57 am
'gentlemen' :) how nice
January 14, 2013 at 12:59 am
BRAVO!!
January 14, 2013 at 1:00 am
What a nice cause. Hats off
January 14, 2013 at 1:00 am
ullu k patthe.....
January 14, 2013 at 1:01 am
Really owssum
January 14, 2013 at 1:02 am
seriously hatss off...all men should thnk d same so 2 hav a bettr n. brightr future....!!
January 14, 2013 at 1:06 am
Yha pe baith k inhe gali dna asan h par jb khud kch krne pe aygi na to phat jygi..
Dey r doin a gud job..
Dey r doin a gud job..
January 14, 2013 at 1:14 am
Good work..
January 14, 2013 at 1:15 am
Good work
January 14, 2013 at 1:15 am
wanna salute them.....they did stunning wrk...!!keep it up...!
January 14, 2013 at 1:17 am
(Y)
January 14, 2013 at 1:18 am
True........
January 14, 2013 at 1:20 am
great!!!hats off!!
January 14, 2013 at 1:21 am
lots and lots of appriciation
January 14, 2013 at 1:23 am
That is freaking awesome. Hats off to these men! You are a credit to your species. This is the happiest news item I have seen in a long time - if only more men could show such humanity and solidarity!
January 14, 2013 at 1:45 am
May every man think lyk you..
January 14, 2013 at 1:49 am
hats off guys
January 14, 2013 at 1:49 am
a heartiest thanx nd a grand salute to these man...!!
January 14, 2013 at 1:54 am
Hats off friends
January 14, 2013 at 1:56 am
amazing!!! a big big big salute from my side
January 14, 2013 at 2:00 am
you all are real heroes ... hats off
January 14, 2013 at 2:01 am
hats off brothers... awesum
January 14, 2013 at 2:03 am
that's true................
January 14, 2013 at 2:05 am
Hatzzz off ...appriciable ...realy gr8 thinkin <Y>
January 14, 2013 at 2:05 am
Grt heroes
January 14, 2013 at 2:07 am
Truely deserve salute
January 14, 2013 at 2:07 am
Great
January 14, 2013 at 2:12 am
Salute you guys u set an example
January 14, 2013 at 2:12 am
Waw kya pic hai yaar
January 14, 2013 at 2:13 am
really salute u guys
January 14, 2013 at 2:16 am
bravo
January 14, 2013 at 2:22 am
shai h boss...
January 14, 2013 at 2:26 am
Love u awl :) god bless
January 14, 2013 at 2:27 am
Gr8
January 14, 2013 at 2:33 am
Good work !
January 14, 2013 at 2:33 am
Gud
January 14, 2013 at 2:34 am
All mens r nt dogs. gud job
January 14, 2013 at 2:44 am
Well done guys
January 14, 2013 at 2:56 am
khyak khyak
January 14, 2013 at 3:03 am
Good job , but rapes happen only in India not in our's Bharat.
January 14, 2013 at 3:04 am
Salute...
January 14, 2013 at 3:07 am
Smply htz off 2 sch men
January 14, 2013 at 3:31 am
Hats off ....
January 14, 2013 at 3:35 am
these are real men
January 14, 2013 at 3:35 am
i salute u.
January 14, 2013 at 3:41 am
Every male shd salutes u.....hatts off
January 14, 2013 at 3:54 am
salute u gues
January 14, 2013 at 3:55 am
I think Warren Adler's response to the blip in the sales of ereaders is the right one and time will prove it. I myself have been reading on digital devices since starting in the mid-nineties on a series of three different Palm Pilots, moving to a Sony eReader in 2007, an Aluratek tablet in 2011, and now a Android Nexus 7 tablet, which is a remarkable device! I've spent much of my life reading and writing books, and I don't think for a moment that ereading is the end of the world or books. It's not a matter of one or the other.
I just published an epic poem that I've literally studied for and worked on for over thirty years as BOTH a hardcover and an ebook: Barnes & Noble https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-parliament-of-poets-frederick-glaysher/1112448232?ean=9780982677889&itm=10&
January 13, 2013 at 1:43 pm
I just published an epic poem that I've literally studied for and worked on for over thirty years as BOTH a hardcover and an ebook: Barnes & Noble https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-parliament-of-poets-frederick-glaysher/1112448232?ean=9780982677889&itm=10&
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Misreading the Facts on E-Books |
The reported decline in e-reader sales is being misread as an indication that consumption of the e-book itself is in decline. This false conjecture has given authors and publishers hope that the printed book will return to the economic dominance it enjoyed before the technological innovation of the e-reader device. No way. The e-book revolution continues apace and the print book business will continue to decline, de...
January 13, 2013 at 1:43 pm
Just published in Kolkata, India, Rupkatha, Excerpt from Book IV
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2013/01/13/just-published-in-kolkata-india-rupkatha-excerpt-from-book-iv/
January 13, 2013 at 8:33 am
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2013/01/13/just-published-in-kolkata-india-rupkatha-excerpt-from-book-iv/
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Kolkata, India, Rupkatha Journal |
"We soon were over a plain, a wide field, / where two vast armies were ranked to battle, / legions on either side for war..." Just published in Kolkata, India > Excerpt from Book IV. Rupkatha Journal, Volume IV, Number 2, 2012.
January 13, 2013 at 8:33 am
2 people like this
Thanks, Nishat! Nice to hear from you.
January 13, 2013 at 12:53 pm
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2013/01/13/just-published-in-mumbai-india-the-criterion-excerpt-from-book-iv/
January 13, 2013 at 7:35 am
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Just published in Mumbai, India, The Criterion, Excerpt from Book IV |
Just published in Mumbai, India > Excerpt Shiva Nataraja, from Book IV. The Criterion: An International Journal in English, Vol. III. Issue. IV (December 2012). In the Himalayan foothills, Shiva Na...
January 13, 2013 at 7:35 am
2 people like this
"Gender violence is one of the world’s most common human rights abuses. Women worldwide ages 15 through 44 are more likely to die or be maimed because of male violence than because of cancer, malaria, war and traffic accidents combined. The World Health Organization has found that domestic and sexual violence affects 30 to 60 percent of women in most countries."
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/opinion/sunday/is-delhi-so-different-from-steubenville.html
January 13, 2013 at 5:43 am
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/opinion/sunday/is-delhi-so-different-from-steubenville.html
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Is Delhi So Different From Steubenville? |
India’s horrific rape case is symptomatic of a global problem, and Americans who view it with condescension should also look in the mirror.
January 13, 2013 at 5:43 am
1 person likes this
So true and so depressing.
January 13, 2013 at 6:08 am
Yes, unfortunately. But he does observe that in the US "the rising status of women has led to substantial drops in rates of reported rape and domestic violence. Few people realize it, but Justice Department statistics suggest that the incidence of rape has fallen by three-quarters over the last four decades."
That's significant progress, despite a long way to go... Were that to happen in India and elsewhere it would mean tremendous social change in the right direction.
That's significant progress, despite a long way to go... Were that to happen in India and elsewhere it would mean tremendous social change in the right direction.
January 13, 2013 at 6:13 am
For anyone unfamiliar with NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, he and his wife, wrote a book titled Half the Sky, about the abuse of women and girls around the world.
January 13, 2013 at 6:17 am
Religion
January 12, 2013 at 11:18 am
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Shamanism |
January 12, 2013 at 11:18 am
Religion
January 12, 2013 at 11:18 am
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Pan-Theistic |
Pantheism is the belief that everything composes an all-encompassing, immanent God, or that the universe (or nature) is...
January 12, 2013 at 11:18 am
Religion
January 12, 2013 at 11:18 am
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Sufism |
January 12, 2013 at 11:18 am
Religion
January 12, 2013 at 11:18 am
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Judaism |
January 12, 2013 at 11:18 am
Religion
January 12, 2013 at 11:18 am
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Daoist |
Taoism is a philosophical and religious tradition that emphasizes living in harmony with the Tao (modernly romanized as...
January 12, 2013 at 11:18 am
Religion
January 12, 2013 at 11:18 am
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Buddhism |
January 12, 2013 at 11:18 am
Badri Singh Pandey > “I have not lost hope,” the father said. “I will take my sons forward.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/12/world/asia/for-india-rape-victims-family-layers-of-loss.html
January 12, 2013 at 5:40 am
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/12/world/asia/for-india-rape-victims-family-layers-of-loss.html
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For India Rape Victim’s Family, Layers of Loss |
The woman whose brutal attack shocked India had been the hope of her family, and an example of social and economic mobility in a changing nation.
January 12, 2013 at 5:40 am
1 person likes this
"Due to poor practices in harvesting, storage and transportation, as well as market and consumer wastage, it is estimated that 30–50% (or 1.2–2 billion tonnes) of all food produced never reaches a human stomach. Furthermore, this figure does not reflect the fact that large amounts of land, energy, fertilisers and water have also been lost in the production of foodstuffs which simply end up as waste."
https://www.imeche.org/knowledge/themes/environment/global-food
January 11, 2013 at 12:54 pm
https://www.imeche.org/knowledge/themes/environment/global-food
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Global food - Waste not, want not | Institution of Mechanical Engineers |
New global food report highlighting losses of over one billion tonnes of food each year.
January 11, 2013 at 12:54 pm
1 person likes this
“O Divine Light, that never stops shining,
beyond our atmosphere, Eternal Radiance,
though we may be oblivious of thee..."
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2013/01/11/invocation-book-vii-the-parliament-of-poets/
January 11, 2013 at 5:30 am
beyond our atmosphere, Eternal Radiance,
though we may be oblivious of thee..."
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2013/01/11/invocation-book-vii-the-parliament-of-poets/
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Invocation, BOOK VII, The Parliament of Poets |
"O Divine Light, that never stops shining, / beyond our atmosphere, Eternal Radiance, / though we may be oblivious of thee..." From the invocation of BOOK VII, The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem...
January 11, 2013 at 5:30 am
1 person likes this
"Apollo, give me joy in what I have,
I pray, and with good health and a steady mind,
may my old age be spent without
dishonor, and not be deprived of the lyre." --Horace, Odes I.31 (tr J. P. Clancy)
I pray, and with good health and a steady mind,
may my old age be spent without
dishonor, and not be deprived of the lyre." --Horace, Odes I.31 (tr J. P. Clancy)
January 11, 2013 at 5:10 am
7 people like this
Oh, I haven't seen a prayer to Apollo in, like, forever! Cool.
January 11, 2013 at 6:38 am
Thanks for commenting. This one is Horace's, which I can't but feel deeply nearing the end of my fifties... Apollo plays a role throughout my epic poem: "Apollo calls all the poets of the nations, ancient and modern, East and West, to assemble on the moon to consult on the meaning of modernity."
January 11, 2013 at 6:44 am
"I thought I would lose my mind," Kubota told The Associated Press in a recent interview. "I felt I would have no answer for my children if, after they grew up, they ever asked me, 'Mama, why didn't you leave?'"
https://bigstory.ap.org/article/people-flee-japan-nuke-disaster-faraway-okinawa
January 10, 2013 at 4:23 pm
https://bigstory.ap.org/article/people-flee-japan-nuke-disaster-faraway-okinawa
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People flee Japan nuke disaster to faraway Okinawa |
NAHA, Japan (AP) — Okinawa is about as far away as one can get from Fukushima without leaving Japan, and that is why Minaho Kubota is here.Petrified of the radiation spewing from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant that went into multiple meltdowns last year, Kubota grabbed her children, left her s...
January 10, 2013 at 4:23 pm
2 people like this
Problem is, where do we all go? Chernobyl spread radiation all over Europe and the UK. Four reactors at Fukushima are still spewing out radiation. It's not staying in Japan... the US has plenty of its own:
https://fairewinds.org/content/podcast-january-6-2013-happy-new-year-2013
https://fairewinds.org/content/podcast-january-6-2013-happy-new-year-2013
January 10, 2013 at 5:14 pm
Yuri Kageyama, Thank you for another great article!
January 11, 2013 at 3:49 am
Yuri Kageyama, ...on what's really going on in Japan. There's so little news over here in the media, and there, it seems, that it's very scary and worrisome.
I hope and pray that somehow the Kami and Kannon can unite to inspire Japan's leaders to protect Honshu from further irreparable harm...
I hope and pray that somehow the Kami and Kannon can unite to inspire Japan's leaders to protect Honshu from further irreparable harm...
January 11, 2013 at 6:13 am
I will do my best on continuing coverage on Japan, regardless of the interest or lack thereof. Sometimes there is a time lag on the interest, but we have to keep pursuing the stories. Your comments and FB sharing help _ thanks.
January 11, 2013 at 1:43 pm
I can't understand why there would not be huge and intense interest. This affects and endangers all of us, devastating Japan, more than so many realize. The world needs to hear from you... Don't give up!
January 11, 2013 at 1:57 pm
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People flee Japan nuke disaster to faraway Okinawa |
NAHA, Japan (AP) — Okinawa is about as far away as one can get from Fukushima without leaving Japan, and that is why Minaho Kubota is here.Petrified of the radiation spewing from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant that went into multiple meltdowns last year, Kubota grabbed her children, left her s…
January 10, 2013 at 4:21 pm
"A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair.”
Abraham J. Heschel (1907-1972), Jewish theologian and philosopher
January 10, 2013 at 6:03 am
Abraham J. Heschel (1907-1972), Jewish theologian and philosopher
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Timeline Photos |
January 10, 2013 at 6:03 am
3 people like this
I like the phrase "defiance of despair."
January 10, 2013 at 6:07 am
I like that phrase, too.
January 10, 2013 at 6:12 am
Very inspiring.
January 10, 2013 at 6:12 am
Nice quote..."God" in your thoughts without equally considering "man" is the problem with many "religious" people today. If something doesn't benefit mankind, it's no good.
January 10, 2013 at 6:32 am
Charter for Compassion--Wow! A lot to ponder.
January 10, 2013 at 6:45 am
I'd have to go further, Brianne, and say if something doesn't benefit "the world" it's no good."
January 10, 2013 at 6:46 am
This is great, something strive for
January 10, 2013 at 9:13 am
Love the quote. "Defiance of despair"....having ocd makes life hard. Faith in God and the goodness of man makes it easier.
January 10, 2013 at 3:27 pm
true words for what they are meant to convey, still one might question why there must be a charter for compassion, or anything for that matter to my person it indicaes that something vital is out of balance
January 10, 2013 at 5:32 pm
so true.
January 11, 2013 at 7:51 pm
"May Venus . . . watch over you, ship that holds our
Vergil in trust: may you deposit him safely
on the shores of Greece, as I pray,
and preserve the man who is half my very soul." -- Horace, I.3
Vergil in trust: may you deposit him safely
on the shores of Greece, as I pray,
and preserve the man who is half my very soul." -- Horace, I.3
January 10, 2013 at 5:59 am
1 person likes this
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2013/01/10/invocation-book-iii-the-parliament-of-poets/
January 10, 2013 at 5:56 am
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Invocation, BOOK III, The Parliament of Poets |
"O Divine Essence and attending Muse, / give my tongue thy blessings that I may find / the words to describe the glories of thy Being..." From the invocation of BOOK III, The Parliament of Poets: A...
January 10, 2013 at 5:56 am
Mahatma ...
January 10, 2013 at 3:47 am
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January 10, 2013 at 3:47 am
Just published in Kolkata, India > Excerpt from Book IV. Rupkatha Journal, Volume IV, Number 2, 2012. Tagore and the Persona, at Kurukshetra:
"We soon were over a plain, a wide field,
where two vast armies were ranked to battle,
legions on either side for war..."
https://rupkatha.com
January 9, 2013 at 5:44 pm
"We soon were over a plain, a wide field,
where two vast armies were ranked to battle,
legions on either side for war..."
https://rupkatha.com
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Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities - Home |
Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities. Rupkatha Journal, Volume IV, Number 2, 2012.
January 9, 2013 at 5:44 pm
1 person likes this
Just published in Mumbai, India > Excerpt (2nd) from Book IV. The Criterion: An International Journal in English, Vol. III. Issue. IV (December 2012). In the Himalayan foothills, Shiva Nataraja.
"Tagore then spoke. “You have heard Krishna, now
Lord Vishnu’s eighth incarnation, Shiva.
He will come down to us from Mt Kailash..."
https://www.the-criterion.com/
Or direct PDF: https://www.the-criterion.com/V3/n4/Frederick.pdf
January 9, 2013 at 5:22 pm
"Tagore then spoke. “You have heard Krishna, now
Lord Vishnu’s eighth incarnation, Shiva.
He will come down to us from Mt Kailash..."
https://www.the-criterion.com/
Or direct PDF: https://www.the-criterion.com/V3/n4/Frederick.pdf
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The Criterion: An International Journal in English [ISSN: 0976-8165] |
The Criterion: An International Journal in English, Vol. III. Issue. IV (December 2012).
January 9, 2013 at 5:22 pm
"In 2011, corporations paid just 12 percent of their profits in taxes, the lowest since 1972. ...one five-story office building in the Cayman Islands is now the "home" to more than 18,000 [US] corporations. "
January 9, 2013 at 5:05 pm
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Timeline Photos |
January 9, 2013 at 5:05 pm
4 people like this
Rabbi Michael Lerner > "Finally, those of us who come from the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam must redeem Jerusalem and Embrace Israel and Palestine, helping each side of that struggle to move to a new commitment to fulfill the Torah commandment not only to love our neighbors, but as we are commanded, to “love the stranger, the Other, the one who is different, the one who is powerless.”
January 9, 2013 at 4:47 pm
| What Would A.J. Heschel Be Doing or Advocating Today? |
At the Philadelphia “Heschel/King Festival” last week, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Abraham Joshua Heschel’s death (his Yarhzeit), I was asked to speak about what this man, now recognized as the most significant American Jewish theologian of the 20th century (and my mentor at the Jewi...
January 9, 2013 at 4:47 pm
The deep wisdom of American Indians can be so thrilling...
January 9, 2013 at 12:11 pm
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Timeline Photos |
Like ✔ Tag ✔ Share ✔
... brought to you by
www.ReamusWilson.com
... thanks for all your support ...
January 9, 2013 at 12:11 pm
5 people like this
Be still, listen, act with courage. Excellent advise. I have always been partial to Cochise's admonition to a US colonel at a palaver, once: "You must speak straight to us so that your words will go like sunlight to our hearts." It's something that should resonate with writers and poets--any artist, really. I quote him to my students.
January 9, 2013 at 12:27 pm
Yeah, the beauty of simplicity... in a fresh simile.
January 9, 2013 at 12:46 pm
"Long choosing, / and beginning late." --John Milton
January 9, 2013 at 10:38 am
3 people like this
From the Invocation of the Muse, BOOK I
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2013/01/09/invocation-book-i-the-parliament-of-poets/
January 9, 2013 at 6:11 am
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2013/01/09/invocation-book-i-the-parliament-of-poets/
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Invocation, BOOK I, The Parliament of Poets |
O Muse, O Maid of Heaven, O Circling Moon, / O lunar glory of the midnight sky, / I call on thee to bless thy servant’s tongue... From the invocation, The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem. Copyrig...
January 9, 2013 at 6:11 am
Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper on repealing the Second Amendment:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/18/2nd-amendment-repeal-norm-stamper_n_2325745.html
January 9, 2013 at 3:46 am
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/18/2nd-amendment-repeal-norm-stamper_n_2325745.html
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Former Police Chief: Repeal The 2nd Amendment |
Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper said Tuesday that repealing the Second Amendment would help curb the type of gun violence witnessed in last Friday's massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. "I have seen over the course of my 34 years of police work countless homicide and ...
January 9, 2013 at 3:46 am
Repealing the Second Amendment Would Make Us 'Better Than This'
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/norm-stamper/repealing-the-second-amen_b_2319249.html
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/norm-stamper/repealing-the-second-amen_b_2319249.html
January 9, 2013 at 3:53 am
Brave dad Badri Singh Pandey > “We want the world to know her real name. My daughter didn’t do anything wrong, she died while protecting herself. I am proud of her. Revealing her name will give courage to other women who have survived these attacks. They will find strength from my daughter.”
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/india-gang-rape-victims-father-1521289
January 8, 2013 at 4:59 pm
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/india-gang-rape-victims-father-1521289
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January 8, 2013 at 4:59 pm
4 people like this
If you Share the picture, please quote the text and link at the top so that people can read the rest of the article about the family.
January 8, 2013 at 5:11 pm
Amend the Second Amendment or remove it from the Constitution. No weapons of war allowed in the hands of private citizens.
January 8, 2013 at 11:19 am
6 people like this
We the People can outvote the NRA!
January 8, 2013 at 11:21 am
No citizen of the USA has a "right" to automatic assault weapons. An amendment barring them would put it to a vote. That's where we are now and what we should do. Get rid of the antiquated clause about militias, if that's what it takes to protect the nation.
January 8, 2013 at 11:58 am
The gun lobby is more powerful than citizens.
January 8, 2013 at 10:55 pm
Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper on repealing the Second Amendment:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/18/2nd-amendment-repeal-norm-stamper_n_2325745.html
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/18/2nd-amendment-repeal-norm-stamper_n_2325745.html
January 9, 2013 at 3:46 am
"Science without conscience is the ruin of the soul." Rabelais
The Second Book, Pantagruel, Chapter 8.
The Second Book, Pantagruel, Chapter 8.
January 8, 2013 at 9:16 am
4 people like this
"Scientia" is the word Rabelais uses, "systematic knowledge," in the old sense, sometimes translated today just as "knowledge," which misses the richness of the term.
January 8, 2013 at 11:09 am
My wife and I at the Sikh Gurdwara of Rochester Hills, Michigan, during its Open House on August 16, 2012, in memory of the victims of the Wisconsin incident.
https://www.sikhgurdwara.com/media/photos/?album=6&gallery=2&nggpage=3
January 8, 2013 at 7:26 am
https://www.sikhgurdwara.com/media/photos/?album=6&gallery=2&nggpage=3
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January 8, 2013 at 7:26 am
13 people like this
Swaran Singh, I thought you might enjoy this! ...though it's not one of my better poses. ...kind of slumped over. Makes me worry age is catching up with me! :)
January 8, 2013 at 7:28 am
look like a perfect muslim couple. with any offense !!
January 8, 2013 at 8:09 am
Perhaps you mean "without any." We respect Islam too, though we tend to think like Kabir and all the great Sufis that God is not in a box, if you understand what I mean.
January 8, 2013 at 8:13 am
yes Sir, I meant it '' Without any''...thanks.. sounds good that you respect Islam too.:D
January 8, 2013 at 8:15 am
Very informative video about the debate that's going on in India regarding sexual violence.
The Hindu's Fight against rape
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDqm7IN5NYU&
January 8, 2013 at 6:44 am
The Hindu's Fight against rape
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDqm7IN5NYU&
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The Hindu's Fight against rape - Part one |
A focussed discussion organised by The Hindu bolstered the fight against sexual violence with viewpoints from various spheres- legislation, law enforcement, ...
January 8, 2013 at 6:44 am
1 person likes this
Just published in Mumbai, India > Excerpt (2nd) from Book IV of The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem by Frederick Glaysher. The Criterion: An International Journal in English, Vol. III. Issue. IV (December 2012).
"Tagore then spoke. “You have heard Krishna, now
Lord Vishnu’s eighth incarnation, Shiva.
He will come down to us from Mt Kailash..."
https://www.the-criterion.com/
Or direct PDF: https://www.the-criterion.com/V3/n4/Frederick.pdf
January 8, 2013 at 6:36 am
"Tagore then spoke. “You have heard Krishna, now
Lord Vishnu’s eighth incarnation, Shiva.
He will come down to us from Mt Kailash..."
https://www.the-criterion.com/
Or direct PDF: https://www.the-criterion.com/V3/n4/Frederick.pdf
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The Criterion: An International Journal in English [ISSN: 0976-8165] |
The Criterion: An International Journal in English, Vol. III. Issue. IV (December 2012). Excerpt from Book IV of The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem by Frederick Glaysher.
January 8, 2013 at 6:36 am
Frederick Glaysher may jolly well call Shiva an avatar of Vishnu. But why lug poor Tagore in your patent mistake?
January 8, 2013 at 6:45 am
I'm trying to identify what reference or allusion you're referring to. I've search the entire text of my poem and only found three uses of "avatar," none of them related to Tagore. If I've erred, I'd appreciate your mentioning the line.
January 8, 2013 at 7:01 am
I referred to the lines quoted at the top. Avatar= incarnation
January 8, 2013 at 7:03 am
"Vishnu in his myths "becomes" Shiva.[195] The Vishnu Purana (4th c. AD) shows Vishnu awakening and becoming both Brahmā to create the world and Shiva to destroy it.[196] Shiva also is viewed as a manifestation of Vishnu in the Bhagavata Purana.[197] "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva#Relationship_to_Vishnu
I know I read a source somewhere that listed Shiva as the eighth. Is there variance in the myths versus the popular tradition?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva#Relationship_to_Vishnu
I know I read a source somewhere that listed Shiva as the eighth. Is there variance in the myths versus the popular tradition?
January 8, 2013 at 7:10 am
With the Troy Interfaith Group and the Reform Bahai Faith, I attended last night the Sikh Gurdwara of Sterling Heights, Michigan, January 7, 2013. The Sikhs served as gracious hosts of the TIG Steering Committee Meeting, and then of Charles Mabee and discussion of the Hospitality Initiative: Intersecting Culture and Spirituality, closing with a brief introduction to Sikhism and a tour of their beautiful new gurdwara. There were approximately thirty to forty people in attendance, with much discussion and sharing. An enjoyable evening!
January 8, 2013 at 5:54 am
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January 8, 2013 at 5:54 am
1 person likes this
https://www.michigangurudwara.com/media/
January 8, 2013 at 5:55 am
Just published in Kolkata, India > Excerpt from Book IV. Rupkatha Journal, Volume IV, Number 2, 2012.
Tagore and the Poet, at Kurukshetra:
"We soon were over a plain, a wide field,
where two vast armies were ranked to battle,
legions on either side for war..."
https://rupkatha.com
January 8, 2013 at 5:26 am
Tagore and the Poet, at Kurukshetra:
"We soon were over a plain, a wide field,
where two vast armies were ranked to battle,
legions on either side for war..."
https://rupkatha.com
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Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities - Home |
Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities
January 8, 2013 at 5:26 am
1 person likes this
Now in Spain, on Amazon.es, Kindle. EUR 10,50
The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem
https://www.amazon.es/The-Parliament-Poets-Epic-ebook/dp/B00AAQCCU0/ref=sr_1_7?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1357648939
January 8, 2013 at 4:44 am
The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem
https://www.amazon.es/The-Parliament-Poets-Epic-ebook/dp/B00AAQCCU0/ref=sr_1_7?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1357648939
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The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem |
The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem, by Frederick Glaysher, takes place partly on the moon, at the Apollo 11 landing site, the Sea of Tranquility. Apollo, the Greek god of poetry, calls all the poets of the nations, ancient and modern, East and West, to assemble on the moon to consult on the me...
January 8, 2013 at 4:44 am
Asun LópezVarela Ana Cristina Figueiredo
"I found myself sitting in my study, dozing
over a book, Cervantes’ Don Quixote,
surrounded by volumes of world classics...."
"I found myself sitting in my study, dozing
over a book, Cervantes’ Don Quixote,
surrounded by volumes of world classics...."
January 8, 2013 at 4:50 am
Free first chapter at PDF.
January 8, 2013 at 4:53 am
"And then I saw him sitting upon his nag,
Rocinante, Don Quixote, a lance resting
across his saddle, as he leaned forward,
from next to a crater, gazing my way..."
Rocinante, Don Quixote, a lance resting
across his saddle, as he leaned forward,
from next to a crater, gazing my way..."
January 8, 2013 at 4:58 am
Cervantes was not portuguese....but he became universal...:))
January 8, 2013 at 12:05 pm
Of course... but same "neighborhood"? :)
January 8, 2013 at 12:22 pm
Yes, we are iberian :))
January 8, 2013 at 12:24 pm
...so I thought of you! Hope you don't mind.
January 8, 2013 at 12:24 pm
Of course not ... I felt honoured.
January 8, 2013 at 12:27 pm
Jyoti Singh Pandey. “We want the world to know her real name. My daughter didn’t do anything wrong, she died while protecting herself. I am proud of her. Revealing her name will give courage to other women who have survived these attacks. They will find strength from my daughter.”
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/india-gang-rape-victims-father-1521289
January 7, 2013 at 3:41 am
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/india-gang-rape-victims-father-1521289
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India gang rape victim's father reveals daughter's name is Jyoti Singh Pandey |
Devastated dad tells The Sunday People he hopes revealing her name will give courage to other women who have survived such attacks
January 7, 2013 at 3:41 am
1 person likes this
Heartrending story and tragedy...
January 7, 2013 at 3:42 am
A brave act x
January 7, 2013 at 6:28 am
Especially in an Indian context where families and the victim are often treated with prejudice and recrimination, as though it were their fault!
January 7, 2013 at 6:33 am
Thanks for that, I was not aware of that - having never been to India etc.
January 7, 2013 at 6:37 am
Yeah, unfortunately, from a Western perspective, I think it's fair to say, many Asian cultures tend to shame and blame the victim... which is very hard to understand but seems to be what happens, so the reaction is often silence which only leads to more abuse, I would think...
January 7, 2013 at 6:39 am
"What Dawkins does too often is to concentrate his attack on fundamentalists. But there are many believers who are just not fundamentalists.... Fundamentalism is another problem. I mean, Dawkins in a way is almost a fundamentalist himself, of another kind."
January 6, 2013 at 4:34 pm
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Peter Higgs criticises Richard Dawkins over anti-religious 'fundamentalism' |
Higgs boson theorist says he agrees with those who find Dawkins' approach to dealing with believers 'embarrassing'
January 6, 2013 at 4:34 pm
3 people like this
If you enjoy seeing Dawkins eviscerated, check out this book: https://www.amazon.com/Last-Superstition-Refutation-New-Atheism/dp/1587314525/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1357520166&sr=1-1&keywords=feser+last+superstition
January 6, 2013 at 4:56 pm
It gets me that Dawkins is just like the extremes that he attacks - just at the other end of the spectrum. I must learn to laugh at him rather than get annoyed and irritated. x
January 6, 2013 at 11:36 pm
The words said by V S Naipaul in an interview that I recently read seems pertinent to the context: "How can you be an atheist and have an ideology to go with it? To be an atheist is to be free of some areas of belief. I don’t see how that can become an ideology."
January 6, 2013 at 11:45 pm
The key word here is 'almost'. Richard Dawkins makes people uncomfortable but his work is no less rooted in hard science than Higgs'.
Like religion, much evil has been done in the name of 'science' but I'd rather put my trust in Richard Dawkins' word than the schemers of the Vatican and Lambeth Palace.
Like religion, much evil has been done in the name of 'science' but I'd rather put my trust in Richard Dawkins' word than the schemers of the Vatican and Lambeth Palace.
January 7, 2013 at 1:26 am
I prefer being sceptical. Each ideology, in the final reckoning, lacks in sap, can't sustain itself, can't rejuvenate itself. True of Higgs, true of Dawkins, true of the Pope and his spiritual brothers doling out other religions. Dawkins, so long as he doesn't say, "Or else." (the favourite phrase of all ideologues), is preferable.
January 7, 2013 at 4:31 am
I think these are refreshing and interesting passages from Peter Higgs:
"The growth of our understanding of the world through science weakens some of the motivation which makes people believers. But that's not the same thing as saying they're incompatible. It's just that I think some of the traditional reasons for belief, going back thousands of years, are rather undermined."
"But that doesn't end the whole thing. Anybody who is a convinced but not a dogmatic believer can continue to hold his belief. It means I think you have to be rather more careful about the whole debate between science and religion than some people have been in the past."
I have had the books of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens for a long time, and have read chunks of them, on and off, followed their arguments in various ways for many years. A year ago I read, with a group of Unitarian Universalists, Greg Epstein's Good Without God, sort of an attempt to turn atheism into a religion. There have been and are other such attempts. To my mind, they are logical descendants of modernism and scientism, and I don't find that persuasive, especially when they become fanatical and smugly self-righteous as any fundamentalist Christian or whatever.
Peter Higgs seems to be a more nuanced voice. What constitutes "religion" or *a* religion, is much of the question to me. I wouldn't include organizations and institutionalized "religions." By the time that happens, it seems to me that religion is no longer the concern... Cultural politics, is that a search for truth?
I try to grapple with all this in my epic: "One of the major themes . . . is the nature of science and religion, as well as the “two cultures,” science and the humanities." I think the language of poetry is the best way in which to do that...
"The growth of our understanding of the world through science weakens some of the motivation which makes people believers. But that's not the same thing as saying they're incompatible. It's just that I think some of the traditional reasons for belief, going back thousands of years, are rather undermined."
"But that doesn't end the whole thing. Anybody who is a convinced but not a dogmatic believer can continue to hold his belief. It means I think you have to be rather more careful about the whole debate between science and religion than some people have been in the past."
I have had the books of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens for a long time, and have read chunks of them, on and off, followed their arguments in various ways for many years. A year ago I read, with a group of Unitarian Universalists, Greg Epstein's Good Without God, sort of an attempt to turn atheism into a religion. There have been and are other such attempts. To my mind, they are logical descendants of modernism and scientism, and I don't find that persuasive, especially when they become fanatical and smugly self-righteous as any fundamentalist Christian or whatever.
Peter Higgs seems to be a more nuanced voice. What constitutes "religion" or *a* religion, is much of the question to me. I wouldn't include organizations and institutionalized "religions." By the time that happens, it seems to me that religion is no longer the concern... Cultural politics, is that a search for truth?
I try to grapple with all this in my epic: "One of the major themes . . . is the nature of science and religion, as well as the “two cultures,” science and the humanities." I think the language of poetry is the best way in which to do that...
January 7, 2013 at 5:49 am
Hmmm, well I am not a christian, more a lover of nature and cosmos with a strong belief in reincarnation (which I admit is not based on evidence) but I find that the more I learn about science and discoveries about the universe, the more it seems to be that there is a divine force at work. Not an old man with a long beard sitting the clouds casting judgment on us all but rather an immense and powerful energy that created everything and influences our on-going development. Probably heretical, I know but there you are. And BTW I don't expect anyone else to believe the same things as me...
January 7, 2013 at 6:12 am
Dawkins and others, the media, usually use a definition of "religion" that is a caricature, really, to my mind, very narrow and tiresome, the "old man with a long beard," as you say! Ah, we human beings... :) Awe... is beyond all that. I like your suggestion, too, that exclusive claims to truth demonstrate a certain problem in their own way, whether "religion" or science I would say...
January 7, 2013 at 6:31 am
Definitely I agree about exclusive claims to truth. I like the idea of awe. I am in awe of the beauty of nature and the cosmos and everything that is beautiful. I suppose I just get irritated by scientists who claim they know the truth. Church people and other organised religion types can be just as limited in their outlook but I get less annoyed with them because I don't have anything to do with them - having been served up large doses of their 'truth' as a child...
January 7, 2013 at 6:36 am
The modern understanding of religion and spirituality is much of our problem today, as the exclusivism of all the traditional religions have shown themselves ever further out of touch with experience, life as it has come to be lived, which is much more global and human, universal, than the narrow, isolated cultures of the past in which they all arose. The eyes of the child, or poet, before nature, the awesomeness of the cosmos, as it continues to unfold deeper and deeper *out there*, is the quintessential response to life... but then I'm a poet! :) It's part of what I try to explore in my epic...
January 7, 2013 at 6:45 am
"O Divine Light, that never stops shining,
beyond our atmosphere, Eternal Radiance,
though we may be oblivious of thee,
sustain us with thy rays of warmth and light,
sustenance unseen, heating our earthly realm,
with beams, beyond our ken, but not our need.
I ask thee once again to lift me up
like a drooping plant shut off from thee,
to carry further forth this epic song,
whose glory, if ever won, belongs to thee.
Thou seest my need and frailty.
Mercy and compassion I crave of thee,
not merely for myself but all humanity.
Let us not destroy ourselves. Help us find
a new vision that we may humbly serve,
restore the cosmic order now, a wider
harmony in tune with thee, your global realm..."
From the invocation of BOOK VII, The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem. Copyright (c) 2012 Frederick Glaysher.
beyond our atmosphere, Eternal Radiance,
though we may be oblivious of thee,
sustain us with thy rays of warmth and light,
sustenance unseen, heating our earthly realm,
with beams, beyond our ken, but not our need.
I ask thee once again to lift me up
like a drooping plant shut off from thee,
to carry further forth this epic song,
whose glory, if ever won, belongs to thee.
Thou seest my need and frailty.
Mercy and compassion I crave of thee,
not merely for myself but all humanity.
Let us not destroy ourselves. Help us find
a new vision that we may humbly serve,
restore the cosmic order now, a wider
harmony in tune with thee, your global realm..."
From the invocation of BOOK VII, The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem. Copyright (c) 2012 Frederick Glaysher.
January 6, 2013 at 8:46 am
3 people like this
While I agree with much of what Peled has to say, his closing comments on Egypt now ring quite ironic, if not wishful thinking, given the Muslim Brotherhood's "constitution." I note he never addressed the nature of Hamas...
January 6, 2013 at 7:53 am
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THE GENERAL'S SON |
Miko Peled is a peace activist who dares to say in public what others still choose to deny. Born in Jerusalem in 1961 into a well known Zionist family, his g...
January 6, 2013 at 7:53 am
Apparently recorded prior to "Uploaded on May 21, 2011." He mentions 2008 events, somewhere in that range.
January 6, 2013 at 7:57 am
"O Divine Essence and attending Muse,
give my tongue thy blessings that I may find
the words to describe the glories of thy Being,
help all mankind, threatened by ourselves,
turn again to peaceful contemplation,
prayer uplifting human vision to
the Great Mystery of the universe...."
From the invocation of BOOK III, The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem. Copyright (c) 2012 Frederick Glaysher.
give my tongue thy blessings that I may find
the words to describe the glories of thy Being,
help all mankind, threatened by ourselves,
turn again to peaceful contemplation,
prayer uplifting human vision to
the Great Mystery of the universe...."
From the invocation of BOOK III, The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem. Copyright (c) 2012 Frederick Glaysher.
January 6, 2013 at 6:05 am
2 people like this
O Muse, O Maid of Heaven, O Circling Moon,
O lunar glory of the midnight sky,
I call on thee to bless thy servant’s tongue,
descend upon thy pillar of light,
moonbeam blessings, that from my mouth
may pour out at least a fraction of the love
I hold for thee, sweet blessings, for service
to God’s creation, and His Creative Word,
the Bible’s thundering verses, Brahma
of the Upanishads, Allah, the Compassionate,
Buddha’s meditative mystery,
Confucius and the Dao. O Great Spirit
of the many peoples and the tribes,
if I have ever sacrificed for thee, long years,
drinking water from a wooden bowl,
hear my appeal and inspire me to sing
the tale supernal, upon the moon,
The Parliament of Poets, assemblage
of thy devoted ones, God intoxicated,
survey the cosmos and the centuries....
From the invocation, The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem. Copyright (c) 2012 Frederick Glaysher.
O lunar glory of the midnight sky,
I call on thee to bless thy servant’s tongue,
descend upon thy pillar of light,
moonbeam blessings, that from my mouth
may pour out at least a fraction of the love
I hold for thee, sweet blessings, for service
to God’s creation, and His Creative Word,
the Bible’s thundering verses, Brahma
of the Upanishads, Allah, the Compassionate,
Buddha’s meditative mystery,
Confucius and the Dao. O Great Spirit
of the many peoples and the tribes,
if I have ever sacrificed for thee, long years,
drinking water from a wooden bowl,
hear my appeal and inspire me to sing
the tale supernal, upon the moon,
The Parliament of Poets, assemblage
of thy devoted ones, God intoxicated,
survey the cosmos and the centuries....
From the invocation, The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem. Copyright (c) 2012 Frederick Glaysher.
January 5, 2013 at 4:53 am
4 people like this
One of my (undeclared) New Year resolutions is to finish my yet-to-be-read list before January-end. 'The Parliament of Poets' is on that list. (I had downloaded it during the 'free' period.)
January 5, 2013 at 4:59 am
"The Parliament of Poets" !!!
January 5, 2013 at 6:24 am
"One of the major themes is the power of women and the female spirit across cultures."
January 4, 2013 at 4:56 pm
1 person likes this
In the sense in which I mean it, I would say we are all striving to get it, growing toward it. The statement, though, is in prose... from the book description about one motif in my epic poem, The Parliament of Poets, partly set on the moon. Poetry is another language, on the level of experience, and hence, I believe capable of reaching deeper into the psyche than prose.
January 4, 2013 at 5:44 pm
Malala... Incredible. It does sound like a "miraculous recovery."
January 4, 2013 at 1:05 pm
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Timeline Photos |
January 4, 2013 at 1:05 pm
6 people like this
“She has awakened us. If we can carry on this fight with her name, it would be tribute to her,” he said...
January 4, 2013 at 12:26 pm
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People stared at us and left, but didn’t help: Delhi gang-rape victim’s friend |
The male friend of the Delhi gang-rape victim - the only witness in the case - on Friday spoke for the first time in front of the nation and exclusively told Zee News that his friend was “positive” and wanted to live even after the horrific incident that took place on the night of December 16.
January 4, 2013 at 12:26 pm
I just read the whole article... how terrible and tragic. It gets even worse.
January 4, 2013 at 12:30 pm
Unfortunately the Indian mind is not yet ready to understand the deep rooted hypocrisy in its whole existence. I have doubt may be we are showing this fight because deep insider we understand our long nurtured sins and bigotry over ages. We are somewhere eager to show that those few persons are the only sinners and we are clean people in our heart. But we are about 200 years behind the time when we will really understand what is the deep rooted sin in all of us which is the real picture of a deeply wounded civilization.
January 4, 2013 at 10:01 pm
I realize you understand your own society better than I do and are probably right, yet it's sad to watch and hear all the turmoil from the outside. For the sake of the young girls and women, I hope India can find it's way through all this to a better future. I think, too, what happened is clearly shaking people up all over the world and perhaps leading to soul-searching and change elsewhere as well.
January 5, 2013 at 11:06 am
Men need to be part of the solution by raising awareness of women's issues and thereby helping to change the culture.
January 3, 2013 at 6:07 pm
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Timeline Photos |
January 3, 2013 at 6:07 pm
7 people like this
Actually, I've tried to deal with some of these things in an epic poem that I've recently published. "One of the major themes is the power of women and the female spirit across cultures."
There's a free chapter online, BOOK I, from The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem:
PDF.
There's a free chapter online, BOOK I, from The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem:
PDF.
January 3, 2013 at 6:14 pm
To try to answer Hilary's implicit question, I would say some men want to *control* women because they don't know how to *harmonize* with them... or understand and respect that, at the deepest level, the female is a metaphor. That understanding is one of the things that modernity has also lost, around the globe.
January 3, 2013 at 6:28 pm
She's right!
January 3, 2013 at 8:24 pm
I agree with her...In d present decade,all talk abt d equality of d genders,bt it doesn't really work out in d patriarchal society.women still seem d object of domination......
January 3, 2013 at 10:45 pm
Unfortunately, that seems all too true... But we must hope and work for a better day. People can change, however difficult, with effort and guidance. Something seems to be stirring in India for the better.
January 4, 2013 at 2:41 am
She belongs now to the world... in her memory, we can change it.
January 3, 2013 at 4:43 pm
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Timeline Photos |
January 3, 2013 at 4:43 pm
5 people like this
Happy New Year! Going into 2013, I just want to let interested people know that The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem was published in late November and is now available worldwide in both hardcover and ebook formats, through most online booksellers. Links via my homepage: https://fglaysher.com/
January 3, 2013 at 12:09 pm
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Frederick Glaysher, books, poems, essays, reviews, interviews, blog |
Gazing from the moon, we see one earth, without borders, Mother Earth, her embrace encircling one people, humankind.
January 3, 2013 at 12:09 pm
Polio > "the disease has been run to ground in just three countries: Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria, and in 2012, it struck only 215 people worldwide..."
https://healthland.time.com/2013/01/03/the-final-battle-against-polio/
January 3, 2013 at 11:45 am
https://healthland.time.com/2013/01/03/the-final-battle-against-polio/
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The Final Battle Against Polio? |
The poliovirus is tantalizingly close to being eradicated, but Pakistani extremists are standing in the way
January 3, 2013 at 11:45 am
In Mali, where the Taliban is pressing south, they have been requiring ring tones to be Quranic verses, forbidden song or dance and thus oral history, they have been hacking off hands for offences against Sharia, and forbidding vaccinations against Polio.
January 3, 2013 at 11:52 am
Yes, I've read some articles to that effect... very sad. It's appalling backward to forbid Polio vaccinations, tragic for the children.
January 3, 2013 at 11:59 am
During the 90s I worked with the the National Museum of Mali, and wrote a dissertation on Dogon sculptors. What is currrently happening in Mali (and elsewhere) breaks my heart. How can people be so proudly, violently ignorant? It is beyond my ability to understand.
January 3, 2013 at 12:09 pm
Oh, so right about that! I can't really understand it either. It's the extreme fanaticism that an exclusive notion of truth leads to, I suppose... The video reports of the destruction of ancient Mali sites is quite distrubing to me too, so similar to the demolishing of the Bamiyan Buddhist statue in Afghanistan. It's what the modern world is up against.
January 3, 2013 at 12:14 pm
Looking forward again to the Stratford Festival! Check out Stratford Social Ticketing here: https://apps.facebook.com/stratfordsocial/ and join me at Othello on Wednesday, August 14, 2013 at 8:00 PM
January 3, 2013 at 9:20 am
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Check out Stratford Social Ticketing here: https://apps.facebook.com/stratfordsocial/ and join me at |
January 3, 2013 at 9:20 am
Free chapter, BOOK I, from The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem.
Apollo calls all the poets of the nations, ancient and modern, East and West, to assemble on the moon to consult on the meaning of modernity. Search "Earthrise Press eBooks"
Apollo calls all the poets of the nations, ancient and modern, East and West, to assemble on the moon to consult on the meaning of modernity. Search "Earthrise Press eBooks"
January 3, 2013 at 8:15 am
Just published in Kolkata, India > Excerpt from Book IV of The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem by Frederick Glaysher. Rupkatha Journal, Volume IV, Number 2, 2012.
Tagore and the Persona, at Kurukshetra:
"We soon were over a plain, a wide field,
where two vast armies were ranked to battle,
legions on either side for war..."
https://rupkatha.com/Home.php
January 2, 2013 at 4:45 pm
Tagore and the Persona, at Kurukshetra:
"We soon were over a plain, a wide field,
where two vast armies were ranked to battle,
legions on either side for war..."
https://rupkatha.com/Home.php
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Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities - Home |
Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities
January 2, 2013 at 4:45 pm
1 person likes this
Mali Martha Lightfoot > "There is no good reason to produce plutonium for space travel, especially when there have been successful solar powered missions. While we are desperately trying to figure out what to do with all the plutonium we are stuck with, why is spreading more plutonium around the world, potentially the atmosphere, and creating nuclear space trash a good idea in anyone's mind?"
January 2, 2013 at 8:11 am
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Update on plutonium project at ORNL | Frank Munger's Atomic City Underground |
A pilot project to demonstrate the a capability to produce plutonium-238 at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is still in its early stages, but there is some progress to report in the development efforts.
January 2, 2013 at 8:11 am
"All of India’s struggles for modernity have been about this — the battle of the idea of the city against the idea of the village. The latest uprising in India is a part of this tired war, even though at first glance it appears to be a society’s outrage at the rape and murder of a young woman in Delhi."
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/03/world/asia/03iht-letter03.html
January 2, 2013 at 7:45 am
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/03/world/asia/03iht-letter03.html
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City Setting, but Village Mentalities |
The protest movement that has sprung up in Delhi after a brutal rape in December is largely a lament of the city against a nation that has blamed attacks on women on the women's own modernity.
January 2, 2013 at 7:45 am
3 people like this
Just published in Mumbai, India > Excerpt (2nd) from Book IV of The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem by Frederick Glaysher. The Criterion: An International Journal in English, Vol. III. Issue. IV (December 2012).
"Tagore then spoke. “You have heard Krishna, now
Lord Vishnu’s eighth incarnation, Shiva.
He will come down to us from Mt Kailash..."
https://www.the-criterion.com/
Or direct PDF: https://www.the-criterion.com/V3/n4/Frederick.pdf
January 2, 2013 at 7:15 am
"Tagore then spoke. “You have heard Krishna, now
Lord Vishnu’s eighth incarnation, Shiva.
He will come down to us from Mt Kailash..."
https://www.the-criterion.com/
Or direct PDF: https://www.the-criterion.com/V3/n4/Frederick.pdf
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The Criterion: An International Journal in English [ISSN: 0976-8165] |
Current Issue The Criterion: An International Journal in English, Vol. III. Issue. IV (December 2012). Excerpt from Book IV of The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem by Frederick Glaysher.
January 2, 2013 at 7:15 am
1 person likes this
In the Himalayan foothills, Shiva Nataraja.
January 2, 2013 at 8:19 am
Really shocking... India really seems to have a history all its own in some ways. Over breakfast, each having read the NY Times piece, my wife and I were recalling living out in Maebashi, Japan in the early 1980s, riding the bus, and the subway to Tokyo... and some experiences we and she had as foreigners. Women everywhere have a lot to deal with, unfortunately, more than many men seem to realize even now.
The West isn't any better either. I've read recently the UK has about 80,000 rapes a year with only a 6.5% conviction rate. One might say, compared to India, that's progress... but not enough really. The US is a mess too...
January 2, 2013 at 5:45 am
The West isn't any better either. I've read recently the UK has about 80,000 rapes a year with only a 6.5% conviction rate. One might say, compared to India, that's progress... but not enough really. The US is a mess too...
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The Unspeakable Truth About Rape in India |
The volume of protests in the case of a gang-rape victim in Delhi show that change is possible.
January 2, 2013 at 5:45 am
3 people like this
Just published in India > Excerpt (2nd) from Book IV of The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem by Frederick Glaysher. The Criterion: An International Journal in English, Vol. III. Issue. IV (December 2012).
"Tagore then spoke. “You have heard Krishna, now
Lord Vishnu’s eighth incarnation, Shiva.
He will come down to us from Mt Kailash..."
https://www.the-criterion.com/
Or direct PDF: https://www.the-criterion.com/V3/n4/Frederick.pdf
January 1, 2013 at 10:32 am
"Tagore then spoke. “You have heard Krishna, now
Lord Vishnu’s eighth incarnation, Shiva.
He will come down to us from Mt Kailash..."
https://www.the-criterion.com/
Or direct PDF: https://www.the-criterion.com/V3/n4/Frederick.pdf
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The Criterion: An International Journal in English [ISSN: 0976-8165] |
The Criterion: An International Journal in English, Vol. III. Issue. IV (December 2012). Excerpt from Book IV of The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem by Frederick Glaysher.
January 1, 2013 at 10:32 am
2 people like this
Just published > Excerpt from Book IV of The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem by
Frederick Glaysher. Rupkatha Journal, Volume IV, Number 2, 2012.
"We soon were over a plain, a wide field,
where two vast armies were ranked to battle,
legions on either side for war..."
https://rupkatha.com/Home.php
January 1, 2013 at 8:59 am
Frederick Glaysher. Rupkatha Journal, Volume IV, Number 2, 2012.
"We soon were over a plain, a wide field,
where two vast armies were ranked to battle,
legions on either side for war..."
https://rupkatha.com/Home.php
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Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities - Home |
Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities
January 1, 2013 at 8:59 am
3 people like this
Congratulations Frederick! A very interesting poem! Do you recommend I subscribe to Rupkatha? Satchidanandan's poems are a tad wet but otherwise well-done. I'm trying to avoid lit crit while I'm assembling my own volume of poems -- reading it makes me write ideas -- but I need to read good new poetry. Where can I buy your book?
January 1, 2013 at 9:06 am
Happy New Year, Diana! Nice hearing from you... and thanks for your positive words. I think Rupkatha is a very interesting journal, seriously seeking a new perspective, Indian and otherwise.
My books are available all over the Net, any way you want to read them, print or ebook. Amazon and Barnes & Noble are two good sources for the hardcover copy of The Parliament of Poets:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-parliament-of-poets-frederick-glaysher/1112448232
My books are available all over the Net, any way you want to read them, print or ebook. Amazon and Barnes & Noble are two good sources for the hardcover copy of The Parliament of Poets:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-parliament-of-poets-frederick-glaysher/1112448232
January 1, 2013 at 9:18 am
I got a Nook reader for Christmas. Yours can be my first eBook!
January 1, 2013 at 9:29 am
Wow, how cool! ...I appreciate the honor! Hope you enjoy the journey to the moon. :)
January 1, 2013 at 9:59 am
I look forward to it!
January 1, 2013 at 10:00 am
Diana Manister I keep having a nagging feeling about your comment on Satchidanandan's poems. I've followed him for a long time on Facebook. He's the real thing, though perhaps some of his translation don't entirely do justice to his original Malayalam. Read him for a while. I think you'll probably agree...
January 1, 2013 at 4:28 pm
I found them to be a bit too overtly emotional. Not my taste. I like poetry to be oblique and suggestive, and to leave something to the imagination. When the poetry spells out everything I'm supposed to feel I perversely refuse to feel it! I like to respond in my own ways not the way the writer directs me to react.
Perhaps it's a cultural difference.
Perhaps it's a cultural difference.
January 1, 2013 at 5:33 pm
I once heard an actor who said if an actor cries onstage the audience won't cry because it's been done it for them. A great actor doesn't cry, he makes the audience cry.
January 1, 2013 at 5:40 pm
A fine way of putting it... though perhaps depending on how it's done and what the playwright actually wants to accomplish.
January 1, 2013 at 5:49 pm
congratulations and wishing you a Happy New Year Frederick , May this year and years ahead bring you success peace to your nation and prosperity...congratulations for the poem being published...
January 1, 2013 at 7:17 pm
Happy New Year! Harlequin... La Maschera Del Galeone, Venice, Commedia dell'arte. December 31, 2012
January 1, 2013 at 8:48 am
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January 1, 2013 at 8:48 am
4 people like this
Love the mask and love Venice x
January 1, 2013 at 9:39 am
Like that Mask will love to wear one ..sumtimes...
January 1, 2013 at 7:18 pm
Happy New Year! Punchinello... La Maschera Del Galeone, Venice, Commedia dell'arte. December 31, 2012
January 1, 2013 at 8:10 am
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January 1, 2013 at 8:10 am
2 people like this
Happy New Year! Harlequin... La Maschera Del Galeone, Venice, Commedia dell'arte. December 31, 2012
January 1, 2013 at 7:09 am
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January 1, 2013 at 7:09 am
11 people like this
If you're shocked by the recent horrifying rape in India, and think it's all "over there," read about the West...
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/soraya-chemaly/50-facts-rape_b_2019338.html
December 31, 2012 at 7:43 am
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/soraya-chemaly/50-facts-rape_b_2019338.html
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50 Actual Facts About Rape |
Remember facts? Remember facts about rape? Because it turns out that a whole lot of people know less than nothing about the subject. Indeed what they think they know is a whole lot of something that is wrong and dangerous to our heath, safety and well-being.
December 31, 2012 at 7:43 am
3 people like this
"Rape and sexual violence against women are endemic everywhere."
"But although the voices of women must be heard above all else, men must speak out too. It’s really important that we show solidarity with women, educate each other and challenge prejudice in our ranks."
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/sexual-violence-is-not-a-cultural-phenomenon-in-india--it-is-endemic-everywhere-8433445.html
December 31, 2012 at 4:40 am
"But although the voices of women must be heard above all else, men must speak out too. It’s really important that we show solidarity with women, educate each other and challenge prejudice in our ranks."
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/sexual-violence-is-not-a-cultural-phenomenon-in-india--it-is-endemic-everywhere-8433445.html
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Sexual violence is not a cultural phenomenon in India - it is endemic everywhere |
We don’t know the name of the 23-year-old student who was raped and killed on a city bus in Delhi.
December 31, 2012 at 4:40 am
7 people like this
O Frederick Glaysher...I feel so ashamed of the incidents happened in India...the girl died..and the country runs in grief...dunno but ...men are the best strength to women ...we are only coz of men...and if they are strong so do they make us women strong...god made a mutual relationship ...hope you agree..
December 31, 2012 at 4:43 am
If god gives me his MAGIC WAND I turn it to just beautiful world of choclates...pastries cakes stars..I would bring Elvis Presley to sing me forever in FOR YEARS AND AGES..and no one becomes sad all be happy and no miseries...god please gimme the magic wand in the new year tonight ...send it wid Santa tonite.....
December 31, 2012 at 4:45 am
I certainly agree that both men and women are mutually needed to stop such violence against women. It won't happen if women are left alone to try to deal with it. As long as people are capable of change, there is hope. Not easy and simplistic, but the long human struggle... From the outside, it seems India during the last few weeks is experiencing a very deep and profound awakening that's stirring up the souls of millions. Let's hope something positive will begin to come out of it.
December 31, 2012 at 4:50 am
“This is the story of every Indian woman.” “There’s a movement that has been built out of this,” said Ruchira Sen, 25, a student of economics.... “We are going to do everything it takes to make it last,” she said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/31/world/asia/rape-incites-women-to-fight-culture-in-india.html
December 31, 2012 at 4:23 am
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/31/world/asia/rape-incites-women-to-fight-culture-in-india.html
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Rape Incites Women to Fight Culture in India |
Protesters say they and others like them will never fully take part in the promise of a more prosperous nation unless something fundamental changes.
December 31, 2012 at 4:23 am
1 person likes this
Now in India, Hardcover > The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem
https://www.flipkart.com/parliament-poets-098267788x/p/itmdg6h4pdby5kep?pid=9780982677889
https://www.flipkart.com/parliament-poets-098267788x/p/itmdg6h4pdby5kep?pid=9780982677889
December 31, 2012 at 3:21 am
2 people like this
Rs. 1244 (10% Off)
(Prices inclusive of taxes)
Imported Edition. Delivered in 8 business days.
It's also available through Amazon, hardcover and Kindle. I'm not sure if people in India can buy ebooks through Kobo, Google Play and their international affiliates, but perhaps?
(Prices inclusive of taxes)
Imported Edition. Delivered in 8 business days.
It's also available through Amazon, hardcover and Kindle. I'm not sure if people in India can buy ebooks through Kobo, Google Play and their international affiliates, but perhaps?
December 31, 2012 at 3:38 am
What's wrong with the US media > The Walt Disney Company, News Corporation, Time Warner, CBS Corporation, Hearst Corporation, NBCUniversal, Sony Corporation of America, Viacom....
December 30, 2012 at 6:56 pm
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Timeline Photos |
December 30, 2012 at 6:56 pm
1 person likes this
"Chicago recorded its 499th murder of 2012 on Thursday..."
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/29/chicago-homicide-rate-new-york_n_2378073.html
December 29, 2012 at 11:18 am
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/29/chicago-homicide-rate-new-york_n_2378073.html
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Chicago's Homicide Rate Spikes While New York's Falls |
* Chicago says 80 percent of victims African-American * Gang violence blamed for Chicago murder spike
December 29, 2012 at 11:18 am
"Revulsion and anger over the rape have galvanized India, where women regularly face sexual harassment and assault, and where neither the police nor the judicial system is seen as adequately protecting them... Activists and lawyers in India have long said that the police are insensitive when dealing with crimes against women, and that therefore many women do not report cases of sexual violence."
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/30/world/asia/india-rape-delhi.html
December 29, 2012 at 6:08 am
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/30/world/asia/india-rape-delhi.html
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Victim of Gang Rape in India Dies at Hospital in Singapore |
As protests grew in India Saturday over the death of a young woman who was raped by several men in a moving bus, police said her attackers would be charged with murder.
December 29, 2012 at 6:08 am
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“We have already seen the emotions and energies this incident has generated,” he said in a statement. “It would be a true homage to her memory if we are able to channelize these emotions and energies into a constructive course of action.” The government, he said, is examining “the penal provisions that exist for such crimes and measures to enhance the safety and security of women.”
Politics over protests!! Still examining???!! How long it takes to review such anti woman laws?
Politics over protests!! Still examining???!! How long it takes to review such anti woman laws?
December 29, 2012 at 6:21 am
This is a Big Issue in India right now. I am glad the American press is taking notice.
You know, the sheer bestiality of the attack on that young girl is forcing us to ask fundamental questions not only about 'human' nature, but also about the kind of exploitative economy and society we have made ourselves walk towards.
I just hope the issue doesn't die down as a merely media-hyped event but leads to some real soul-searching.
You know, the sheer bestiality of the attack on that young girl is forcing us to ask fundamental questions not only about 'human' nature, but also about the kind of exploitative economy and society we have made ourselves walk towards.
I just hope the issue doesn't die down as a merely media-hyped event but leads to some real soul-searching.
December 29, 2012 at 6:23 am
Yes, such a dreadfully merciless attack on the poor woman... I hope somehow some positive changes can come about in memory of her for the sake of others in India. Of course, there's lots of bestiality here in the USA... more than makes the international news... but I think this incident is truly shocking people around the globe, maybe causing people to wake up to how awful life can be for many women everywhere and the need for serious efforts for reform in thinking and deed, I hope...
December 29, 2012 at 6:42 am
May she rest in peace -- and may India now get serious on its pervasive sexual violence...
December 29, 2012 at 7:57 am
Amen, God willing... may she rest in peace, in some way beyond understanding. While India seems to have a unique social history in some ways with violence against women, I don't think such crimes are limited to it. Here in the USA, Detroit and elsewhere, there are incidents of equally shocking violence against women, though admittedly the ruthlessness of this attack is appalling beyond belief.
When I was a younger man I didn't understand how vulnerable women really were to this kind of thing. As I've gotten older, I've come to realize more the extent to which there's a terrifyingly bestial nature in some men, not that I claim to really understand how a man could do such things to a woman. It's so inhuman... I felt compelled to try to grapple with this kind of abuse, in a sense, in my epic poem, to the extent that art can... trying to evoke a vision of male and female mutual affection, the humanizing importance of it, on various levels. I think there's something to be said for the role literature and art plays in creating a culture that values and protects women... I believe modern popular culture has too often let the female gender down and open to abuse, as "entertainment," pornography, and all of that...
When I was a younger man I didn't understand how vulnerable women really were to this kind of thing. As I've gotten older, I've come to realize more the extent to which there's a terrifyingly bestial nature in some men, not that I claim to really understand how a man could do such things to a woman. It's so inhuman... I felt compelled to try to grapple with this kind of abuse, in a sense, in my epic poem, to the extent that art can... trying to evoke a vision of male and female mutual affection, the humanizing importance of it, on various levels. I think there's something to be said for the role literature and art plays in creating a culture that values and protects women... I believe modern popular culture has too often let the female gender down and open to abuse, as "entertainment," pornography, and all of that...
December 29, 2012 at 8:24 am
"I refuse to take violent acts as normal. I do not want to be desensitized towards all the manifestations of violence. I want every heart with a burning fire in it to raise the voice against this brutality. Each time a voice is registered i believe there will be a change."
- World Pulse response to a violent public gangrape of a student in Delhi, India. Read more and follow their link to add your voice to a petition calling for an end to rape and impunity in India. https://worldpulse.com/node/62575
- World Pulse response to a violent public gangrape of a student in Delhi, India. Read more and follow their link to add your voice to a petition calling for an end to rape and impunity in India. https://worldpulse.com/node/62575
December 29, 2012 at 8:31 am
Welcome to KMart... WalMart, & others... Prison labor has been going on for decades in China, while US businesses and the government have looked the other way. It's nothing new. It's the same corrupt system that a significant portion of trade with China has always been based on.
https://www.examiner.com/article/woman-finds-note-from-chinese-labor-camp-prisoner-kmart-decorations
December 28, 2012 at 9:34 am
https://www.examiner.com/article/woman-finds-note-from-chinese-labor-camp-prisoner-kmart-decorations
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Woman finds note from Chinese labor camp prisoner in Kmart decorations |
Oregon resident Julie Keith was shocked when she opened her $29.99 Kmart Halloween graveyard decoration kit to find a letter, folded into eights, hidden between
December 28, 2012 at 9:34 am
2 people like this
The real shock is the letter itself in PDF:
https://media.oregonlive.com/happy_valley_news/photo/12026598-large.jpg
https://media.oregonlive.com/happy_valley_news/photo/12026598-large.jpg
December 28, 2012 at 9:35 am
the principle "might is right" is to be blamed for that. Power is the Center of all social evils, corrupt system, etc.
December 28, 2012 at 9:43 am
excuse me but wtf
December 28, 2012 at 9:53 am
Vishwanath Bite Yes, but each side has been willing to participate in exploiting the Chinese slave camps. Harry Wu wrote a book about the early 1990s labor camps, Bitter Winds : A Memoir of My Years in China’s Gulag. https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2011/06/24/bitter-winds-harry-wu/
There are many such books and reports. Countries all around the world have been willing to take products from Chinese camps... so there's really an awful lot of blame to go around for exploitation hidden behind "globalization," etc. We human beings can't get rid of "power," which is why we've tried to create a superior regulating power in the United Nations, such as it is, despite it flaws and failures. I feel the only real solution is to move further in that direction because every nation invariably only thinks of its own well-being, usually economic only... A stronger world legal system could help in many ways motivate and move people in the right direction.
There are many such books and reports. Countries all around the world have been willing to take products from Chinese camps... so there's really an awful lot of blame to go around for exploitation hidden behind "globalization," etc. We human beings can't get rid of "power," which is why we've tried to create a superior regulating power in the United Nations, such as it is, despite it flaws and failures. I feel the only real solution is to move further in that direction because every nation invariably only thinks of its own well-being, usually economic only... A stronger world legal system could help in many ways motivate and move people in the right direction.
December 28, 2012 at 11:05 am
USA Deaths since Newtown: 242
https://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2012/12/gun_death_tally_every_american_gun_death_since_newtown_sandy_hook_shooting.html
December 28, 2012 at 7:13 am
https://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2012/12/gun_death_tally_every_american_gun_death_since_newtown_sandy_hook_shooting.html
| https://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2012/12/gun_death_tally_every_american_gun_dea |
December 28, 2012 at 7:13 am
NYC > "the final numbers for 2012 will likely beat last year’s 515 murders, and even the recent low of 471 homicides in 2009."
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-murders-18-5-year-article-1.1227060
December 28, 2012 at 6:40 am
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-murders-18-5-year-article-1.1227060
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NYC has had 414 murders so far in 2012, down 18.5%, NYPD credits ‘stop and frisk’ policy |
Preliminary numbers released by the NYPD show that, barring unprecedented bloodshed over the next week, the final numbers for 2012 will likely beat last year’s 515 murders, and even the recent low of 471 homicides in 2009.
December 28, 2012 at 6:40 am
As though 414 murders is something to celebrate...
December 28, 2012 at 8:12 am
"Since 1982, there have been at least 62 mass murders* carried out with firearms across the country..."
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map
December 28, 2012 at 6:31 am
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map
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A Guide to Mass Shootings in America |
There have been at least 62 in the last 30 years—and most of the killers got their guns legally.
December 28, 2012 at 6:31 am
2 people like this
Frederick, you post such great information. I have been sharing them in our gun control group, and I encourage you to share them directly: https://www.facebook.com/groups/446541958741931/
December 28, 2012 at 7:36 am
Thanks, Keith... Glad to hear of your group. There are so many groups I can't keep up... but appreciate the invitation. If something is of interest, feel free to Share...
December 28, 2012 at 7:39 am
According to the site, you are already a member, Frederick.
December 28, 2012 at 7:41 am
See what I mean!! :)
December 28, 2012 at 7:42 am
"What's outrageous about this is that it has become the norm," "A lack of economic opportunity, law enforcement budget cuts, the lure of easy money through drug trafficking, lack of respect for human life and the abundance of illegal guns all contribute to the problem."
https://www.freep.com/article/20121228/NEWS01/312280175/Detroit-s-homicide-rate-nears-highest-in-2-decades
December 28, 2012 at 6:19 am
https://www.freep.com/article/20121228/NEWS01/312280175/Detroit-s-homicide-rate-nears-highest-in-2-decades
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Detroit's homicide rate nears highest in 2 decades |
With only a few days left in 2012, Detroit is poised to see its highest murder rate in nearly two decades. As of Dec. 16, there had been 375 homicides -- more than the number counted each year since 2008, according to Detroit Police Department statistics.
December 28, 2012 at 6:19 am
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"five times the national average and more than enough to make Detroit America’s Most Dangerous City for the fourth year in a row."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2012/10/18/detroit-tops-the-2012-list-of-americas-most-dangerous-cities/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2012/10/18/detroit-tops-the-2012-list-of-americas-most-dangerous-cities/
December 28, 2012 at 7:05 am
Last night on the local TV news it was reported that the number of murders in Detroit for 2012 is actually 410. The reporter went on to compare Detroit with New Yorker's 414, pointing out that compared to Detroit's population of only 716,000 people New York by percentage would have a murder rate of 4,400!
December 29, 2012 at 5:41 am
All the old exclusivisms, religious and secular, have exhausted themselves or run out... whether Christianity and its many denominations, Judaism, Marxism, or, for that matter, Islam, we can not go backwards. All the attempts to do so have revealed themselves as fanatical and antequated, East and West, out of touch with the history and human experience of modernity.
In the US, I would say Democracy has often become for the oligarchs, the plutocrats, the people of vast billions who really don't care about the common people. They're using their wealth to bribe and buy everything and everyone, including the politicians at all levels, seeking to impose their rule, whether secular or ossified Christianity.
It is a very serious and threatening problem, not only for the US but all around the world, for the ultra-wealthy have no loyalty to any nation but have often become an international class of their own, exploiting the resources and people for their own benefit, with little to no sense of the classical philosophical and religious conceptions of self-less service to others. At the deepest level, to resist this process and change it, I believe what's required is a superior vision of global human unity and oneness.
Much of my epic poem is about this... about resolving the modern conflicts, antinomies, and searching for a satisfying vision of unity.
December 24, 2012 at 6:55 am
In the US, I would say Democracy has often become for the oligarchs, the plutocrats, the people of vast billions who really don't care about the common people. They're using their wealth to bribe and buy everything and everyone, including the politicians at all levels, seeking to impose their rule, whether secular or ossified Christianity.
It is a very serious and threatening problem, not only for the US but all around the world, for the ultra-wealthy have no loyalty to any nation but have often become an international class of their own, exploiting the resources and people for their own benefit, with little to no sense of the classical philosophical and religious conceptions of self-less service to others. At the deepest level, to resist this process and change it, I believe what's required is a superior vision of global human unity and oneness.
Much of my epic poem is about this... about resolving the modern conflicts, antinomies, and searching for a satisfying vision of unity.
| American Christianity and Secularism at a Crossroads |
The Christian consensus that long governed our public square is disintegrating.
December 24, 2012 at 6:55 am
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Sir, what do you think on the concept "Dialogue among Civilizations"?
December 24, 2012 at 7:38 am
Dated... outmoded. I'd argue we human beings have moved way beyond that. In many places around the globe, we've long been in the process of seeking and realizing *human oneness* at a level synonymous with, but more profound, than that of the past, global to a degree never experienced before. It's very difficult for minds tied to the past to see it, understand it, even as we experience it on a daily lived level, its implications.
December 24, 2012 at 7:48 am
Thank you, sir, for your kind response.
December 24, 2012 at 7:51 am
Thank you for your kind interest...
December 24, 2012 at 8:08 am
Sir, this is one of greatest opportunities for me to remain connected with you!
December 24, 2012 at 8:11 am
Human beings all over the world have been the same anatomically,biologically and spiritually.It is people who for their own selfishness divided them on the lines of caste,creed, colour religion and gender.The division is artificial and politically induced.The fragmented walls are man made and international humanism,cosmic vision alone make a passage to the vast ocean of humanity.Your noble attempt through your epic poem is highly praise worthy.Ir is always better to lit a candle than cursing the darkness.You have lit it .And it will reach to the millions.Thank you very much.I join your chorus for universal humanism wit my heart and soul.
December 25, 2012 at 10:18 pm
Chandra Shekhar Dubey Chandra, I'm grateful for your good words. I take encouragement from them, perhaps, maybe, somehow... it has not all been for naught. As you know, most modern writers, East and West, have strained every nerve for other visions, if not dystopias. I have always realized that I and my epic are up against the entire drift of world civilization, from the popular to the highest levels of literary achievement. You are the only person who has said to me that he sees and understand my epic this clearly. My hope is to reach the millions with a new vision of life, with all humility, in the artistic sense or degree of that meaning. I believe art can be a powerful force in expanding and elevating human consciousness, affecting human meaning, purpose, and action. Your words help me to hold on and hope that somehow my epic might indeed reach the millions.
Here in the USA, all the traditional channels are closed off, have always been closed off to me and my writing, which has throughout my life been in complete and entire opposition to much of the prevailing little conceptions of modernism and post-modernism. That's all part of the dilemmas that are destroying civilization on this planet. The vehicles of literary and academic review, newspapers, magazines, and so forth, are all in the hands of people with *those* conceptions of life, nihilism and its many derivatives... It's quite unlikely that they are even remotely capable of seeing in my epic what you have, which is why I recently wrote the following in a blog piece:
"I’m grateful, too, that there has been some interest among South Asian Indian readers and journals. While Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and so many other American writers, had to go east, back to the old world, if you will, to find and receive a hearing, I have always felt and experienced an attraction to Asia, Japan, China, and India, on many levels of my being. That interest is reflected in my epic. Often I have thought that perhaps for me, if anything like recognition ever finds me, maybe it has to come first somehow from Asia, given what literature and the academy have so often become in the US and Western world." https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2012/12/17/post-gutenberg-book-launch/
It seems to me that this is how things stand in the West, including Europe. If you and other readers in India and elsewhere think my writing merits the attention of the millions, it's up to you... I know of no one in the West who has thought and said as much.
Here in the USA, all the traditional channels are closed off, have always been closed off to me and my writing, which has throughout my life been in complete and entire opposition to much of the prevailing little conceptions of modernism and post-modernism. That's all part of the dilemmas that are destroying civilization on this planet. The vehicles of literary and academic review, newspapers, magazines, and so forth, are all in the hands of people with *those* conceptions of life, nihilism and its many derivatives... It's quite unlikely that they are even remotely capable of seeing in my epic what you have, which is why I recently wrote the following in a blog piece:
"I’m grateful, too, that there has been some interest among South Asian Indian readers and journals. While Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and so many other American writers, had to go east, back to the old world, if you will, to find and receive a hearing, I have always felt and experienced an attraction to Asia, Japan, China, and India, on many levels of my being. That interest is reflected in my epic. Often I have thought that perhaps for me, if anything like recognition ever finds me, maybe it has to come first somehow from Asia, given what literature and the academy have so often become in the US and Western world." https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2012/12/17/post-gutenberg-book-launch/
It seems to me that this is how things stand in the West, including Europe. If you and other readers in India and elsewhere think my writing merits the attention of the millions, it's up to you... I know of no one in the West who has thought and said as much.
December 26, 2012 at 6:38 am
Tarun Tapas Mukherjee
Vishwanath Bite
Nishat Haider
Bina Biswas
Rati Saxena
Hisham M Nazer
Vishwanath Bite
Nishat Haider
Bina Biswas
Rati Saxena
Hisham M Nazer
December 26, 2012 at 7:22 am
I too join your chorus for universal humanism wit my heart and soul. Thanks Frederick
December 26, 2012 at 7:28 am
Thank you, Bina, for saying so. I need your help to reach the millions, East and West. What I've written in this thread is very much how things appear to me. I cannot do it alone. In the solitude of many years of study and reflection, I was able to write my epic, but I am very conscious that I need others to help bring it to the attention of readers. I'd be most grateful for any help or suggestions you or anyone else might have. The West seems very stuck in the mire of modern nihilism and unwilling to even consider anything other the usual dystopian dirge... That has been my experience thus far...
December 26, 2012 at 7:36 am
Frederick definitely!! To quote Tagore “You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.” ...we do it better when we all are together.
December 26, 2012 at 7:41 am
Silence is a sign of acceptance so say the Upanishads.Civilizations may come and go but truth remains for ever.In your writings I see a vision of eternity.it's truth.one of my poems from my collection titled RIPPLES ON A STONE ,Writer's Workshop,Kolkata .1993 includes a poem titled' Civilization', this poem ends on 'Man is the last thing to be civilized'.In this mad world of materialism, consumerism , narcissism: acceptance has melted into silence and rejection has become vociferousness. Rabindra Nath Tagore wrote ''If you call some one and if no one responds to your call/ O' Man walk alone, walk alone..."Follow your own bent and some day you will find many pilgrims in progress in this Odyssey.
December 26, 2012 at 7:45 am
Frederick Glaysher we need to talk in detail and find the real solution, thanks for tag
December 26, 2012 at 7:50 am
Now an ePub on Kobo and Google Play,
The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem
The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem
December 24, 2012 at 5:59 am
Now on Barnes and Noble, Hardcover & Nook ePub,
The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem
The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem
December 23, 2012 at 5:17 pm
5 people like this
Now on Amazon, Hardcover & Kindle,
The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem
The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem
December 23, 2012 at 4:38 pm
3 people like this
Adam Kolczynski iAuthor is an interesting idea. I respect your initiative and creativity... trying to find some new ways to make things work for writers and readers, without the interferences of current middlemen, or seek a new way to adjust the relationships.
I think you're quite right when you say, "They are not independent. Instead, the websites are associated with existing companies under the guise of "community forums". Where there are vested interests, author interests are overlooked."
I think you're quite right when you say, "They are not independent. Instead, the websites are associated with existing companies under the guise of "community forums". Where there are vested interests, author interests are overlooked."
December 23, 2012 at 5:04 pm
Many thanks for your feedback regarding iAuthor, and for showcasing "The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem" on our interactive platform. You've captured the essence of iAuthor in your second sentence! Let's keep in touch. Kind regards, Adam
December 24, 2012 at 3:28 am
Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut >
"Since the Cartesian time body and mind, physicality and spirituality were two separate things, two separate realms of reality that did not interact, that served a very noble purpose, it got the Inquisition off the backs of the intellectuals of the period, so that they could disagree with the church on physical things, as long as they stayed away from spiritual and mind and consciousness things."
https://www.noetic.org/about/vision/
December 21, 2012 at 7:29 am
"Since the Cartesian time body and mind, physicality and spirituality were two separate things, two separate realms of reality that did not interact, that served a very noble purpose, it got the Inquisition off the backs of the intellectuals of the period, so that they could disagree with the church on physical things, as long as they stayed away from spiritual and mind and consciousness things."
https://www.noetic.org/about/vision/
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Vision/Mission | About | Institute of Noetic Sciences |
“The presence of divinity became almost palpable, and I knew that life in the universe was not just an accident based on random processes. . . .The knowledge came to me directly.”
December 21, 2012 at 7:29 am
Mircea Eliade > "Like all human cultures the west is parochial and narrow in its viewpoint and although, over the last three hundred years there has been a substantial amount of cross-cultural intermingling and a potential broadening of the philosophical and religious horizon, that broadening has not been sufficiently complete."
December 21, 2012 at 6:54 am
6 people like this
"broadening has not been sufficiently complete" you say. I ain't holding my breath. As far as I can see, ants are the only animals with sufficiently complete societies - at least till their workers wise up & form a union.
December 21, 2012 at 7:04 am
I would argue a historical perspective suggests and demonstrates otherwise. Every region of the Earth used to be much more isolated and self-absorbed, walled-off in its provincialism. Many still are... but thoughtful and forward-looking people around the world are headed in another direction...
December 21, 2012 at 7:08 am
What direction is that Fred? Towards the isles of the self-absorbed, walled-off folk? Meanwhile us thoughtful and forward-looking people (tic) create our own islands - like my Manhattan or Seattle, Portland, Austin or Chapel Hill. All blue isles in a Red Sea.
December 21, 2012 at 7:17 am
I would say as well that those too are narrow, isolated, limited conceptions... that time itself has shown as such, though there's much that can be salvaged and worthy of carrying on forward from those bastions. We human beings can always drop into cynicism and embitterment, if not nihilism. It has long been the approach of much of the academy and educated, a form of parochialism in itself. Life is moving toward a wider vision...
December 21, 2012 at 7:27 am
OK, I'm in. Tell me when & where the party begins - I'll bring the wine.
December 21, 2012 at 7:54 am
Start here:
PDF.
PDF.
December 21, 2012 at 7:56 am
While Saudi Princess Ameerah Al-Taweel, in her interview with the Wall Street Journal, seems and may be modern and headed in the right direction, some of her thinking and comments are still based on or influenced by takfir, taqiyya, and the fanatical exclusivism of Wahhabi Islam. Real tolerance and interfaith understanding cannot be built on any of that.
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2012/12/21/saudi-princess-ameerah-al-taweel/
December 21, 2012 at 6:17 am
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2012/12/21/saudi-princess-ameerah-al-taweel/
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Saudi Princess Ameerah Al-Taweel |
If the Saudis and Princess Ameerah Al-Taweel are serious, all that kind of thing needs to change. Nothing she says in this video interview demonstrates that it has. The world needs real love and peace, not Wahhabi ideology and violence.
December 21, 2012 at 6:17 am
Philip Hall I expanded on my comments on my blog, if interested.
December 21, 2012 at 2:36 pm
I find the “water moon” position of the Chinese Buddhist statues of Kuan-yin, right knee raised, with the right arm extending over the knee, one of the most beautiful and evocative in Buddhist art...
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2012/12/20/buddhism-and-modernity/
December 20, 2012 at 5:57 am
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2012/12/20/buddhism-and-modernity/
|
Buddhism and Modernity |
Given modern experience, I have often thought, What's the difference between going back to Jesus or back to Buddha? The idea of *exclusive* truth, East or West, is a misconception.
December 20, 2012 at 5:57 am
I find the “water moon” position of the Chinese Buddhist statues of Kuan-yin, right knee raised, with the right are extending over the knee, one of the most beautiful and evocative in Buddhist art. That's what the Chinese call this pose... I saw one statue at a Shaanxi History Museum in X'ian, China, that is truly a national treasure, in carved stone, that's very famous. Buddhism has what are called mudras, stylized hand positions and other poses, all carry various meanings symbolically. I use or refer to several in my epic poem, because for Buddhists they carry a great deal of meaning and suggestive emotion, and so on.
I finally finished my epic, and it's available online as a hardcover and ebook formats. There's a long section with Kabir that I hope speaks well to Sikhs, though he's really a pre-Sikh poet. It's his universal perspective that is important to me. I think much of that spirit is what the world needs today, globally, East and West. One of the qualities of modernity is the rigidity of its abstractions, whether East or West, codifying its disjunctions.
Whose Buddha? Whose West? East? Modern life is much more complex and fluid than the traditional categories and the attempts to "return," "restore," "recover," and so forth, in each case, around the globe. Kabir, Rumi, others, speak to our time because they were early voices of the realization of Unity.
I've read the Tao te Ching many times throughout my life. To my mind, one who has spent his entire adult life reading in all the religious and literary traditions, East and West, and lived in Japan, traveling all over China, the "categories" are not as tight and neat as many argue... especially on the lived, human level. Given modern experience, I have often thought, What's the difference between going back to Jesus or back to Buddha? The idea of *exclusive* truth, East or West, is a misconception. I believe the realization of Unity, as in Rumi, Kabir, and others, human oneness, is a much more profound response to human experience, especially given all the upheavals and change that marked the 20th Century.
December 20, 2012 at 3:57 am
I finally finished my epic, and it's available online as a hardcover and ebook formats. There's a long section with Kabir that I hope speaks well to Sikhs, though he's really a pre-Sikh poet. It's his universal perspective that is important to me. I think much of that spirit is what the world needs today, globally, East and West. One of the qualities of modernity is the rigidity of its abstractions, whether East or West, codifying its disjunctions.
Whose Buddha? Whose West? East? Modern life is much more complex and fluid than the traditional categories and the attempts to "return," "restore," "recover," and so forth, in each case, around the globe. Kabir, Rumi, others, speak to our time because they were early voices of the realization of Unity.
I've read the Tao te Ching many times throughout my life. To my mind, one who has spent his entire adult life reading in all the religious and literary traditions, East and West, and lived in Japan, traveling all over China, the "categories" are not as tight and neat as many argue... especially on the lived, human level. Given modern experience, I have often thought, What's the difference between going back to Jesus or back to Buddha? The idea of *exclusive* truth, East or West, is a misconception. I believe the realization of Unity, as in Rumi, Kabir, and others, human oneness, is a much more profound response to human experience, especially given all the upheavals and change that marked the 20th Century.
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December 20, 2012 at 3:57 am
5 people like this
Thanks, Manjari, for your interest. There's a fuller version of the text now on my blog. I posted here too soon! ...thoughts kept coming to my head. :)
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2012/12/20/buddhism-and-modernity/
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2012/12/20/buddhism-and-modernity/
December 20, 2012 at 4:45 am
A rare article on the realities of Buddhism in much of Asia, on the ground, as it is often lived. Of course, though, typical of the New York Times, one might add... This is the Buddhism I witnessed, at times, in Japan, thirty years ago.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/19/world/asia/thai-buddhist-monks-struggle-to-stay-relevant.html
December 19, 2012 at 8:11 am
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/19/world/asia/thai-buddhist-monks-struggle-to-stay-relevant.html
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Thai Buddhist Monks Struggle to Stay Relevant |
The country’s rapid economic rise has altered the role of the local Buddhist monk, once a moral authority, now someone whose job is often limited to presiding over ceremonies.
December 19, 2012 at 8:11 am
...I've written about it, repeatedly, throughout my books.
December 19, 2012 at 4:22 pm
Reading at the end of my Epic Poetry Workshop. Excerpt from BOOK I, published in the *di-verse-city* 2012 Anthology for the Austin International Poetry Festival, 20th Anniversary Celebration Edition. Copyright (c) 2012 Frederick Glaysher.
https://youtu.be/qUiEMr9uJFM
December 19, 2012 at 5:13 am
https://youtu.be/qUiEMr9uJFM
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Poetry Reading, Frederick Glaysher, Epic Poetry, AIPF |
Frederick Glaysher reading from the eighth draft of his epic poem The Parliament of Poets, from the very beginning of BOOK I, at the Austin International Poe...
December 19, 2012 at 5:13 am
1 person likes this
Norm Stamper34-year veteran police officer who retired as Seattle's chief of police in 2000 >
"The Second Amendment -- elevated to a state of holiness, its problematic comma debated for decades and "resolved," for the moment, by the Supreme Court -- is a relic. It made sense when it was written. It does not make sense now."
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/norm-stamper/repealing-the-second-amen_b_2319249.html
December 18, 2012 at 6:41 pm
"The Second Amendment -- elevated to a state of holiness, its problematic comma debated for decades and "resolved," for the moment, by the Supreme Court -- is a relic. It made sense when it was written. It does not make sense now."
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/norm-stamper/repealing-the-second-amen_b_2319249.html
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Repealing the Second Amendment Would Make Us 'Better Than This' |
The Second Amendment -- elevated to a state of holiness, its problematic comma debated for decades and "resolved," for the moment, by the Supreme Court -- is a relic. It made sense when it was written. It does not make sense now.
December 18, 2012 at 6:41 pm
1 person likes this
"Only the U.S. has a political class, on the take from gun manufacturers owned by Wall Street, that stands by while the nation's children are slaughtered.... In the name of the children, let us wake from the trap of ancient history and the gun-manufacturers."
December 18, 2012 at 5:49 pm
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Overcoming Delusions About the Second Amendment |
Overcoming Delusions About the Second Amendment - The Huffington Post
December 18, 2012 at 5:49 pm
2 people like this
Awesome... > "The spirituality of space exploration as self-exploration."
December 18, 2012 at 5:38 pm
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The Overview Effect and the Psychology of Cosmic Awe |
The spirituality of space exploration as self-exploration.
December 18, 2012 at 5:38 pm
Inevitably, I am the thoroughly immersed and partial author of my child...
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2012/12/17/post-gutenberg-book-launch/
December 18, 2012 at 8:06 am
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2012/12/17/post-gutenberg-book-launch/
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Post-Gutenberg Book Launch |
Initially, after such a long time of study and writing, I think the Post-Gutenberg launch of The Parliament of Poets is off to a good start.
December 18, 2012 at 8:06 am
While Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and so many other American writers, had to go east, back to the old world, if you will, to find and receive a hearing, I have always felt and experienced an attraction to Asia, Japan, China, and India, on many levels of my being. That interest is reflected in my epic. Often I have thought that perhaps for me, if anything like recognition ever finds me, maybe it has to come first somehow from Asia, given what literature and the academy have so often become in the US and Western world.
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2012/12/17/post-gutenberg-book-launch/
December 18, 2012 at 7:05 am
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2012/12/17/post-gutenberg-book-launch/
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Post-Gutenberg Book Launch |
Initially, after such a long time of study and writing, I think the Post-Gutenberg launch of The Parliament of Poets is off to a good start.
December 18, 2012 at 7:05 am
2 people like this
“The NRA is the enabler of death–paranoid, delusional and as venomous as a scorpion. With the weak-kneed acquiescence of our politicians, the National Rifle Association has turned the Second Amendment of the Constitution into
a cruel and deadly hoax." --Bill Moyers
Please Like and Share if you agree.
December 17, 2012 at 4:56 pm
a cruel and deadly hoax." --Bill Moyers
Please Like and Share if you agree.
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Timeline Photos |
December 17, 2012 at 4:56 pm
4 people like this
After a 1996 Mass Shooting, Australia Enacted Strict Gun Laws. It Hasn't Had a Similar Massacre Since.
SHARE if you support Gun Control Now!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/08/02/did-gun-control-work-in-australia/
https://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=ask_this.view&askthisid=491
Thanks to Alex Freid
December 17, 2012 at 4:54 pm
SHARE if you support Gun Control Now!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/08/02/did-gun-control-work-in-australia/
https://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=ask_this.view&askthisid=491
Thanks to Alex Freid
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Timeline Photos |
December 17, 2012 at 4:54 pm
3 people like this
"Like the ancient Hellenistic period around the Mediterranean lake, both the East and the West, around the globe, stand in need of, and in dialectical struggle for, a whole new vision of human existence. In the cave of our dark nihilism, we
can, as human beings, endowed with the capacity, grope our way forward to the altar and find again that sweet bliss, so well etched on the faces of the statues of Dunhuang, that calms, sustains, and renews the stormy individual soul, cut loose from positive values and traditions, and bring back to contemporary society a vision of life worthy of the modern, international, global civilization we are now all struggling to create."
Book Giveaway > Six Hardcover Review Copies. Much of the background study for my epic poem, The Parliament of Poets, especially essays on Japanese, Chinese, and South Asia Indian literature, and "Epopee" with which it ends.
Shipped free to any USA postal address. Message me your request for one with your address through Facebook, or ask me for my email address, or send me yours, if you'd prefer handling it outside Facebook. No quid pro quo. Whether you choose to review it or not is up to you.
https://fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
December 17, 2012 at 12:19 pm
can, as human beings, endowed with the capacity, grope our way forward to the altar and find again that sweet bliss, so well etched on the faces of the statues of Dunhuang, that calms, sustains, and renews the stormy individual soul, cut loose from positive values and traditions, and bring back to contemporary society a vision of life worthy of the modern, international, global civilization we are now all struggling to create."
Book Giveaway > Six Hardcover Review Copies. Much of the background study for my epic poem, The Parliament of Poets, especially essays on Japanese, Chinese, and South Asia Indian literature, and "Epopee" with which it ends.
Shipped free to any USA postal address. Message me your request for one with your address through Facebook, or ask me for my email address, or send me yours, if you'd prefer handling it outside Facebook. No quid pro quo. Whether you choose to review it or not is up to you.
https://fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
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The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture, Frederick Glaysher |
Book Giveaway > Six Hardcover Review Copies. Shipped free to any USA postal address.
December 17, 2012 at 12:19 pm
2 people like this
"In the West, I believe we too stand in need of a broader future, a new vision. Our old visions of human existence, of the human spirit, are as exhausted as those of the East. Equally bankrupt are the modern ersatzes on which we have wasted so much time, energy, and even, in our own way, human lives."
From "The Dialectic of Chinese Literature" in The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture.
Book Giveaway > Six Hardcover Review Copies. Shipped free to any USA postal address. Much of the background study for my epic poem, The Parliament of Poets, especially essays on Japanese, Chinese, and South Asia Indian literature, and "Epopee" with which it ends.
Message me your request for one with your address through Facebook, or ask me for my email address, or send me yours, if you'd prefer handling it outside Facebook. No quid pro quo. Whether you choose to review it or not is up to you.
https://fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
December 17, 2012 at 12:01 pm
From "The Dialectic of Chinese Literature" in The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture.
Book Giveaway > Six Hardcover Review Copies. Shipped free to any USA postal address. Much of the background study for my epic poem, The Parliament of Poets, especially essays on Japanese, Chinese, and South Asia Indian literature, and "Epopee" with which it ends.
Message me your request for one with your address through Facebook, or ask me for my email address, or send me yours, if you'd prefer handling it outside Facebook. No quid pro quo. Whether you choose to review it or not is up to you.
https://fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
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The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture, Frederick Glaysher |
The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture. Book Giveaway > Six Hardcover Review Copies. Shipped free to any USA postal address.
December 17, 2012 at 12:01 pm
1 person likes this
"The Enlightenment brought much that is good into the modern world, much that we need not live without, as we move beyond modernism, but also much that has led to fragmentation, anomie, extreme individualism, and social violence and chaos."
FROM "Robert Hayden in the Morning Time" in The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture.
Book Giveaway > Six Hardcover Review Copies of the book that forms the background study for my epic poem, The Parliament of Poets, especially essays on Japanese, Chinese, and South Asia Indian literature, and "Epopee" with which it ends.
Shipped free to any USA postal address. Message me your request for one with your address through Facebook, or ask me for my email address, or send me yours, if you'd prefer handling it outside Facebook. No quid pro quo. Whether you choose to review it or not is up to you.
https://fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
December 17, 2012 at 9:21 am
FROM "Robert Hayden in the Morning Time" in The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture.
Book Giveaway > Six Hardcover Review Copies of the book that forms the background study for my epic poem, The Parliament of Poets, especially essays on Japanese, Chinese, and South Asia Indian literature, and "Epopee" with which it ends.
Shipped free to any USA postal address. Message me your request for one with your address through Facebook, or ask me for my email address, or send me yours, if you'd prefer handling it outside Facebook. No quid pro quo. Whether you choose to review it or not is up to you.
https://fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
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The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture, Frederick Glaysher |
The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture. Frederick Glaysher
December 17, 2012 at 9:21 am
A true Canadian treasure. Dr. David Suzuki is a tireless activist whose work should be better known around the world.
subscribe us@Facts Gallery
.
December 17, 2012 at 8:21 am
subscribe us@Facts Gallery
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Timeline Photos |
December 17, 2012 at 8:21 am
1 person likes this
While Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and so many other American writers, had to go east, back to the old world, if you will, to find and receive a hearing, I have always felt and experienced an attraction to Asia, Japan, China, and India, on many levels of my being. That interest is reflected in my epic. Often I have thought that perhaps for me, if anything like recognition ever finds me, maybe it has to come first somehow from Asia, given what literature and the academy have so often become in the US and Western world.
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2012/12/17/post-gutenberg-book-launch/
December 17, 2012 at 5:45 am
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2012/12/17/post-gutenberg-book-launch/
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Post-Gutenberg Book Launch |
Initially, after such a long time of study and writing, I think the Post-Gutenberg launch of The Parliament of Poets is off to a good start.
December 17, 2012 at 5:45 am
1 person likes this
"Without a vision of transcendence to inspire and call forth from our people the best that is in them, they live for frivolity, hedonism, and decadence, obsessed with the self and materialism. Instead of gloating at the seeming victory of capitalism over communism, we should take note of the failure of capitalism itself to create and preserve a civilization worthy of human habitation. Every bit as much of a modern ersatz as communism, unrestrained capitalism both dehumanizes the spirit and devalues the moral and the transcendent, as thoroughly and cynically as the efforts of any politburo."
Book Giveaway > I have Six Free Hardcover Review Copies of the book that forms the background study for my epic poem, The Parliament of Poets, especially essays on Japanese, Chinese, and South Asia Indian literature, and "Epopee" with which it ends.
Shipped free to any USA postal address. Message me your request with your address through Facebook, or ask me for my email address, or send me yours, if you'd prefer handling it outside Facebook. No quid pro quo. Whether you choose to review it or not is up to you.
https://fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
December 17, 2012 at 4:31 am
Book Giveaway > I have Six Free Hardcover Review Copies of the book that forms the background study for my epic poem, The Parliament of Poets, especially essays on Japanese, Chinese, and South Asia Indian literature, and "Epopee" with which it ends.
Shipped free to any USA postal address. Message me your request with your address through Facebook, or ask me for my email address, or send me yours, if you'd prefer handling it outside Facebook. No quid pro quo. Whether you choose to review it or not is up to you.
https://fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
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The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture, Frederick Glaysher |
The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture. Frederick Glaysher
December 17, 2012 at 4:31 am
2 people like this
"Every year there are 30,000 gun deaths and 300,000 gun-related assaults in the U.S.," he said. "Firearm violence may cost our country as much as $100 billion a year. Toys are regulated with greater care and safety concerns than guns ... we have become so gun loving, so blasé about home-grown violence that in my lifetime alone, far more Americans have been casualties of domestic gunfire than have died in all our wars combined."
December 16, 2012 at 4:36 pm
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WATCH: Bill Moyers' Blistering Words About The NRA |
PBS' Bill Moyers had blistering words for the National Rifle Association in the wake of the deadly shootings in Colorado. Moyers placed partial blame for the murders in the NRA's lap in a web video posted over the weekend, calling it "the best friend a killer's instinct ever had."
December 16, 2012 at 4:36 pm
"The Left has thoroughly proven itself incapable of fulfilling its early promises, while the Right dreams, in its retrograde way, of the past, ossified in the present. The many dispirited millions condemned to our violent ghettoes, reservations, jails, and, indeed, society are the appalling evidence of our own failure of vision." FROM The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture.
Book Giveaway > I have Six Free Hardcover Review Copies of the book that forms the background study for my epic poem, The Parliament of Poets, especially essays on Japanese, Chinese, and South Asia Indian literature, and "Epopee" with which it ends.
Shipped free to any USA postal address. Message me your request with your address through Facebook, or ask me for my email address, or send me yours, if you'd prefer handling it outside Facebook. No quid pro quo. Whether you choose to review it or not is up to you.
https://fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
December 16, 2012 at 3:12 pm
Book Giveaway > I have Six Free Hardcover Review Copies of the book that forms the background study for my epic poem, The Parliament of Poets, especially essays on Japanese, Chinese, and South Asia Indian literature, and "Epopee" with which it ends.
Shipped free to any USA postal address. Message me your request with your address through Facebook, or ask me for my email address, or send me yours, if you'd prefer handling it outside Facebook. No quid pro quo. Whether you choose to review it or not is up to you.
https://fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
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The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture, Frederick Glaysher |
The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture. Frederick Glaysher
December 16, 2012 at 3:12 pm
2 people like this
Fdrerick I would love to review this book.I have reviewed many books and this book pertains to my area of interest.
December 17, 2012 at 1:23 am
I'd love to have you review it. The book is available in India at Flipkart and other online booksellers:
https://www.flipkart.com/grove-eumenides-0967042186/p/itmdyf3gtqhmz8h2?pid=9780967042183&ref=098e9319-ab11-4e47-b1e9-2f8cf485d25d&srno=s_7&otracker=from-search&query=glaysher
Or online, through Amazon and other ebook sellers, depending on what you prefer using. Links to them are on my homepage at https://fglaysher.com/
https://www.flipkart.com/grove-eumenides-0967042186/p/itmdyf3gtqhmz8h2?pid=9780967042183&ref=098e9319-ab11-4e47-b1e9-2f8cf485d25d&srno=s_7&otracker=from-search&query=glaysher
Or online, through Amazon and other ebook sellers, depending on what you prefer using. Links to them are on my homepage at https://fglaysher.com/
December 17, 2012 at 4:23 am
I would define "Post-Gutenberg" as those digital changes in the techne of the culture and publishing that open up the relationship between writers and readers to a wider level than ever before experienced in history, enabling a much more direct communication, without or with fewer interfering middlemen and encumbrances, and frequently permitting dialogue to flow in both directions.
December 16, 2012 at 9:49 am
5 people like this
this sounds great, therefore There will be a dynamic and interesting interaction between the two directions. At times teacher correct topic about a writer depending on their own understandings of the book which is not compulsory what the writer means.
December 16, 2012 at 10:32 am
Mmm, you raise a serious issue. Ideally. I would say yes and no... sometimes the student can be right, the teacher has the opportunity to learn; others, the student has misread or understand the text... Often the student can think he or she is always right, but few teachers would agree categorically with that! :)
December 16, 2012 at 10:58 am
To come back to the point you are on the verge of experiencing... Had the teachers and students have the same sources, there would be less misreading and misunderstanding about the book. and when I mention sources i mean directly from the authors,.. not only through written words but probably through interviews...commentaries about they works :D
December 16, 2012 at 11:24 am
In my experience as a former educator, two students can read the same book and misunderstand it in different ways... right and wrong, with endless shades of gray. The same is true of any other two people. If truth exists and we're not to descend into relativism, there must be a correct answer, for we can conceive of such, while allowing latitude for individual variation, interpretation. Not all views or communication is fruitful.
December 16, 2012 at 11:30 am
so Please tell me Mr. Frederick Glaysher how can students profit from this relationship you are willing to experience ?!
December 16, 2012 at 11:38 am
I would say it's always a struggle in this world... to learn. Part of what is always required of us is a pure and seeking heart, a thirst for knowledge, a willingness to seek "even unto China," a strange and bizarre place, but only such an open and yearning soul can reach the Simorgh... no honest teacher would dare claim he will be among the thirty birds to arrive... so the search deepens, not lessens, in the Post-Gutenberg Age.
December 16, 2012 at 11:49 am
...where Pir and student can become one on a common journey for knowledge and understanding.
December 16, 2012 at 11:51 am
thanks, yes i confess, it's clearer than before. Seemingly you understand how some seekers are mistaken by determining a frame work in a given and limited space. And yes I confess again that very few people have the '' thirst of knowledge''. and a large figure of those who have it in themselves do not reach the extrem limit. And as a result, the world seems to be turning around the same knowledge for centuries. And I am wondering ho your '' coming experience'' can make the journey easy and fruitful for both students and teachers.
December 16, 2012 at 12:06 pm
#how your ''... *
December 16, 2012 at 12:07 pm
I confess I think of myself as a poet and only the language of metaphor is fit for real communication, can possibly convey anything of real worth and value. Everything else is vanity... so I've written an epic poem, a flight to the Moon, among the Guides of the Persona are Rumi and Attar, and others among all the great religious traditions. It seems to be the nature of existence that the world always struggles to learn the experience that alone is worth the effort. The best that sages of all traditions have ever claimed is the duty of trying to suggest it for others. A student cannot be forced but must be attracted, as by honey... so again, I'm back to poetry.
December 16, 2012 at 12:27 pm
Initially, after such a long time of study and writing, I think the Post-Gutenberg launch of The Parliament of Poets is off to a good start. There has been a considerable amount of interest in the book...
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2012/12/16/now-an-epub-on-kobo-and-google-play-the-parliament-of-poets/
December 16, 2012 at 7:42 am
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2012/12/16/now-an-epub-on-kobo-and-google-play-the-parliament-of-poets/
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Now an ePub on Kobo and Google Play, The Parliament of Poets |
Now an ePub on Kobo and Google Play, The Parliament of Poets. Initially, after such a long time of study and writing, I think the Post-Gutenberg launch of The Parliament of Poets is off to a good start. I'm grateful, too, that there has been some interest among South Asian Indian readers and journal...
December 16, 2012 at 7:42 am
I would define "Post-Gutenberg" as those digital changes in the techne of the culture and publishing that open up the relationship between writers and readers to a wider level than ever before experienced in history, enabling a much more direct communication, without or with fewer interfering middlemen and encumbrances, and frequently permitting dialogue to flow in both directions.
December 16, 2012 at 8:02 am
Thank you for asking and inspiring me to think about and actually put it into words... and here we are doing it, how absolutely Post-Gutenberg!
December 16, 2012 at 8:04 am
Now here's a shock, given the timing... I just received an emailed invoice from Ingram's Lightning Source in the USA, while we've been chatting here, for sending out a review copy of my epic poem, printed in Scoresby, Victoria, to an Australian journal!!! Honestly, I'm not kidding or making this up! Incredible, to me...
December 16, 2012 at 8:10 am
Mmm, I'm the superstitious type... don't want to jink it. I promise you'll be the first to know if it actually reviews it. I believe I did email pdf advance review copies to all or most of those. You know there's always a low review rate, so, I tell myself, and whatever... I hope somebody will review it, down under, the canto with the Aborigine Japara is very important to me. I studied long and hard for it, and I hope it honors the Aborigine experience, tried to, at least.
https://www.google.com/search?q=lightning+source+Scoresby%2C+Victoria%2C+Australi&rlz=1C1TSNP_enUS463US463&oq=lightning+source+Scoresby%2C+Victoria%2C+Australi&aqs=chrome.0.57.4627&sugexp=chrome,mod=0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
https://www.google.com/search?q=lightning+source+Scoresby%2C+Victoria%2C+Australi&rlz=1C1TSNP_enUS463US463&oq=lightning+source+Scoresby%2C+Victoria%2C+Australi&aqs=chrome.0.57.4627&sugexp=chrome,mod=0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
December 16, 2012 at 8:17 am
Culture has become so extremely fragmented. Every journal has its precious theory and conceptions, historical baggage from the past that blinds it to anything really new, the basics of challenge and revolt, I would argue... so who knows? But we're in a very different moment, our problems so endemic and global...
December 16, 2012 at 8:20 am
I lived and taught on an American Indian reservation for a couple of years, and realize there are major differences, obviously, but when I read or watch something about the Aboriginies, I know there are many shared dynamics... I had to be honest to my experience... and what I felt *compelled* to write about, confront. Perhaps an outsider stands a better chance of having a perspective that suggests, taking all sides in a friendly way by the arm, let us look at it all like this....
December 16, 2012 at 8:24 am
...our numeric calculation comes out about the same, yet, none of this intended for you, one hopes an occasional human being survives somewhere with a living backbone and guts.
December 16, 2012 at 8:26 am
Uh, I suppose I feel drawn to all that is human, that speaks to who and what we have become in our time, throughout time, really, is the scope of my epic...
December 16, 2012 at 8:28 am
...that I strive for.
December 16, 2012 at 8:28 am
I'm not familiar with whatever book you're referring to, though I suppose you mean Broome in the north. I have heard and understand what you're saying about appropriation... My experience goes very deep into African-American literature, in this regard, that's more than I can go into in this context, but I am one long familiar with such arguments. I am human and entitled thereby, compelled, to engage with all that is human... is my answer, the answer of a poet, one might call it, but, true, nonetheless.
December 16, 2012 at 8:38 am
Modernity is quite a trip, isn't it?
December 16, 2012 at 8:41 am
There's a way forward... read it in context, in my epic... global now.
December 16, 2012 at 8:42 am
Printed in Scoresby.
https://www.angusrobertson.com.au/book/parliament-of-poets-an-epic-poem/37353686/
https://www.angusrobertson.com.au/book/parliament-of-poets-an-epic-poem/37353686/
December 16, 2012 at 8:44 am
I respect your conscience and opinion. I have met with the like in many contexts. I can only say I don't share such thinking. I believe it's ultimately racist. Cultures cannot be boxed in. Every attempt to do so, to preserve a people, in human history, has failed as a result of its own flawed conception of the dynamics between the traditional and the modern. There's another way, lived life, as and what it has become... but that's just my opinion. Obviously, Australians and Aborigines are free to find their own way through all of this, and need to, choose to...
December 16, 2012 at 8:54 am
When I say "racist" I mean on both sides... white and Aboriginal, as in other cultures. That thinking and those dynamics belong to the past, life as it is lived on the ground, around the world, has moved on... many of our problems are because a discrepancy has grown between our conceptions and the way we actually live. I argue a wider frame of reference is what we need... as from the moon.
December 16, 2012 at 9:00 am
Best wishes...
December 16, 2012 at 9:02 am
"Congo has become a never-ending nightmare, one of the bloodiest conflicts since World War II, with more than five million dead... hundreds of thousands of women have been systematically assaulted in recent years... THE government’s response has been a shrug."
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/sunday-review/congos-never-ending-war.html
December 16, 2012 at 4:27 am
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/sunday-review/congos-never-ending-war.html
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Congo’s Never-Ending War |
The conflict in Congo is one of the bloodiest since World War II, and each time I come back, I meet a new set of thoroughly traumatized people.
December 16, 2012 at 4:27 am
1 person likes this
A never-mentioned war.... :(((
December 16, 2012 at 6:36 am
Too rarely... and then often it's only as though nothing can be done.
December 16, 2012 at 6:37 am
https://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/27/congo-british-aid-failure
December 16, 2012 at 6:45 am
Thank you, Ana, for another powerful article... what a mess we human beings have made.
December 16, 2012 at 7:39 am
ALL over the world, not only in Congo ....
December 16, 2012 at 7:49 am
December 15, 2012 at 2:02 pm
Hello Albany poets!
At the Albany Word Fest, April 21, 2012, I read a selection from my epic poem, The Parliament of Poets, at the Albany Public Library:
"I found myself sitting in my study, dozing
over a book, Cervantes’ Don Quixote,
surrounded by volumes of world classics...."
It’s on Youtube for anyone interested!
https://youtu.be/CJ_xbSXbN7k
I also just want to let all the Albany poets know my epic is finished and just published in hardcover, Kindle, and epub:
Amazon, Hardcover & Kindle:
https://www.amazon.com/Parliament-Poets-Epic-Poem/dp/098267788X/ref=la_B001H6P3K8
Hardcover & Nook ePub:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-parliament-of-poets-frederick-glaysher/1112448232?ean=9780982677889
Kobo,
https://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/The-Parliament-of-Poets/book-o0H_nhEHWkqOyyVMFD1LWg/page1.html
LibraryThing Review:
“A wonderful book. As a fan of poetry and especially epic poetry I found this book to be up to the standards set by Homer. I met some new poets that I have looked up and added to my collection. This book also is very thought provoking as it brings into question what humanity is doing to the Earth and each other. I highly recommend it.” ( )
| wtshehan | Oct 25, 2012
The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem, by Frederick Glaysher, takes place partly on the moon, at the Apollo 11 landing site, the Sea of Tranquility.
Apollo, the Greek god of poetry, calls all the poets of the nations, ancient and modern, East and West, to assemble on the moon to consult on the meaning of modernity. The Parliament of Poets sends the Persona on a Journey to the seven continents to learn from all of the spiritual and wisdom traditions of humankind. On Earth and on the moon, the poets teach him a new global, universal vision of life.
December 15, 2012 at 1:35 pm
At the Albany Word Fest, April 21, 2012, I read a selection from my epic poem, The Parliament of Poets, at the Albany Public Library:
"I found myself sitting in my study, dozing
over a book, Cervantes’ Don Quixote,
surrounded by volumes of world classics...."
It’s on Youtube for anyone interested!
https://youtu.be/CJ_xbSXbN7k
I also just want to let all the Albany poets know my epic is finished and just published in hardcover, Kindle, and epub:
Amazon, Hardcover & Kindle:
https://www.amazon.com/Parliament-Poets-Epic-Poem/dp/098267788X/ref=la_B001H6P3K8
Hardcover & Nook ePub:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-parliament-of-poets-frederick-glaysher/1112448232?ean=9780982677889
Kobo,
https://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/The-Parliament-of-Poets/book-o0H_nhEHWkqOyyVMFD1LWg/page1.html
LibraryThing Review:
“A wonderful book. As a fan of poetry and especially epic poetry I found this book to be up to the standards set by Homer. I met some new poets that I have looked up and added to my collection. This book also is very thought provoking as it brings into question what humanity is doing to the Earth and each other. I highly recommend it.” ( )
| wtshehan | Oct 25, 2012
The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem, by Frederick Glaysher, takes place partly on the moon, at the Apollo 11 landing site, the Sea of Tranquility.
Apollo, the Greek god of poetry, calls all the poets of the nations, ancient and modern, East and West, to assemble on the moon to consult on the meaning of modernity. The Parliament of Poets sends the Persona on a Journey to the seven continents to learn from all of the spiritual and wisdom traditions of humankind. On Earth and on the moon, the poets teach him a new global, universal vision of life.
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Poetry Reading, Frederick Glaysher, Albany Word Fest, April 21, 2012.wmv |
Frederick Glaysher reading from the fifth draft of his epic poem The Parliament of Poets at the Albany Word Fest, Saturday, April 21, 2012, in Albany, New Yo...
December 15, 2012 at 1:35 pm
Local Business
December 15, 2012 at 1:24 pm
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Albany Poets |
December 15, 2012 at 1:24 pm
Google Play > The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem.
Apollo calls all the poets of the nations, ancient and modern, East and West, to assemble on the moon to consult on the meaning of modernity.
https://play.google.com/store/books/author?id=Frederick+Glaysher
December 15, 2012 at 7:03 am
Apollo calls all the poets of the nations, ancient and modern, East and West, to assemble on the moon to consult on the meaning of modernity.
https://play.google.com/store/books/author?id=Frederick+Glaysher
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Frederick Glaysher - Books on Google Play |
Shop Google Play on the web. Purchase and enjoy instantly on your Android phone or tablet without the hassle of syncing.
December 15, 2012 at 7:03 am
Google Play > The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem.
Apollo calls all the poets of the nations, ancient and modern, East and West, to assemble on the moon to consult on the meaning of modernity.
https://play.google.com/store/books/author?id=Frederick+Glaysher
December 14, 2012 at 3:46 am
Apollo calls all the poets of the nations, ancient and modern, East and West, to assemble on the moon to consult on the meaning of modernity.
https://play.google.com/store/books/author?id=Frederick+Glaysher
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Frederick Glaysher - Books on Google Play |
Shop Google Play on the web. Purchase and enjoy instantly on your Android phone or tablet without the hassle of syncing.
December 14, 2012 at 3:46 am
https://www.pfaw.org/rww-in-focus/alec-the-voice-of-corporate-special-interests-state-legislatures
December 13, 2012 at 4:11 pm
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ALEC: The Voice of Corporate Special Interests In State Legislatures | People For the American Way |
ALEC: The Voice of Corporate Special Interests In State Legislatures Table of Contents Introduction Who Founded and Funds ALEC? Who’s Behind ALEC? How Does ALEC Work? What Does ALEC Lobby For?
December 13, 2012 at 4:11 pm
3 people like this
"ALEC represents an alarming risk to the credibility of the political process and threatens to greatly diminish the confidence and influence ordinary people have in government."
December 13, 2012 at 4:16 pm
Moyers & Company presents “United States of ALEC,” a report on the most influential corporate-funded political force most of America has never heard of — ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. A national consortium of state politicians and powerful corporations, ALEC presents itself as a “nonpartisan public-private partnership”. But behind that mantra lies a vast network of corporate lobbying and political action aimed to increase corporate profits at public expense without public knowledge.
https://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-united-states-of-alec/
December 13, 2012 at 12:40 pm
https://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-united-states-of-alec/
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Full Show: United States of ALEC | Moyers & Company | BillMoyers.com |
How corporations and state legislators are colluding to write laws and remake America, one statehouse at a time.
December 13, 2012 at 12:40 pm
TED presentation by Nick Hanhauer deflates the 'job creators' myth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBx2Y5HhplI
December 13, 2012 at 12:20 pm
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Nick Hanauer |
Here is the much-talked-about TED talk on inequality given by Nick Hanauer. We (TED) are posting it here to promote public discussion on an important issue. ...
December 13, 2012 at 12:20 pm
The disappearance of epic poetry and the rise of modern times go hand in hand. To look back over the last three hundred years is to observe the steady decline of the epic spirit and the ever-increasing substitution of subjective, personal modes of literary composition.
https://www.amazon.com/lm/R3KO37LMDGKIMF
December 13, 2012 at 4:44 am
https://www.amazon.com/lm/R3KO37LMDGKIMF
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Epic Poetry, New on Amazon |
I'm an epic poet, poet-critic, and the author or editor of several books. Amazon Author's Page at https://www.amazon.com/Frederick-Glaysher/e/B001H6P3K8 The disappearance of epic poetry and the rise of modern times go hand in hand. To look back ove
December 13, 2012 at 4:44 am
2 people like this
From my collection of essays, The Grove of the Eumenides, which forms the background study for my epic poem, The Parliament of Poets, especially the essays on Japanese, Chinese, and South Asia Indian literature and the forty-page "Epopee" with which the book ends. I'm giving away Seven Free Hardcover Review Copies of The Grove of the Eumenides... FB Message me if you'd like one!
December 13, 2012 at 5:04 am
Findland > The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem.
"Wainamoinen said, 'A sacred grove of birch,
chosen by the Parliament of the moon.
I take the golden moonlight to Kavela,'
his white hair and beard furling in the breeze,
staff firmly grasped and planted on the ground.
'I must go quickly to the people of Suomi,
who need my coming and watch for me at dawn...'"
https://www.bookplus.fi/kirjat/glaysher,_frederick/
December 13, 2012 at 4:03 am
"Wainamoinen said, 'A sacred grove of birch,
chosen by the Parliament of the moon.
I take the golden moonlight to Kavela,'
his white hair and beard furling in the breeze,
staff firmly grasped and planted on the ground.
'I must go quickly to the people of Suomi,
who need my coming and watch for me at dawn...'"
https://www.bookplus.fi/kirjat/glaysher,_frederick/
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frederick glaysher - Bookplus kirjakauppa |
Tilaa uutiskirjeemme niin pääset osalliseksi kampanjatarjouksista, uutuuksista, alennuskoodeista ja saat etusijan alennusmyynteihin.
December 13, 2012 at 4:03 am
Ian Bourgeot
Leevi Lehto
Esa Mäkijärvi
Leevi Lehto
Esa Mäkijärvi
December 13, 2012 at 4:11 am
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Timeline Photos |
December 13, 2012 at 3:49 am
8 people like this
"If building 4 collapses..." ...that will mean the end of much of Japan." The former Japanese ambassador to Switzerland and others have warned of the endangerment and end of much of the entire northern hemisphere, all jokes aside...
https://www.ustream.tv/recorded/27136614
https://www.ustream.tv/recorded/27136614
December 13, 2012 at 7:18 am
Taken off line. See https://www.facebook.com/pages/Dr-Helen-Caldicott/102772801940
December 13, 2012 at 7:20 am
"There is no boundary between the music and myself. The thin layer that separated me from it has dissolved. Now, I am the music..."
~ Ravi Shankar ~
April 7, 1920 – December 11, 2012
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xB_X9BOAOU
December 12, 2012 at 5:40 pm
~ Ravi Shankar ~
April 7, 1920 – December 11, 2012
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xB_X9BOAOU
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The Way of Music |
December 12, 2012 at 5:40 pm
11 people like this
The opening sentences from my essay "Epopee":
"The disappearance of epic poetry and the rise of modern times go hand in hand. To look back over the last three hundred years is to observe the steady decline of the epic spirit and the ever-increasing substitution of subjective, personal modes of literary composition...."
See my wall if interested in receiving a free review copy of the books it's from, The Grove of the Eumenides.
"The disappearance of epic poetry and the rise of modern times go hand in hand. To look back over the last three hundred years is to observe the steady decline of the epic spirit and the ever-increasing substitution of subjective, personal modes of literary composition...."
See my wall if interested in receiving a free review copy of the books it's from, The Grove of the Eumenides.
December 12, 2012 at 12:31 pm
5 people like this
I feel I have a feelilng same to this view to some extenct. May be that is the reason I feel more motivated to read classics than the modern works. Works by Kalidasa and also Mahabharatam is my favorit. Also I read Gita as more of a literatur than scripture.
December 12, 2012 at 12:55 pm
Yes, the old masters are really more objective, telling a story outside their own personal lives. Modernity has become more and more obsessed with the personal. There's a classic statement by Goethe to this affect that I was struck by as a very young poet:
"All eras in a stage of decline and dissolution are subjective; on the other hand, all progressive eras have an objective tendency. Our present time is retrograde, for it is subjective: we see this not merely in poetry, but also in painting, and much besides. Every healthy effort, on the contrary, is directed from the inward to the outward world; as you see in all great eras, which were really in a state of progression and all of an objective nature."
"All eras in a stage of decline and dissolution are subjective; on the other hand, all progressive eras have an objective tendency. Our present time is retrograde, for it is subjective: we see this not merely in poetry, but also in painting, and much besides. Every healthy effort, on the contrary, is directed from the inward to the outward world; as you see in all great eras, which were really in a state of progression and all of an objective nature."
December 12, 2012 at 1:05 pm
I'd like to think, in a sense, my epic engages in a literary way with more objective material.
December 12, 2012 at 1:08 pm
Are you familiar with Nirad C. Chaudhuri? I can't remember at the moment whether he's Indian or from Bangladesh, but has touches on some similar issues too, cultural change, if not decline, and so forth.
December 12, 2012 at 1:40 pm
I was just thinking of him now. Currently reading his Thy Hand Great Anarch. He was born in undevided India in the part of the country which later on went first to Pakistan (east) on 1947 and then formed Bangladesh (1971). But he had come back (to calcutta now in India) long back around 1927 or something for the last time. He at that time had been involved in a magazine called Saturday Letters where they were trying to say that the new literary movements which were in fashion in bengal from that time was not true to the tradition. He himself was very much aggreable with change but he could see the weakness of the new movements because the flag bearers of the new movements were not having enough education to have a proper understanding of the classics. He has explained in length in his different writings how the new change can be really use full for a reliable mode of expression. It has to be through the proper understanding of the traditions and classics. I will find out some of his remarks if I get a time and post them later. The saturday letter was later deserted by him when he understood that it was becoming more of a personal imbroglio than objective study. And also he felt that it was giving more popularity to the new comers than they actually deserved.
December 12, 2012 at 1:47 pm
I've actually read large sections of Thy Hand Great Anarch and have a copy of his Three Horsemen and selections from a few other books. So don't feel you have to go to too much trouble for me, though I'm open and interested in discussing anything about him. I think I came upon him while studying to write my essay on Tagore, and then quoted something from him in an essay I started writing last spring, but had to put aside to finish my epic. I'm hoping to get back to the essay early next year. I've got to recover for a few weeks... clear out my head a little, before turning to any other project. Thy Hand Great Anarch has an interesting chapter on Tagore.
December 12, 2012 at 2:00 pm
I'm giving away Eight Free Hardcover Review Copies of The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture. Earthrise Press, 2007. 340 pages.
Much of The Grove of the Eumenides forms the background study for my epic poem The Parliament of Poets, especially the essays on Japanese, Chinese, and South Asia Indian literature and the forty-page essay "Epopee" with which the book ends.
I will mail a Free Copy to anyone with a USA Address who would like it. Free shipping. Message me your request with your address through Facebook, or ask me for my email address, or send me yours, if you'd prefer handling it outside Facebook. No quid pro quo. Whether you choose to review it or not is up to you.
https://fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
December 12, 2012 at 10:43 am
Much of The Grove of the Eumenides forms the background study for my epic poem The Parliament of Poets, especially the essays on Japanese, Chinese, and South Asia Indian literature and the forty-page essay "Epopee" with which the book ends.
I will mail a Free Copy to anyone with a USA Address who would like it. Free shipping. Message me your request with your address through Facebook, or ask me for my email address, or send me yours, if you'd prefer handling it outside Facebook. No quid pro quo. Whether you choose to review it or not is up to you.
https://fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
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The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture, Frederick Glaysher |
The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture. Frederick Glaysher. ....a global vision beyond the prevailing postmodern conceptions of life and literature that have become firmly entrenched in contemporary world culture.
December 12, 2012 at 10:43 am
The opening sentences from "Epopee":
"The disappearance of epic poetry and the rise of modern times go hand in hand. To look back over the last three hundred years is to observe the steady decline of the epic spirit and the ever-increasing substitution of subjective, personal modes of literary composition...."
"The disappearance of epic poetry and the rise of modern times go hand in hand. To look back over the last three hundred years is to observe the steady decline of the epic spirit and the ever-increasing substitution of subjective, personal modes of literary composition...."
December 12, 2012 at 12:29 pm
Netherlands > Van Stockum
The Parliament Of Poets: An Epic Poem
https://www.vanstockum.nl/boeken/romans-spanning/poezie/gb/the-parliament-of-poets-glaysher-frederick-9780982677889/
December 12, 2012 at 3:46 am
The Parliament Of Poets: An Epic Poem
https://www.vanstockum.nl/boeken/romans-spanning/poezie/gb/the-parliament-of-poets-glaysher-frederick-9780982677889/
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The Parliament Of Poets |
Auteur: Glaysher, Frederick, Prijs: € 20,60, ISBN/ISBN13: 9780982677889, Categorie: Boek. Apollo, the Greek god of poetry, calls all the poets of the nations, ancient and modern, East and West, to assemble on the moon to consult on the meaning of modernity.
December 12, 2012 at 3:46 am
Australia > Angus & Robertson
The Parliament Of Poets: An Epic Poem
https://www.angusrobertson.com.au/book/parliament-of-poets-an-epic-poem/37353686/
December 11, 2012 at 12:21 pm
The Parliament Of Poets: An Epic Poem
https://www.angusrobertson.com.au/book/parliament-of-poets-an-epic-poem/37353686/
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Buy Parliament Of Poets: An Epic Poem Book by Frederick Glaysher (9780982677889) at Angus and Rober |
Buy in Australia The Parliament Of Poets: An Epic Poem by Frederick Glaysher (9780982677889), at Angus and Robertson, with free shipping
December 11, 2012 at 12:21 pm
1 person likes this
Printed in Scoresby, Victoria, near Melbourne.
December 11, 2012 at 12:24 pm
South Africa: Loot Online - loot.co.za
https://www.loot.co.za/product/frederick-glaysher-the-parliament-of-poets/yvcv-2274-g600
December 11, 2012 at 3:54 am
https://www.loot.co.za/product/frederick-glaysher-the-parliament-of-poets/yvcv-2274-g600
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Loot.co.za - Books: The Parliament of Poets - An Epic Poem (Hardcover): Frederick Glaysher | Poetry. |
Books: The Parliament of Poets - An Epic Poem (Hardcover): Frederick Glaysher; Poetry texts & anthologies; Literature: texts; Language & Literature
December 11, 2012 at 3:54 am
"Who is backing nuclear power? General Electric, which controls much of the mainstream media, built the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors, as well as 22 percent of the nuclear power plants in the United States."
https://nuclearfreeplanet.org/blogs/fukushimas-hot-water-now-fallout-in-our-kitchens-.html
December 10, 2012 at 6:04 pm
https://nuclearfreeplanet.org/blogs/fukushimas-hot-water-now-fallout-in-our-kitchens-.html
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Fukushima's Hot Water: Now Fallout in Our Kitchens? |
Information about radioactive fallout from Japan has been in very short supply since the unprecedented triple nuclear meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi on March 11, 2011.
December 10, 2012 at 6:04 pm
2 people like this
Now on Barnes and Noble, Hardcover & Nook ePub, The Parliament of Poets
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2012/12/10/now-on-barnes-and-noble-hardcover-nook-the-parliament-of-poets/
December 10, 2012 at 7:04 am
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2012/12/10/now-on-barnes-and-noble-hardcover-nook-the-parliament-of-poets/
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Barnes and Noble, Hardcover & Nook |
Now on Barnes and Noble, Hardcover & Nook ePub, The Parliament of Poets. Apollo, the Greek god of poetry, calls all the poets of the nations, ancient and modern, East and West, to assemble on the moon to consult on the meaning of modernity.
December 10, 2012 at 7:04 am
3 people like this
Fukushima Disaster: Costs and Consequences
"Reactors #1, #2 and #3 **every day** discharge radioactive gases that emit a billion becquerels of radiation. The uranium cores of reactors 1, 2 and 3, which completely melted down and then melted through the bottom of the steel reactor vessel,[viii] will continue to produce enormous amounts of radiation and heat for many years."
"There are 23 nuclear reactors of the same design as those at Fukushima now operating in the US. US spent fuel pools contain many times more spent fuel than the spent fuel pool at reactor building 4 in Fukushima Daiichi.[xiii] It is past time to shut these reactors down...."
https://nuclearfreeplanet.org/
December 9, 2012 at 1:53 pm
"Reactors #1, #2 and #3 **every day** discharge radioactive gases that emit a billion becquerels of radiation. The uranium cores of reactors 1, 2 and 3, which completely melted down and then melted through the bottom of the steel reactor vessel,[viii] will continue to produce enormous amounts of radiation and heat for many years."
"There are 23 nuclear reactors of the same design as those at Fukushima now operating in the US. US spent fuel pools contain many times more spent fuel than the spent fuel pool at reactor building 4 in Fukushima Daiichi.[xiii] It is past time to shut these reactors down...."
https://nuclearfreeplanet.org/
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Nuclear Free Planet |
SASKATOON — “The only way evil flourishes is for good people to do nothing,” Dr. Helen Caldicott quoted Edmund Burke when speaking to audiences at the Royal University Hospital and Third Avenue United Church, Saskatoon, on Nov. 1st.
December 9, 2012 at 1:53 pm
1 person likes this
Helen Caldicott > "Cancer has become epidemic, she said, and we must shut down the mines for the sake of our children, grandchildren and future generations.... [In Japan] Thirty-five thousand children under the age of 18 have been diagnosed with thyroid tumours. In time, many of these tumours will become malignant."
https://www.helencaldicott.com/2012/12/caldicott-speaks-of-toxic-nuclear-legacy/#more-525
December 9, 2012 at 1:38 pm
https://www.helencaldicott.com/2012/12/caldicott-speaks-of-toxic-nuclear-legacy/#more-525
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Caldicott speaks of toxic nuclear legacy | Helen Caldicott, MD |
Caldicott speaks of toxic nuclear legacy Posted on December 3, 2012 by Helen Caldicott... Virginia Scissons, Prairie Messenger, 14 November 2012
December 9, 2012 at 1:38 pm
2 people like this
Here little is known about how many of the children are diagnosed with thyroid tumours, which will eventually develope into cancers.
>Caldicott said that “nuclear reactors are a very expensive way to boil water.” Also, she explained, it takes a tremendous amount of fossil fuel to run a nuclear reactor.
This is the fact those politicians here have to know at least. Every day 10 billion yen is spent on the oil to generate electricity. Every year 10,000,000 children die from hunger, About 30,000,000 children die before they reach five yeard old. If the money for the expensive way---though less expensive than running the nuke reactors---to produce electricity is spent on foods for starving children, the world would be a little better place. Arnie Gundersen says scientists can think of the way to save the solar energy so that we can use it for electricity even on cloudy and rainy days.
>Caldicott said that “nuclear reactors are a very expensive way to boil water.” Also, she explained, it takes a tremendous amount of fossil fuel to run a nuclear reactor.
This is the fact those politicians here have to know at least. Every day 10 billion yen is spent on the oil to generate electricity. Every year 10,000,000 children die from hunger, About 30,000,000 children die before they reach five yeard old. If the money for the expensive way---though less expensive than running the nuke reactors---to produce electricity is spent on foods for starving children, the world would be a little better place. Arnie Gundersen says scientists can think of the way to save the solar energy so that we can use it for electricity even on cloudy and rainy days.
December 10, 2012 at 9:15 am
Yes, Mariko, all so true. We've made a lot of wrong choices with nuclear energy. It's really scary. And very shocking to hear that few Japanese know how serious it is, especially for the innocent children. What a terrible thing for politicians and the nuclear energy not to be open and honest about... We human beings need to change on this in major ways.
December 10, 2012 at 9:43 am
Lock him up and throw away the key...
December 9, 2012 at 8:57 am
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Kazakhstan's uranium 'stolen' by ex-official |
The recently imprisoned former head of Kazakhstan's state nuclear power agency stole the majority of the Central Asian nation's uranium deposits, security officials alleged on Monday.
December 9, 2012 at 8:57 am
1 person likes this
Wouldn't be in the least bit surprised if Nazerbayev had a hand in this. He was the major beneficiary when the US spent a billion dollars to decommission the country's nuclear weapons in the early 90s. Then much of that went into the building of the presidential palace by that French paragon of virtue, Bouygues.
December 9, 2012 at 12:11 pm
I don't claim to know anything about it, as you do. I'm horrified in general, at the lack of any serious effort that's commensurate with the threat, on this, and, it seems, so much on the nuclear front... for instance, Japan's Unit 4 at Fukushima.
December 9, 2012 at 12:17 pm
I lived through some very interesting times in Almaty -- and saw unbelievable deals being made. Even the IMF head-of-office in Kaz. resigned his lucrative position to becomes the president's personal financial adviser.
December 9, 2012 at 12:22 pm
...become
December 9, 2012 at 12:22 pm
Yeah, there's always a way to make more millions if you're crooked enough. Scary.
December 9, 2012 at 12:26 pm
Ode to the Used Bookstore, next best place to heaven, and an experience ebooks can't possibly replace...
December 9, 2012 at 6:38 am
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Why second-hand bookshops are just my type - Telegraph |
As bookshops are displaced by the internet, the author of a new work on serendipity describes the joys of delving in dusty shelves
December 9, 2012 at 6:38 am
3 people like this
The First Global, Universal Epic. Now Available Worldwide.
The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem. Frederick Glaysher.
https://www.amazon.com/Parliament-Poets-Epic-Poem/dp/098267788X/ref=la_B001H6P3K8
December 8, 2012 at 9:37 am
The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem. Frederick Glaysher.
https://www.amazon.com/Parliament-Poets-Epic-Poem/dp/098267788X/ref=la_B001H6P3K8
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The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem |
The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem, by Frederick Glaysher, takes place partly on the moon, at the Apollo 11 landing site, the Sea of Tranquility. Apollo, the Greek god of poetry, calls all the poets of the nations, ancient and modern, East and West, to assemble on the moon to consult on the me...
December 8, 2012 at 9:37 am
1 person likes this
Also at Barnes & Noble, Hardcover & Nook ePub:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-parliament-of-poets-frederick-glaysher/1112448232?ean=9780982677889&itm=9&
The ePub edition is also available through Kobo and its many worldwide affiliates.
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-parliament-of-poets-frederick-glaysher/1112448232?ean=9780982677889&itm=9&
The ePub edition is also available through Kobo and its many worldwide affiliates.
December 8, 2012 at 9:44 am
Book Store
December 8, 2012 at 6:30 am
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Northshire Bookstore |
December 8, 2012 at 6:30 am
"Climate change negotiations cannot be based on the way we currently measure progress. It is a clear sign of planetary and economic and environmental dysfunction."
https://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2012/dec/06/philippines-delegator-tears-climate-change
December 8, 2012 at 5:43 am
https://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2012/dec/06/philippines-delegator-tears-climate-change
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Will Philippines negotiator's tears change our course on climate change? |
John Vidal: At the COP18 climate talks in Qatar, the lead Filipino delegate broke down as he appealed to the world: 'no more delays, no more excuses'
December 8, 2012 at 5:43 am
1 person likes this
YURI KAGEYAMA got the goods on Japan's nuclear industry:
"Last month, some members of a panel that sets nuclear plant safety standards acknowledged they received research and other grant money from utility companies and plant manufacturers"
December 6, 2012 at 6:38 pm
"Last month, some members of a panel that sets nuclear plant safety standards acknowledged they received research and other grant money from utility companies and plant manufacturers"
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AP Exclusive: Japan scientists took utility money |
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese scientists who help set national radiation exposure limits have for years had overseas trips paid for by the country's nuclear plant operators.The potential conflict-of-interest is revealed in one sentence in a 600-page parliamentary investigation into last year's nuclear power...
December 6, 2012 at 6:38 pm
Some of them should be accused of their liaison with the manufacturers, which have been involved with the nuke plant industry. One of the prime suspects has to be Madarame Haruki the former chairman of the Nuclear Safety Commission. After the Fukushima disaster he was on NHK and said he wanted to return to the days before 311. It sounded so ridiculous; he knew what might be coming. He had got four million yen from the Mitsubishi Heavy Industry. This figure must be just a tip of the iceberg. If he had not been a Japanese, say, French or so, he could have been accused and sued by the majority of us.
December 6, 2012 at 8:47 pm
Masahide Morita FYI, For your information...
December 8, 2012 at 6:06 am
I have a Free Hardcover Review Copy of The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem.
Mailed to anyone with a USA Address who would like it. Free shipping. Message me your request with your address through Facebook, or ask me for my email address, if you'd prefer handling it outside Facebook. No quid pro quo. Whether you choose to review it or not is up to you.
Mailed to anyone with a USA Address who would like it. Free shipping. Message me your request with your address through Facebook, or ask me for my email address, if you'd prefer handling it outside Facebook. No quid pro quo. Whether you choose to review it or not is up to you.
December 6, 2012 at 5:52 pm
1 person likes this
I sent a request, but got the postal code wrong. It is 93012
December 6, 2012 at 6:02 pm
"Ban shared the "profound sense of urgency" to deal with the Mali crisis but there were still questions about how the African Union and Malian forces would be led, sustained, trained, equipped and financed."
https://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/06/us-mali-crisis-un-idUSBRE8B508C20121206
December 6, 2012 at 5:41 pm
https://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/06/us-mali-crisis-un-idUSBRE8B508C20121206
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African Union appeals for U.N. funding for Mali force |
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The African Union appealed on Wednesday for U.N. funding for a military operation to combat Islamist extremists in northern Mali after U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon cautiously recommended
December 6, 2012 at 5:41 pm
"All I'm stating is the fact of what I have done. I've written what I believe is an epic poem. I don't say it's the best epic poem. I don't say I've outdone Homer and Dante and everybody else. All I can say is it's on my desk." Now on Barnes & Noble and Amazon, Hardcover, Nook ePub & Kindle.
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-parliament-of-poets-frederick-glaysher/1112448232?ean=9780982677889&itm=9&
An Epic Poetry Workshop, presented by Frederick Glaysher, at the Austin International Poetry Festival, AIPF, September 29, 2012.
https://youtu.be/9vPGP1ygY_s
December 6, 2012 at 4:44 pm
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-parliament-of-poets-frederick-glaysher/1112448232?ean=9780982677889&itm=9&
An Epic Poetry Workshop, presented by Frederick Glaysher, at the Austin International Poetry Festival, AIPF, September 29, 2012.
https://youtu.be/9vPGP1ygY_s
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Epic Poetry Workshop, Frederick Glaysher, AIPF |
An Epic Poetry Workshop, presented by Frederick Glaysher, at the Austin International Poetry Festival, AIPF, September 29, 2012. "Frederick Glaysher presents...
December 6, 2012 at 4:44 pm
1 person likes this
Apollo, the Greek god of poetry, calls all the poets of the nations, ancient and modern, East and West, to assemble on the moon to consult on the meaning of modernity.
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-parliament-of-poets-frederick-glaysher/1112448232
December 6, 2012 at 6:01 am
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-parliament-of-poets-frederick-glaysher/1112448232
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The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem |
Available in: NOOK Book (eBook), Hardcover. The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem, by Frederick Glaysher, takes place partly on the moon, at the Apollo 11 landing site, the Sea of Tranquility. Apollo, the Greek god of poetry, calls all the
December 6, 2012 at 6:01 am
2 people like this
I have left One Free Hardcover Review Copy of The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem.
A Free copy mailed to anyone with a USA Address who would like it. Free shipping. Message me your request with your address through Facebook, or ask me for my email address, if you'd prefer handling it outside Facebook. No quid pro quo. Whether you choose to review it or not is up to you.
A Free copy mailed to anyone with a USA Address who would like it. Free shipping. Message me your request with your address through Facebook, or ask me for my email address, if you'd prefer handling it outside Facebook. No quid pro quo. Whether you choose to review it or not is up to you.
December 6, 2012 at 5:52 am
1 person likes this
"Nigeria has a very rich literary tradition. With over 500 languages and over 240 ethnic groups it’s a mesmerising place for any writer to describe, and it boasts some of the greatest authors in African literature. "
https://www.litro.co.uk/2012/11/ambakalar-top-ten-nigerian-novels/
December 6, 2012 at 4:14 am
https://www.litro.co.uk/2012/11/ambakalar-top-ten-nigerian-novels/
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My Top Ten Nigerian Novels | Litro |
I’ve always been a huge fan of Nigerian literature. A few years back I even went on a course to learn Igbo. I started seriously reading Nigerian literature during my PhD studies on Nigerian and Zimbabwean contemporary fiction—a course, incidentally, which I never finished, because I wrote my own nov...
December 6, 2012 at 4:14 am
1 person likes this
Interesting. I once had a Nigerian writing tutor who was very proud of his heritage and then criticized me for writing about mine x
December 6, 2012 at 11:53 pm
I have left One Free Hardcover Review Copies of The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem.
A Free copy mailed to anyone with a USA Address who would like it. Free shipping. Message me your request with your address through Facebook, or ask me for my email address, if you'd prefer handling it outside Facebook. No quid pro quo. Whether you choose to review it or not is up to you.
A Free copy mailed to anyone with a USA Address who would like it. Free shipping. Message me your request with your address through Facebook, or ask me for my email address, if you'd prefer handling it outside Facebook. No quid pro quo. Whether you choose to review it or not is up to you.
December 5, 2012 at 6:29 pm
1 person likes this
Abdullah, Any chance you're on assignment or something in the US? :)
December 5, 2012 at 6:45 pm
International postage is extreme...
December 5, 2012 at 6:46 pm
Abdullah Khan It should eventually in a few weeks or so make it on to Infibeam and Flipkart. https://www.flipkart.com/search-books/glaysher
December 5, 2012 at 6:51 pm
I have left Two Free Hardcover Review Copies of The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem.
A Free copy mailed to anyone with a USA Address who would like it. Free shipping. Message me your request with your address through Facebook, or ask me for my email address, if you'd prefer handling it outside Facebook. No quid pro quo. Whether you choose to review it or not is up to you.
A Free copy mailed to anyone with a USA Address who would like it. Free shipping. Message me your request with your address through Facebook, or ask me for my email address, if you'd prefer handling it outside Facebook. No quid pro quo. Whether you choose to review it or not is up to you.
December 5, 2012 at 4:16 pm
1 person likes this
December 5, 2012 at 4:04 am
Do you agree with Hillary Clinton?
December 4, 2012 at 6:34 pm
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Timeline Photos |
December 4, 2012 at 6:34 pm
"The probe, launched 35 years ago to study the outer planets, is now about 11 billion miles (18 billion km) from Earth. ... Voyager 1 will be the first manmade object to leave the solar system."
December 4, 2012 at 6:29 pm
| Voyager 1 probe leaving solar system reaches 'magnetic highway' exit |
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec 3 (Reuters) - NASA's long-lived Voyager 1 spacecraft, which is heading out of the solar system, has reached a "magnetic highway" leading to interstellar space, scientists said on Monday.
December 4, 2012 at 6:29 pm
2 people like this
Kobo ePub - The Parliament of Poets - An Epic Poem.
The first global, universal epic.
At or on it's way to Kobo's affiliates worldwide. SEND AS A GIFT!
https://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/The-Parliament-of-Poets/book-o0H_nhEHWkqOyyVMFD1LWg/page1.html?s=wJxGiA24xU-NhObg9FzRnw&r=1
December 4, 2012 at 1:21 pm
The first global, universal epic.
At or on it's way to Kobo's affiliates worldwide. SEND AS A GIFT!
https://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/The-Parliament-of-Poets/book-o0H_nhEHWkqOyyVMFD1LWg/page1.html?s=wJxGiA24xU-NhObg9FzRnw&r=1
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The Parliament of Poets |
The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem, by Frederick Glaysher, takes place partly on the moon, at the Apollo 11 landing site, the Sea of Tranquility. Apollo, the Greek god of… read more at Kobo.
December 4, 2012 at 1:21 pm
1 person likes this
https://www.kobobooks.com/search/search.html?q=%22Frederick+Glaysher%22&t=none&f=author&p=1&s=none&g=both
December 4, 2012 at 1:21 pm
Thanks, Keith! Much of The Grove of the Eumenides formed the background study for my epic poem.
December 4, 2012 at 3:54 pm
Australia - Hardcover - The Parliament of Poets - An Epic Poem.
The first global, universal epic. Set partly in Australia, in The Dreaming...
Printed in Scoresby, Victoria.
https://www.angusrobertson.com.au/book/parliament-of-poets-an-epic-poem/37353686/
December 4, 2012 at 11:23 am
The first global, universal epic. Set partly in Australia, in The Dreaming...
Printed in Scoresby, Victoria.
https://www.angusrobertson.com.au/book/parliament-of-poets-an-epic-poem/37353686/
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Buy Parliament Of Poets: An Epic Poem Book by Frederick Glaysher (9780982677889) at Angus and Rober |
Buy Parliament Of Poets: An Epic Poem (Book) by Frederick Glaysher (9780982677889) at Angus and Robertson with free shipping
December 4, 2012 at 11:23 am
1 person likes this
Jennifer Compton
Anita Heiss
Ruma Chakravarti
Billy Marshall Stoneking
James WF Roberts
Mary Steer
FYI
Anita Heiss
Ruma Chakravarti
Billy Marshall Stoneking
James WF Roberts
Mary Steer
FYI
December 4, 2012 at 11:33 am
Thank you.
December 4, 2012 at 11:36 am
Thanks, Mary, for sharing. I appreciate it. Do you know any poets or writers in Australia who are interested in Aborigine myth and The Dreaming? My epic poem has a canto dealing with it set in Australia but I've had trouble finding any Aborigine writers online or elsewhere, or whoever, who might be interested...
December 4, 2012 at 11:41 am
Most Aborigine myth belongs to the individuals or the specific groups and is always related to place - their place on the land. It is a unique relationship and the cultural laws are very strict about who may write and what they may write. I'm sure individuals will find your work interesting Frederick. All the best. Mary.
December 4, 2012 at 11:46 am
I've gathered that a little, trying to suggest the extensive number of clans, and writing about myths that I hope and have read are broadly shared among many...
December 4, 2012 at 11:51 am
Usually such myths are written by non Aboriginal people, usually white. Often whites think the story has been told. But that will never happen in Australian Aboriginal culture.
December 4, 2012 at 12:01 pm
I have read that and seen documentaries to that effect, so I suppose I should have phrased it as "my version" or something like that. I lived and taught English on an American Indian reservation in Arizona for a couple of years, long ago, so, while worlds apart, I can appreciate the complexities that can exist with indigenous material and legends. I do realize "down under" you've all had your own history, too, shall we say...
December 4, 2012 at 12:15 pm
There are many cultures in Australia. Many cultures across indigenous Australia. Each person has a life, a life story, that may be interpreted by many others in many different ways. But only the person experiences their life, only the person gives meaning to their life and to their story. This is the private, sacred world of the individual. Certain meanings may be shared tribally. But even then the meaning is hostage of language. Each of us as writers can find the 'magic' at the core of ourselves and of others that unites us through our memes, mores, metaphors, rites etc. that link us together and may help define who we are as those 'down under.'
December 4, 2012 at 2:15 pm
Err thanks i will have a look.
December 4, 2012 at 2:27 pm
ePub available in 190 countries.
The Parliament of Poets - An Epic Poem.
The first global, universal epic.
https://books.fglaysher.com
December 4, 2012 at 7:07 am
The Parliament of Poets - An Epic Poem.
The first global, universal epic.
https://books.fglaysher.com
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Earthrise Press eBooks |
Earthrise Press is a Post-Gutenberg Publisher of eBooks, DRM free, publishing poetry, lyric, epic poetry, essays, letters, and reviews.
December 4, 2012 at 7:07 am
UK > Hardcover & Kindle, The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Frederick-Glaysher/e/B001H6P3K8/ref=la_B001H6P3K8_st?qid=1354629130&rh=n%3A266239%2Cp_82%3AB001H6P3K8&sort=-pubdate
December 4, 2012 at 5:54 am
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Frederick-Glaysher/e/B001H6P3K8/ref=la_B001H6P3K8_st?qid=1354629130&rh=n%3A266239%2Cp_82%3AB001H6P3K8&sort=-pubdate
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Amazon.co.uk: Frederick Glaysher: Books, Biogs, Audiobooks, Discussions |
Visit Amazon.co.uk's Frederick Glaysher Page and shop for all Frederick Glaysher books. Check out pictures, bibliography, biography and community discussions about Frederick Glaysher
December 4, 2012 at 5:54 am
"the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Is Failing - nuclear weapon states have not negotiated in good faith on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control."
https://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/db_article.php?article_id=422
December 3, 2012 at 4:24 pm
https://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/db_article.php?article_id=422
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Outlawing Nuclear Weapons: Time for a New International Treaty? |
David Krieger outlines the bold steps that are needed to achieve the abolition of nuclear weapons.
December 3, 2012 at 4:24 pm
1 person likes this
Robert Reich > "DEMAND HIGHER TAX RATES ON WEALTHY, NOT JUST LIMITS ON DEDUCTIONS. Don’t fall for Republican offers to limit some tax deductions on the wealthy. Demand we go back to higher tax rates on the wealthy and eliminate their unfair tax loopholes, so they truly start paying their fair share."
https://robertreich.org/
December 3, 2012 at 3:47 pm
https://robertreich.org/
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Robert Reich |
ROBERT B. REICH, Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at...
December 3, 2012 at 3:47 pm
1 person likes this
Adele Ward's novel "Everything is Free."
A Free Kindle Download until Dec 5th.
A Free Kindle Download until Dec 5th.
December 2, 2012 at 6:05 am
2 people like this
ePub now available worldwide directly from Earthrise Press eBooks
The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem
https://books.fglaysher.com/The-Parliament-of-Poets-An-Epic-Poem-9780982677865.htm
December 1, 2012 at 11:49 am
The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem
https://books.fglaysher.com/The-Parliament-of-Poets-An-Epic-Poem-9780982677865.htm
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The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem |
The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem , by Frederick Glaysher, takes place partly on the moon, at the Apollo 11 landing site, the Sea of Tranquility. Apollo, the Greek god of poetry, calls all the poets of the nations, ancient and modern, East...
December 1, 2012 at 11:49 am
1 person likes this
November 30, 2012 at 3:32 pm
Barnes & Noble, Hardcover and Nook ePub... now available.
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-parliament-of-poets-frederick-glaysher/1112448232
November 30, 2012 at 8:08 am
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-parliament-of-poets-frederick-glaysher/1112448232
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November 30, 2012 at 8:08 am
6 people like this
Wow, from strength to strength x
November 30, 2012 at 11:12 am
Kathy Greethurst, I appreciate your positive words. :) Thanks, all...
November 30, 2012 at 11:57 am
I just wish I had time to read your work properly. Maybe one day ,,, x
December 1, 2012 at 1:32 am
Kindle edition on Amazon, available worldwide.
https://www.amazon.com/Parliament-Poets-Epic-Poem-ebook/dp/B00AAQCCU0
November 30, 2012 at 7:08 am
https://www.amazon.com/Parliament-Poets-Epic-Poem-ebook/dp/B00AAQCCU0
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The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem |
The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem, by Frederick Glaysher, takes place partly on the moon, at the Apollo 11 landing site, the Sea of Tranquility. Apollo, the Greek god of poetry, calls all the poets of the nations, ancient and modern, East and West, to assemble on the moon to consult on the me...
November 30, 2012 at 7:08 am
Hardcover, worldwide... and Kindle.
https://www.amazon.com/Parliament-Poets-Epic-Poem/dp/098267788X
November 30, 2012 at 6:30 am
https://www.amazon.com/Parliament-Poets-Epic-Poem/dp/098267788X
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The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem |
The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem, by Frederick Glaysher, takes place partly on the moon, at the Apollo 11 landing site, the Sea of Tranquility. Apollo, the Greek god of poetry, calls all the poets of the nations, ancient and modern, East and West, to assemble on the moon to consult on the me...
November 30, 2012 at 6:30 am
1 person likes this
"A good epic would grace our history. --Robert Frost
November 30, 2012 at 5:11 am
6 people like this
Too bad he never wrote one!
November 30, 2012 at 5:19 am
Frost was largely a lyric, pastoral poet, though he wrote many very fine brief narrative poems. He understood his forte was not that of an epic vision.
November 30, 2012 at 5:32 am
Frost rightly evoked Theocritus on a number of occasions...
November 30, 2012 at 5:35 am
Frost is nothing if not bucolic!
November 30, 2012 at 6:02 am
Edgar Allen Poe should have written an epic!
November 30, 2012 at 6:02 am
Poe was all against the epic... wrote to that effect, famously, taking the art in the wrong direction.
November 30, 2012 at 6:15 am
I didn't realize there was only one direction!
November 30, 2012 at 1:48 pm
Have you ever read much of Poe? He wrote an essay titled "The Poetic Principle" setting the direction away from the epic and the literary and cultural values it stands for. Thank you for reminding me of him. I'll have to dig around and find my old copy of it and respond to Poe. I feel it as a duty now, this side of having written an epic, to clarify what I think of him and his views on the form, and so on. At least a short blog piece would be apropos.
December 1, 2012 at 6:45 am
“Few countries in the world have been as disastrously ruled as Congo”
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/11/29/stabilizing-the-democratic-republic-of-congo
November 30, 2012 at 3:19 am
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/11/29/stabilizing-the-democratic-republic-of-congo
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Stabilizing the Democratic Republic of Congo - Room for Debate |
Congo has been poorly governed throughout its history, and is chronically prone to violence. What is the secret to stabilizing the resource-rich country?
November 30, 2012 at 3:19 am
"It will take an effort similar to the one that ended the blood diamonds wars elsewhere in Africa."
November 30, 2012 at 3:20 am
The Persona with Sun Wukong at the Mogao Caves, Dunhuang, China.
"With the sun, we entered the cave, Tang Dynasty,
at its height, sumptuous detail everywhere,
glorious art intimating a world beyond art,
art its servant, glorying in its servitude,
exalting in worship of beauty beyond beauty,
the highest, deepest, true beauty,
the good, the true, the beautiful made one.
Awe, waves of awe overwhelmed me.
I felt it once again. Wukong silently
stepped aside, stayed back out of the way..."
From BOOK VI, The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem. Copyright (c) 2012 Frederick Glaysher. Free PDF ends tomorrow. Download now.
https://books.fglaysher.com/
November 29, 2012 at 6:37 am
"With the sun, we entered the cave, Tang Dynasty,
at its height, sumptuous detail everywhere,
glorious art intimating a world beyond art,
art its servant, glorying in its servitude,
exalting in worship of beauty beyond beauty,
the highest, deepest, true beauty,
the good, the true, the beautiful made one.
Awe, waves of awe overwhelmed me.
I felt it once again. Wukong silently
stepped aside, stayed back out of the way..."
From BOOK VI, The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem. Copyright (c) 2012 Frederick Glaysher. Free PDF ends tomorrow. Download now.
https://books.fglaysher.com/
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Earthrise Press eBooks |
Free PDF ends tomorrow... Download now.
November 29, 2012 at 6:37 am
1 person likes this
Reading at the Buffalo Small Press Book Fair, Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum, Buffalo, New York, last March:
https://youtu.be/XlWTzhNjIb4
November 29, 2012 at 5:03 am
https://youtu.be/XlWTzhNjIb4
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Poetry Reading, Frederick Glaysher, Buffalo Small Press Fair |
Frederick Glaysher reading from the fifth draft of his epic poem, The Parliament of Poets, at the Buffalo Small Press Book Fair, Karpeles Manuscript Library ...
November 29, 2012 at 5:03 am
2 people like this
"Japan plans to bring its long-delayed Rokkasho reprocessing plant online, which could extract as much as eight tons of weapons-usable plutonium from spent reactor fuel a year, enough for nearly 1,000 warheads."
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/29/opinion/japans-nuclear-mistake.html
November 29, 2012 at 3:29 am
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/29/opinion/japans-nuclear-mistake.html
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Japan’s Nuclear Mistake |
Japan’s plutonium recycle program sets a terrible precedent and creates a tempting target for terrorists.
November 29, 2012 at 3:29 am
What about the USA's nuclear mistake? ...the whole goddamn thing from Day One.
November 29, 2012 at 3:49 am
Friends, I need your help to reach humanity... with a new Vision of
life on this planet. > The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem
https://www.facebook.com/events/373602946063505/
life on this planet. > The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem
https://www.facebook.com/events/373602946063505/
November 28, 2012 at 1:50 pm
"Tall and severe, laconic, Virgil stood
among the Greek and Roman poets,
Orpheus, still grieving for Eurydice,
Homer, Demodokos, and Anacreon; Horace,
Theocritus, Momus, and Symmachus;
Apollonius, poet of the Argonauts,
Callimachus, Alexandria’s librarian,
Lucretius, who said of Iphigenia,
sacrificed before the Greeks sailed for Troy,
religion could cause so much evil and woe;
Ovid, lush tales of metamorphosis;
Catullus, still longing for Lesbia;
Seneca, Plautus, and Petronius;
Statius, the late echo of epic song;
Propertius, Juvenal on the Forum;
even Cicero was there, whose “Dream of
Scipio” was a poet’s dream, earning him
the right forever to stand upon the moon.
I could not keep my eyes from drifting to his hands."
From BOOK I, The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem. Copyright (c) 2012
Frederick Glaysher.
among the Greek and Roman poets,
Orpheus, still grieving for Eurydice,
Homer, Demodokos, and Anacreon; Horace,
Theocritus, Momus, and Symmachus;
Apollonius, poet of the Argonauts,
Callimachus, Alexandria’s librarian,
Lucretius, who said of Iphigenia,
sacrificed before the Greeks sailed for Troy,
religion could cause so much evil and woe;
Ovid, lush tales of metamorphosis;
Catullus, still longing for Lesbia;
Seneca, Plautus, and Petronius;
Statius, the late echo of epic song;
Propertius, Juvenal on the Forum;
even Cicero was there, whose “Dream of
Scipio” was a poet’s dream, earning him
the right forever to stand upon the moon.
I could not keep my eyes from drifting to his hands."
From BOOK I, The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem. Copyright (c) 2012
Frederick Glaysher.
November 28, 2012 at 9:44 am
"All the Roman great stood with Virgil,
who moved with gravitas towards me,
weight of vision, master of masters, whose
Aeneid I had labored over, its choice Latin
a living, immortal tongue, the beauty
of which no dust can ever sully, as long
as our fragile planet circles the sun,
before me, in toga, sizing me up.
O dreadful sense of unworthiness!"
From BOOK I, The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem. Copyright (c) 2012 Frederick Glaysher.
who moved with gravitas towards me,
weight of vision, master of masters, whose
Aeneid I had labored over, its choice Latin
a living, immortal tongue, the beauty
of which no dust can ever sully, as long
as our fragile planet circles the sun,
before me, in toga, sizing me up.
O dreadful sense of unworthiness!"
From BOOK I, The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem. Copyright (c) 2012 Frederick Glaysher.
November 28, 2012 at 5:48 am
4 people like this
"Down below there somewhere I thought I saw
a Gulag camp of prisoners, sentenced
to years and decades of manual labor,
scientists and artists, intellectuals,
banished for having a brain and using it.
I could not help but weep over their plight,
the plight of the people, all of China..."
Free PDF worldwide, during November. Four days left... if you want to read it for free.
From BOOK V, The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem. Copyright (c) 2012
Frederick Glaysher.
https://books.fglaysher.com/
November 27, 2012 at 5:19 am
a Gulag camp of prisoners, sentenced
to years and decades of manual labor,
scientists and artists, intellectuals,
banished for having a brain and using it.
I could not help but weep over their plight,
the plight of the people, all of China..."
Free PDF worldwide, during November. Four days left... if you want to read it for free.
From BOOK V, The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem. Copyright (c) 2012
Frederick Glaysher.
https://books.fglaysher.com/
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Earthrise Press eBooks |
Free PDF worldwide, during November. Four days left... if you want to read it for free.
November 27, 2012 at 5:19 am
1 person likes this
"Defending Animal Farm against left-wing critics, Orwell declared: 'Liberty is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.' Around the same time, Camus vowed: 'What belongs to the concentration camp, even socialism, must be called a concentration camp. In a sense, I shall never again be polite.'"
https://chronicle.com/article/Camuss-Restless-Ghost/135874/
November 27, 2012 at 5:07 am
https://chronicle.com/article/Camuss-Restless-Ghost/135874/
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Camus's Restless Ghost - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education |
The political legacy of the French author, born almost a century ago, remains volatile. "People are now planting bombs in the tramways of Algiers. My mother might be on one of those tramways. If that is justice, then I prefer my mother."
November 27, 2012 at 5:07 am
8 people like this
Excellent article > "The challenge to democracy in Africa is not the prevalence of ethnic diversity, but the use of identity politics to promote narrow tribal interests.... The way forward for African democracy lies in concerted efforts to build modern political parties founded on development ideas and not tribal bonds."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-20465752
November 27, 2012 at 3:50 am
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-20465752
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Viewpoint: How tribalism stunts African democracy |
Africa's democratic transition is back in the spotlight. The concern is no longer the stranglehold of autocrats, but the hijacking of democratic process by the tribal politics, argues Kenyan academic Calestous Juma.
November 27, 2012 at 3:50 am
The Persona outside Blombos Cave, South Africa, circa 72,000 BCE.
"I felt it was a privilege just to watch,
sheltered in the dunes below, so close,
while Blombos Man worked on, pondering.
Some internal, personal struggle was
going on inside his head, a need to know,
his consciousness grappling about, for
such there clearly was, as in his artefacts,
dressed in, and equipped, with their regalia,
their full equipage already his attire,
imagining and planning and creating,
what a memory he stood there accessing,
all of which I, myself, could barely guess at..."
From BOOK XI, The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem. Copyright (c) 2012 Frederick Glaysher. During November, a Free PDF download.
https://books.fglaysher.com/The-Parliament-of-Poets-An-Epic-Poem-9780982677865.htm
November 26, 2012 at 9:01 am
"I felt it was a privilege just to watch,
sheltered in the dunes below, so close,
while Blombos Man worked on, pondering.
Some internal, personal struggle was
going on inside his head, a need to know,
his consciousness grappling about, for
such there clearly was, as in his artefacts,
dressed in, and equipped, with their regalia,
their full equipage already his attire,
imagining and planning and creating,
what a memory he stood there accessing,
all of which I, myself, could barely guess at..."
From BOOK XI, The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem. Copyright (c) 2012 Frederick Glaysher. During November, a Free PDF download.
https://books.fglaysher.com/The-Parliament-of-Poets-An-Epic-Poem-9780982677865.htm
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The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem |
The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem , by Frederick Glaysher, takes place partly on the moon. During November, a Free PDF download.
November 26, 2012 at 9:01 am
Arab Spring puts religious freedom at risk
"What is the Middle East without Christianity and the Holy Land without Christians?"
https://www.freep.com/article/20111227/OPINION05/112270364/Guest-commentary-Arab-Spring-puts-religious-freedom-at-risk
December 27, 2011 at 11:17 am
"What is the Middle East without Christianity and the Holy Land without Christians?"
https://www.freep.com/article/20111227/OPINION05/112270364/Guest-commentary-Arab-Spring-puts-religious-freedom-at-risk
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Guest commentary: Arab Spring puts religious freedom at risk |
As American Middle East Christian communities celebrate the Christmas season, they are doing so with anxiety and apprehension about the future of the countries from which many were forced to emigrate, and about the future of Christians and their religion in the Middle East.
December 27, 2011 at 11:17 am
"Recent studies also suggest Japan continues to significantly underestimate the scale of the disaster — which could have health and safety implications far into the future."
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/12/27/world/asia/AP-AS-Japan-Inside-the-Zone.html
December 27, 2011 at 8:30 am
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/12/27/world/asia/AP-AS-Japan-Inside-the-Zone.html
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No-Man's Land Attests to Japan's Nuclear Nightmare |
Fukushima was just emerging from the snows of winter when the disaster hit — a 9.0-magnitude earthquake, the strongest in Japan's recorded history, followed by a tsunami.
December 27, 2011 at 8:30 am
Earthrise Press eBooks on Barnes & Noble - 99¢ Sale through New Year's.
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/frederick-glaysher
December 27, 2011 at 8:01 am
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/frederick-glaysher
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BARNES & NOBLE | frederick glaysher |
Frederick Glaysher eBooks on Barnes & Noble. 99¢ Sale ...through New Year's.
December 27, 2011 at 8:01 am
Earthrise Press eBooks - 99¢ SALE ...through New Year's.
Kindle ebooks
https://www.amazon.com/Frederick-Glaysher/e/B001H6P3K8/
December 27, 2011 at 6:33 am
Kindle ebooks
https://www.amazon.com/Frederick-Glaysher/e/B001H6P3K8/
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Frederick Glaysher |
Visit Amazon.com's Frederick Glaysher Page and shop for all Frederick Glaysher books. Check out pictures, bibliography, biography and community discussions about Frederick Glaysher.
December 27, 2011 at 6:33 am
"The Chinese government ... has undertaken a broad crackdown on liberal writers and artists to try and stamp out any stirrings of dissent."
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/27/world/asia/china-jails-writer-chen-xi-for-subversion.html
December 26, 2011 at 7:24 am
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/27/world/asia/china-jails-writer-chen-xi-for-subversion.html
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China Jails Writer Chen Xi for Subversion |
Chen Xi, a liberal Chinese writer, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison on a charge of inciting subversion of the state, according to news reports.
December 26, 2011 at 7:24 am
Chen Wei, “Democracy must win; autocracy must die.”
China > “Sticking to one’s beliefs over time is a far more serious offense than just calling for political change.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/24/world/asia/china-jails-rights-activist-chen-wei-for-9-years.html
December 23, 2011 at 5:15 am
China > “Sticking to one’s beliefs over time is a far more serious offense than just calling for political change.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/24/world/asia/china-jails-rights-activist-chen-wei-for-9-years.html
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China Jails Rights Activist Chen Wei for 9 Years |
Chen Wei is among scores of advocates who were detained, arrested or disappeared in a crackdown that followed calls for a “jasmine revolution” modeled on uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa.
December 23, 2011 at 5:15 am
The experience of Chen Wei, Ai Weiwei, and others suggests all the "letters" on earth do not constitute the way forward...
December 23, 2011 at 9:38 am
Selected Letters of Charles Baudelaire: The Conquest of Solitude.
https://fglaysher.com/baudelaire.html
December 23, 2011 at 5:02 am
https://fglaysher.com/baudelaire.html
| Charles Baudelaire, Frederick Glaysher, review |
Charles Baudelaire, letters, literary essays, poems, reviews, modernism, postmodernism, anomie, loss of faith, nihilism, solipsism
December 23, 2011 at 5:02 am
1 person likes this
In many of his letters Baudelaire loathes "belief in progress, the salvation of the human race through balloons," and "all modem stupidity."
December 22, 2011 at 7:08 am
1 person likes this
Perhaps Baudelaire would have owned his complicity.
December 22, 2011 at 6:18 am
4 people like this
Had Baudelaire lived long enough to witness the symbolists at their height what would he have then thought of the "sillinesses"of the Baudelaire school?
December 22, 2011 at 5:58 am
1 person likes this
How laughable to find Baudelaire alarmed by the "tendencies" or histrionics to which he had helped give birth, especially since in 1859 he had defended to Hugo his stratagem of handling bourgeois "utilitarian concerns" by "exaggerating a little in the other direction."
December 22, 2011 at 5:21 am
In 1866 just before the stroke that partially paralyzed him and led to his death nearly a year and a half later, Baudelaire sent his mother a copy of Verlaine’s article on him, writing,
"These young people have talent--but what sillinesses! what exaggerations! what
youthful infatuation! For several years now, I’ve been noticing here and there
imitations and tendencies that alarm me.... It seems there is in existence a
Baudelaire school."
"These young people have talent--but what sillinesses! what exaggerations! what
youthful infatuation! For several years now, I’ve been noticing here and there
imitations and tendencies that alarm me.... It seems there is in existence a
Baudelaire school."
December 22, 2011 at 4:48 am
5 people like this
His letters testify he stood in the full flood of his century and recognized the loss
that still deafens "the Muse of modern times."
that still deafens "the Muse of modern times."
December 21, 2011 at 9:18 am
What other struggles had Job and Eccelesiastes?
December 21, 2011 at 8:06 am
And what is more religious than the writer who studies "crime in his own heart" and in the world around him?
December 20, 2011 at 10:35 am
1 person likes this
I am the 100% in agreement. Paging Thomas Aquinas....
December 20, 2011 at 10:39 am
Midsomer murders.
December 20, 2011 at 11:34 am
You can no more understand Baudelaire without Catholicism than you can Mayakovsky without Marxism but you don't have to be either to enjoy them, nor is either a proof of their beliefs.
December 21, 2011 at 5:05 am
Duncan, I couldn't agree more with you...
December 21, 2011 at 8:06 am
There are, for instance, times of sustained prayer and attendance at mass on Christmas, descriptions of himself as a "fervent" and "incorrigible" Catholic (he grants a "suspect" one), and his repeated affirmation that The Flowers of Evil "set out from a Catholic idea"--"is there...anyone more Catholic than the devil?"
December 20, 2011 at 8:57 am
1 person likes this
Does he mean Baudelaire s Flowers of Evil.
December 20, 2011 at 10:25 am
Yes. The quotation is from Baudelaire's Selected Letters.
December 20, 2011 at 10:34 am
There are good and bad aspects of religion.
December 20, 2011 at 8:00 pm
...and, alas, of everything else in life.
December 21, 2011 at 9:17 am
Merry Christmas and all good wishes
December 21, 2011 at 8:31 pm
Joy to you & yours.
December 22, 2011 at 5:46 am
But Baudelaire is too complicated a writer to evaluate on the basis of a few statements.
December 20, 2011 at 8:07 am
1 person likes this
Books.Google.com > Frederick Glaysher, The Bower of Nil. A Narrative Poem.
https://www.google.com/search?tbs=bks:1&tbo=p&q=inauthor:frederick+inauthor:glaysher&num=10
December 16, 2010 at 11:31 am
https://www.google.com/search?tbs=bks:1&tbo=p&q=inauthor:frederick+inauthor:glaysher&num=10
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inauthor:frederick inauthor:glaysher - Google Search |
December 16, 2010 at 11:31 am
Cut the Publishers. Here's how.
Time for publishing to change. Tell your friends...
Earthrise Press® eBooks on Kobo
https://www.kobobooks.com/search/search.html?q=Frederick+Glaysher&t=none&f=author&p=1&s=averagerating&g=both
December 16, 2010 at 3:57 am
Time for publishing to change. Tell your friends...
Earthrise Press® eBooks on Kobo
https://www.kobobooks.com/search/search.html?q=Frederick+Glaysher&t=none&f=author&p=1&s=averagerating&g=both
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Search: Frederick Glaysher - Kobo |
East and West meet in a new synthesis of a global vision of humankind—ranging over classic literature, ancient and modern, both Western and non-Western, from the dilemmas of modernity in ...
December 16, 2010 at 3:57 am
Hard to Hear a New Voice
https://fglaysher.com/eReading/2009/02/hard-to-hear-a-new-voice/
December 14, 2010 at 9:00 am
https://fglaysher.com/eReading/2009/02/hard-to-hear-a-new-voice/
| eReading » Blog Archive » Hard to Hear a New Voice |
As I’ve mentioned, I’ve now read books on a digital device for over a decade. I started with the original Palm PDA, the green one, a piece of ancient technology. I then progressed up the scale with two subsequent Palms and now have the Sony Reader PRS-5o5, which seems to me an incredible leap forwar
December 14, 2010 at 9:00 am
Or Sony’s Reader will go, I suppose, the way of the US car industry…. Another company will figure it out.
December 14, 2010 at 8:14 am
Only one or two updates during the last few years just isn’t enough support for serious improvement to take place. Sony needs to listen to and to hear its users if it’s ever really going to improve, and not just the technically inclined, but those who are serious readers of real literature, not the predominantly popular schlock they’re pushing on their elibrary bookstore.
December 14, 2010 at 7:09 am
I think Sony has a chance of beating the Kindle and other devices, if it allows readers to hear the voices, some new, of the writers they want, not just those on its propriatary bookstore site, and develops a better software package to support the eReading experience.
December 14, 2010 at 2:45 am
and reduce its price a bit or?
December 14, 2010 at 2:55 am
Not sure I understand. All readers but Kindle allow you to import ePub format files from indy pubs. PDFs too, even Kindle.
December 14, 2010 at 4:00 am
@Nana Fredua-Agyeman, I bought mine in early 2007. The price has dropped a lot since then but I'm not sure what they're going for now on the world market. In the US there are now probably twenty to thirty ereaders to choose from.
@Ron Heimbecher, I wrote that a few years ago, before Sony embraced the ePub format, encouraging its universal adoption, other than by Kindle. I think Sony missed the boat, so to speak, for various reasons, hardware and software.
My PRS-505 allows disk space over 24 gigabytes, somewhere well beyond 30,000 books. I currently have over 4,000 on it. All the models after my 2007 vintage have had that capacity removed... I think Sony realized they were just giving too much away. I run a custom software installation to make up for their deficient one. https://code.google.com/p/prs-plus/
@Ron Heimbecher, I wrote that a few years ago, before Sony embraced the ePub format, encouraging its universal adoption, other than by Kindle. I think Sony missed the boat, so to speak, for various reasons, hardware and software.
My PRS-505 allows disk space over 24 gigabytes, somewhere well beyond 30,000 books. I currently have over 4,000 on it. All the models after my 2007 vintage have had that capacity removed... I think Sony realized they were just giving too much away. I run a custom software installation to make up for their deficient one. https://code.google.com/p/prs-plus/
December 14, 2010 at 7:09 am
@FG " I run a custom software installation to make up for their deficient one." that's a smart move.
December 14, 2010 at 7:28 am
I don't like the way Sony handles what it calls "collections," and I call English Literature, American Literature, African Literature, etc... PRS-PLUS allows one to import the folder structure from your hard drive directly onto the Sony Reader, instead one book at a time, which is insane when one has hundreds and thousands of books.
December 14, 2010 at 8:14 am
@FG, I can feel your frustrations here. So that if you have 100 of e-books it would virtually take some time to accomplish it. Other e-readers could handle this better, can't they? I don't use an e-reader so I barely know how it works.
December 14, 2010 at 8:26 am
I've heard there are other ereaders that import and keep the structure one has already created on a hard drive, but can't name them. Early on, the allegation was made that Sony was collecting the meta-data of what people were reading, as was the Kindle. Another reason for me not to use the Kindle.
December 14, 2010 at 8:59 am
I have a year-old SONY Pocket Reader a nice and simple tool. However, all my current projects require readers that can link to external sources from within the reader software. Not too many right now, but growing.
December 14, 2010 at 11:53 am
Sony’s software, though, has problems that get in the way of the experience of reading, requiring far too much tinkering around to copy files already sorted on one’s hard drive into “collections.” They’ve been criticized too, perhaps justly, for trying to corner the market in their own way, similar to Amazon.
December 13, 2010 at 5:29 pm
I chose the Sony Reader because I believe it’s more flexible. I have an existing library of over a thousand books from Gutenberg.org and all over the net, including some I’ve scanned myself. I wanted more control over my library than I ultimately felt the Kindle and other eReaders would allow me.
December 13, 2010 at 9:43 am
1 person likes this
For the yet unborn genrations, no such option is likely to exist, the libraries will be digitalized and the choices less.
December 13, 2010 at 11:30 am
Thanks for commenting. If you're talking about generations yet unborn, it's difficult to predict.
I would argue, for many decades to come, we will have both printed and ebooks, with the latter reaching perhaps 50% and more, especially in some genres, perhaps even within five years or so. The growth in ebooks is basically exponential. Most writers still lag behind understanding the siginifciance of what ebooks has to offer them. The traditional publishing monopolies are working hard to keep them in the dark.
POD and the Espresso Book Machine promise to keep the printed book around for a very long time, despite pervasive digitization. All, in my opinion, will offer readers more options, not fewer.
I would argue, for many decades to come, we will have both printed and ebooks, with the latter reaching perhaps 50% and more, especially in some genres, perhaps even within five years or so. The growth in ebooks is basically exponential. Most writers still lag behind understanding the siginifciance of what ebooks has to offer them. The traditional publishing monopolies are working hard to keep them in the dark.
POD and the Espresso Book Machine promise to keep the printed book around for a very long time, despite pervasive digitization. All, in my opinion, will offer readers more options, not fewer.
December 13, 2010 at 5:23 pm
I think something like that has happened with eReaders, as it has with literature and poetry, but it’s changing as the technology has improved. The Kindle didn’t appeal to me given the required uploading of one’s own documents, and downloading them back to the device.
December 13, 2010 at 7:54 am
1 person likes this
Most recently, I’ve read D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature, a book I always wanted to get around to reading, though he was never one of my literary heroes: “It is hard to hear a new voice… We just don’t listen.”
December 13, 2010 at 7:15 am
5 people like this
Funny, hectoring, prophetic, and infuriating readings of Franklin, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville and Whitman, to my memory. Wright Morris tried his hand at a sequel in The Territory Ahead. See https://www.amazon.com/Territory-Ahead-Wright-Morris/dp/0803281005
December 13, 2010 at 7:33 am
That's about the only sentence by D. H. Lawrence in the book that I thought much of. He wrote it when he was very young, in the 1920s, if memory serves. His readings of American literature are fairly shallow, don't exhibit much depth of reading and understanding. Lawrence was still coming more out of the influence of English literature and culture. Like so many writers of that time, he really didn't sufficiently understand or respect American culture and literature.
December 13, 2010 at 7:54 am
We start reading the new sometimes when, with exhaustion, we're finished with old.
December 13, 2010 at 11:13 am
I agree a requisite degree of dissatisfaction has to develop before one begins to look afield from the prevailing aesthetic and outlook. I take that as a cultural dynamic on many levels. Much of our problems today is a failure to search deep enough.
December 13, 2010 at 5:26 pm
I’ve read everything on one device or another, including the following books, or large sections of them: Shakespeare’s King Lear, Macbeth, Chaucer, Cicero, Milton, numerous writings of Martin Luther, Joel Barlow, Philip Freneau, Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus, and more than I can immediately remember over the years.
https://fglaysher.com/eReading/2009/02/hard-to-hear-a-new-voice/
December 13, 2010 at 6:09 am
https://fglaysher.com/eReading/2009/02/hard-to-hear-a-new-voice/
| eReading » Blog Archive » Hard to Hear a New Voice |
As I’ve mentioned, I’ve now read books on a digital device for over a decade. I started with the original Palm PDA, the green one, a piece of ancient technology. I then progressed up the scale with two subsequent Palms and now have the Sony Reader PRS-5o5, which seems to me an incredible leap forwar
December 13, 2010 at 6:09 am
As I’ve mentioned, I’ve now read books on a digital device for over a decade. I started with the original Palm PDA, the green one, a piece of ancient technology. I then progressed up the scale with two subsequent Palms and now have the Sony Reader PRS-5o5, which seems to me an incredible leap forward.
https://fglaysher.com/eReading/2009/02/hard-to-hear-a-new-voice/
December 13, 2010 at 4:58 am
https://fglaysher.com/eReading/2009/02/hard-to-hear-a-new-voice/
| eReading » Blog Archive » Hard to Hear a New Voice |
As I’ve mentioned, I’ve now read books on a digital device for over a decade. I started with the original Palm PDA, the green one, a piece of ancient technology. I then progressed up the scale with two subsequent Palms and now have the Sony Reader PRS-5o5, which seems to me an incredible leap forwar
December 13, 2010 at 4:58 am
Cut the Publishers! Here's how. Tell your friends...
Earthrise Press® eBooks
https://books.fglaysher.com
December 12, 2010 at 11:05 am
Earthrise Press® eBooks
https://books.fglaysher.com
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Earthrise Press |
Earthrise Press is a Post-Gutenberg Publisher of eBooks, non-DRM
December 12, 2010 at 11:05 am
We need soberly to remember the violence and oppression when we study or trade with China and remember that the moral, religious, philosophical crisis of China is fundamentally the modern one East and West share.
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
December 12, 2010 at 9:13 am
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
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Human Rights in China. Fang Lizhi. « Reviews by Frederick Glaysher |
Since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, Fang Lizhi has often been regarded as the foremost advocate of human rights in China. As one might well imagine, his championing of democracy and human rights has a long history going back as far as thirty years before Tiananmen Square. In 1957 he argued
December 12, 2010 at 9:13 am
3 people like this
The Chinese setting highlighted for me the betrayal of democracy, at tax payer’s expense, among some of my own nation’s elite in an overwhelmingly devastating way. How could the words of Fang Lizhi not resonate in my mind?
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
December 12, 2010 at 8:03 am
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
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Human Rights in China. Fang Lizhi. « Reviews by Frederick Glaysher |
Since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, Fang Lizhi has often been regarded as the foremost advocate of human rights in China. As one might well imagine, his championing of democracy and human rights has a long history going back as far as thirty years before Tiananmen Square. In 1957 he argued
December 12, 2010 at 8:03 am
Three times a day, they were forced to bow down to Mao’s picture. Even more shocking and disturbing was to hear words, in the very same room, from some of my American colleagues, shamelessly supporting the Chinese communist revolution, as though China would be the country finally to get communism right.
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
December 12, 2010 at 7:38 am
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
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Human Rights in China. Fang Lizhi. « Reviews by Frederick Glaysher |
Since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, Fang Lizhi has often been regarded as the foremost advocate of human rights in China. As one might well imagine, his championing of democracy and human rights has a long history going back as far as thirty years before Tiananmen Square. In 1957 he argued
December 12, 2010 at 7:38 am
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Against Defending Poetry |
Along with poems entitled “Ars Poetica,” essays entitled, “In Defense of Poetry,” or some variation on that theme, have circulated for decades. It occurs to me that the idea...
December 12, 2010 at 7:31 am
I was truly shocked and deeply moved by the revelation that the lecture room in which I and thirteen other Fulbright scholars sat every day for two weeks was used as a prison cell for twenty Beijing University professors during the first two years of the Cultural Revolution.
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
December 12, 2010 at 6:21 am
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
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Human Rights in China. Fang Lizhi. « Reviews by Frederick Glaysher |
Since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, Fang Lizhi has often been regarded as the foremost advocate of human rights in China. As one might well imagine, his championing of democracy and human rights has a long history going back as far as thirty years before Tiananmen Square. In 1957 he argued
December 12, 2010 at 6:21 am
One of my lasting impressions of China is that many individuals were palpably afraid to speak freely about issues of social, political, or public importance.
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
December 11, 2010 at 12:08 pm
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
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Human Rights in China. Fang Lizhi. « Reviews by Frederick Glaysher |
Since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, Fang Lizhi has often been regarded as the foremost advocate of human rights in China. As one might well imagine, his championing of democracy and human rights has a long history going back as far as thirty years before Tiananmen Square. In 1957 he argued
December 11, 2010 at 12:08 pm
Here were voices of heroism, reminiscent of the noblest Confucian scholarly traditions, who had the courage to speak the truth in a country in which many were still too afraid, and for good reason.
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
December 11, 2010 at 11:15 am
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
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Human Rights in China. Fang Lizhi. « Reviews by Frederick Glaysher |
Since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, Fang Lizhi has often been regarded as the foremost advocate of human rights in China. As one might well imagine, his championing of democracy and human rights has a long history going back as far as thirty years before Tiananmen Square. In 1957 he argued
December 11, 2010 at 11:15 am
1 person likes this
For those few who managed to find the humanity to affirm the truth about China’s century-long tragedy of violence and chaos, no matter in how careful and guarded of a way, I felt the deepest respect.
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
December 11, 2010 at 7:34 am
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
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Human Rights in China. Fang Lizhi. « Reviews by Frederick Glaysher |
Since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, Fang Lizhi has often been regarded as the foremost advocate of human rights in China. As one might well imagine, his championing of democracy and human rights has a long history going back as far as thirty years before Tiananmen Square. In 1957 he argued
December 11, 2010 at 7:34 am
Those who were obviously presenting the party line scared or appalled me with their distortions of modern Chinese history and their defense of the abuse of human rights on a scale that is almost unbelievable.
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
December 11, 2010 at 7:11 am
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
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Human Rights in China. Fang Lizhi. « Reviews by Frederick Glaysher |
Since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, Fang Lizhi has often been regarded as the foremost advocate of human rights in China. As one might well imagine, his championing of democracy and human rights has a long history going back as far as thirty years before Tiananmen Square. In 1957 he argued
December 11, 2010 at 7:11 am
Having just read Fang’s writings before leaving for China as a Fulbright Scholar in early June of 1994, I sat in a lecture room of Beijing University with his words and ideas resonating at times in my mind. The lecturers represented a variety of points of view on Chinese history and culture.
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
December 11, 2010 at 5:32 am
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
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Human Rights in China. Fang Lizhi. « Reviews by Frederick Glaysher |
Since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, Fang Lizhi has often been regarded as the foremost advocate of human rights in China. As one might well imagine, his championing of democracy and human rights has a long history going back as far as thirty years before Tiananmen Square. In 1957 he argued
December 11, 2010 at 5:32 am
With a striking clarity of moral vision, fearing for the long-term stability of Asia, he has pointed out that fascist Germany and Japan both had productive economies that far from resulting in liberal democracy ended in widespread regional and global destruction and misery for millions of people.
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
December 10, 2010 at 2:03 pm
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
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Human Rights in China. Fang Lizhi. « Reviews by Frederick Glaysher |
Since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, Fang Lizhi has often been regarded as the foremost advocate of human rights in China. As one might well imagine, his championing of democracy and human rights has a long history going back as far as thirty years before Tiananmen Square. In 1957 he argued
December 10, 2010 at 2:03 pm
On a number of occasions, Fang Lizhi has criticized the West and particular leaders for believing that trade with China is more important than human rights.
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
December 10, 2010 at 1:26 pm
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
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Human Rights in China. Fang Lizhi. « Reviews by Frederick Glaysher |
Since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, Fang Lizhi has often been regarded as the foremost advocate of human rights in China. As one might well imagine, his championing of democracy and human rights has a long history going back as far as thirty years before Tiananmen Square. In 1957 he argued
December 10, 2010 at 1:26 pm
Here is a voice of universal human importance reminding us of our own history and responsibilities and what we ourselves at times forget in exchange for business with China.
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
December 10, 2010 at 1:00 pm
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
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Human Rights in China. Fang Lizhi. « Reviews by Frederick Glaysher |
Since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, Fang Lizhi has often been regarded as the foremost advocate of human rights in China. As one might well imagine, his championing of democracy and human rights has a long history going back as far as thirty years before Tiananmen Square. In 1957 he argued
December 10, 2010 at 1:00 pm
Here is the voice of a Chinese intellectual we ought to remember the next time the excuse of 1.2 billion people surfaces.
December 10, 2010 at 12:59 pm
The exemplary quality of Fang Lizhi’s appeal to the world community can be discerned in the following excerpt from "Patriotism and Global Citizenship," originally an interview taped in Beijing in February of 1989 just before the spring turmoil leading up to the Tiananmen Square massacre:
December 10, 2010 at 10:37 am
"Human rights are not the property of a particular race or nationality. . . . These are fundamental freedoms, and everyone on the face of the earth should have them, regardless of what country he or she lives in. I think humanity is slowly coming to recognize this. Such ideas are fairly recent in human history;" Fang Lizhi
December 10, 2010 at 10:36 am
1 person likes this
... "in Lincoln’s time, only a century past, it was just being acknowledged in the United States that blacks and whites should enjoy the same rights. In China we are only now confronting such an issue." (247) Fang Lizhi
December 10, 2010 at 10:36 am
Taiwanese Animators Skewer China’s Response to Liu Xiaobo Peace Prize
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeQeXlgNVF0&feature=player_embedded
December 10, 2010 at 9:56 am
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeQeXlgNVF0&feature=player_embedded
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China creates peace prize to rival Nobel |
https://www.nma.tv/ Angered by the decision to award this year's prize to jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. Beijing has mounted a campaign to discredit the award and has asked its allies to boycott the ceremony. It has also created its own rival 'Confucius Peace Prize.'
December 10, 2010 at 9:56 am
2 people like this
This satire is VERY funny!! Lolz.
December 10, 2010 at 10:22 am
The largest cemeteries should be automatically short-listed for this prize... ;-)
December 10, 2010 at 10:56 am
I'm not sure what you mean by "cemeteries." How does that fit the context?
December 10, 2010 at 1:29 pm
Ah, it dawned on me, China, a cemetery of a political system, alas, apropos... a fitting trope for its entire trajectory.
December 10, 2010 at 1:48 pm
@Frederick; well surely large cemeteries much contribute substantially to the Peace of mind of political systems with a delicate constitution... ;-)
December 10, 2010 at 7:42 pm
Liu Xiaobo, Slide Show - Oslo - The Empty Seat
https://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/12/10/world/20101210-nobel.html
December 10, 2010 at 9:47 am
https://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/12/10/world/20101210-nobel.html
| Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to Liu Xiaobo - Slide Show - NYTimes.com |
The Chinese dissident Mr. Liu, who is imprisoned in China, was absent from the ceremony in Oslo and his close family members were forbidden to leave the country.
December 10, 2010 at 9:47 am
The suppression of Falun Gong and other dissidents continues to cry out to the world for justice.
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
December 10, 2010 at 9:41 am
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
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Human Rights in China. Fang Lizhi. « Reviews by Frederick Glaysher |
Since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, Fang Lizhi has often been regarded as the foremost advocate of human rights in China. As one might well imagine, his championing of democracy and human rights has a long history going back as far as thirty years before Tiananmen Square. In 1957 he argued
December 10, 2010 at 9:41 am
Instead of accepting and even defending what Fang Lizhi calls a "double standard" when it comes to China, Fang emphasizes the world community should "uphold human rights as a universal standard."
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
December 10, 2010 at 8:23 am
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
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Human Rights in China. Fang Lizhi. « Reviews by Frederick Glaysher |
Since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, Fang Lizhi has often been regarded as the foremost advocate of human rights in China. As one might well imagine, his championing of democracy and human rights has a long history going back as far as thirty years before Tiananmen Square. In 1957 he argued
December 10, 2010 at 8:23 am
Liu Xiaobo - PEN bio
https://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/3029/prmID/174
December 10, 2010 at 7:49 am
https://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/3029/prmID/174
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PEN American Center - China: Liu Xiaobo |
December 10, 2010 at 7:49 am
1 person likes this
Far from unique despite its huge population, Fang Lizhi insists "the Chinese people want the same freedoms as everyone else."
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
December 10, 2010 at 7:46 am
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
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Human Rights in China. Fang Lizhi. « Reviews by Frederick Glaysher |
Since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, Fang Lizhi has often been regarded as the foremost advocate of human rights in China. As one might well imagine, his championing of democracy and human rights has a long history going back as far as thirty years before Tiananmen Square. In 1957 he argued
December 10, 2010 at 7:46 am
Liu Xiaobo, Text of Chinese Dissident’s ‘Final Statement’
"I hope to be the last victim of China’s endless literary inquisition, and that after this no one else will ever be jailed for their speech."
https://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/text-of-chinese-dissidents-final-statement/
December 10, 2010 at 7:12 am
"I hope to be the last victim of China’s endless literary inquisition, and that after this no one else will ever be jailed for their speech."
https://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/text-of-chinese-dissidents-final-statement/
| Text of Chinese Dissident's 'Final Statement' |
The complete text of a statement by Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese dissident, which was read in his absence at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony on Friday.
December 10, 2010 at 7:12 am
1 person likes this
Charter 08 - Human Rights In China
December 9, 2008
https://www.hrichina.org/public/contents/article?revision_id=191250&item_id=173687
December 10, 2010 at 6:57 am
December 9, 2008
https://www.hrichina.org/public/contents/article?revision_id=191250&item_id=173687
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HRIC | 中国人权 |
This year marks 100 years since China’s [first] Constitution,1 the 60th anniversary of the promulgation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 30th anniversary of the birth of the Democracy Wall, and the 10th year since the Chinese government signed the International Covenant on Civil an
December 10, 2010 at 6:57 am
Send email asking for liu xiabo's release here: https://www.pen.org/page.php/prmID/1893
December 10, 2010 at 6:53 am
| PEN American Center - Demand the Immediate Release of Liu Xiaobo |
December 10, 2010 at 6:53 am
AlJazeera English on Liu Xiaobo. Charter 08 signatory interviewed about Liu Xiaobo and human rights.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTCHNj72AbY
December 10, 2010 at 6:50 am
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTCHNj72AbY
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Nobel crackdown in China |
For the first time since 1936, the Nobel Peace Prize won't be handed over to the winner himself, Liu Xiaobo, or a member of his family. That year, it was pacifist Carl von Ossietzky living in Nazi Germany who couldn't attend. In 2010, Communist China is the obstacle.
December 10, 2010 at 6:50 am
Liu Xiaobo discusses freedom and liberty in China, "to elevate the standard of the whole world," "a crucial precondition for the elevation of the spiritual quality of mankind."
December 10, 2010 at 6:08 am
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Liu Xiaobo Discusses Freedom of Expression in China |
Imprisoned Chinese writer Liu Xiaobo talks about freedom of expression in China
December 10, 2010 at 6:08 am
1 person likes this
Let’s come to grips now with Fang Lizhi’s statements on China. He himself has criticized the tendency in China and the West to conceive of China "as totally different from any other civilization in the world" and that therefore "universal principles of human rights don’t fit China’s experience" (New Perspectives Quarterly, Winter 1992).
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
December 10, 2010 at 5:53 am
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
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Human Rights in China. Fang Lizhi. « Reviews by Frederick Glaysher |
Since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, Fang Lizhi has often been regarded as the foremost advocate of human rights in China. As one might well imagine, his championing of democracy and human rights has a long history going back as far as thirty years before Tiananmen Square. In 1957 he argued
December 10, 2010 at 5:53 am
Liu Xiaobo wants this year’s Peace Prize to be dedicated to “the lost souls from the 4th of June.” i.e., Tiananmen Square
December 10, 2010 at 4:55 am
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Nobel Winner’s Imprisonment Shows China Weakness, Jagland Says - Bloomberg.com |
The imprisonment of Nobel Peace Prize Winner and activist Liu Xiaobo illustrates the fragility of the Chinese political system, the chairman of the Nobel Committee said at the awards ceremony.
December 10, 2010 at 4:55 am
Oppression... always an act of weakness.
December 10, 2010 at 7:56 am
An excellent brief video on Liu Xiaobo.
Please consider sharing with your friends...
December 10, 2010 at 4:40 am
Please consider sharing with your friends...
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Liu Xiaobo - Nobel Peace Laureate |
Liu Xiaobo, one of the most outspoken critics of the Chinese government, spent a year and a half in prison after the 1989 Tiananmen Square peaceful protests, and in 1996 was imprisoned for three years for criticizing China's policy toward Taiwan and the Dalai Lama. Last year, he was sentenced to a f
December 10, 2010 at 4:40 am
Any chance they will let him go? Is his family safe? Does the world's attention on him protect him? Thank you for increasing my sensitivity to this issue.
December 10, 2010 at 4:53 am
Not the slightest chance on earth... As the video suggests, he has chosen knowingly to sacrifice himself for the good of China... which makes him all the more truly heroic.
It's difficult to hope that the world's attention will help protect him. He's really in the hands of thugs, desperate to hold onto power, willing to brutalize and murder anyone to do it.
It's difficult to hope that the world's attention will help protect him. He's really in the hands of thugs, desperate to hold onto power, willing to brutalize and murder anyone to do it.
December 10, 2010 at 5:00 am
But the limelight shows their thugishness to the world. It is very scary to to think how indebted our country is to a country like this.
December 10, 2010 at 10:30 am
Yes, we're propping them up, really. Have been for a long time. Fang Lizhi has repeatedly criticized that in terms of the West in general.
December 10, 2010 at 10:33 am
I am like a four year old with always wanting to ask "why?" Why would the West be so supportive? What do they have on us? (Deeds to our countries? I can think of nothing worse to hold us hostage with.)
December 10, 2010 at 10:41 am
I quote only one reference in support of this fact: "Einstein’s concept of world citizenship was profound. . . . in the years ahead, the human race will have to come to grips with this idea as well" (249).
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
December 10, 2010 at 4:20 am
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
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Human Rights in China. Fang Lizhi. « Reviews by Frederick Glaysher |
Since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, Fang Lizhi has often been regarded as the foremost advocate of human rights in China. As one might well imagine, his championing of democracy and human rights has a long history going back as far as thirty years before Tiananmen Square. In 1957 he argued
December 10, 2010 at 4:20 am
Chinese censors clamp down on internet buzz over Liu Xiaobo.
“I hope when a new China is established, the Nobel committee will send us the empty chair so it can remind us of our hard-earned freedom and peace.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8193345/Nobel-prize-Chinese-censors-clamp-down-on-internet-buzz-over-Liu-Xiaobo.html
December 10, 2010 at 4:15 am
“I hope when a new China is established, the Nobel committee will send us the empty chair so it can remind us of our hard-earned freedom and peace.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8193345/Nobel-prize-Chinese-censors-clamp-down-on-internet-buzz-over-Liu-Xiaobo.html
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Nobel prize: Chinese censors clamp down on internet buzz over Liu Xiaobo |
Chinese censors moved rapidly today to extinguish a flickering buzz about Liu Xiaobo, the winner of this year’s Nobel Peace prize, from the Chinese internet.
December 10, 2010 at 4:15 am
1 person likes this
Liu Xiaobo, "China's modernization can only be achieved after a long period of Westernization."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/10/AR2010121000111_2.html?sid=ST2010120906241
December 10, 2010 at 4:10 am
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/10/AR2010121000111_2.html?sid=ST2010120906241
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How China branded Nobel winner Liu Xiaobo a traitor |
HONG KONG -- The magazine is banned in mainland China. So, too, is its Web site. Its editor is barred from visiting the land of his birth. Yet Chinese authorities have repeatedly cited reporting from the blacklisted publication.
December 10, 2010 at 4:10 am
1 person likes this
I don't believe in 'Westernisation'. What is it actually? Swallowing what somebody from another part is doing? I admire Lu Xiabao but such a statement is flawed under critical examination. By Westernisation does he imply Capitalism or what? I am fed with one culture swallowing up another and calling it modernisation or westernisation or even civilisation.
What do we want: a homogeonous world culture?
What do we want: a homogeonous world culture?
December 10, 2010 at 4:50 am
The article ends by quoting Liu Xiaobo, "The age of colonialism has already passed." So the Chinese government is actually distorting his meaning by citing out of context his one sarcastic remark about China needing 300 years of colonialism. He said that to make his point that China is a long way from respecting human rights. The irony is that China is demonstrating Liu Xiaobo was right by the entire way they treating him!
I don't believe "modernisation" is "Westernization." The West, arguably, wasn't even where it "began," in a sense. To my mind, each country and people must answer your question for itself. I don't believe the only choice is to become one homogeneous mush. All civilizations evolve, we all have and are, now together more than ever before toward the future...
By the way, I enjoyed your interview. I particularly liked your comment about "calabash and huts," your displeasure with that kind of cliched African writing, presumably for something more engaged with other areas of life, as it is actually lived by many people... Best.
I don't believe "modernisation" is "Westernization." The West, arguably, wasn't even where it "began," in a sense. To my mind, each country and people must answer your question for itself. I don't believe the only choice is to become one homogeneous mush. All civilizations evolve, we all have and are, now together more than ever before toward the future...
By the way, I enjoyed your interview. I particularly liked your comment about "calabash and huts," your displeasure with that kind of cliched African writing, presumably for something more engaged with other areas of life, as it is actually lived by many people... Best.
December 10, 2010 at 5:14 am
And why should China "westernize"? Liu is ruined intellectual good, tunnel visioned as the most celebrated non-Western Westernizing intellectuals.
December 10, 2010 at 5:16 am
@FG... If that's what he intended well enough because I believe the respect of the right of humans is universal and each civilsation or people have found ways of fighting against those who fights it.
Thanks... I am glad you liked it.
Thanks... I am glad you liked it.
December 10, 2010 at 5:38 am
@Richard Ali, The Chinese government tactics against Liu Xiaobo are merely calculated to discredit him and frighten into silence anyone who believes in democracy, by making an example of Liu. It's basically what all tyrants and oppressors throughout history have done to control people. Liu has had the rare intelligence and courage to understand the importance of the issue and the willingness to sacrifice himself, like Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, and others, in similar situations. I think too of writers in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa, at times...
December 10, 2010 at 5:48 am
The trouble is a credibility deficit in the West. Human rights is the Western trojan and we in Africa know that. As, undoubtedly, does all Asia. The Chinese govt overreacts but we must see this as a stress response, not because they are tyrants and wrong but because they know they are seen as being tyrants and being wrong. Even when their opponents are equally wrong. We've got a Pascal's Circle here, I see it and so does China.
December 10, 2010 at 6:05 am
Millions of Chinese think otherwise. Fang Lizhi, for one:
Bringing Down the Great Wall: Writings on Science, Culture, and Democracy in China. Fang Lizhi.
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
As someone who once sat in Beijing traffic next to a man with a hood covering his head, flanked by PRC guards, I've witnessed with my own eyes what millions of Chinese experience... only political prisoners are hooded.
Bringing Down the Great Wall: Writings on Science, Culture, and Democracy in China. Fang Lizhi.
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
As someone who once sat in Beijing traffic next to a man with a hood covering his head, flanked by PRC guards, I've witnessed with my own eyes what millions of Chinese experience... only political prisoners are hooded.
December 10, 2010 at 6:18 am
"What millions of Chinese experience" - do you/does he mean political imprisonment? Or chance meeting political prisoners? Both things are not the same and their difference is misleading and significant.
December 10, 2010 at 6:27 am
Liu Xiaobo *is* a political prisoner... You say "we in Africa." I've been reading virtually everything Chinua Achebe ever wrote over the last three months. I doubt he'd agree with your view of tyrants, nor your monolithic "West." Similarly, having lived in Asia, in addition to having traveled all over China, I know you're wrong on that score as well...
December 10, 2010 at 6:38 am
That is your take of Chinua Achebe's thought. To hold that as a grail would be unseemly, wouldnt it?
Wrong on what score, doctor? I simply requested clarification on the quoted double-speak. China *has* got a billion people, the sooner we stop being convenient and patronizing, the sooner we can agree on the dialectic of argument.
Wrong on what score, doctor? I simply requested clarification on the quoted double-speak. China *has* got a billion people, the sooner we stop being convenient and patronizing, the sooner we can agree on the dialectic of argument.
December 10, 2010 at 8:56 am
https://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/liu_xiaobo/index.html
December 10, 2010 at 3:53 am
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Liu Xiaobo - The New York Times |
News about Liu Xiaobo. Commentary and archival information about Liu Xiaobo from The New York Times.
December 10, 2010 at 3:53 am
In his 1992 book Bringing Down the Great Wall: Writings on Science, Culture, and Democracy in China, he often quotes Einstein not only on scientific matters but also on social and political ones as well.
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
December 10, 2010 at 3:40 am
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
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Human Rights in China. Fang Lizhi. « Reviews by Frederick Glaysher |
Since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, Fang Lizhi has often been regarded as the foremost advocate of human rights in China. As one might well imagine, his championing of democracy and human rights has a long history going back as far as thirty years before Tiananmen Square. In 1957 he argued
December 10, 2010 at 3:40 am
Fang Lizhi, then, conceives of himself, and must be seen properly in the light of, a universal struggle for human freedom and peace.
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
December 10, 2010 at 3:21 am
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/human-rights-in-china-fang-lizhi
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Human Rights in China. Fang Lizhi. « Reviews by Frederick Glaysher |
Since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, Fang Lizhi has often been regarded as the foremost advocate of human rights in China. As one might well imagine, his championing of democracy and human rights has a long history going back as far as thirty years before Tiananmen Square. In 1957 he argued
December 10, 2010 at 3:21 am
1 person likes this
"Chinese authorities, who have been incensed by the choice of Mr. Liu, continued to pour vitriol on the award while intensifying their crackdown on scores of people they perceive as a threat."
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/world/europe/11nobel.html
December 10, 2010 at 3:18 am
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/world/europe/11nobel.html
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Peace Prize to be Awarded to Absent Chinese Dissident |
The Nobel Committee prepared on Friday to honor Liu Xiaobo in his absence and over China’s loud objections.
December 10, 2010 at 3:18 am
Einstein of course had the experience of fleeing the Nazis and was always very politically involved in the struggle for a just social order. Especially during the last decade before Einstein died in 1955, he was an active spokesman for human rights and the United Nations, which he felt the Member States had nevertheless failed properly to design and support.
December 10, 2010 at 3:11 am
More surprisingly though, he finds in Einstein’s progressive social and political ideals an example of a public role for the scientist that he clearly thinks inspiring and worthy of emulation.
December 9, 2010 at 5:00 pm
2 people like this
Before turning to his ideas on democracy and human rights, I believe it is important to understand why Albert Einstein is a significant influence on Fang Lizhi. As a prominent fellow scientist, one might well imagine Fang Lizhi to respect and appreciate Einstein’s scientific achievements.
December 9, 2010 at 4:43 pm
Forced to live in the embassy for an entire year before being allowed to leave China, Fang Lizhi wrote four scientific papers and a number of acceptance speeches for the international awards that he increasingly began receiving in recognition of his heroic defense of democracy and human rights. Since his release, he has taught at Oxford, Princeton, and the University of Arizona, where he is now a tenured professor.
December 9, 2010 at 3:18 pm
Although Fang Lizhi did not participate in the Tiananmen Square demonstrations of 1989, the government accused him of counterrevolutionary activities and of instigating the demonstrations. When the bloody crackdown began, he realized his life was in danger and fled with his wife to the US embassy in Beijing.
December 9, 2010 at 10:18 am
1 person likes this
In 1986 the communist authorities believed he helped start the pro-democracy student demonstrations of that year. In 1987 Fang Lizhi was dismissed as vice-president of the University of Science and Technology in Anhui province and thrown out of the Communist Party. His dismissal was clearly in retaliation for his fearless pro-democracy speeches throughout China and statements in the foreign press.
December 9, 2010 at 8:22 am
In 1957 he argued political ideology had nothing to contribute to scientific inquiry, which initially led the Chinese government to identify him as someone in need of correction. From time to time, several other clashes with the government took place.
December 9, 2010 at 7:34 am
Since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, Fang Lizhi has often been regarded as the foremost advocate of human rights in China. As one might well imagine, his championing of democracy and human rights has a long history going back as far as thirty years before Tiananmen Square.
December 9, 2010 at 6:04 am
eReading is reading but then…
https://fglaysher.com/eReading/2009/02/ereading-is-reading-but-then/
https://fglaysher.com/eReading/2009/02/ereading-is-reading-but-then/
December 9, 2010 at 5:55 am
Liu Xiaobo, from “Experiencing Death”
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/opinion/09liu.html
December 9, 2010 at 4:54 am
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/opinion/09liu.html
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Words a Cell Can’t Hold |
The recipient of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize has been forbidden to travel to the award ceremony by China. This poem was translated from the Chinese.
December 9, 2010 at 4:54 am
1 person likes this
like is an insufficient a response to this poem.
December 9, 2010 at 5:11 am
What Ann said. Thanks for sharing this.
December 9, 2010 at 5:29 am
Sadly tragic... consider "Share"ing the link to your friends. Maybe we can make it viral...
December 9, 2010 at 5:40 am
@Frederick: Done.
December 9, 2010 at 6:55 am
I love the new meaning to the word viral and the new intentionality that goes with it. I am a medical person so I find making great works, important news, humor and wisdom go viral a considerable improvement in the status of this word, viral.
December 9, 2010 at 7:02 am
I can't carry hundreds of physical books, but I can on my Palm or Sony Reader, anywhere I go.
And then the experience, I still believe, being tugged in both directions, isn't quite the same. It can even seem better. Or right with the right book. The quality is as deep and engaging.
And then the experience, I still believe, being tugged in both directions, isn't quite the same. It can even seem better. Or right with the right book. The quality is as deep and engaging.
December 9, 2010 at 4:07 am
1 person likes this
It is alright to embrace the new, miraculous technology. I for one can not sit and read these days but I can read, always unabridged, through my ears in a car, while in a line, when waiting, when cleaning the kitchen. Some people would consider that unfaithful to the book. Though I love the feel of a book, I will take whatever method allows me to actually read it.
December 9, 2010 at 4:56 am
To my mind, it would be a different experience, though I know many people find audio books satisfying and rewarding. I can respect that. I need to linger over words, flip back, mull things over... rewinding, for me, wouldn't be the same...
December 9, 2010 at 4:59 am
Just as not holding a book in one's hands and sitting undisturbed for hours. One does what one can with what one has. No regrets, no apologies. However, the experience is similar for me as I am not a teacher and do not need to analyze or critique. I can just imagine. It is not the same for you who teach. I know. I am married to a former English professor. It took him a long time before he could just read and enjoy a novel the way we pedestrians do.
December 9, 2010 at 5:18 am
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/world/asia/09wikileaks-oslo.html
December 9, 2010 at 3:54 am
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WikiLeaks Archive - China Resisted U.S. on Liu Xiaobo’s Rights |
Western support for Liu Xiaobo has led China to wage a campaign against other governments.
December 9, 2010 at 3:54 am
I find I actually can read that marginal article, which I wouldn’t otherwise, life being too busy since it’s a little lower on my list of priorities or interests. It’s easy to copy and paste it into my eReader to maybe get around to weeks or sometimes months later.
December 8, 2010 at 5:47 pm
1 person likes this
Depending on the inspiration of the moment, there’s always something to read, something I *want* to read, not a soiled, wornout magazine at the doctor’s office, a newspaper at the restaurant that has been handled by dozens of people that day, over their eggs and toast, french fries, and other greasy fare.
December 8, 2010 at 5:08 pm
4 people like this
...with coffee.
December 8, 2010 at 5:21 pm
God only knows what else...
December 8, 2010 at 5:44 pm
And lots of fish in the sea.
December 9, 2010 at 3:18 am
I can flip things off the net, into a reader, and take it with me for snatches, long or short, when I can. Having hundreds of books and articles with me at all times has advantages.
December 8, 2010 at 4:23 pm
3 people like this
I am half and half on eReading and things similar of that nature. Even with FB: I do enjoy the articles, conversations that it generates but I can't stand the computer screen. It makes me distracted and it hurts my eyes tremendously. And most of the stuff I read on the Internet is actually of substance but even with that: it seems that my mind is over-stimulated and it wants to breathe. But maybe I am all alone in this...people are moving so fast technologically.
December 8, 2010 at 4:28 pm
I can sympathize with what you're saying. The limitless load of information now on the Net can be overwhelming. The technical geniuses keep coming out with new gadgets.
Actually, any ereader with what's called an eInk screen would be very easy on your eyes, unlike computer screens. Most of the ereaders use eInk. It's as comfortable as a real book.
Actually, any ereader with what's called an eInk screen would be very easy on your eyes, unlike computer screens. Most of the ereaders use eInk. It's as comfortable as a real book.
December 8, 2010 at 4:33 pm
I was going to spring for a Kindle, but for a number of reasons have decided to wait for the 7" iPad...if it's ever put on the market--one's not restricted to one eStore, and the reading experience is supposed to be pretty close to using a real book. Which is what, of course, I prefer above all.
December 8, 2010 at 4:38 pm
The Kindle has the eInk screen mentioned above. I'm assuming the 7" iPad will also have the same color screen as the original iPad. Apple's advertising has largely avoided the issue that it's light-emitting, which causes eye strain, unlike a book. Would that matter to you?
I've read many two to three hundred page books on my Sony Reader. Its eInk technology doesn't cause eye strain.
It depends on the individual, what one wants. I know the iPads will do more than primarily read books like most ereaders.
I've read many two to three hundred page books on my Sony Reader. Its eInk technology doesn't cause eye strain.
It depends on the individual, what one wants. I know the iPads will do more than primarily read books like most ereaders.
December 8, 2010 at 4:53 pm
Oops, I think I 'liked' the wrong comment. Thanks for the information on the difference between a reader and a computer screen. I have assumed I will never get one because I hate the computer screen and find it very difficult to read on one. You are changing my mind about the ereaders.
December 8, 2010 at 5:19 pm
You need a light just like reading a regular book, with the ereaders with the eInk screens. There isn't any "back light" to them, is another way of putting it. So you can read for hours without it bothering you. Most people say so at least.
December 8, 2010 at 5:43 pm
Often, we think in reverse. What is lost or diminished by a mechanical device. I don’t want one or the other, but both. I’ve been regularly using both for over a decade, like everybody else, or at least so many people now.
December 8, 2010 at 1:48 pm
1 person likes this
Reading and eReading are the same. But then….
I suppose what I was thinking of was that eReading can be as absorbing and imaginative as conventional reading, yet there are advantages to eReading.
I suppose what I was thinking of was that eReading can be as absorbing and imaginative as conventional reading, yet there are advantages to eReading.
December 8, 2010 at 12:41 pm
2 people like this
19 Countries to Miss Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/world/08nobel.html
December 7, 2010 at 3:39 am
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/world/08nobel.html
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|
19 Countries to Miss Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony |
Beijing has pressed for a boycott of the event, which will recognize the imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.
December 7, 2010 at 3:39 am
1 person likes this
PLEASE MAKE THIS VIRAL EVERYONE... GET THE WORD OUT!
December 6, 2010 at 6:59 pm
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Sen Bernie Sanders Amazing Speech DEC 02 2010 .flv |
THIS IS A MUST SEE , FINALLY SOMEONE IN SENATE IS TELLING THE TRUTH WHAT IS GOING ON IN OUR COUNTRY !!! THANKYOU C-SPAN AND BERNIE SAMNDERS.... PLEASE TAKE THIS VIRAL EVERYONE... GET THE WORD OUT
December 6, 2010 at 6:59 pm
3 people like this
I totally agree with Sen Sanders.
December 6, 2010 at 7:34 pm
Sen. Sanders did not cite who is paying the taxes in this country to make it run and support the 50% who are not paying taxes. Neither did he correctly identify the law that caused the mortgage bubble and put Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and their supporters at the center of the debacle that cost so many of us our retirement. Instead he choses to incorrectly broad-brush every person on Wall Street as a "Crook." Sen. Sanders seeks redistrubution of wealth through a variety of means because philosophically he is a democratic socialist and is the first and only socialist in Congress. I likewise thank C-Span for bringing his speech to our attention, and await the opportunity to hear what the Senator proposes, now that we know what he dislikes.
December 6, 2010 at 7:59 pm
I don't really know anything about Sanders but respect him for speaking out about the ever-increasing concentration of wealth in a few hands. Structurally, that's not a formula that ever works, historically speaking. Add the dysfunctional factionalism of our politics, and I think there's reason to be very concerned.
December 7, 2010 at 3:33 am
Agreed. Cheers !!!
December 7, 2010 at 4:55 am
Google ebooks > Frederick Glaysher
https://books.google.com/ebooks?as_brr=5&q=%22frederick+glaysher%22&as_sub=
December 6, 2010 at 6:00 pm
https://books.google.com/ebooks?as_brr=5&q=%22frederick+glaysher%22&as_sub=
| Search results for “"frederick glaysher"” - Google eBookstore |
The Google eBook store offers access to millions of ebooks, from bestsellers to favorite classics.
December 6, 2010 at 6:00 pm
Google Introduces E-Bookstore
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/business/media/07ebookstore.html
December 6, 2010 at 1:19 pm
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/business/media/07ebookstore.html
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|
Google Introduces E-Bookstore |
The Google eBookstore may be a boon to independent bookstores that have signed on to sell e-books on their Web sites through Google.
December 6, 2010 at 1:19 pm
Physically, there’s a qualitative difference; intellectually, reading is reading is eReading.
Qualitative Difference
https://fglaysher.com/eReading/2009/02/qualitative-difference/
December 5, 2010 at 10:15 am
Qualitative Difference
https://fglaysher.com/eReading/2009/02/qualitative-difference/
| eReading » Blog Archive » Qualitative Difference |
Reading is reading is eReading. And then I have afterthoughts. It is different. I “access” it in a different way. It feels different. Personally speaking, I wouldn’t want to read every book in digital format. Cover and paper weight have an aesthetic feel to them that steel and aluminum can’t provide
December 5, 2010 at 10:15 am
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Is all that self-evident? There are a lot of people resisting the notion… the experience.
I suppose my point is that the quality of the reading experience is or can be every bit as deep and reflective as with a physical book. One needn’t feel one has betrayed books and letters by admitting as much. Far from it, it is the experience that counts and the cultivation of the consciousness that only reading can provide.
I suppose my point is that the quality of the reading experience is or can be every bit as deep and reflective as with a physical book. One needn’t feel one has betrayed books and letters by admitting as much. Far from it, it is the experience that counts and the cultivation of the consciousness that only reading can provide.
December 5, 2010 at 9:48 am
2 people like this
Ride a horse or drive a car, you will still get there, but the experience is entirely different. You don't have to be considered disloyal to try a new experience. That being said, I don't own a horse just because my grandmother did.
December 5, 2010 at 9:58 am
absolutely..reading is self exploring, enhancing..makes 1 question..a strong consciousness as u said. whether physical bk-preferably, or even virtual...bit 1 must keep reading...
December 5, 2010 at 10:08 am
Since I’ve read so many ebooks now on electronic devices than I can even recall, I continue to be surprised when I come across protestations against ereading. Even educated readers can be resistant to the idea that there is “no difference.” Which is to say, reading is JUST AS intellectually exciting, rewarding, invigorating, etc., capable of changing my consciousness.
December 5, 2010 at 8:36 am
Yet I found myself fully immerse in Cervantes’ imaginative world. The allegory took over and pulled me into it, as I eagerly suspended my disbelief. All the cliches about reading were just as true. I escaped from the harshness of reality into the perfection of an ideal world, relishing the delights of his intellect and humor.
December 5, 2010 at 7:25 am
1 person likes this
|
Court sides with splinter group |
CHICAGO - A federal court in Chicago has ruled that a group of self-proclaimed orthodox Baha'i believers can keep calling themselves Baha'i despite a 1966 court decision that said an earlier breakaway group could not.
December 5, 2010 at 7:15 am
Reading is reading is eReading. And then I have afterthoughts. It is different. I “access” it in a different way. It feels different. Personally speaking, I wouldn’t want to read every book in digital format. Cover and paper weight have an aesthetic feel to them that steel and aluminum can’t provide. The leather case for the Sony Reader helps, but it’s still different.
December 5, 2010 at 7:08 am
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I'm still mired in ambivalence about e-readers--partly because I'm admittedly a knee-jerk Luddite and partly because I love books as objects.
December 5, 2010 at 7:15 am
What constitutes a book? That's the real question to my mind. It's not the paper product that the Book, Platonic, is printed on... The Book has been stored on many mediums throughout human history.
Having read or reread many of the classics as ebooks, I'm convinced the *experience* is every bit as deep and profound as the Gutenberg Form...
Having read or reread many of the classics as ebooks, I'm convinced the *experience* is every bit as deep and profound as the Gutenberg Form...
December 5, 2010 at 7:19 am
Oh, I don't doubt that--it has more to do with the environment in which I read--the tactile and visual interaction with the book as a longstanding association with a pleasurable activity. Then there's the pleasure of poking around in independent used book stores and coming across something I either didn't know about or had forgotten. But in the early 70s I resisted calculators for a while too!
December 5, 2010 at 7:26 am
I respect and honor the tactile experience of a printed book, and I think there should and will always be a place for printed books... heritage volumes, like vinyl record albums, especially the great classics.
I've haunted bookstores all my life, especially used bookstores, and enjoy and need the Happy Discovery! I've often traveled hundreds of miles to browse in bookstores. Can't imagine living without the experience. It's not an either/or to me. I think people of literary sensibility are tending to miss a very valuable opportunity to reach younger readers...
It seems to me that the academy is working against itself, too, at times, in this way. The "two cultures" mentality is too quickly invoked, leading in the wrong direction... Instead of defending from a bastion, we should be leading the charge...
I've haunted bookstores all my life, especially used bookstores, and enjoy and need the Happy Discovery! I've often traveled hundreds of miles to browse in bookstores. Can't imagine living without the experience. It's not an either/or to me. I think people of literary sensibility are tending to miss a very valuable opportunity to reach younger readers...
It seems to me that the academy is working against itself, too, at times, in this way. The "two cultures" mentality is too quickly invoked, leading in the wrong direction... Instead of defending from a bastion, we should be leading the charge...
December 5, 2010 at 7:37 am
...or at least participating in it with greater understanding of what's taking place, joining and appreciating the excitement!
December 5, 2010 at 7:38 am
I have a home so filled with books we can hardly move, and I adore my new Kindle. To me, it is an adjunct. You can't compare e-reading to a beautiful book, in a fine binding, nice paper, perhaps some illustrations. But you can compare it very easily (and to the better) to a cheap paperback. I've been wanting to re-read classics, but my library doesn't carry them and buying used paperbacks would be a bit pricey. I've downloaded 500 free books to my Kindle. Conrad, Dickinson, Woolf, Balzac, etc. A pleasant reading experience. Ability to annotate. Can share directly to Twitter and FB.
December 5, 2010 at 7:41 am
I do like the idea of a virtually non-material library as a way of materially lightening and simplifying my life (something I've been thinking about a lot lately) as well as reducing production/distribution costs as a means of democratizing the writing in much the same way that cinema is on the verge of a great democratization via the widespread availability of digital technology.
December 5, 2010 at 7:56 am
I also resisted digital photography, but love it now--more than love it. I gave up photography in 1975 in part because it's cost, if indulged with the kind of relentless engagement I live for, would render me an indentured servant to unloved work. Now I've been able to re-engage it very freely and independently thanks to the very technology I not so long ago regarded with great distrust. It will be interesting to watch this new era sort itself out...
December 5, 2010 at 8:02 am
@Tree Riesener, I do agree the ebook is essentially the replacement of the cheap paperback. Why pay for a printed copy of Conrad and whoever, when you can easily download every book he ever wrote? As well as every other classic... in various editions and translations.
With over 4,000 books on my Sony Reader, I'm not missing much of the best of the cultural heritage of humanity. What isn't yet in an ebook that I want is on my library shelves, nearly floor to ceiling...
@Reg Darling, It's an amazing experience to me to carry around access to thousands of books, at the doctor's office, family, etc., I can read what strikes my fancy. Unlike my physical library, I can actually find the book in only a few clicks! ...instead search the walls for twenty minutes, sometimes just giving up!
Smartphone technology continues to merge all the digital revolutions into one. ...the Star Trek pad. I think I read recently 6 to 9 megapixel cameras are available or coming on phones. I have a couple of hundred books on my G1 phone and am looking forward to Google's new phone this month which is supposed to exceed everything else now out there... as a reader it will probably often replace my Sony Reader. Many young people have already made the shift...
With over 4,000 books on my Sony Reader, I'm not missing much of the best of the cultural heritage of humanity. What isn't yet in an ebook that I want is on my library shelves, nearly floor to ceiling...
@Reg Darling, It's an amazing experience to me to carry around access to thousands of books, at the doctor's office, family, etc., I can read what strikes my fancy. Unlike my physical library, I can actually find the book in only a few clicks! ...instead search the walls for twenty minutes, sometimes just giving up!
Smartphone technology continues to merge all the digital revolutions into one. ...the Star Trek pad. I think I read recently 6 to 9 megapixel cameras are available or coming on phones. I have a couple of hundred books on my G1 phone and am looking forward to Google's new phone this month which is supposed to exceed everything else now out there... as a reader it will probably often replace my Sony Reader. Many young people have already made the shift...
December 5, 2010 at 8:35 am
@Reg Darling, ...phones. Probably not up to professional standards? But I meant the observation as an example of significant change.
December 5, 2010 at 8:40 am
People have even shot technically credible short films with iPhones! Professional standards--the camera is an instrument--once you learn to see through its capabilities technical standards can be easily transcended--I play my camera like a musical instrument and my Nikon is a finely tuned one indeed, but i have an old friend who has done some very beautiful things with a child's toy guitar with plastic strings.
December 5, 2010 at 9:24 am
Sir, every book, thematically and in vision, is different from the others...So it is always pleasing to see those as different entities...It happens only in the case of printed books...While on the ereadar screen, they all look alike...
December 5, 2010 at 11:03 am
Ratul Pal, An interesting thought. Are ebooks all the same, the way they look on the screen? Yes, I suppose, the way you mean it, in general. A lot of ereaders, though, now allow users to customize fonts and sizes, makes notes, and on. Enhanced ebooks are in color with a lot of pictures and videos, so things are improving, some people would say, beyond plain monochrome text.
Personally, I don't really care about the etablets. They all emit light into the eyes, like computer screens, while iInk screens don't, eliminating eye strain.
Could one argue that for people reading for the story or content there's less distraction with plain text? Some ereaders have aesthetic flourishes and so forth to formatting, trying to emulate printers' fancy typography, and what not... Thanks for commenting.
Personally, I don't really care about the etablets. They all emit light into the eyes, like computer screens, while iInk screens don't, eliminating eye strain.
Could one argue that for people reading for the story or content there's less distraction with plain text? Some ereaders have aesthetic flourishes and so forth to formatting, trying to emulate printers' fancy typography, and what not... Thanks for commenting.
December 5, 2010 at 11:36 am
I like the way books smell. I got caught inhaling their aroma in an aisle at the library when I was a kid by an old, really heavy librarian. She smiled.
December 5, 2010 at 11:42 am
Great point too! Electronic hardware just isn't the same... the heavier papers can be highly aromatic. ...but that's not going to prevent the change we've already plunged into. I think there are trade offs. Someone mentioned distribution and warehousing problems. Here is what any author on earth can now do about those pre-post-Gutenberg problems... https://books.fglaysher.com/
December 5, 2010 at 11:47 am
Heavy paper is delicious to touch.
December 5, 2010 at 11:50 am
Yes, I agree... especially the textures of 55 lb paper and above are an aesthetic experience in their own right. It's why I think there will always be a place for special editions of all kinds, beyond the majority of books as they pass into ebooks during the next few to several years.
December 5, 2010 at 11:58 am
...high quality collector editions are the kind of thing I'm thinking of, numbered and signed by the author, etc.
December 5, 2010 at 12:01 pm
...leather bound, The Heritage Press, slip cases...
December 5, 2010 at 12:04 pm
Sir, I experienced something interesting while editing the texts in electronic devices...When I hold a printed book, it seems to be a "product" direct from the author...But when I edit the texts in ereader, I feel like editing the author himself....Although editing texts has no relation to the author's voice, I can't help being influenced by it...
December 5, 2010 at 12:14 pm
Mmm, nice observation. I've edited my own books in html prior to printing to ePub. It was an interesting experience for me too. I've also edited three books written by other people and have perhaps had a similar experience of learning much more by the processor of editing, going deeper into the material, understanding it more. At least that was the way it was for me.
What kind of texts were you editing? For what ereader device and format?
What kind of texts were you editing? For what ereader device and format?
December 5, 2010 at 12:42 pm
Sir, I don't own any ereader...Sometimes I use my friend's one...Generally I download ".txt" files and convert those into ".pdf" to read on my laptop screen....Sir, by "editing" I meant changing the colours and fonts etc....If I take your sense of the term, devices are excellent...
December 5, 2010 at 1:27 pm
Hello and welcome. I don't know you but I confirmed you because I read your very interesting comments/ profile. How did you find me?
Best,
Harris Gardner, Tapestry of Vooices
Best,
Harris Gardner, Tapestry of Vooices
December 8, 2010 at 3:10 pm
Cables Discuss Vast Hacking by a China That Fears the Web
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/world/asia/05wikileaks-china.html
December 4, 2010 at 11:45 am
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/world/asia/05wikileaks-china.html
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WikiLeaks Archive - China’s Battle With Google |
China has engaged in attacks aimed at American military and political data, and its leaders have been obsessed with Google’s role in China, cables say.
December 4, 2010 at 11:45 am
Cervantes, Journey to Parnassus
https://fglaysher.com/eReading/2009/02/cervantes-journey-to-parnassus/
December 4, 2010 at 11:26 am
https://fglaysher.com/eReading/2009/02/cervantes-journey-to-parnassus/
| eReading » Blog Archive » Cervantes, Journey to Parnassus |
Author of Don Quixote, Cervantes wrote Journey to Parnassus in 1614, about four years before he died. I’ve wanted to read this book for the last year or more. I had search antiquarian bookstores online but discovered the only translation of it was in 1883, and they wanted, if memory serves, $200
December 4, 2010 at 11:26 am
1 person likes this
The picaro is lacking in serious contemporary fiction, don't you think? I wonder why? Perhaps we're too introspective.
December 4, 2010 at 5:35 pm
Or are too many writers too bourgeois, even when they think they're not, to understand sufficiently the lower echelons of life? American ideology officially inculcates against class consciousness? ...other than Marxist, which doesn't work well in fiction? Throw away a serious moral order and how can the lower reaches be used to expose the corruption of the upper register?
I think literary fiction has slid a lot... My own taste has been focused on epic, poetry and novels, for a long time, so I can't presume to have kept up with fiction to the degree I had years ago. When I read reviews of fiction, there's seldom anything that appeals to my taste and imagination. I'm interested in striving for a much wider vision than the genre usually comprises and find the whole academic world and classifications deleterious to actual writing and coming to terms with life.
Still, the great stories of the Journey, picaresque and otherwise, are what I value, Homer, Virgil, Dante, Rabelais, Cervantes... very deep and serious visions of the human being... outside one's own cranium.
I think literary fiction has slid a lot... My own taste has been focused on epic, poetry and novels, for a long time, so I can't presume to have kept up with fiction to the degree I had years ago. When I read reviews of fiction, there's seldom anything that appeals to my taste and imagination. I'm interested in striving for a much wider vision than the genre usually comprises and find the whole academic world and classifications deleterious to actual writing and coming to terms with life.
Still, the great stories of the Journey, picaresque and otherwise, are what I value, Homer, Virgil, Dante, Rabelais, Cervantes... very deep and serious visions of the human being... outside one's own cranium.
December 5, 2010 at 6:54 am
Cervantes uses the journey motif in a fascinating, humorous way to survey and lambast or applaud Spanish poets of his day or earlier. Somewhat similar to Czeslaw Milosz’s A Treatise on Poetry and other such works. Ultimately, though, it’s a self-serving work, as the genre is, and therefore of a lesser order. Nevertheless, it’s a fine work that ought to be better known in the English reading world.
December 4, 2010 at 10:53 am
I’ve had to process the copy a little to get it to load on the 4×6 inch screen, but better than my laptop. And worth the effort. It allowed me really to be drawn much deeper into his imaginative world….
December 4, 2010 at 9:00 am
1 person likes this
But I kept thinking about it and searching for it once in a while. To my surprise, about a month ago, I stumbled on it on Google Books. They had scanned it in from the library at the University of Michigan, where I was a student, long, long ago. What a thrill finding it.
December 4, 2010 at 7:01 am
2 people like this
whch book is dis mr frederick???
December 4, 2010 at 9:07 am
Cervantes, Journey to Parnassus. A poem about Spanish poets of his time journeying to Mt. Parnassus in Greece.
December 4, 2010 at 9:50 am
Author of Don Quixote, Cervantes wrote Journey to Parnassus in 1614, about four years before he died. I’ve wanted to read this book for the last year or more. I had search antiquarian bookstores online but discovered the only translation of it was in 1883, and they wanted, if memory serves, about $200 for it.
December 4, 2010 at 6:10 am
1 person likes this
https://www.archive.org/details/journeytoparnass00cerviala
December 4, 2010 at 6:19 am
Thanks, I did find a copy online. Nice to have another one!
December 4, 2010 at 7:00 am
Gutenberg.org eBooks
https://fglaysher.com/eReading/2009/02/gutenbergorg-ebooks/
December 3, 2010 at 8:04 am
https://fglaysher.com/eReading/2009/02/gutenbergorg-ebooks/
| eReading » Blog Archive » Gutenberg.org eBooks |
Probably about 80% of the over 1200 ebooks I have are from Gutenberg.org, from where I’ve been collecting books since at least about the early 1990s, mostly in ascii text format.
December 3, 2010 at 8:04 am
eReading Huckleberry Finn
https://fglaysher.com/eReading/2009/02/ereading-huckleberry-finn/
December 3, 2010 at 7:06 am
https://fglaysher.com/eReading/2009/02/ereading-huckleberry-finn/
| eReading » Blog Archive » eReading Huckleberry Finn |
I use a Sony Reader PRS-505. In March of 2007, I saw one at Barnes & Noble on display and sat down and played with it for half an hour, and that was it! I had to get one. (I don’t have any affiliation with Sony or B&N.) It’s a very comfortable device to read books on. I found myself FORGETTING I was
December 3, 2010 at 7:06 am
It seems to me too that it’s a problem that the academic community ought to confront and help educate the public about. Unless one believes it’s not important to have the book as the author wrote it, but a conflation…
December 3, 2010 at 6:08 am
The frustration I’ve had with Gutenberg.org over the years is with the quality of the text. On a scholarly, editorial level, I don’t feel comfortable with their policy of sometimes using two or three sources to “produce” the “best” text. That leaves too much latitude for people with little or no literary or textual sophistication to “create” and misedit the classics and other books of essential importance.
December 3, 2010 at 5:32 am
1 person likes this
Hear! Hear! Hear!
December 3, 2010 at 5:42 am
I never assume texts found there are anything more than what they purport to be: free and easily accessible. If I want a text produced through scholarly rigor, I'll spring for the (molecule-based) book.
December 3, 2010 at 5:59 am
Gutenberg.org has used volunteers from its very beginning, introducing lots of uneven texts, in my view.
Google Books and Archive.org have the original pdfs, with ePub copies reproducing the originally edited work, preserving a reliable eye and brain at some stage of the process, prior to books becoming "content"!
Google Books and Archive.org have the original pdfs, with ePub copies reproducing the originally edited work, preserving a reliable eye and brain at some stage of the process, prior to books becoming "content"!
December 3, 2010 at 6:08 am
Anyway, if you copy and paste the book into a word processor and then save it as an RTF file, the generic format that all word processors have available, the Reader will handle them just fine. It’s an easy fix. There are several formats too that work well on different devices.
December 2, 2010 at 6:35 pm
The Sony Reader handles Gutenberg files very well. Since I read a lot of poetry, I don’t even have to format them in any way, just load them on. Some of the prose, fiction, etc., word wraps weirdly, as you may be familiar with. I’ve never understood why all the computer people can’t get that fixed….
December 2, 2010 at 9:20 am
1 person likes this
Probably about 80% of the over 1200 ebooks [now 4,000+] I have are from Gutenberg.org, from where I’ve been collecting books since at least about the early 1990s, mostly in ascii text format.
December 2, 2010 at 8:00 am
That experience was much more frustrating for a number of reasons: a very small screen, colored green, and a very sloppy text from the University of Virginia’s early etext database. And yet, I knew a threshold had been crossed, one that made me think and look to the future….
December 2, 2010 at 5:46 am
I just read yesterday an interview with Chinua Achebe, back in the '60s or 70s, complaining about Nigerians not reading. Interesting to read this about President Goodluck Jonathan, & on Facebook...
December 1, 2010 at 6:51 pm
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AfricaNews - Nigeria: President to launch book on facebook - Murtala |
The most compelling interactive Africa community, sharing news, photos, weblogs, videos, mobile reports and the untold stories by African people.
December 1, 2010 at 6:51 pm
New users might find it harder to make that transition, but I’ve been reading books for years on my Palm PDAs. Actually, I remember now that the first time, and only time, I’ve ever read Huckleberry Finn was on the first Palm I had, a much more primitive device than Sony’s Reader.
December 1, 2010 at 1:20 pm
It’s a very comfortable device to read books on. I found myself FORGETTING I was on an electronic thing, and was just drawn into reading one morning in my favorite chair by a sunny window….
December 1, 2010 at 11:21 am
1 person likes this
I use a Sony Reader PRS-505. In March of 2007, I saw one at Barnes & Noble on display and sat down and played with it for half an hour, and that was it! I had to get one. (I don’t have any affiliation with Sony or B&N.)
December 1, 2010 at 10:11 am
3 people like this
The Bahai Faith can be Reformed but only by returning to the interpretation clearly outlined by Abdul-Baha in Europe and America prior to his death. The evidence and record of his interpretation has been preserved in the early Bahai magazine "Star of the West" for anyone willing to read with an independent mind, free of the decades of deception and brainwashing into blind belief administered by the Haifans.
Opinion
December 1, 2010 at 7:18 am
Opinion
| US 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, Case No. 08-2306, rules against Haifan Baha'is |
US 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, Case No. 08-2306, rules against the Wilmette, Illinois Baha'is in their attempt to destroy the religious freedom of other Bahai denominations
December 1, 2010 at 7:18 am
The root of the problem with the Wilmette, Haifan Baha'i interpretation of Baha'u'llah's Teachings is that it leaves out Abdul-Baha's actual 1912 Authentic Covenant, substituting the spurious will and testament forged by Shoghi Effendi's family in 1921.
https://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/11/federal-appeals-court-rules-in-favor-of-splinter-bahai-group.html
November 29, 2010 at 7:56 am
https://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/11/federal-appeals-court-rules-in-favor-of-splinter-bahai-group.html
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Federal appeals court rules in favor of splinter Baha'i group - Chicago Breaking News |
A federal court in Chicago has ruled a group of self-proclaimed orthodox Baha'i believers can keep calling themselves Baha'i despite a 1966 court decision that said an earlier breakaway group could not.
November 29, 2010 at 7:56 am
The root of the problem with the Wilmette, Haifan Baha'i interpretation of the Baha'u'llah's Teachings is that it leaves out Abdul-Baha's actual 1912 Authentic Covenant, substituting the spurious will and testament forged by Shoghi Effendi's family in 1921.
The Bahai Faith can be Reformed but only by returning to the Interpretation clearly outlined by Abdul-Baha in Europe and America prior to his death. The evidence and record of his Interpretation has been preserved in the early Bahai magazine "Star of the West" for anyone willing to read with an independent mind, free of the decades of deception and brainwashing administered by the Haifans.
The Reform Bahai Faith
https://www.ReformBahai.org/
Abdu'l-Baha's Covenant
https://www.reformbahai.org/Covenant.html
An Analysis of Abdul-Baha's 1912 Authentic Covenant
https://www.reformbahai.org/Covenant_comments.html
The Bahai Faith can be Reformed but only by returning to the Interpretation clearly outlined by Abdul-Baha in Europe and America prior to his death. The evidence and record of his Interpretation has been preserved in the early Bahai magazine "Star of the West" for anyone willing to read with an independent mind, free of the decades of deception and brainwashing administered by the Haifans.
The Reform Bahai Faith
https://www.ReformBahai.org/
Abdu'l-Baha's Covenant
https://www.reformbahai.org/Covenant.html
An Analysis of Abdul-Baha's 1912 Authentic Covenant
https://www.reformbahai.org/Covenant_comments.html
November 29, 2010 at 8:36 am
The Kansas City Star
Orthodox believers can keep calling themselves Baha'i, court rules
https://www.kansascity.com/2010/11/25/2472247/orthodox-believers-can-keep-calling.html
November 28, 2010 at 11:58 am
Orthodox believers can keep calling themselves Baha'i, court rules
https://www.kansascity.com/2010/11/25/2472247/orthodox-believers-can-keep-calling.html
| Orthodox believers can keep calling themselves Baha'i, court rules - KansasCity.com |
A federal court in Chicago has ruled that a group of self-proclaimed orthodox Baha'i believers can keep calling themselves Baha'i despite a 1966 court decision that said an earlier breakaway group could not.
November 28, 2010 at 11:58 am
7th Circuit Court of Appeals:
Baha'i Groups Not Bound By Old Trademark Injunction
https://religionclause.blogspot.com/2010/11/7th-circuit-bahai-groups-not-bound-by.html
November 28, 2010 at 8:32 am
Baha'i Groups Not Bound By Old Trademark Injunction
https://religionclause.blogspot.com/2010/11/7th-circuit-bahai-groups-not-bound-by.html
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Religion Clause: 7th Circuit: Baha'i Groups Not Bound By Old Trademark Injunction |
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof... --US Const., Amend. 1
November 28, 2010 at 8:32 am
Federal appeals court rules in favor of splinter Baha'i group
Orthodox believers can keep calling themselves Baha'i, court says.
November 25, 2010 By Manya A. Brachear, Chicago Tribune reporter
https://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-11-25/news/ct-met-bahai-decision-20101125_1_baha-u-llah-baha-i-community-shoghi-effendi
November 28, 2010 at 7:16 am
Orthodox believers can keep calling themselves Baha'i, court says.
November 25, 2010 By Manya A. Brachear, Chicago Tribune reporter
https://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-11-25/news/ct-met-bahai-decision-20101125_1_baha-u-llah-baha-i-community-shoghi-effendi
| Federal appeals court rules in favor of splinter Baha'i group - Chicago Tribune |
Adherents of the Orthodox Baha'i Faith — about 50 strong in the U.S. — believe the mainstream Baha'i Faith — with about 5 million members worldwide — has strayed from the religion's original teachings.
November 28, 2010 at 7:16 am
Judge: Baha'i believers can call themselves Baha'i
Chicago BreakingNews November 23, 2010
https://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/11/judge-bahai-believers-can-call-themselves-bahai.html
November 28, 2010 at 6:42 am
Chicago BreakingNews November 23, 2010
https://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/11/judge-bahai-believers-can-call-themselves-bahai.html
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Judge: Baha'i believers can call themselves Baha'i - Chicago Breaking News |
A federal court in Chicago has ruled a group of self-proclaimed orthodox Baha'i believers can keep calling themselves Baha'i despite a 1966 court decision that stopped an offshoot organization from using the Baha'I name.
November 28, 2010 at 6:42 am
Literary Writers in a Post-Gutenberg Age of Self-Archiving and Self-Publishing
Synthesizing Stevan Harnad, Lawrence Lessig, Alan Rusbridger, and Stowe Boyd...
https://www.fglaysher.com/Post_Gutenberg_Publishing.html
November 27, 2010 at 6:55 am
Synthesizing Stevan Harnad, Lawrence Lessig, Alan Rusbridger, and Stowe Boyd...
https://www.fglaysher.com/Post_Gutenberg_Publishing.html
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Publishing in the Post-Gutenberg Age |
Publishing in the Post-Gutenberg Age, digital change, bookselling
November 27, 2010 at 6:55 am
Stevan Harnad, First and Foremost PostGutenberg Distinction
"Creative Commons' goal is to protect creators' give-away rights -- not consumers' (or 2nd-party copyright-holders') rip-off rights."
https://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/778-The-First-and-Foremost-PostGutenberg-Distinction.html
November 23, 2010 at 7:07 am
"Creative Commons' goal is to protect creators' give-away rights -- not consumers' (or 2nd-party copyright-holders') rip-off rights."
https://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/778-The-First-and-Foremost-PostGutenberg-Distinction.html
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Open Access Archivangelism |
November 23, 2010 at 7:07 am
Lawrence Lessig, An Obvious Distinction
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-lessig/an-obvious-distinction_b_783068.html
November 23, 2010 at 6:46 am
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-lessig/an-obvious-distinction_b_783068.html
| An Obvious Distinction |
“‘Open-source’ is a practice that rests explicitly upon a respect for copyright.” “The free choice of copyright owners to waive some portion of their copyright is not a rejection of copyright.”
November 23, 2010 at 6:46 am
The splintering of the fourth estate
"the mass ability to communicate with each other, without having to go through a traditional intermediary – is truly transformative."
https://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/19/open-collaborative-future-journalism
November 19, 2010 at 7:59 am
"the mass ability to communicate with each other, without having to go through a traditional intermediary – is truly transformative."
https://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/19/open-collaborative-future-journalism
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The splintering of the fourth estate | Alan Rusbridger | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk |
Alan Rusbridger: Media organisations are trying various routes to the future – the Guardian's is firmly an open and collaborative one
November 19, 2010 at 7:59 am
3 people like this
The American essayist Walter Lippmann, in his famous 1922 book, Public Opinion, made it plain that the press could not live without the subsidy of advertising.
He wrote of the reader:
"Nobody thinks for a moment that he ought to pay for his newspaper … The citizen will pay for his telephone, his railroad rides, his motor car, his entertainment. But he does not pay openly for his news … He will, however, pay handsomely for the privilege of having someone read about him. He will pay directly to advertise … The public pays for the press, but only when the payment is concealed."
He wrote of the reader:
"Nobody thinks for a moment that he ought to pay for his newspaper … The citizen will pay for his telephone, his railroad rides, his motor car, his entertainment. But he does not pay openly for his news … He will, however, pay handsomely for the privilege of having someone read about him. He will pay directly to advertise … The public pays for the press, but only when the payment is concealed."
November 19, 2010 at 10:01 am
I especially like his quotation, not paraphrasing (where was the copy editor?), of Stowe Boyd, social networking is "not really about the the end of what came before, but instead is the starting point for what comes next: richer and more complex societies."
November 19, 2010 at 11:43 am
How China Meddled With the Internet:
"the service provider, IDC China Telecommunication, broadcast inaccurate Web traffic routes for about 18 minutes on April 8."
"information was then retransmitted by China’s state-owned China Telecommunications, effectively forcing data from the United States and other countries to pass through Chinese computer servers."
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/18/world/asia/18intel.htmlHow China Meddled With the Internet
November 18, 2010 at 4:22 am
"the service provider, IDC China Telecommunication, broadcast inaccurate Web traffic routes for about 18 minutes on April 8."
"information was then retransmitted by China’s state-owned China Telecommunications, effectively forcing data from the United States and other countries to pass through Chinese computer servers."
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/18/world/asia/18intel.htmlHow China Meddled With the Internet
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Chinese Scrutinized for Meddling With Web Traffic |
A Congressional report touched off a round of speculation about the motives of a Chinese Internet service provider that briefly rerouted as much as 15 percent of the world’s Web traffic last spring.
November 18, 2010 at 4:22 am
Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo - Nobel Committee May Not Hand Over Peace Prize
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/world/asia/19nobel.html
November 18, 2010 at 4:19 am
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/world/asia/19nobel.html
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Nobel Committee May Not Hand Over Peace Prize |
Part of the ceremony may not happen because no one from the family of the winner is likely to attend.
November 18, 2010 at 4:19 am
Wu Yuren - Activist Artist Goes on Trial in Beijing
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/18/world/asia/18beijing.html
November 18, 2010 at 4:01 am
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/18/world/asia/18beijing.html
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Activist Artist Goes on Trial in Beijing |
Supporters say assault charges against Wu Yuren are aimed at punishing him for his political activism.
November 18, 2010 at 4:01 am
“My father is Li Gang”
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/18/world/asia/18li.html
Video & Transcript via Ai Weiwei at
https://www.danwei.org/video/ai_weiwei_produces_video_inter.php
Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrcvosDxvqg
November 18, 2010 at 3:56 am
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/18/world/asia/18li.html
Video & Transcript via Ai Weiwei at
https://www.danwei.org/video/ai_weiwei_produces_video_inter.php
Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrcvosDxvqg
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China’s Censorship Backfires in ‘Li Gang’ Case |
The government’s heavy-handed efforts to control the story of a fatal accident involving a police official’s son have been scorned by many Chinese.
November 18, 2010 at 3:56 am
Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America. John McWhorter. Gotham, 2006.
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/winning-the-race-john-mcwhorter
November 17, 2010 at 6:19 am
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/winning-the-race-john-mcwhorter
| Winning the Race. John McWhorter. « Reviews by Frederick Glaysher |
John McWhorter’s Winning the Race has a strong sociological approach to the issues of black America, surveying the history of the development of the inner cities and the welfare system, leading to the dependence that later found expression in affirmative action and racial preferences.
November 17, 2010 at 6:19 am
Together we will find our way towards a new meaning of what it is to be an American, as did Ralph Ellison in Invisible Man, not white OR black, but white AND black. And all the shades of humanity beyond.
November 17, 2010 at 4:04 am
2 people like this
Ending racial preferences in Michigan and throughout the Nation is essential for creating an atmosphere of high and equal expectations for all our children, capable of Winning the Race, in all senses of the phrase.
November 16, 2010 at 11:47 am
3 people like this
If the University of Michigan is truly interested in the equal opportunity and success of black students, I challenge my alma mater to organize a conference, a summit of people who have two feet on the ground, with the following keynote speakers, hosted perhaps by U of M Professor Carl Cohen: Ward Connerly, Thomas Sowell, John McWhorter, Shelby Steele, Bill Cosby, Juan Williams, and MSU Professor William Allen.
November 16, 2010 at 8:42 am
The work of John McWhorter ought to be even more widely known than it already is in Michigan and throughout the country. Michigan’s concerned citizens should turn more to his understanding of what went wrong and what is required for success.
November 16, 2010 at 6:16 am
In unrelated reading, I make the discovery in an essay By Amartya Sen, "Tagore and His India, 2001, that "half of the adult population and two thirds of Indian women remain unable to read or write."
https://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1913/tagore-article.html (near end of essay)
Whether India or Detroit, Michigan USA... recalling that two thirds of the residents of Detroit never finished high school--a shocking statistic for half to TWO THIRDS of any population to be at such an extreme educational deficit.
Amartya Sen emphasizes Tagore believe only education could really help India develop. I believe McWhorter and others are obviously right in emphasizing the necessity of the role of education for African Americans, all people.
https://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1913/tagore-article.html (near end of essay)
Whether India or Detroit, Michigan USA... recalling that two thirds of the residents of Detroit never finished high school--a shocking statistic for half to TWO THIRDS of any population to be at such an extreme educational deficit.
Amartya Sen emphasizes Tagore believe only education could really help India develop. I believe McWhorter and others are obviously right in emphasizing the necessity of the role of education for African Americans, all people.
November 16, 2010 at 7:18 am
Cutting to the quick and ending his book on the hopeful note that black kids are every bit as capable of competing and achieving as anybody else, John McWhorter quite rightly states, lampooning radical race elites who benefit from the affirmative action gravy train, “The simple fact is that America is quietly getting past race despite the best efforts of the Soul Patrol to pretend otherwise” (377).
November 16, 2010 at 4:06 am
1 person likes this
In the light of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI, 2006) and the misleading allegations surrounding gender that have been used to scare white females into voting against it, McWhorter asks a simple question that Michigan women ought to consider: “Whites listening to defenses based on ‘diversity’ should ask themselves a simple question: Would you allow this of your own children?” (308).
November 15, 2010 at 11:51 am
Like Ward Connerly, John McWhorter clearly advocates expecting more of black kids, knowing only then can society and educators elicit from students their highest potential.
November 15, 2010 at 6:59 am
Did you say "like Ward Connerly"? I don't know this guy, but quoting WC to support any statement is tantamount to dropping the F bomb in front of my grandmother. I regard him as an enemy of education
November 15, 2010 at 7:24 am
Far from an enemy of education, Ward Connerly has been, and is, an outstanding advocate of education and a former University of California Regent.
You might find interesting his book Creating Equal: My Fight Against Race Preferences.
https://www.amazon.com/Creating-Equal-Fight-Against-Race/dp/1893554384
You might find interesting his book Creating Equal: My Fight Against Race Preferences.
https://www.amazon.com/Creating-Equal-Fight-Against-Race/dp/1893554384
November 15, 2010 at 7:52 am
Ill read the book. I was a UCSC undergrad when Connerly was a Regent. I remember him and his policies. Its a complex argument on both sides. Affirmative Action was one measure among many conceived to help dismantle institutional racism. It was gutted over the years and made into a catchphrase. There are many people of color in high places today that would not be there if it were not for AA.
At the base of my entire argument is the way that desegregation has been implemented. Black people had been denied full entrance into American society. Even now, we have only been full legal citizens for less than 50 years. If we are to succeed, students must be prepared from day 1 to succeed. Early childhood education, well prepared teachers, schools that are safe and families that are supportive, is what all people need. Some people will make it, no matter what. Some people will fall to the wayside, regardless of the support they receive. Most of us are in the middle somewhere.
At the base of my entire argument is the way that desegregation has been implemented. Black people had been denied full entrance into American society. Even now, we have only been full legal citizens for less than 50 years. If we are to succeed, students must be prepared from day 1 to succeed. Early childhood education, well prepared teachers, schools that are safe and families that are supportive, is what all people need. Some people will make it, no matter what. Some people will fall to the wayside, regardless of the support they receive. Most of us are in the middle somewhere.
November 15, 2010 at 8:09 am
To my mind, much of the educational problem in the US is the result of the failure of parents, whether black or white, whatever. And the failure of all politicians, white or black, their constituencies responsible for the education and upbringing of their own children. Natrually, politicians want to get elected and stay in office, but the dynamics often undermine what's really important for education and families.
I don't believe the government can replace a family. Unfortunately, there are consequences for the children when adults make bad choices. I think we need much more public honesty about all that.
I don't believe the government can replace a family. Unfortunately, there are consequences for the children when adults make bad choices. I think we need much more public honesty about all that.
November 15, 2010 at 8:20 am
Incidentally, I have a very brief note on Ward Connerly. Creating Equal:
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/creating-equal-ward-connerly
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/creating-equal-ward-connerly
November 15, 2010 at 8:22 am
Had to look back at his bibliography. We read "Content of our character" for a Sociology class.
November 16, 2010 at 3:34 pm
Yes, okay, I missed that book. I only read Shelby Steele's two subsequent books, A Dream Deferred and White Guilt, the latter of which is a brilliant book, in my view. It's the kind of book that only someone who has spent many writings thinking and writing about the same issues can achieve by finally breaking through into a new and deeper synthesis.
November 16, 2010 at 5:37 pm
The fact that I read something that he wrote much longer ago and you've read something more current may explain why we have
November 16, 2010 at 5:39 pm
..different opinons of Mr. Steele. Ill check out his more current work.
November 16, 2010 at 5:40 pm
If you only have time to read one of his books, White Guilt is definitely his best work. I have online a brief review of White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era. Shelby Steele . HarperCollins, 2006, if interested:
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/white-guilt-shelby-steele
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/white-guilt-shelby-steele
November 17, 2010 at 3:23 am
Instead of “self-defeating cultural patterns,” McWhorter argues for the cultural patterns that produce success for all people. For decades, Caribbean and African immigrants, Asian boat people, and others who have entered urban schools have flown past the kids held back by the misguided ideas of the race elites: “As long as black students have to do only so well, they will do only so well” (295).
November 14, 2010 at 11:48 am
We’ve got the pernicious system we’ve created, along with all the social and personal destruction that goes with it. I like the way he puts it at one point: “a new sense of black identity in the sixties has led to a quiet cultural disconnect from the ‘school thing’” (273).
November 14, 2010 at 8:48 am
Laying the blame squarely on “teen culture” and the failure of black and white parents and leaders to have sufficiently high expectations for all students, McWhorter faces what virtually no one else in America will. It’s our fault.
November 14, 2010 at 6:08 am
2 people like this
Yeah, duh, it's American parents... and self-serving "leaders" and politicians whose first priority is lining their own nest, through pandering for votes. Juan Williams is very good on that point in Enough. More on him later.
November 14, 2010 at 11:53 am
Actually, I do know who you're talking about. We all know what works. African American students can learn. They need 2 out of 3 things: committed teachers, positive peer support, and involved parents. I've seen all kinds of situations and I know that any student can learn. African American culture is not to blame, nor is it the governments fault. It is society's failing. It is alk of us, not just one segment. Continental Africans, Carribeans have cultural capital and a presumption that they will succeed. They've already left their countries, so they have a different attitude towards school when they arrive. Education is a gateway to success. African Americans do need to re commit ourselves to ourselves, not just school, but in our careers and our communities. Ok. I'm done. Thank you Frederick for waking up my brain today!
November 15, 2010 at 7:58 am
You list three essentials, it seems to me. Why 2 out of 3? Wouldn't that be cutting them short on one? I agree with you that we know what works and it is, in many places.
I live near Detroit, where education is a mess in many ways, two thirds of the city without a high school diploma, lots of school graft, and problems, etc. It's not all dismal. There are many heroic educators and families. But the prevailing atmosphere on the nightly local news, realistically speaking, is dire.
An invigorated sense of turning the corner has yet to arrive... I believe people like Connerly, Shelby Steele, Thomas Sowell, Juan Williams and others have a much to offer and deserve more of a hearing...
I live near Detroit, where education is a mess in many ways, two thirds of the city without a high school diploma, lots of school graft, and problems, etc. It's not all dismal. There are many heroic educators and families. But the prevailing atmosphere on the nightly local news, realistically speaking, is dire.
An invigorated sense of turning the corner has yet to arrive... I believe people like Connerly, Shelby Steele, Thomas Sowell, Juan Williams and others have a much to offer and deserve more of a hearing...
November 15, 2010 at 8:10 am
First off, let me thank you again for the dialogue. Second, all voices are necessary. So the men you mentioned, their voices would be welcome at the table, if I were inviting the guests.
What you may or may not know is that those guys have made their names being "tough on Negroes" and I doubt any of them have ever taught high school or middle school, sat with a problem kid and helped them to figure out how to push past to the next level.
My perspective is that schools in our communities are under resourced and families themselves are often not healthy enough to support their students. That's why I said 2 of 3. All 3 elements would be great, but if you can get two of three, you'll be ok.
What you may or may not know is that those guys have made their names being "tough on Negroes" and I doubt any of them have ever taught high school or middle school, sat with a problem kid and helped them to figure out how to push past to the next level.
My perspective is that schools in our communities are under resourced and families themselves are often not healthy enough to support their students. That's why I said 2 of 3. All 3 elements would be great, but if you can get two of three, you'll be ok.
November 15, 2010 at 8:25 am
Mmm, in fairness, Shelby Steele was an English teacher in St. Louis and elsewhere for years. I've often heard the allegation they just out to make money by bashing their own people, etc. Anyone who actually reads their books would never think such a thing. They offer many practical and insight observations on how to improve education for minority students, and, indeed, by extension, I think, all students.
I respect your opinion but I don't believe the two our of three argument holds out hope of any real improvement. Placing everything on "resources" misses the fact that hundreds of million, indeed, billions, have been poured into the inner cities over the decades. More "resources" won't alone help the children, thought what Shelby Steele calls the "race elite" would certainly benefit.
Bill Cosby has visited Detroit a number of times over the last several years and laid it on the line...
I respect your opinion but I don't believe the two our of three argument holds out hope of any real improvement. Placing everything on "resources" misses the fact that hundreds of million, indeed, billions, have been poured into the inner cities over the decades. More "resources" won't alone help the children, thought what Shelby Steele calls the "race elite" would certainly benefit.
Bill Cosby has visited Detroit a number of times over the last several years and laid it on the line...
November 15, 2010 at 8:33 am
Thanks, too, for commenting. I enjoy the conversation.
November 15, 2010 at 8:34 am
Yes, I should give Mr. Steele more credit. I've read at least one of his books, and found it to be insightful in some ways but also thought he "blamed the victim" too much. We cannot ignore the fact that African Americans have been chronically undereducated as long as we've been here.
I am no expert, and I don't promote myself as one. We all need to work together to promote success.
In my own experience, I went to mostly Black schools, public and private, where all my teachers knew our names and our potential. They took a personal interest in our education, our parents were often called in to volunteer or discipline us. Students were encouraged to work together, to support one another. If we had a group project, we all got the same grade. We were held to very high standards with every expectation that we would meet them.
When i went to "white" schools, there was a marked difference. No one called my parents if I had a problem. My teachers couldn't have cared less about me, and students very rarely worked together. It was me, me, me. People expected me to be a bad ass instead of the nerd that I was. I was also exposed to high levels of racism everyday in school, from students and teachers. This was not some remote town in the South, I'm talking about San Jose, California in the late 70's.
Thankfully, I was prepared with good study habits and frankly a superior education. Education is culturally relevant.
I am no expert, and I don't promote myself as one. We all need to work together to promote success.
In my own experience, I went to mostly Black schools, public and private, where all my teachers knew our names and our potential. They took a personal interest in our education, our parents were often called in to volunteer or discipline us. Students were encouraged to work together, to support one another. If we had a group project, we all got the same grade. We were held to very high standards with every expectation that we would meet them.
When i went to "white" schools, there was a marked difference. No one called my parents if I had a problem. My teachers couldn't have cared less about me, and students very rarely worked together. It was me, me, me. People expected me to be a bad ass instead of the nerd that I was. I was also exposed to high levels of racism everyday in school, from students and teachers. This was not some remote town in the South, I'm talking about San Jose, California in the late 70's.
Thankfully, I was prepared with good study habits and frankly a superior education. Education is culturally relevant.
November 15, 2010 at 8:49 am
Thanks for sharing some of your personal experience.
In my view, I don't believe it can be said fairly of Shelby Steele that he "blames the victim." After decades of a worsening situation, I think he argues it's long past time to hold people accountable for their decisions and actions, instead of always standing ready with an excuse.
What book by Shelby Steele have you read?
In my view, I don't believe it can be said fairly of Shelby Steele that he "blames the victim." After decades of a worsening situation, I think he argues it's long past time to hold people accountable for their decisions and actions, instead of always standing ready with an excuse.
What book by Shelby Steele have you read?
November 15, 2010 at 11:49 am
Alas, one can almost count on one hand the scholars intelligent and honest enough to state simply the truth about many “black students on campus”:
“So few of them have grades or test scores high enough to qualify under the regular evaluation procedure." John McWhorter
“So few of them have grades or test scores high enough to qualify under the regular evaluation procedure." John McWhorter
November 13, 2010 at 9:38 am
"...In response to claims from the occasional whistleblower that standards are being lowered for black students, administrators are trained to insist that this is not true. Yet, simple and readily available data show that each year, there is but a sliver of black students with the grades and test scores considered sine qua non for serious consideration if students were white or Asian” (264). John McWhorter
November 13, 2010 at 9:38 am
During the last four years since I wrote this review of McWhorter, there have been many other books by insightful people on race in the US. Too many to list. Probably many I don't know about. I think now that the "one hand count" thing can seem to be the case because the prevailing impression tends to be the party line of the media, though it continues to change, fortunately.
November 13, 2010 at 9:49 am
Another afterthought. The Obama phenomenon has obviously helped a lot.
November 13, 2010 at 9:50 am
John McWhorter’s honesty about racial matters and race preferences is truly admirable. How else can we all come to understand what the situation truly is and then decide what to do about it?
November 13, 2010 at 6:46 am
A devastating critique of a devastating system, one that all people, white and black, have participated in creating and maintaining, much to the detriment of ourselves and our young people.
November 12, 2010 at 1:54 pm
The more interesting chapters to me deal directly with affirmative action, racial preference, and the serious damage done by race elites allowing for years the continuation of the “acting white” mentality to spread and pollute the springs of self-reliance, independence, and education for black youth, in their inmost consciousness:
November 12, 2010 at 9:20 am
“To understand that we are dealing with therapeutic alienation rather than racism brings us to implications for grappling with the black-white achievement gap in the present and future.... To set the bar lower for black students out of a sense that the achievement gap is due to socioeconomics is mistaken. Because the factor is not socioeconomic but cultural and self-perpetuating, the lowered bar only deprives black students and parents of any reason to learn how to hit the highest note." - John McWhorter
November 12, 2010 at 9:20 am
To what book are you referring? Definitely, don't set the bar lower for African-American students. But how can any "cultural" factor exist separte from "social economy"? What do you mean by "race elites"?
November 12, 2010 at 9:55 am
John McWhorter's Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America, 2006. Far from setting the bar lower, McWhorter is arguing it has to be set higher, where it is for everyone else, without any "socioeconomic" excuses for poor performance.
His closing sentence to the quoted paragraph above makes this perhaps clearer: "Much of the time, there is not even any way for black people to know what it would actually be to perform at that level–because they never have to” (263).
I believe McWhorter defines "race elites" repeatedly as both white and black people involved in various ways with affirmative action and preferential treatment of minority students and programs.
His closing sentence to the quoted paragraph above makes this perhaps clearer: "Much of the time, there is not even any way for black people to know what it would actually be to perform at that level–because they never have to” (263).
I believe McWhorter defines "race elites" repeatedly as both white and black people involved in various ways with affirmative action and preferential treatment of minority students and programs.
November 12, 2010 at 10:09 am
Of course, I haven't read the book, but from what you are saying here, and from my experience teaching in many urban schools, this seems like a very funny argument to me.
From what I have seen, the institutions that are most guilty of setting a very low bar for Black students are those that require no affirmative action at all for Black students to get into, i.e. their neighborhood schools. Unfortunately, many of my former colleage who taught at these schools had the attitude, "these kids are never going to college anyway, so why knock ourselves out preparing them for it."
On the other hand, Black students who attend institutions of higher education with the help of affirmative action, for the most part, are expected to fulfill the same academic requirements as everyone else in that institution. Many Black students are intially shocked by how ill-prepared they are compared to their more privelged classmates. They have to sink or learn to swim. Those who succeed learn to read, write and think as well, or maybe even better, than their white classmates. So how is affirmative action to blame for the low expectations our society has for Black youth?
And again how are you defining "culture"? How can cultural problems be understood outside of social economy?
From what I have seen, the institutions that are most guilty of setting a very low bar for Black students are those that require no affirmative action at all for Black students to get into, i.e. their neighborhood schools. Unfortunately, many of my former colleage who taught at these schools had the attitude, "these kids are never going to college anyway, so why knock ourselves out preparing them for it."
On the other hand, Black students who attend institutions of higher education with the help of affirmative action, for the most part, are expected to fulfill the same academic requirements as everyone else in that institution. Many Black students are intially shocked by how ill-prepared they are compared to their more privelged classmates. They have to sink or learn to swim. Those who succeed learn to read, write and think as well, or maybe even better, than their white classmates. So how is affirmative action to blame for the low expectations our society has for Black youth?
And again how are you defining "culture"? How can cultural problems be understood outside of social economy?
November 12, 2010 at 10:44 am
I agree that the lowest standards can often be at the local level, which can be the case for students of whatever background. But even in universities standards can be very low for minority students. Much of the book is addressing the "therapeutic alienation" of many blacks, according to McWhorter, not merely in education or in terms of affirmative action. That's why I say it's heavy on the sociological scale of things.
I think you're right too about the top tier universities requiring more from students, ideally, though there's much controversy over that as well, with poor graduation rates. McWhorter argues somewhere the "sink or swim" phenomenon is exacerbated by preferential treatment, leading to very high failure rates for black students.
I have to turn to something else at the moment. Back later...
I think you're right too about the top tier universities requiring more from students, ideally, though there's much controversy over that as well, with poor graduation rates. McWhorter argues somewhere the "sink or swim" phenomenon is exacerbated by preferential treatment, leading to very high failure rates for black students.
I have to turn to something else at the moment. Back later...
November 12, 2010 at 11:00 am
When you get the time, please explain what "therapeutic alienation" is.
November 12, 2010 at 11:22 am
Sorry. Life can get in the way of interesting conversations.
I would say McWhorter argues, in Winning the Race, that low performance isn't attributable on only one thing, but a complex mix of decline in strong families, bad social policies, and individuals increasingly looking outside themselves for answers. Much of the book traces the series of problems from the '50s and '60s to the later endemic inner city situation. Affirmative action is only one factor.
Neither McWhorter nor I am a determinist. I don't believe the economy is the sole value involved and wouldn't construe cultural problems solely in such terms. There are many highly capable and well educated blacks and others who chose to run and define their own lives irrespective of poverty.
"Therapeutic alienation" is a "defeatist attitude," one become a "meme," a cliched or pattern of thinking and behavior: "The upshot of realizing that black ideology has been driven by a meme is that we must resist a misimpression that black people's oppositional statements and positions are always driven by current conditions. As often as not, black 'victimology' is not a logical response to experience, but the manifestation of a cultural tic that a post-1960s Zeitgeist encourages us to misconceive as an expression of wisdom" (194).
John McWhorter has written a number of books on race: Losing the Race; Winning the Race, and Authentically Black. A thoughtful voice, with fresh insights. Since you're interested in the society angle, you might especially find Winning the Race of interest. Hope this helps. Best.
I would say McWhorter argues, in Winning the Race, that low performance isn't attributable on only one thing, but a complex mix of decline in strong families, bad social policies, and individuals increasingly looking outside themselves for answers. Much of the book traces the series of problems from the '50s and '60s to the later endemic inner city situation. Affirmative action is only one factor.
Neither McWhorter nor I am a determinist. I don't believe the economy is the sole value involved and wouldn't construe cultural problems solely in such terms. There are many highly capable and well educated blacks and others who chose to run and define their own lives irrespective of poverty.
"Therapeutic alienation" is a "defeatist attitude," one become a "meme," a cliched or pattern of thinking and behavior: "The upshot of realizing that black ideology has been driven by a meme is that we must resist a misimpression that black people's oppositional statements and positions are always driven by current conditions. As often as not, black 'victimology' is not a logical response to experience, but the manifestation of a cultural tic that a post-1960s Zeitgeist encourages us to misconceive as an expression of wisdom" (194).
John McWhorter has written a number of books on race: Losing the Race; Winning the Race, and Authentically Black. A thoughtful voice, with fresh insights. Since you're interested in the society angle, you might especially find Winning the Race of interest. Hope this helps. Best.
November 12, 2010 at 1:53 pm
I cannot help feeling it’s an old story, but, one that cannot be told too often, still today, given the continuing mutual recrimination and the evasion of the obvious.
November 12, 2010 at 6:48 am
1 person likes this
Heart of Darkness
November 12, 2010 at 5:34 am
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Heart of Darkness |
A griot woman, robes and calabash flowing in the air, takes the Persona into the heart of darkness. Sogolon, Sunjata’s mother. A dense jungle, a village in a clearing. A compound, a round, mud-bri...
November 12, 2010 at 5:34 am
Putting aside the emphasis of more traditional black leaders, such as Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois, on personal responsibility and initiative, increasingly after the 1960s civil rights generation, “the main culprit was whitey and his ‘systemic racism’” (13).
November 12, 2010 at 3:48 am
John McWhorter refers often throughout the book to the implicit theater entailed in such attitudes and the misguided strategy of relying on such theater for advancement and self-definition, instead of “rolling their sleeves up and working out concrete plans for change” (7).
November 11, 2010 at 3:54 pm
Highlighting the psychological drive of the protest impulse, John McWhorter continues,
“This is therapeutic alienation: alienation unconnected to, or vastly disproportionate to, real-life stimulus, but maintained because it reinforces one’s sense of psychological legitimacy, via defining oneself against an oppressor characterized as eternally depraved” (6).
“This is therapeutic alienation: alienation unconnected to, or vastly disproportionate to, real-life stimulus, but maintained because it reinforces one’s sense of psychological legitimacy, via defining oneself against an oppressor characterized as eternally depraved” (6).
November 11, 2010 at 2:05 pm
Referring to radical race elites and leaders, John McWhorter states,
"What people like this are seeking is, sadly, not what they claim to be seeking. They seek one thing: indignation for its own sake. And that means that the alienation that they are expressing is disconnected from current reality" (5).
"What people like this are seeking is, sadly, not what they claim to be seeking. They seek one thing: indignation for its own sake. And that means that the alienation that they are expressing is disconnected from current reality" (5).
November 11, 2010 at 9:12 am
My background being more literary in nature, I do not have the grounding for assessing McWhorter’s sociological arguments and data and will focus on his discussion of racial preference and its dynamics, of which I have personal experience, on the ground shall we say, and extensive knowledge and interest.
November 11, 2010 at 6:35 am
Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America. John McWhorter. Gotham, 2006.
John McWhorter’s Winning the Race has a strong sociological approach to the issues of black America, surveying the history of the development of the inner cities and the welfare system, leading to the dependence that later found expression in affirmative action and racial preferences.
John McWhorter’s Winning the Race has a strong sociological approach to the issues of black America, surveying the history of the development of the inner cities and the welfare system, leading to the dependence that later found expression in affirmative action and racial preferences.
November 11, 2010 at 3:18 am
The Quest for Cosmic Justice. Thomas Sowell.
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/quest-for-cosmic-justice-thomas-sowell
November 10, 2010 at 12:45 pm
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/quest-for-cosmic-justice-thomas-sowell
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Quest for Cosmic Justice. Thomas Sowell. « Reviews by Frederick Glaysher |
Thomas Sowell may be one of the most despised black men in America--despised by extremist liberals, black and white, because Sowell has devoted his abilities to exposing their destructive ideologies of social redemption as counter productive to the best interests of all Americans.
November 10, 2010 at 12:45 pm
Cosmic justice? Does that include Zeta Reticuli and Sirius?
November 10, 2010 at 5:24 pm
In the spirit of friendliness, you are a far-out woman! :)
More in the sense of Jonathan Swift's "prognosticators," I would say.
More in the sense of Jonathan Swift's "prognosticators," I would say.
November 10, 2010 at 5:30 pm
I take it that Sowell thought that the quest in question was a bad idea. That reminds me of the potentially misleading title of John Dewey's book "The Quest for Certainty"--he was agin' it, not for it. @Diana --far-out? You seem perfectly Sirius to me.
November 11, 2010 at 4:38 am
In this context, I recommend reading Robert Conquest’s Reflections on a Ravaged Century, a parallel meditation on the dilemmas of modernity.
November 10, 2010 at 9:07 am
But I take heart in knowing such people as he, Shelby Steele, and Ward Connerly have the courage to speak out on race and other matters and in the end hope that events will unfold for the good in ways I can not imagine and that now seem so often unlikely.
November 10, 2010 at 7:58 am
While his insight into the subtleties of modern ideologies is remarkable, as is his own high and demanding sense of justice, alas, I seriously found myself wondering at times if Sowell’s Quest for Cosmic Justice is not a voice in the wilderness, as always, one come much too late.
November 10, 2010 at 6:16 am
Summing up in a passage that has very wide application, Thomas Sowell states, "cosmic justice attempts to create equal results or equal prospects, with little or no regard for whether the individuals or groups involved are in equal circumstances or have equal capabilities or equal personal drives...."
November 10, 2010 at 4:06 am
"To do this, it cannot operate under general rules, the essence of law, but must create categories of people entitled to various outcomes, regardless of their own inputs . . . assuming with little or no evidence that only malign intentions or systemic bias could explain unequal results. ’Affirmative action’ is perhaps the classic example of this approach but it is only one example." Thomas Sowell
November 10, 2010 at 4:06 am
Sowell observes this same "bogus explanation" can keep entire societies in poverty, making me think of my recent experience as an accredited participant at the United Nations Millennium Forum in 2000,
November 9, 2010 at 10:12 am
...where I witnessed Kofi Annan’s wise proposal for a Global Compact with business swept aside and essentially replaced with the "sophisticated modern versions of the envy vision spread by the Third World intelligentsia, often seconded by the intelligentsia in more fortunate countries."
November 9, 2010 at 10:12 am
The acquisition of such "skills, education, discipline, foresight," needed to improve their lot, becomes less likely, as the "ideology of envy" blames others for exploitation and racism, undermining their own will to act, while rendering "more successful members suspect as traitors."
November 9, 2010 at 8:00 am
One of the many perceptive and striking points Sowell makes in the book involves "The High Cost of Envy." Pointing out its dangers to poor people, he writes,
"The very terms of the discussion encourage them to attribute their less fortunate position to social barriers, if not political plots, and so to neglect the kinds of efforts and skills which are capable of lifting them to higher economic and social levels."
"The very terms of the discussion encourage them to attribute their less fortunate position to social barriers, if not political plots, and so to neglect the kinds of efforts and skills which are capable of lifting them to higher economic and social levels."
November 9, 2010 at 5:38 am
Marx, Lenin, Hitler, and Mao all followed this procedure, as have utopians of similar or less horrible results.... That comparable dynamics rule the day, especially in the humanities in many American universities, will not surprise those who have any real experience of those departments. Sowell evokes the American political system and tradition in the hope of preventing its further erosion.
November 9, 2010 at 4:51 am
Saul Bellow, Letters: [His letters] underscore his simultaneous craving for intellectual conversation and his impatience with the literary establishment and what he called “fashionable extremism” — “the hysterical, shallow and ignorant academic ‘counterculture.’ ”
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/books/09book.html
November 9, 2010 at 3:46 am
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/books/09book.html
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Saul Bellow’s Letters, edited by Benjamin Taylor |
Although Saul Bellow repeatedly apologizes for being a lousy correspondent in this volume of his collected letters, he shows himself to be a gifted and emotionally voluble letter writer.
November 9, 2010 at 3:46 am
1 person likes this
Lovabe Bellow. I liked his 'henderson and the rain king' a lot.
November 9, 2010 at 3:49 am
Yes, Bellow is a very important writer for me too. He has a marvelous sense of humor and the ability to cut through so much of the pretension and idiocies of received academic "wisdom," as in the quotation above.
I've written a few pieces on him, a couple of reviews online and an essay, if interested:
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/saul-bellow-ravelstein-allan-bloom
https://www.fglaysher.com/saul_bellow_review.html
"Saul Bellow’s Soul" in The Grove of the Eumenides
https://books.fglaysher.com/Grove-of-the-Eumenides-9780982677841.htm
I've written a few pieces on him, a couple of reviews online and an essay, if interested:
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/saul-bellow-ravelstein-allan-bloom
https://www.fglaysher.com/saul_bellow_review.html
"Saul Bellow’s Soul" in The Grove of the Eumenides
https://books.fglaysher.com/Grove-of-the-Eumenides-9780982677841.htm
November 9, 2010 at 4:05 am
The "morally self-anointed," as he calls excessively liberal reformers and radicals, "have for centuries argued as if no honest disagreement were possible, as if those who opposed them were not merely in error but in sin.... Given this exalted vision of their role by the anointed visionaries, those who disagree with them must be correspondingly degraded or demonized."
November 8, 2010 at 12:59 pm
Sowell locates the source of much of the problem in the academy, law schools, and government where "new elites" are quietly repealing the American Revolution.
November 8, 2010 at 10:58 am
1 person likes this
Widely known for his provocative, nationally syndicated newspaper articles and other books, he focuses, in The Quest for Cosmic Justice, on the misguided thinking behind the modern impulse to reform the very nature of the human condition from individual responsibility, competition, and performance to the tragic consequences of affirmative action and politicized egalitarian equality.
November 8, 2010 at 7:20 am
Obama Backs India's Quest For U.N. Permanent Seat
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/11/08/world/international-us-india-obama.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/world/asia/09prexy.html
November 8, 2010 at 7:12 am
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/11/08/world/international-us-india-obama.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/world/asia/09prexy.html
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Obama Backs India's Quest For U.N. Permanent Seat |
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama endorsed on Monday India's long-held demand for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council, a reflection of the Asian country's growing global weight and its challenge to rival China.
November 8, 2010 at 7:12 am
The Quest for Cosmic Justice. Thomas Sowell.
Chastising the Self-Anointed.... Thomas Sowell may be one of the most despised black men in America--despised by extremist liberals, black and white, because Sowell has devoted his abilities to exposing their destructive ideologies of social redemption as counter productive to the best interests of all Americans.
Chastising the Self-Anointed.... Thomas Sowell may be one of the most despised black men in America--despised by extremist liberals, black and white, because Sowell has devoted his abilities to exposing their destructive ideologies of social redemption as counter productive to the best interests of all Americans.
November 8, 2010 at 5:41 am
"China is pressing European governments to boycott the ceremony awarding the
Nobel Peace Prize to the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.... for his role in writing Charter 08, an Internet manifesto that calls for democratic reforms and an end to the Communist Party’s monopoly on power."
China Urges Europeans to Snub Nobel Ceremonyhttps://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/05/world/asia/05china.html
November 6, 2010 at 3:53 am
Nobel Peace Prize to the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.... for his role in writing Charter 08, an Internet manifesto that calls for democratic reforms and an end to the Communist Party’s monopoly on power."
China Urges Europeans to Snub Nobel Ceremonyhttps://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/05/world/asia/05china.html
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China Urges Europeans to Snub Nobel Ceremony |
The Nobel award to a Chinese dissident is emerging as an early test of China’s newfound diplomatic clout.
November 6, 2010 at 3:53 am
"The world has made significant progress in income, education and health over the past 40 years, but the gains have been uneven...."
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/05/world/05nations.html
November 6, 2010 at 3:31 am
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/05/world/05nations.html
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Human Development Report for 2010 Released by U.N. |
The United Nations report charted global progress in income, health and education since 1970.
November 6, 2010 at 3:31 am
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Ezeulu in Igboland, Nigeria |
Words of Ezeulu to the Poet of the Moon. Drums, song, dance. Feet pound the earth, the village moves... Masks.
November 5, 2010 at 4:28 am
Ai Weiwei - Police Confine Beijing Artist and Activist - from Chengdu
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/06/world/asia/06china.html
November 5, 2010 at 2:35 am
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/06/world/asia/06china.html
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Police Confine Beijing Artist and Activist |
The prominent artist Ai Weiwei was arrested apparently at the behest of powerful political figures who feared that he was about to embarrass them.
November 5, 2010 at 2:35 am
A Dream Deferred : The Second Betrayal of Black Freedom in America. Shelby Steele.
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/a-dream-deferred-shelby-steele
November 4, 2010 at 8:16 am
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/a-dream-deferred-shelby-steele
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A Dream Deferred. Shelby Steele. « Reviews by Frederick Glaysher |
This morning, sometime around three or four AM, I woke up thinking about Shelby Steele’s A Dream Deferred. I read it a number of months ago and have been wanting to write a brief note about it. There are so few intelligent, reasonable, sane voices speaking about racial matters in America I feel it a
November 4, 2010 at 8:16 am
It seems to me that it is a struggle that must be fought primarily by intelligent blacks and minorities who have had enough of the insult of preferential treatment to stand up and fight for the unquestionable respect and honor they so rightly deserve and merit.
November 4, 2010 at 6:17 am
To all of which I say, "amen." I hope, indeed struggle to hope, that men like Shelby Steele, Ward Connerly, Thomas Sowell, and others will find the resources to continue to set a new course from the lamentable situation that plagues race relations today, especially in the university, though the struggle against patronizing white guilt for true individual responsibility and achievement exists in all walks of life.
November 4, 2010 at 4:24 am
On another note, Shelby Steele states "to be human is to be responsible" and profoundly probes the intricacies of human motivation, responsibility, and the ways in which affirmative action and the thinking of politically correct race elites erode individual agency:
November 3, 2010 at 9:51 am
"Race should never play a role in social reform for many reasons, not least of which is that it is *always* used to help people avoid full agency for their fate. It always transforms the responsibility that free minorities should carry into a commodity that others will use for their own moral power. Race absolutely corrupts those who use it for redemption and absolutely weakens those who use it for advancement" (112)
November 3, 2010 at 9:51 am
Misguided white guilt only complicates matters for serious, capable minority students and makes it all the more unlikely they’ll be called upon to strive to develop their abilities to the highest degree possible. Shelby Steele perceptively touches on how university administrators are exacerbating this decline.
November 3, 2010 at 6:41 am
Having started as a TA in the early 1980s when most students in writing classes received the C they deserved, I found it difficult to hand out largely all B’s, while the pressure for all A’s sent me looking for another way to make a living so as not to participate in the fraud of "higher" education.
November 3, 2010 at 5:46 am
1 person likes this
Interesting to hear the educator's perspective of the grade curve. The thing is, I think some people, at least, understand what's going on. I don't think anyone's impressed with a GPA under 4.0 anymore.
November 3, 2010 at 7:50 am
The real problem for education is that no one who understands what is really going on is any longer impressed with a GPA of 4.0.
November 3, 2010 at 9:56 am
Because the only classes with substantive merit are AP classes, which are weighted more heavily, thus allowing for 4.5 or 5.0 GPAs? Or worse? People recognize that there's no real learning going on?
November 3, 2010 at 10:20 am
By definition, grade inflation undermines real learning and accomplishment.
November 3, 2010 at 10:47 am
I believe the original idea had to do with getting college kids deferments duiring the Vietnam War.
November 3, 2010 at 3:04 pm
I encouraged him to be gentle with himself and to expect to retain only perhaps sixty to eighty percent of his study but that with time and continual effort he would achieve a more sophisticated level of literacy.
November 3, 2010 at 4:20 am
I recall one student telling me he had to have a grade higher than a C. When I responded that he should read the Harbrace Handbook from cover to cover and do as many of the exercises as possible, he stared at me in disbelief.
November 3, 2010 at 2:45 am
2 people like this
My students had had years of misguided low expectations from both teachers and administrators and had ultimately internalized them.
November 2, 2010 at 3:03 pm
3 people like this
I noticed the same thing about my students.
November 2, 2010 at 3:13 pm
And often, if not usually, the support from administrators necessary to work effectively with the student(s) would be lacking.
November 2, 2010 at 3:15 pm
That was certainly true in my case. I was an adjunct, so I was not paid for conference time with the students, thought the students wanted and needed conference time.
November 2, 2010 at 3:22 pm
Whether adjunct or tenure-track, my experience was the people in administration cared primarily about keeping the marbles rolling through the system, so the money would keep coming in, federal, state, and tuition, corrupting the classroom...
November 2, 2010 at 3:28 pm
They lacked the self-discipline and responsibility that Steele extolls: "Very often those who educate poor blacks feel excused from the responsibilities of high expectations and academic rigor by the very conditions that make such expectations mandatory."
November 2, 2010 at 10:44 am
As a former college English instructor, I occasionally had minority students who were accustomed to being handed A’s and were shocked to receive C’s. Repeated experience convinced me that affirmative action was part of the problem.
November 2, 2010 at 7:44 am
Just minority students? I think grade inflation is a huge issue @ American schools.
November 2, 2010 at 7:49 am
I agree with you that grade inflation across the board is a major problem. But I'm actually focusing here on Shelby Steele's book A Dream Deferred : The Second Betrayal of Black Freedom in America.
November 2, 2010 at 8:06 am
Careful. The great majority of the students I taught were Anglo and they felt the same way. With them, it's a sense of entitlement (they're white, after all), and the fact that they paid for the course.
November 2, 2010 at 9:09 am
I agree there's the general problem you refer to, not restricted to students of any particular background, especially with some first-year students.
The experiences I'm referring to were with sophomores, in research writing courses. The minority students had a sense of entitlement way beyond the other students.
The experiences I'm referring to were with sophomores, in research writing courses. The minority students had a sense of entitlement way beyond the other students.
November 2, 2010 at 10:44 am
I was a registrar for US study abroad programs and had to coordinate and handle (but not decide on) all of the grade appeals American college students made while studying overseas and I can say that in all my experiences as a teacher and int'l registrar this is not a race problem--it's an American problem. Cuts across the board. These were students from hundreds of American universities and colleges studying in many different countries and the grade appeals were often quite ridiculous and the sense of entitlement and their shock at the audacity of foreign professors assigned grades below an A or A- was hard to believe at times.
November 2, 2010 at 4:01 pm
@FG: Wait--I'm confused now--are you referring to your personal experiences with Black students as a college writing instructor as you initially said or are you using arguments from the book, <A Dream Deferred : The Second Betrayal of Black Freedom in America> as you stated in your reply to me? Or both somehow?
November 2, 2010 at 4:04 pm
Yes, I was writing about my experience with some minority students in the original post itself, but I understand your remarks about students in general thinking their illiterate drivel merits A+++!!!
November 2, 2010 at 5:07 pm
Others may criticize Mr. Steele for emphasizing this and underplaying that, but I want to praise his thoughtful probing of the dynamics of affirmative action and how it assuages white guilt while keeping some black people from developing their highest potential.
November 2, 2010 at 6:42 am
1 person likes this
I hope you're referring to Shelby and not Michael!
November 2, 2010 at 7:08 am
Shelby Steele...
November 2, 2010 at 7:16 am
The thought that impelled me out of bed was that I owe it to my memory of the best friend I’ve ever had in my life, who happened to be black, long deceased and sorely missed. So I struggle for words, knowing I will never meet that high mark.
November 2, 2010 at 5:21 am
There are so few intelligent, reasonable, sane voices speaking about racial matters in America I feel it as a duty to try to acknowledge those who are so scorned by the forces of both white and black extremist liberalism.
November 2, 2010 at 4:11 am
2 people like this
A Dream Deferred : The Second Betrayal of Black Freedom in America.
Shelby Steele.
Reawakening the Dream....
This morning, sometime around three or four AM, I woke up thinking about Shelby Steele’s A Dream Deferred. I read it a number of months ago and have been wanting to write a brief note about it.
Shelby Steele.
Reawakening the Dream....
This morning, sometime around three or four AM, I woke up thinking about Shelby Steele’s A Dream Deferred. I read it a number of months ago and have been wanting to write a brief note about it.
November 2, 2010 at 2:45 am
1 person likes this
Hating Whitey: And Other Progressive Causes. David Horowitz.
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/hating-whitey-david-horowitz
November 1, 2010 at 10:28 am
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/hating-whitey-david-horowitz
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Hating Whitey. David Horowitz. « Reviews by Frederick Glaysher |
One brings to a book everything one is and has been through. Let me discuss David Horowitz’s Hating Whitey by seemingly digressing a little on my own experience. I grew up in the white suburbs of Detroit during the `60s and `70s and have vivid memories of the Detroit riot and my uncle and aunt’s bak...
November 1, 2010 at 10:28 am
Along with Hating Whitey, those truly interested in beginning to understand and confront the race dilemmas of America should also read Ward Connerly’s Creating Equal, Shelby Steele’s A Dream Deferred, and Thomas Sowell’s The Quest for Cosmic Justice, works by exceptional, heroic human beings who have all been slandered as Uncle Toms by more than one race radical.
November 1, 2010 at 9:22 am
1 person likes this
I've read these works and find that there's nothing much to recommend them, other than to see simply another perspective. Vincent Harding, William Strickland, Robert Hill, Lerone Bennett, Jr. are more enligtening.
November 1, 2010 at 10:15 am
Uncle Tom is a tired phrase. I haven't heard it used by anyone in many years.
November 1, 2010 at 10:16 am
I respect your conscience.
November 1, 2010 at 10:47 am
Being a white man and given the politically charged nature of race today, Horowitz demonstrates a rare streak of moral strength and courage by his daring to speak his conscience against black racism and the misguided designs of race elites. Fortunately, he is not alone.
November 1, 2010 at 7:49 am
I dont know who H is but I like his courage. However, at some true point, I feel standing against black racism is rather utopian. Black racism founts from the reality of white prejudice. Does H fiight white prejudice as well? And for him to do this last, can he go through history and undo everything that flows from it? Assuming this was possible, what would be left?
November 1, 2010 at 8:42 am
Thanks for responding. "Black racism founts from the reality of white prejudice"? While I don't pretend to understand the full historical and cultural background of colonialism in Africa and Nigeria, I've heard the same claim about "black racism" made here in the USA. That is, any racism on the part of blacks is all the fault of whites, who started it after all.
Having lived in Japan for a year and a half, I experienced Japanese racism against me and other white Westerners; traveling all over China, I've experienced Chinese racism; living for a couple of years on an American Indian reservation, I also experienced racism based on my arbitrary skin pigmentation.
American blacks are just as capable of racism as anyone else on earth or in the USA. With no offense intended, I highly doubt Africans are any different. I believe racism is really a human problem that all peoples struggle with.
David Horowitz was married to an African American woman who had a large extended family. Who can "undo" all the woes of history?
It seems to me the best thing we human beings can do is to move forward, respecting our differences, while seeking what we have in common, what can create mutual understanding and a better life for everyone.
Having lived in Japan for a year and a half, I experienced Japanese racism against me and other white Westerners; traveling all over China, I've experienced Chinese racism; living for a couple of years on an American Indian reservation, I also experienced racism based on my arbitrary skin pigmentation.
American blacks are just as capable of racism as anyone else on earth or in the USA. With no offense intended, I highly doubt Africans are any different. I believe racism is really a human problem that all peoples struggle with.
David Horowitz was married to an African American woman who had a large extended family. Who can "undo" all the woes of history?
It seems to me the best thing we human beings can do is to move forward, respecting our differences, while seeking what we have in common, what can create mutual understanding and a better life for everyone.
November 1, 2010 at 9:22 am
This failure is also evident in his Destructive Generation, which is, nevertheless, another of his brave and brilliant books. Perhaps someday Horowitz will plumb further into the depths of radical causes. (His autobiography Radical Son does touch on his ambivalence towards Judaism and religious belief, leaving him ultimately "stubbornly agnostic.")
November 1, 2010 at 6:31 am
Horowitz’s major shortcoming, typical of the modern secular mind, liberal or conservative, is that his critique, unlike Dostoevsky who understood the nature of modernity, does not go deep enough into the spiritual collapse that underlies the dynamics of race, as they underlay the collapse into communism.
November 1, 2010 at 4:21 am
Horowitz, like other demagogic conservative commentators, seeks a diagnosis that excepts himself. That makes him a major participant in said collapse.
November 1, 2010 at 4:38 am
I'll grant he can be " demagogic," but it's not a quality, in my view, that only "conservative commentators" possess. Broadly speaking, many liberal commentators are every bit as demagogic as he is at times. In fairness to Horowitz, his Radical Son explores the complexity of his own political background and development as a "red-diaper baby," providing at least a rational for his views.
I can agree he's "a major participant in said collapse," but one I often admire for at least having the courage of his convictions, speaking truth to liberal demagogues and ideologues, many of whom dragoon their own followers into only servile obeisance.
Ultimately, I believe the extreme factionalism of US politics and culture, whether conservative or liberal, has become a very destructive force and yet another sign of decadence and decline, boding ill for the future.
I can agree he's "a major participant in said collapse," but one I often admire for at least having the courage of his convictions, speaking truth to liberal demagogues and ideologues, many of whom dragoon their own followers into only servile obeisance.
Ultimately, I believe the extreme factionalism of US politics and culture, whether conservative or liberal, has become a very destructive force and yet another sign of decadence and decline, boding ill for the future.
November 1, 2010 at 4:57 am
We're agreed on your last point. And I trust we're agreed that liberals and conservatives think somewhat differently. Beyond that I should probably just shut up, not having studied the man as thoroughly as you have, but he irks me greatly. "Intellectual Diversity," a phrase Horowitz seems to have effectively trademarked, has to mean more than just affirmative action for conservatives, but that's where it's presently stuck in the discourse.
November 1, 2010 at 5:30 am
Level Four, leaning to Level Five of Plato's Five Regimes comes to mind as a desciptor of this county's current condition.
November 1, 2010 at 5:34 am
I agree that real intellectual diversity in an American university would have to mean more than token conservatives. In my view, it would have to mean more than privileged, pampered nihilism.
@Ronald D. Giles, Plato, if only people would read him! Instead of the schlock on the NY Times best seller list... alas.
"You describe in quite oracular style, Socrates, said Glaucon, the life of the multitude." The Republic, Book IX
@Ronald D. Giles, Plato, if only people would read him! Instead of the schlock on the NY Times best seller list... alas.
"You describe in quite oracular style, Socrates, said Glaucon, the life of the multitude." The Republic, Book IX
November 1, 2010 at 6:28 am
I am one who has lived through almost everything about which Horowitz writes regarding academia, including losing a tenure track job as the result of a relentless and Byzantine conspiracy of "colleagues" who wanted a black in the position, one widely perceived by those fit to judge as nowhere near my intellectual equal and who eventually had to be removed from my post for incompetence.
November 1, 2010 at 2:47 am
1 person likes this
Which piece of Horowitz's do you mean? (I'm writing a novel about this very thing!)
November 1, 2010 at 3:46 am
Hating Whitey: And Other Progressive Causes. David Horowitz.
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/hating-whitey-david-horowitz
His Radical Son would probably throw some light for you on his life too, if interested.
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/hating-whitey-david-horowitz
His Radical Son would probably throw some light for you on his life too, if interested.
November 1, 2010 at 4:20 am
As someone who has edited the poems and prose of a human being usually identified as black, I have had the experience several times of being invited for job interviews at colleges only to be met with disbelief and gaping mouths when I, a "whitey," walked in through the departmental door!
October 31, 2010 at 10:20 am
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Ouch...as a black-identified interracial woman, I get the puzzled look, even though there are plenty of students who look similar to me.
November 1, 2010 at 8:51 am
"Puzzled look"! That's a good one! As in what kind of human being is she? A prejudicial mentality in itself. I've never understood the thinking of only one drop is the only drop that counts or one is "interracial." I think at times it can be a code word.
I'm English, German, French, Irish, Croatian, with DNA traced back to about 20,000 BP. Now which "drop" am I? American, yes, but even that seems too narrow!
I'm English, German, French, Irish, Croatian, with DNA traced back to about 20,000 BP. Now which "drop" am I? American, yes, but even that seems too narrow!
November 1, 2010 at 9:36 am
David Horowitz devastatingly chronicles the result of the lack of such a standard on race relations during the last forty years; the result in the university; the result in the media; the result in the legal system; the result in politics; the result in the hearts and minds and souls of our entire nation.
October 31, 2010 at 6:35 am
The child of an interracial marriage, Hayden loathed the divisiveness of racial politics and lacerated radical blacks on more than one occasion. Ultimately, his vision of human oneness melded with that of Martin Luther King and similar figures, challenging us all to a deeply demanding spiritual ethic, a universal standard holding all accountable, before which all must struggle and strive.
October 31, 2010 at 5:12 am
3 people like this
At the University of Michigan I studied with Robert Hayden, a former Poet Laureate at the Library of Congress, who thought of himself as a human being, first and foremost, though he begrudgingly accepted Afro-American, despite his preference at times for Negro, coming from an older time.
October 30, 2010 at 8:52 am
6 people like this
Thanks for the nice memory. My grandmother used to say, "I've been called so many things for so many decades, I just don't really care what you young people are calling it these days."
October 30, 2010 at 8:57 am
Thanks for commenting. I can't remember precisely when African-American came fully into use but recall Robert Hayden, who knew he had cancer at the time, joking once, "I began life as colored and a Negro, became black, an Afro-American, and am going to die an African-American!" Life was further complicated for him since his mother was white.
He had a wry sense of humor that enjoyed the richly ironic...
I'm supposed to be a "white" man, but, really, like Hayden, I primarily think of myself as a human being. He helped me understand that.
He had a wry sense of humor that enjoyed the richly ironic...
I'm supposed to be a "white" man, but, really, like Hayden, I primarily think of myself as a human being. He helped me understand that.
October 30, 2010 at 12:02 pm
That's not a precise quotation. I should have typed "said something like." Reflecting more on Hayden's sense of humor, I wouldn't rule out that the "N" word was in there somewhere... I wish I had written it down. He had the gift of the raconteur.
October 30, 2010 at 12:22 pm
Funny, my grandmother said just about the same thing. Even imprecise, it reflects the message. I have a poem about exactly this coming out (again) shortly. Grab the thought and pick up a keyboard!
October 30, 2010 at 12:31 pm
With the unlocking of the homo sapien genetic code it is a scientific fact that we are all first and foremost human beings. Race is an outdated concept that no longer exists for well-infomed people. Robert Hayden, like all literate intellectuals, was, to his credit, a man ahead of his time. I despise the incorrect labels used to describe other human beings. The more labels we have, the more predjudiced and intolerant we truly are. It has been proven by anthropologists that we all came out of Africa. So logiically, even I, wtih ancestry from northwestern Europe and aboriginal Cherokee, am an Afro-American? The absurdity of political correctness is self-evident. We should treat everyone with respect and kindness, simply because we share a common humanity.
October 30, 2010 at 1:31 pm
A great poet--a great human being.
October 30, 2010 at 5:07 pm
@Christina Springer, Sounds interesting... Hope you'll let me know where it's published or on FB. @frederick glaysher
@Bill Butcher, Yes, genome and the archeological record, the latter extended back another 50,000 years by Blombos Cave, demonstrates just how much all of us are from one human fountainhead in Africa, "common humanity."
By chance this morning in the news paper there's an article through the Associated Press about Blombos:
https://articles.latimes.com/2010/oct/30/science/la-sci-pointy-spear-20101030
@Kendra Hamilton, "A great human being," and poet. He was really was, on both counts, hard to parse, but one re-enforcing the other.
He was viciously attacked repeatedly in public at Fisk University and at the University of Michigan, though probably now most people don't know the story, by other poets involved with the Black Arts Movement of the time. It took a great deal of courage and strength to stand against "black chauvinism," as he called it, for principled reasons.
Hayden really understood the impulse was divisive and would drive people further apart, leading to greater animosity and embitterment, not less. I think now, from the perspective of over thirty years, it's all the more clear he was quite right.
@Bill Butcher, Yes, genome and the archeological record, the latter extended back another 50,000 years by Blombos Cave, demonstrates just how much all of us are from one human fountainhead in Africa, "common humanity."
By chance this morning in the news paper there's an article through the Associated Press about Blombos:
https://articles.latimes.com/2010/oct/30/science/la-sci-pointy-spear-20101030
@Kendra Hamilton, "A great human being," and poet. He was really was, on both counts, hard to parse, but one re-enforcing the other.
He was viciously attacked repeatedly in public at Fisk University and at the University of Michigan, though probably now most people don't know the story, by other poets involved with the Black Arts Movement of the time. It took a great deal of courage and strength to stand against "black chauvinism," as he called it, for principled reasons.
Hayden really understood the impulse was divisive and would drive people further apart, leading to greater animosity and embitterment, not less. I think now, from the perspective of over thirty years, it's all the more clear he was quite right.
October 31, 2010 at 5:12 am
@Bill Butcher et al., Incidentally, for more on Blombos Cave, see Christopher Henshilwood, Holocene prehistory of the southern Cape, South Africa: excavations at Blombos Cave and the Blombosfontein Nature Reserve. Cambridge: Cambridge Monographs in African Archaeology, 2008.
Or Blombos Cave, South Africa
https://www.svf.uib.no/sfu/blombos/
Or Blombos Cave, South Africa
https://www.svf.uib.no/sfu/blombos/
October 31, 2010 at 2:41 pm
In the end, they too accepted the inevitability of flight for their lives. More than forty years of programs and promises of "renaissance" have only produced a dysfunctional city that often can neither educate its young nor reliably provide the most basic services such as snow removal and, for a couple of days now, electricity.
October 30, 2010 at 7:01 am
2 people like this
During my lifetime, the city population of Detroit has gone from about 2 million to less than 900,000, about 85 % of whom are African-Americans. In September 2010, there was an editorial in the Detroit Free Press that shockingly stated that two thirds of the population had never finished high school.
The frequent failure to provide the most basic services necessary for a large city continues, along with a relentless stream of political corruption and violence, in all sectors of life.
The frequent failure to provide the most basic services necessary for a large city continues, along with a relentless stream of political corruption and violence, in all sectors of life.
October 30, 2010 at 7:39 am
I grew up in the white suburbs of Detroit during the `60s and `70s and have vivid memories of the 1967 Detroit riot and my uncle and aunt’s bakery being almost burnt to the ground, while their neighbors and friends were increasingly driven out by violence and the erosion of social order.
October 30, 2010 at 5:46 am
Hating Whitey: And Other Progressive Causes. David Horowitz.
For Betty - Oh God, What Have We Done.... One brings to a book everything one is and has been through. Let me discuss David Horowitz’s Hating Whitey by seemingly digressing a little on my own experience.
For Betty - Oh God, What Have We Done.... One brings to a book everything one is and has been through. Let me discuss David Horowitz’s Hating Whitey by seemingly digressing a little on my own experience.
October 30, 2010 at 4:58 am
Creating Equal. Ward Connerly. « Reviews by Frederick Glaysher
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/creating-equal-ward-connerly
October 29, 2010 at 9:18 am
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/creating-equal-ward-connerly
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Creating Equal. Ward Connerly. « Reviews by Frederick Glaysher |
In Creating Equal, Ward Connerly returns the *human* dimension to the realities of race in America. Where so often what the poet Robert Hayden called "race rhetoric" substitutes for thought and dialogue, Connerly confronts long-held affirmative action doctrine with compelling insight into the pervas
October 29, 2010 at 9:18 am
Whatever shape our future will take regarding race, Ward Connerly’s personal and public odyssey will be part of the answer, as it is a clear sign for renewed hope that reason and sanity may yet prevail.
October 29, 2010 at 7:19 am
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Connerly rightly deserves to be more widely known not merely as an opponent of race preferences but rather as a matchless defender of free speech and conscience, a cause for which he has also suffered dearly at one university after another throughout our country.
October 29, 2010 at 6:23 am
At last someone other than a radical black or white "civil rights professional" has found a way to speak to these issues and reach all Americans--not merely the campus crowd.
October 29, 2010 at 5:02 am
His emphasis on the necessity of basic human virtue and morality stands as both an indictment of us all and a call to struggle together toward a new vision of what it means to be an American.
October 28, 2010 at 7:01 am
Where so often what the poet Robert Hayden called "race rhetoric" substitutes for thought and dialogue, Connerly confronts long-held affirmative action doctrine with compelling insight into the pervasive devastation race preferences have actually had for all people.
October 28, 2010 at 5:03 am
Ward Connerly.
A Courageous Man and a Brilliant Book. In Creating Equal: My Fight Against Race Preferences, he returns the *human* dimension to the realities of race in America.
A Courageous Man and a Brilliant Book. In Creating Equal: My Fight Against Race Preferences, he returns the *human* dimension to the realities of race in America.
October 28, 2010 at 3:39 am
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Blombos Cave |
A cave beyond ancient, Blombos Cave, on the Southern Cape.
October 25, 2010 at 5:18 am
Re-Centering: The Turning of the Tide and Robert Hayden
https://fglaysher.com/Recentering_turning_of_the_tide_%20and_Robert_Hayden.html
October 24, 2010 at 4:08 am
https://fglaysher.com/Recentering_turning_of_the_tide_%20and_Robert_Hayden.html
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Recentering, The Turning of the Tide and Robert Hayden, Frederick Glayshert |
Frederick Glaysher identifies in the poetry of Robert Hayden the first intimation of the spiritual renewal of Western and global civilization.
October 24, 2010 at 4:08 am
Life is fundamentally a spiritual phenomenon, and though man-made ideologies may be briefly substituted, they soon prove to be hollow and barren; by their very nature they increase anomie; they merely raise another stone image in the desert.
October 24, 2010 at 4:06 am
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Guilds in writing have always been destroyed in only one way. A master consecrates his or her life to stepping forward and writing a book that utterly destroys it, buries it forever.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/anis-shivani/creative-writing-programs-corrupt_b_757653.html?ref=fb&src=sp#
October 23, 2010 at 7:11 am
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/anis-shivani/creative-writing-programs-corrupt_b_757653.html?ref=fb&src=sp#
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Creative Writing Programs: Is The MFA System Corrupt And Undemocratic? |
Just as the guild structure was socially conservative--and hence easily superseded when the more progressive market system, flourishing along with the industrial economy, came along--so is the present MFA credentialing system.
October 23, 2010 at 7:11 am
Leonardo da Vinci and Michaelangelo defied the guilds by walking into the big corporations and telling them they were the best. Meanwhile back in Siena Sano di Pietro laboured on as if he were still Mediaeval. Now we have them both to admire. Conservatism is inevitable in writing programmes, if you can't ignore them, paranoia won't get you anywhere
October 24, 2010 at 1:45 am
Thanks, Duncan, for bringing up da Vinci and Michaelangelo. Guild or coterie, I think you're right that that's the way to handle them--forget 'em, and write the work that buries them.
Whether Cervantes and chivalry, T. S. Eliot and the Edwardians, endless others, the example in the literary tradition is that a new way forward can be charted if a poet or writer in solitude will shoulder the burden... rise to the occasion, for the good of the literary and cultural tradition that sustains civilization.
Whether Cervantes and chivalry, T. S. Eliot and the Edwardians, endless others, the example in the literary tradition is that a new way forward can be charted if a poet or writer in solitude will shoulder the burden... rise to the occasion, for the good of the literary and cultural tradition that sustains civilization.
October 24, 2010 at 4:05 am
wishes that George Garrett had lived to share his wit and wisdom on facebook.
October 24, 2010 at 4:37 am
Very interesting article. Thanks for posting this.
November 1, 2010 at 9:03 am
The use of "impelled" is an outstanding example of Hayden’s choosing the perfect word. It forcibly asserts the speaker’s conviction that only the new rain can cause the wasteland to bloom once again; that only the turning of the tide can replenish the sea of faith and respiritualize and unite mankind; that only the new dispensation can decisively challenge bourgeois materialism.
October 23, 2010 at 4:33 am
3 people like this
The closing triplet reads: "I bear Him witness now: / toward Him our history in its disastrous quest / for meaning is impelled."
October 22, 2010 at 9:51 am
Awareness of the "imminence of bloom" pervades the poem. Furthermore, it firmly places Baha’u’llah in history: "renewal of / the covenant of timelessness with time." Once again, the reality of the existence of the center has been restored for man.
October 22, 2010 at 6:51 am
The tone of "and all the atoms cry aloud" is much more elevated than that of "The Night-Blooming Cereus" and is free of the somewhat veiled disclosure of that poem. The atmosphere of quiet awe has changed to urgent certainty.
October 22, 2010 at 5:57 am
The poem contains several other allusions to the Bahai writings. The words a "shrill pen," "wronged, exiled One", "surgeon, architect / of our hope of peace"; the acclaiming by the"stones," "seas," and "stars"; the quotation "I was but a man / like others, asleep upon / My couch"’ (from Baha’u’llah’s Kitab-i-Aqdas)—all have their origin, as do many subtleties in Hayden’s poetry, in Bahai scripture.
October 21, 2010 at 5:26 am
This repeated assertion announces with uncommon certainty, as the entire poem does, the long-awaited turning of the tide.
October 20, 2010 at 7:30 am
The sentence may be an allusion to the Bahai prayer that begins "I bear witness, 0 my God, that Thou hast created me to know Thee and to worship Thee."
October 20, 2010 at 5:05 am
The words "cry aloud" in themselves connote a more emphatic attitude than can be found in "The Night-Blooming Cereus." This same increased emphasis exists in the repeated line "I bear Him witness now." The adverb "now" especially intensifies the line.
October 19, 2010 at 8:28 am
The Bahai writings frequently conceive of the new dispensation as releasing re-vitalizing spiritual energy. Often this energy is described as influencing the rocks, the dust, every atom of existence—hence the title of the poem, wherein all the atoms of creation proclaim the new dispensation.
October 19, 2010 at 2:36 am
Robert Hayden did not find in the Bahai teachings a vague utopian dream. He was deeply conscious, as the religion is, of human suffering and evil. Yet he believed that the only true theodicy for today was to be found in the Bahai dispensation. Even a cursory acquaintance with his poetry must leave us with this realization.
October 18, 2010 at 9:59 am
In an interview Robert Hayden once discussed these poems and specifically referred to the last one: "The final poem is the culmination, the climax of the sequence. For me, it contains the answers to the questions the preceding poems have stated or implied. If I seem to come to any conclusion about injustice, suffering, violence at all, it’s in . . . the last poem, written originally for a Bahai occasion."
October 18, 2010 at 6:59 am
"Baha’u’llah urged the absolute, inescapable necessity for human unity, the recognition of the fundamental oneness of mankind. He also prophesied that we’d go through sheer hell before we achieved anything like world unity—partly owing to our inability to love." -Robert Hayden
October 18, 2010 at 6:59 am
3 people like this
The poem "and all the atoms cry aloud" is the last one in Hayden’s superb sequence of poems "Words in the Mourning Time." This sequence irrefutably demonstrates that he was sensible of the madness and evil around him.
October 18, 2010 at 4:56 am
Lebanese Liberal: Cordoba Initiative Chairman Abdul Rauf Is Not Truly Moderate
In a September 19, 2010 article on the liberal website Elaph, Lebanese journalist Joseph Bishara wrote that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, chairman of the Cordoba Initiative [9/11 mosque], does not really believe in tolerance. He stated that Rauf is deceiving the public based on the Islamic principle of taqiyya (concealing one's true beliefs) – that is, he is hiding his real intentions, which are to spread Islam in the U.S. while exploiting the liberties granted him by the U.S.
Constitution.https://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/4677.htm#_edn2
October 18, 2010 at 3:41 am
In a September 19, 2010 article on the liberal website Elaph, Lebanese journalist Joseph Bishara wrote that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, chairman of the Cordoba Initiative [9/11 mosque], does not really believe in tolerance. He stated that Rauf is deceiving the public based on the Islamic principle of taqiyya (concealing one's true beliefs) – that is, he is hiding his real intentions, which are to spread Islam in the U.S. while exploiting the liberties granted him by the U.S.
Constitution.https://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/4677.htm#_edn2
| https://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/4677.htm |
October 18, 2010 at 3:41 am
Interesting points--though I'd like to see how Judaism and Christianity (as traditionally practiced) are compatible with democracy and tolerance. Or Hinduism or Confucianism. Maybe Buddhism in theory, but certainly none of the others.
October 18, 2010 at 4:30 am
Joseph Bishara's most important points are in his last two paragraphs on Abdul Rauf, especially regarding taqiyya:
"Imam Abdul Rauf calls for moderation, but his actions say otherwise. He is not trying to Americanize Islam, as he claims, because that is not possible. [On the contrary], he is trying to Islamize America by demanding to implement the Islamic shari'a and through his attempt to convince the Americans that Islam and the Islamic shari'a are compatible with the American culture and constitution.
"Abdul Rauf says he is trying to build bridges among religions, and that he is a man of peace trying to illuminate the tolerant face of Islam. But his illogical statements and his provocative actions reveal him in a different light. He is employing [the principle of] taqiyya,[2] which is sanctioned by the shari'a, in order to Islamize America."
For more on taqiyya, see Raymond Ibrahim, "How Taqiyya Alters Islam's Rules of War: Defeating Jihadist Terrorism". Middle East Forum. Winter 2010. https://www.meforum.org/2538/taqiyya-islam-rules-of-war
"Imam Abdul Rauf calls for moderation, but his actions say otherwise. He is not trying to Americanize Islam, as he claims, because that is not possible. [On the contrary], he is trying to Islamize America by demanding to implement the Islamic shari'a and through his attempt to convince the Americans that Islam and the Islamic shari'a are compatible with the American culture and constitution.
"Abdul Rauf says he is trying to build bridges among religions, and that he is a man of peace trying to illuminate the tolerant face of Islam. But his illogical statements and his provocative actions reveal him in a different light. He is employing [the principle of] taqiyya,[2] which is sanctioned by the shari'a, in order to Islamize America."
For more on taqiyya, see Raymond Ibrahim, "How Taqiyya Alters Islam's Rules of War: Defeating Jihadist Terrorism". Middle East Forum. Winter 2010. https://www.meforum.org/2538/taqiyya-islam-rules-of-war
October 18, 2010 at 4:55 am
Yah, lots different, say, than the RC Church or evangelicals.
October 18, 2010 at 5:02 am
If you're alluding to, say Jesuits at their worst, or whatever, taqiyya still differs significantly... or am I misunderstanding you? Expand if you would.
October 18, 2010 at 5:35 am
nothing as obscure: homosexuality, stem cell research, contraception, abortion, etc. All of these impact our laws.
October 18, 2010 at 7:34 am
Lumping them together, if that's what you're doing, fails to distinguish between their differences.
October 18, 2010 at 7:39 am
@Jennifer Reeser, Since we've discussed taqiyya alittle, I just want to be sure you had a chance to hear another perspective on it:
"He stated that Rauf is deceiving the public based on the Islamic principle of taqiyya (concealing one's true beliefs) – that is, he is hiding his real intentions, which are to spread Islam in the U.S. while exploiting the liberties granted him by the U.S."
"He stated that Rauf is deceiving the public based on the Islamic principle of taqiyya (concealing one's true beliefs) – that is, he is hiding his real intentions, which are to spread Islam in the U.S. while exploiting the liberties granted him by the U.S."
October 20, 2010 at 3:15 am
“The person who is oppressed is the woman, but the real slave is the man, caught up in defending his enslavement. Women should help him become free.” - Adonis
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/18/books/18adonis.html?_r=2&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y
October 18, 2010 at 2:53 am
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/18/books/18adonis.html?_r=2&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y
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A Visit With the Arabic Poet Adonis |
Adonis, the Syrian-born poet and perennial Nobel favorite, has a new volume of selected poems and an upcoming reading at the 92nd Street Y.
October 18, 2010 at 2:53 am
4 people like this
Arab-American Psychiatrist Wafa Sultan Harshly Criticizes the Status of Women in Islam Al-Hayat TV (Cyprus) - December 4, 2008
https://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1993.htm
"I personally did not suffer, but I have witnessed many crimes against
women perpetrated within my extended family and in the framework of my work. As a doctor, I have entered homes that have not seen the light of day, and I have witnessed many crimes against women, perpetrated under the influence of Islamic teachings."
https://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1993.htm
"I personally did not suffer, but I have witnessed many crimes against
women perpetrated within my extended family and in the framework of my work. As a doctor, I have entered homes that have not seen the light of day, and I have witnessed many crimes against women, perpetrated under the influence of Islamic teachings."
October 18, 2010 at 3:59 am
Yet the unequivocal suggestion is that the newly opened flower is the one worth celebrating, the one worthy of their "marvelling," their primordial human awe and adoration.
October 17, 2010 at 7:07 am
"Foredoomed, already dying" emphasizes the cyclical nature of the flower and implies that it,too, is and shall continue to wane since it is a "Lunar presence."
October 17, 2010 at 6:25 am
The poem ends with the following stanzas:
"Lunar presence, / foredoomed, already dying, / it charged the room / with plangency / older than human / cries, ancient as prayers / invoking Osiris, Krishna, / Tezca’tlipoca. / We spoke / in whispers when / we spoke / at all . . ."
"Lunar presence, / foredoomed, already dying, / it charged the room / with plangency / older than human / cries, ancient as prayers / invoking Osiris, Krishna, / Tezca’tlipoca. / We spoke / in whispers when / we spoke / at all . . ."
October 17, 2010 at 4:54 am
1 person likes this
UN head assesses future of peacekeepingDifferent UN agencies should work together to provide a more comprehensive and enduring approach to peacekeeping efforts throughout the world, says UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/Special/2010/10/14/Ban-lays-out-vision-for-peacekeeping/UPI-81301287085555/
October 15, 2010 at 11:14 am
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/Special/2010/10/14/Ban-lays-out-vision-for-peacekeeping/UPI-81301287085555/
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Ban lays out vision for peacekeeping - UPI.com |
Peacekeeping operations require endurance to usher in post-conflict stability, the U.N. secretary-general told the U.N. Security Council.
October 15, 2010 at 11:14 am
While one recalls that the speaker is repelled as much as fascinated—"sometimes"—that time is now in the past.
October 15, 2010 at 6:11 am
After the speaker attributes to it grotesque, bestial qualities, he addresses someone he refers to as "dear," undoubtedly a loved one: "But you, my dear, / conceded less to the bizarre / than to the imminence / of bloom. Yet we agreed / we ought / to celebrate the blossom, / paint ourselves, dance / in honor of / archaic mysteries / when it appeared."
October 15, 2010 at 3:51 am
Far from bleak, the collapse of the corporate monopoly on publishing is a tremendously promising development...
October 14, 2010 at 8:54 am
| Apocalypse in Print |
The printed book is dead -- at least, the book as we have known it since Gutenberg. It's going digital not only among the young, but even the ancient.
October 14, 2010 at 8:54 am
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Thanks, Frederick. I re-shared.
October 14, 2010 at 9:14 am
Thanks for the note. I'd say POD is already here, worldwide, with the Expresso Book Machine gaining speed... and ebooks moving forward fast... I've come to think it's not a matter of one or the other, but complimentary niches and roles, all global now.
https://www.fglaysher.com/order_books.html
https://www.fglaysher.com/order_books.html
October 14, 2010 at 1:14 pm
Many people, even in literature and poetry circles, especially in universities, don't know what to think of a book unless someone "authoritative" tells them... historically, always a scary scenario, all the more so now.
The broad, liberal humanism of modernity was so supposed to remedy that dilemma, but it hasn't and can't. Modernity has only created its own meta-myths that have become oppressive in their own turn, suffusing culture, including publishing and journalism, as well as other echelons of thought. The problem is perennial to human development, through antinomies, the deep tensions and struggles of the soul.
The broad, liberal humanism of modernity was so supposed to remedy that dilemma, but it hasn't and can't. Modernity has only created its own meta-myths that have become oppressive in their own turn, suffusing culture, including publishing and journalism, as well as other echelons of thought. The problem is perennial to human development, through antinomies, the deep tensions and struggles of the soul.
October 17, 2010 at 6:41 am
The speaker then states something that may be the reaction of many modern observers: "It repelled as much / as it fascinated me sometimes. . . ."
October 14, 2010 at 8:41 am
Later in the poem the plant is again partially personified as possessing a "focused energy of will."
October 14, 2010 at 6:25 am
Cut the Publishers. Here's how. Time for publishing to change. Tell your friends... Earthrise Press® eBooks non-DRM https://books.fglaysher.com
October 14, 2010 at 4:48 am
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Earthrise Press |
Earthrise Press is a Post-Gutenberg Publisher of eBooks, non-DRM
October 14, 2010 at 4:48 am
The description of the bud as "heavy," pregnant with potential flower, creates a sense of anticipation. It is further described as packed with its miracle and swaying in the air, "as though impelled / by stirrings within itself."
October 14, 2010 at 3:45 am
beautiful!!!
October 14, 2010 at 12:50 pm
Yes, it is a lovely idea.
October 16, 2010 at 5:01 am
I found this interesting and thought you might too.
https://www.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/news/display/?id=6236
October 13, 2010 at 7:03 pm
https://www.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/news/display/?id=6236
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Nigeria’s literary talent can make their mark, says author (The University of Manchester) |
“There is an explosion of young literary talent in Nigeria and other countries in Africa at the moment."
October 13, 2010 at 7:03 pm
Their reaction is the only appropriate one: "We dropped / trivial tasks / and marvelling / beheld at last the achieved / flower."
October 13, 2010 at 8:59 am
1 person likes this
This sense of primordial joy is centered in the fact that they are honoring "archaic mysteries," mysteries that are being restored before their intellectual eyes.
October 13, 2010 at 6:51 am
Dear FG: I seem to always miss the post to which you are responding. Can you steer me to this one?
By archaic mysteries what do you mean?
By archaic mysteries what do you mean?
October 13, 2010 at 8:04 am
Yesterday at 10:21am, below: After the speaker attributes to it grotesque, bestial qualities, he addresses someone he refers to as "dear," undoubtedly a loved one: "But you, my dear, / conceded less to the bizarre / than to the imminence / of bloom. Yet we agreed / we ought / to celebrate the blossom, / paint ourselves, dance / in honor of / archaic mysteries / when it appeared."
Metaphors are always ruined when unpacked. Don't you argree? :)
Metaphors are always ruined when unpacked. Don't you argree? :)
October 13, 2010 at 8:33 am
Metaphors are problematic for me. There never is an equality between the terms in the proposed equation being established; one is always dominant and privileged, and it's almost always the human element. Not being a humanist I find this irksome.
October 13, 2010 at 8:41 am
Wow. Okay. Privileged metaphors... that's a new one on me. I've never thought of metaphors as a problem.
October 13, 2010 at 8:47 am
The references to dancing and the painting of themselves have a joyous, primitive connotation.
October 13, 2010 at 4:03 am
Yet they concur that they "ought to celebrate the blossom."
October 12, 2010 at 11:06 am
4 people like this
And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tombstones where flowers should be;
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys and desires.
And tombstones where flowers should be;
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys and desires.
October 12, 2010 at 11:14 am
I believe it's fair to say that Hayden believed he was on the other side of a cycle from Blake... hence his choosing "to celebrate the blossom."
October 12, 2010 at 1:23 pm
@Scott Rex Hightower, @Cal Desmond-Pearson, I respect your consciences. For many long decades, the ideas you both suggest or seem to feel sympathy with have been intoned as received wisdom. They served their purpose long ago. Robert Hayden had clearly moved on from them as early as the mid 1960s.
October 13, 2010 at 7:01 am
The implication is unmistakable that the speaker himself has been struck by the "bizarre" much more than his companion; she has been touched by the "imminence of bloom."
October 12, 2010 at 8:35 am
After the speaker attributes to it grotesque, bestial qualities, he addresses someone he refers to as "dear," undoubtedly a loved one: "But you, my dear, / conceded less to the bizarre / than to the imminence / of bloom. Yet we agreed / we ought / to celebrate the blossom, / paint ourselves, dance / in honor of / archaic mysteries / when it appeared."
October 12, 2010 at 6:21 am
2 people like this
The speaker then states something that may be the reaction of many modern observers: "It repelled as much / as it fascinated me sometimes. . . . "
October 12, 2010 at 3:10 am
1 person likes this
Later in the poem the plant is again partially personified as possessing a "focused energy of will."
October 11, 2010 at 8:58 am
The description of the bud as "heavy," pregnant with potential flower, creates a sense of anticipation. It is further described as packed with its miracle and swaying in the air, "as though impelled / by stirrings within itself."
October 11, 2010 at 6:57 am
2 people like this
The title itself tersely presents the basic image—the cereus cactus that opens its striking blossom only in the season of darkness: "And so for nights / we waited, hoping to see / the heavy bud / break into flower."
October 11, 2010 at 4:33 am
The first of these poems, "The Night-Blooming Cereus," is perhaps his most beautifully metaphoric treatment of the turning of the tide.
October 10, 2010 at 8:46 am
Robert Hayden wrote matchless poetry that has justly won international acclaim. Two of his poems in particular reveal how deeply aware he was, to invert Nietzsche, of the "tremendous event . . . [that] has not yet reached the ears of man."
October 10, 2010 at 5:08 am
2 people like this
III
"Within the rock the undiscovered suns / release their light." --Robert Hayden
"Within the rock the undiscovered suns / release their light." --Robert Hayden
October 10, 2010 at 3:59 am
All of which is why Baha'u'llah emphasized that he had transformed the understanding of what religion is at the most basic level: "Oh ye people of the world! The virtue of this Most Great Manifestation is that We have removed from the Book whatever was the cause of difference, corruption and discord, and recorded therein that which leads to unity, harmony and agreement."
October 9, 2010 at 7:31 am
2 people like this
Make it Viral... Pass it on, for Liu Xiaobo, for China! ...to the 500,000 on Facebook, by re-posting the link to your Wall and friends...
Video of Liu Xiaobo's wife, Liu Xia, over phone from Beijing!
Liao Yiwu, a fellow writer who has know Liu for more than 20 years, said today: "As Liu's best friend, I am so happy I can't describe what I feel. This is a big moment in Chinese history. It will greatly promote democratic developments in China and it is a huge encouragement to us and our friends."
https://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/08/liu-xiaobo-nobel-chinese-fury
October 8, 2010 at 11:40 am
Video of Liu Xiaobo's wife, Liu Xia, over phone from Beijing!
Liao Yiwu, a fellow writer who has know Liu for more than 20 years, said today: "As Liu's best friend, I am so happy I can't describe what I feel. This is a big moment in Chinese history. It will greatly promote democratic developments in China and it is a huge encouragement to us and our friends."
https://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/08/liu-xiaobo-nobel-chinese-fury
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Liu Xiaobo Nobel win prompts Chinese fury | World news | guardian.co.uk |
Chinese authorities say awarding peace prize to 'criminal' will hurt relations with Norway
October 8, 2010 at 11:40 am
3 people like this
Video of Liu Xiaobo's wife, Liu Xia, over phone from Beijing!
Liao Yiwu, a fellow writer who has know Liu for more than 20 years, said today: "As Liu's best friend, I am so happy I can't describe what I feel. This is a big moment in Chinese history. It will greatly promote democratic developments in China and it is a huge encouragement to us and our friends."
https://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/08/liu-xiaobo-nobel-chinese-fury
October 8, 2010 at 11:17 am
Liao Yiwu, a fellow writer who has know Liu for more than 20 years, said today: "As Liu's best friend, I am so happy I can't describe what I feel. This is a big moment in Chinese history. It will greatly promote democratic developments in China and it is a huge encouragement to us and our friends."
https://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/08/liu-xiaobo-nobel-chinese-fury
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|
Liu Xiaobo Nobel win prompts Chinese fury | World news | guardian.co.uk |
Chinese authorities say awarding peace prize to 'criminal' will hurt relations with Norway
October 8, 2010 at 11:17 am
2 people like this
Reform Bahais believe that Baha'u'llah taught that the separation of church and state is the Will of God and distance themselves from any interpretation of an eventual Bahai theocracy, following Abdul-Baha's vision of a global, pluralistic, spiritual democracy.
October 8, 2010 at 8:23 am
all of which is to say the Reform Bahai Faith has moved on from its historical and cultural roots, reforming Islam and Sufism, as well as all of the great religions, with its global vision of human oneness.
October 8, 2010 at 6:16 am
Liu Xiaobo, an impassioned literary critic, political essayist and democracy advocate repeatedly jailed by the Chinese government for his writings, won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in recognition of his pursuit of nonviolent political reform in the world’s most populous country.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/09/world/09nobel.html?hp
October 8, 2010 at 3:02 am
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/09/world/09nobel.html?hp
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Chinese Dissident Wins Nobel Peace Prize |
The imprisoned pro-democracy advocate was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Friday.
October 8, 2010 at 3:02 am
6 people like this
Protracted crisis: “Those environments in which a significant proportion of the population is acutely vulnerable to death, disease and disruption of livelihoods over a prolonged period of time. The governance of these environments is usually very weak, with the state having a limited capacity to respond to, and mitigate, the threats to the population or provide adequate levels of protection.”
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/crisis-conditions-breed-a-virulent-form-of-food-insecurity-un-report-says/article1746378/
October 7, 2010 at 5:02 pm
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/crisis-conditions-breed-a-virulent-form-of-food-insecurity-un-report-says/article1746378/
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Crisis conditions breed a virulent form of food insecurity, UN report says |
Solving acute hunger issues will require creative international solutions, UN report says
October 7, 2010 at 5:02 pm
1 person likes this
So sad and awful. And probably going to get worse. Not to be too pessimistic or anything.
October 7, 2010 at 5:09 pm
I read about two thirds of Chinua Achebe's A Man of the People (1966) this morning, which deals with corrupt Nigerian politics after independence from Britain, so this article from the UN Wire caught my attention. It's very sad how dysfunctional so many governments are that they can't even provide the most basic services to their people.
October 7, 2010 at 5:22 pm
Hard to be hopeful, given the a partial list of countries in trouble: Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, North Korea, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Tajikistan, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
I think, though, the realization that just dumping money into the hands of corrupt officials isn't helping has become widely recognized during the last decade and more efforts are going into creating better governance. That's a good sign. The Millennium Development Goals have helped focus more such change too. So there is some movement in the right direction on the part of some countries, perhaps...
I think, though, the realization that just dumping money into the hands of corrupt officials isn't helping has become widely recognized during the last decade and more efforts are going into creating better governance. That's a good sign. The Millennium Development Goals have helped focus more such change too. So there is some movement in the right direction on the part of some countries, perhaps...
October 7, 2010 at 5:30 pm
As Abdul-Baha often suggested, far from having the exclusive truth and the fanaticism to which that notion has so often led, Reform Bahais look to what is universal and non-creedal in the world's religious experience, and include prayers and meditations from other religions in their private and community worship, listen to and learn from God's other religions—
October 7, 2010 at 10:59 am
The Reform Bahai Faith affirms the universal spiritual and moral principles taught in all of the great religious traditions.
October 7, 2010 at 8:40 am
It must be observed that the Bahai Movement does not claim to be a new religion. If it is to be correctly understood, what Baha’u’llah revealed must be given due recognition: "This is the changeless Faith of God, eternal in the past, eternal in the future."
October 7, 2010 at 5:04 am
Reform Bahais believe Abdul-Baha's Interpretation of Baha’u’llah’s Teachings for the modern world is much more profound than the prevailing conception of religion.
October 7, 2010 at 3:00 am
Known during Abdul-Baha's time as the Bahai Movement or Cause, the Reform Bahai Faith is not an organization, but a way of life. In England he said, "You can be a Bahai-Christian, a Bahai-Freemason, a Bahai-Jew, a Bahai-Muhammadan."
October 6, 2010 at 9:30 am
3 people like this
To Reform Bahais, it works both ways: Christian-Bahai, Freemason-Bahai (dated), Jew-Bahai, etc., i.e., the linguistic container is not important but what's universal. Only the individual soul can decide and judge, or negotiate the spiritual journey, not an organization.
October 6, 2010 at 10:40 am
Speaking in Europe and North America from 1911 to 1913, Abdul-Baha stated on a number of occasions that he was a man just like anyone else and that the Bahai Faith could not be organized, yet often spoke paradoxically of the growth of the Bahai community throughout the world, grounded in democratic pluralism.
October 6, 2010 at 7:25 am
Appointed in his father's Covenant as the Center of the Covenant, Abdul-Baha taught that the Bahai Movement was a way for people of all persuasions to come together in neutral territory and worship the Divine Being in a mutually respectful atmosphere of peace and harmony.
October 6, 2010 at 4:58 am
The dispensation of Baha’u’llah is worldwide in scope: it favors neither the Orient nor the Occident; and it contains many precepts that make sense only in a context larger than the nation, precepts that are indeed calling into being a globally minded civilization.
October 6, 2010 at 2:54 am
No other prophet has so clearly stipulated the fundamental laws and administrative institutions of His faith, while emphazing the freedom and independence of the individual in controlling his or her own spiritual growth.
October 5, 2010 at 11:33 am
This institution, the Universal House of Justice, was given its authority by Baha’u’llah Himself before His death in 1892, and reaffirmed by his son Abdul-Baha as destined to be elected in the fullness of time.
October 5, 2010 at 9:22 am
What distinguishes the Bahai Dispensation from other religions is its association with an elected, democratic institution, paradoxically an unorganized institution, an association, not a theocracy.
October 5, 2010 at 5:07 am
1 person likes this
Thanks for these posts. Very informative about a religion about which not much is known by non-adherents. I also wonder how many people are aware of the persecution of Bahais in Iran - I only learned of it through a Bahai learner at a school where I occasionally help out; he and his family came to SA from Iran.
October 5, 2010 at 8:07 am
Jayne, I appreciate your saying so. I admit the Bahai faith can be rather unknown for many people. It has a relatively short history and few members scattered far and wide. There are several Bahai denominations. I'm a member of the Reform Bahai Faith, a more "protestant" interpretation than the highly organized one that most Iranian Baha'is belong to and which most people know of as the "Baha'i Faith," if at all.
October 5, 2010 at 9:04 am
Presbyterianism is organized quite democratically.
October 6, 2010 at 4:20 am
Good morning, Jim. Yes, you're right. I'm aware there are many Christian denominations with various forms of election, representation, and association. Bahais don't have any elder, minister, or imam-like figure. So the elected assemblies are largely given to practical community development and concerns, with the individual responsible for their own understanding of the Bahai writings and spiritual growth.
October 6, 2010 at 4:57 am
I'd be interested to learn what Bahai might have in common with Mahayana Buddhism. which, as an organization, is not particularly democratic, but which does leave much of the spiritual responsibility (so to speak) in the hands of the individual. I hope that some future evolution in American Zen might also feature the kind of priestlessness you're pointing out.
October 6, 2010 at 7:45 am
I follow ya. As you know, I'm sure, Theravada or Way of the Elders usually is thought to have stayed close to the "small boat" approach, while Mahayana, the "great boat," to the old saw. But Mahayana especially emphasized and still does the *example* of the Buddha's compassion over and beyond the written records of the Buddha's teachings, like the Dhammapada and so on.
In a Reform Bahai context, it's the example of Abdul-Baha of universal love and compassion, brotherhood, demonstrated especially during his travels throughout Europe and the USA from 1910 to 1913 that forms the Example of how to strive to live one's life in the modern world, beyond the historical background of 19th Century Islam and Naqshbandi Sufism, to a truly global perspective. We human beings have a way of generating words but never living by them, being frail. The thought is Example is more powerful than words.
In a Reform Bahai context, it's the example of Abdul-Baha of universal love and compassion, brotherhood, demonstrated especially during his travels throughout Europe and the USA from 1910 to 1913 that forms the Example of how to strive to live one's life in the modern world, beyond the historical background of 19th Century Islam and Naqshbandi Sufism, to a truly global perspective. We human beings have a way of generating words but never living by them, being frail. The thought is Example is more powerful than words.
October 6, 2010 at 8:18 am
However, they sound much more sane and credible than the "supreme fictions" advanced by such writers as Nietzsche, Stevens, Camus, Derrida, and Yeats. Moreover, the urgent need today for the unity of mankind ought to be glaringly obvious to any open-minded, thinking person.
October 5, 2010 at 2:34 am
1 person likes this
Hi FG, I received the Rieff book on deathworks and read some. My first thought is that he misinterprets revolution as only destructive, instead of a positive clearing away of obstructions to new knowledge.
But more later.
But more later.
October 5, 2010 at 4:31 am
Good morning, Diana. I agree with you in terms of "only destructive." It's partly his nostalgia, in my view, which I've distanced myself from in previous discussion too. I don't think that disqualifies him or any one, necessarily. In fairness to Rieff, in his overall argument, I think he does towards the end intimate a reassessment and a renewal of a more human, affirmative form of art.
"Revolution" for the sake of revolution is also known as anarchy, which leads to violence and horrible social collapse, war, slaughter, and oppression. Unless one glorifies such upheaval, imagining it leads to a better world, not an infinitely worse one, like the Soviet Gulag, I would then argue Philip Rieff is on the side of what is human and enduring, unlike quixotic on the barricades...
Rieff is really speaking at a deeper cultural level than such suppurating sores on the surface of time.
"Revolution" for the sake of revolution is also known as anarchy, which leads to violence and horrible social collapse, war, slaughter, and oppression. Unless one glorifies such upheaval, imagining it leads to a better world, not an infinitely worse one, like the Soviet Gulag, I would then argue Philip Rieff is on the side of what is human and enduring, unlike quixotic on the barricades...
Rieff is really speaking at a deeper cultural level than such suppurating sores on the surface of time.
October 5, 2010 at 5:07 am
Dear FG,
I meant cultural revolution, not political, though of course the two interrelate.
Though I've read only a third of the book, my take so far is that Rieff has a bad case of "knowing how the world should be." And therefore how art should be.
I'll read more tomorrow and post more comments to you.
I meant cultural revolution, not political, though of course the two interrelate.
Though I've read only a third of the book, my take so far is that Rieff has a bad case of "knowing how the world should be." And therefore how art should be.
I'll read more tomorrow and post more comments to you.
October 5, 2010 at 6:58 pm
Yes, they often related, in very unpleasant, violent ways, as with Nietzsche's “glorification of barbarism," as Thomas Mann phrased it.
What's a critic for? From Aristotle, Longinus, and throughout the span of literary and artistic criticism, men and women have expressed their views of "how art should be." Modern nihilists and anarchists, other cultural relativists, express a view of "knowing how the world should be." Our time is wrapped in the meta-narrative of the Deconstructionist, a repulsive, dehumanizing, anti-vision of life, exemplifying Lionel Trilling's "adversarial" insight, applied from art and literature to what passes for criticism...
Just my opinion. I respect yours. And hope to hear more what you think of Rieff. His dense style and three Cultures?
What's a critic for? From Aristotle, Longinus, and throughout the span of literary and artistic criticism, men and women have expressed their views of "how art should be." Modern nihilists and anarchists, other cultural relativists, express a view of "knowing how the world should be." Our time is wrapped in the meta-narrative of the Deconstructionist, a repulsive, dehumanizing, anti-vision of life, exemplifying Lionel Trilling's "adversarial" insight, applied from art and literature to what passes for criticism...
Just my opinion. I respect yours. And hope to hear more what you think of Rieff. His dense style and three Cultures?
October 6, 2010 at 3:19 am
His three cultures seem to me an unnecessary fabrication intended to lend an academic aura to his grouchy gripings. Why not four, or seven?
Insisting the world should be the way you would prefer it to be is a defense against having to evolve and change. Older generations are famous for condemning change as decadence and damnation. It has always been thus.
Seeing the good in new ideas and styles that threaten one's settled worldview is the mark of a mind that is youthful and flexible.
Too many intellectuals get mentally stiff and sclerotic after they have developed their ideas.
Insisting the world should be the way you would prefer it to be is a defense against having to evolve and change. Older generations are famous for condemning change as decadence and damnation. It has always been thus.
Seeing the good in new ideas and styles that threaten one's settled worldview is the mark of a mind that is youthful and flexible.
Too many intellectuals get mentally stiff and sclerotic after they have developed their ideas.
October 6, 2010 at 4:55 am
I can acknowledge any structural system can be criticized as arbitrary and superimposed on the multiplicity of life. And such criticism can help us think and analyze its form and shortcomings. Beyond that, I would argue, though, his three cultures is not entirely a "fabrication." Modern cultural experience, say, since 1500, can be productively viewed as Rieff suggests. It's too simplistic to dismiss him as a curmudgeon, "condemning change." He's quite right that much change in the arts and culture is decline and decadence.
I agree with you on seeing the "good in new ideas and styles," but being "new," again, does not lead necessarily to anything that is superior in human terms. I think he's right that there's very little that is truly new in arts, but rather the same old tiresome diatribe of nihilism and relativism, other decadent interpretations of life. I think Rieff speaks quite elegantly to those facts, as Jacques Barzun often did.
I think you're right that there's a human tendency to become "stiff and sclerotic." But Rieff's critique of modern art and culture runs much deeper than that, especially in terms of "dispossession" and "transgression," signposts of decline into ever more pernicious realms of nihilism.
I agree with you on seeing the "good in new ideas and styles," but being "new," again, does not lead necessarily to anything that is superior in human terms. I think he's right that there's very little that is truly new in arts, but rather the same old tiresome diatribe of nihilism and relativism, other decadent interpretations of life. I think Rieff speaks quite elegantly to those facts, as Jacques Barzun often did.
I think you're right that there's a human tendency to become "stiff and sclerotic." But Rieff's critique of modern art and culture runs much deeper than that, especially in terms of "dispossession" and "transgression," signposts of decline into ever more pernicious realms of nihilism.
October 6, 2010 at 5:17 am
Dear FG,
I'm not dismissing Rieff's ideas in toto, just noting a certain narcissistic resistance to abandon his mindset. His complexity can hardly be analyzed in a Facebook post. lol
I'm not dismissing Rieff's ideas in toto, just noting a certain narcissistic resistance to abandon his mindset. His complexity can hardly be analyzed in a Facebook post. lol
October 6, 2010 at 6:42 am
I agree with you on the limitations of Facebook. Okay for chatter, of sorts, but not the developed reasoning and allusion of real writing, like Rieff's or substantive "content." Antiquated idea!
"Abandon his mindset"? Are you accusing Rieff of narcissism or me? Now don't hurt my feelings. We've had so many good conversations!
"Abandon his mindset"? Are you accusing Rieff of narcissism or me? Now don't hurt my feelings. We've had so many good conversations!
October 6, 2010 at 7:00 am
No no not you FG! I'm suggesting Rieff is very taken with his own ideas and affronted that new ideas might be in the ascendancy.
October 7, 2010 at 10:47 am
Mmm, not so sure of that. What makes you think it? I can't immediately recall any passage to that effect. I'll skim around again in the book tomorrow or soon. Fred
October 7, 2010 at 10:57 am
Well it's his attitude of righteous indignation.
October 7, 2010 at 11:18 am
Sounds like a vague charge to me, Diana. Anyone can hurl that against someone else, no matter the persuasion or intellectual position. His book is way beyond that. Be fair and cite a passage, at least.
October 7, 2010 at 11:37 am
Yes you're right. I'll get some actual evidence.
October 7, 2010 at 11:51 am
Yes FG you are right; I'll get some evidence!
October 7, 2010 at 6:42 pm
Our age is dominated so thoroughly by anomie, ennui, and cynicism that the claims of Baha'u'llah cannot avoid sounding preposterous.
October 4, 2010 at 9:04 am
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That same old ennui's got me in it's spell/ that same old ennui days can weave so well...
October 5, 2010 at 7:27 am
If it's the same ennui as Baudelaire, the symbolists, and others, if we take them as a baseline, it's old, indeed... What could be more boring?
October 5, 2010 at 7:53 am
He asserts that past dispensations resulted in the successive establishment of the unity of the family, the tribe, the nation, and that through the power of His own Revelation mankind shall attain worldwide unity, universal and lasting peace, the time when swords shall be beaten into plowshares.
October 4, 2010 at 6:11 am
Baha’u’llah succinctly expresses His most important precept in the following sentence: "The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens."
October 4, 2010 at 3:57 am
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If the claims of Baha’u’llah are true, they have tremendous and unprecedented significance for mankind, for He professes to be not just another prophet in a long line of many but the One Who shall usher in a truly global civilization beyond the confines of nationalistic regionalism.
October 3, 2010 at 11:55 am
Note the assertion that the advent of His revelation has been foretold "in all the sacred Scriptures." Whether in the Bible, the Quran, or the various writings of Buddhism and Hinduism, and other faiths, the prophecy of a future world teacher or prophet is an omnipresent theme.
October 3, 2010 at 9:25 am
"The advent of such a Revelation hath been heralded in all the sacred Scriptures."
--Baha’u’llah
--Baha’u’llah
October 3, 2010 at 8:27 am
Without discussing the history of the Reform Bahai Faith, I shall briefly outline its major tenets. The central claim can be found in the following passage by its Prophet-Founder, Baha’u’llah:
October 3, 2010 at 7:30 am
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"The Revelation which, from time immemorial, hath been acclaimed as the Purpose and Promise of all the Prophets of God, and the most cherished Desire of His Messengers, hath now, by virtue of the pervasive Will of the Almighty and at His irresistible bidding, been revealed unto men." --Baha’u’llah
October 3, 2010 at 7:30 am
"The promised day is come. . . ." Baha’u’llah
October 3, 2010 at 7:05 am
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Hawthorne, for all his "blackness," reached the same conclusion: "I find that my respect for clerical people, as such, and my faith in the utility of their office, decreases daily. We certainly do need a new revelation—a new system—for there seems to be no life in the old one." Quoted by F. 0. Matthiessen, American Renaissance: Art & Expression in the Age of Emerson & Whitman. NY: Oxford UP, 1941; rpt 1977, p.361.
October 3, 2010 at 6:29 am
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Hans-Joachim Schoeps is on target: "This condition, noted by many thinkers of our age . . . cannot be altered by human means—by a reformation—but only by God, i.e., through a new revelation. All human attempts to breathe new life into the old religions will fail....’
October 3, 2010 at 5:59 am
The patent answer to our question is that only God can restore the center; the truly remarkable fact is that He has.
October 3, 2010 at 4:53 am
Surely, a man-made syncretic religion is not the way to restore the center—that is, to restore man’s belief in God, life, and himself.
October 2, 2010 at 9:29 am
really? why not? I would think that allowing man to synthesize what makes sense out of various belief systems would encourage him to believe in what seems to make sense to him. (Of course, I think all religions are man-made, and many that we accept as 'core' religions, such as Christianity, seem to be syncretic already. What I think would be a better consideration is why it is such a popular belief that God needs to be at the center. Man shouldn't need an outside mandate to appreciate life, himself, and his fellow living beings.)
October 2, 2010 at 9:42 am
There's a very long history of syncretism failing. Google Perennialism and Traditionalists, etc. The religion scholar Huston Smith has talked of his own *personal* tradition, highly eclectic and influenced by Perennialist ideas. While I have the highest respect for his work, I believe such an approach can only have limited resonance, for the relatively rare sensibility.
I acknowledge there are people who think differently on whether or not a syncretic religion is at all possible. Others share your opinion that all religions are man-made. I respect your conscience.
All I can really say is that to my conscience the notion of an artificially man-made religion runs counter to the notion of revelation from God.
As Thomas Jefferson put it, "It does me no harm whether my neighbor says there is no God or 72 gods." Each individual decides these matters for him or herself, in the integrity of their own mind, in the private moment or space of the soul.
I fully agree with you that Christianity and the other major religions clearly show they have evolved from earlier traditions and can be viewed as syncretic on that basis. Syncretism in this sense is not a bad word, in my opinion. For some people it seems to have the nuance of *stealing* from past religions, whereas I think it should be seen as *evolving* naturally as human consciousness evolves. I don't believe that's incompatible with the notion of revelation.
In response to your last point, I would say if there is a Divine Being who is the Author of the universe and humanity that puts Her, by that very fact, at the Center. How could humanity then not "need" Her? Why would humanity not want to be in harmony with Her?
I acknowledge there are people who think differently on whether or not a syncretic religion is at all possible. Others share your opinion that all religions are man-made. I respect your conscience.
All I can really say is that to my conscience the notion of an artificially man-made religion runs counter to the notion of revelation from God.
As Thomas Jefferson put it, "It does me no harm whether my neighbor says there is no God or 72 gods." Each individual decides these matters for him or herself, in the integrity of their own mind, in the private moment or space of the soul.
I fully agree with you that Christianity and the other major religions clearly show they have evolved from earlier traditions and can be viewed as syncretic on that basis. Syncretism in this sense is not a bad word, in my opinion. For some people it seems to have the nuance of *stealing* from past religions, whereas I think it should be seen as *evolving* naturally as human consciousness evolves. I don't believe that's incompatible with the notion of revelation.
In response to your last point, I would say if there is a Divine Being who is the Author of the universe and humanity that puts Her, by that very fact, at the Center. How could humanity then not "need" Her? Why would humanity not want to be in harmony with Her?
October 2, 2010 at 10:23 am
The way I read it, what you're saying supports my position. I agree that man-made religion is counter to a revelation from god, and since you state that each person is deciding for him or herself, that tends to negate the idea of one definitive revelation from god. The whole problem seems to be that mankind as a whole cannot agree on what actually comes from god, as opposed to what is man-made. And I perceive the source of that problem to be that huge IF in your last paragraph. It's a pretty tenuous if, at best.
October 2, 2010 at 11:19 am
It seems to me you're misunderstanding what I said. You've framed it in a rather either/or scenario, more so than to my mind. I believe Huston Smith and others are quite perceptive about the universal teachings that all the religions share in common. I wasn't negating that in any way.
I was speaking for my mind, acknowledging that for others they might feel differently. It seems to me it's not a matter of whose "position" is right. I think they're all right, in a sense, as Jefferson suggested, not at all harmful or false. I was merely expressing how it seems to me. To my mind, that's not relativism, but embracing the variety of conceptions of what it means to be human. No human being truly knows; we believe, yea or nay.
The idea that there is ONLY one truth is exclusivism, regardless of what religious tradition is referred to. The idea expressed in the Indian Vedas that "Truth is One; sages call it by different names" is actually closer to what I had in mind. In that context, IF constitutes an attempt to respect the thinking and beliefs of others, allow them room, as well as a degree of humility in stating my own religious convictions. Best wishes.
I was speaking for my mind, acknowledging that for others they might feel differently. It seems to me it's not a matter of whose "position" is right. I think they're all right, in a sense, as Jefferson suggested, not at all harmful or false. I was merely expressing how it seems to me. To my mind, that's not relativism, but embracing the variety of conceptions of what it means to be human. No human being truly knows; we believe, yea or nay.
The idea that there is ONLY one truth is exclusivism, regardless of what religious tradition is referred to. The idea expressed in the Indian Vedas that "Truth is One; sages call it by different names" is actually closer to what I had in mind. In that context, IF constitutes an attempt to respect the thinking and beliefs of others, allow them room, as well as a degree of humility in stating my own religious convictions. Best wishes.
October 2, 2010 at 1:06 pm
Moreover, they do not meet the requirements of the present age, and all have frequently become more of a hindrance to life in this century than a confirmation and enrichment of it.
October 2, 2010 at 5:58 am
The religions, which professed a humane, spiritual conception of man, are antiquated. They are only regional; only relatively limited areas of the globe have ever found any one of them palatable, perhaps largely because they became bound with local mores.
October 2, 2010 at 4:18 am
But how can the center be restored?
October 1, 2010 at 6:02 am
There is no way back to center, atleast to the center that had fallen apart ( In Yeats' words) and even if the need of the 'center' is so important and urgent, it has to be found new. Restoring the center is surely a nostalgia which itself signifies that one can lament what is gone but cannot call it back. It can be a moment of rejoice also if thought afresh.
October 1, 2010 at 6:08 am
Yes, the ideas you express are the usual ones that come to mind when many people today think about a "restoring the center." I do agree with you that "it has to be found new." The old "center," however one might define it, is gone, has been gone for a very long time. The process of its erosion is largely the tale of modern culture. And nostalgia is the emotion that the loss so often inspired, inspires. I fully agree that "one can lament what is gone but cannot call it back."
The lamentations of generations of thoughtful people around the globe have been lifted to the heavens, for many decades, if not centuries, bemoaning the receding of the Sea of Faith, as Matthew Arnold phrased it.
If I understand you correctly, I would say much of Existentialist and postmodern literature attempted to turn the loss into a gain, to "rejoice," with Nietzsche, before the dark idol of nihilism... grin and bare it... whistle in the Dark.
The lamentations of generations of thoughtful people around the globe have been lifted to the heavens, for many decades, if not centuries, bemoaning the receding of the Sea of Faith, as Matthew Arnold phrased it.
If I understand you correctly, I would say much of Existentialist and postmodern literature attempted to turn the loss into a gain, to "rejoice," with Nietzsche, before the dark idol of nihilism... grin and bare it... whistle in the Dark.
October 1, 2010 at 6:40 am
People wondered that in Edwardian England. It was a thought unrealized. Life is morphing around us. When we come to shuffle off, we'll be vacating a world we won't know very well.
October 1, 2010 at 3:19 pm
Roberta, Yes, such change during the span of a life has increasingly been part of human experience, vastly accelerated in modern times.
October 2, 2010 at 4:22 am
Therefore, we need to restore the center to life before it can be restored to literature.
October 1, 2010 at 3:55 am
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One of the aspects that I find fascinating about Walt Whitman was that he was to a degree a product of his time, but to a larger degree a creator of his time. A single voice singing in the night and far away can wake many others that rise from slumber and take to song.
October 1, 2010 at 4:52 am
I think you're quite right that Whitman was "to a larger degree a creator of his time." From his newspaper days, he lived into that without even realizing fully where he was going, no one can, but he trusted in the Muse within him to lead the way, and it did, into a universal, cosmic song... into what Yeats called A Vision.
October 1, 2010 at 5:32 am
...a creator of a future time, which we all have significantly lived into, I would add.
October 1, 2010 at 5:33 am
It is perhaps up to literature to restore the center of life. The holocaust shook the world view of Western Civilization to its roots, surprisingly this included the intellectual class as well.
October 1, 2010 at 5:50 am
Well, it's often been said that the serious spiritual search for truth and meaning passed in various ways to literary and artistic endeavor increasingly from the Enlightenment onwards... while the traditional denominations of Christianity, and I would say, all the major religions, responded to modernity by clinging to the status quo.
If that's a given, it would be logical that the humanities, though sullied by the love affair with nihilism, might also rise out of the mire and play a role in recovering a deep, genuine, and serious engagement once again with the spiritual... in some new evolutionary form that builds on the past, but opens to the future... the immense potential of all of the capacities of the human being.
If that's a given, it would be logical that the humanities, though sullied by the love affair with nihilism, might also rise out of the mire and play a role in recovering a deep, genuine, and serious engagement once again with the spiritual... in some new evolutionary form that builds on the past, but opens to the future... the immense potential of all of the capacities of the human being.
October 1, 2010 at 5:58 am
Ultimately the center, "custom," has been lost in literature because it has been lost in life.
September 30, 2010 at 9:14 am
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Eliot perceived the plight of modern literature and perhaps would have viewed postmodernism as more of the same: "When one man’s "view of life" is as good as another’s, all the more enterprising spirits will naturally evolve their own; and where there is no custom to determine what the task of literature is, every writer will determine for himself, and the more enterprising will range as far a field as possible."
September 30, 2010 at 5:55 am
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The intellectual cannibalizing of structuralism and poststructuralism clearly demonstrates this point.
September 30, 2010 at 2:53 am
Reference to other men--system builders--as authorities can only go so far before deteriorating into futile and muddled "discourse."
September 29, 2010 at 7:27 am
Certainly, Yeats’s "communicators" cannot be taken seriously; even he did not believe in them.
W. B. Yeats, A Vision (1937; rpt. New York: Collier Books, 1966), pp.8-9.
W. B. Yeats, A Vision (1937; rpt. New York: Collier Books, 1966), pp.8-9.
September 29, 2010 at 3:00 am
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Esoteric, individualistic systems and existentialism’s negating of any coherent world view invariably result in solipsism because there is no external authority behind the artists; there is no reality to their "visions."
September 28, 2010 at 7:08 am
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But how can the center be restored?
September 28, 2010 at 4:00 am
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I don't know how. But, I believe this is possible.
September 28, 2010 at 4:30 am
Thanks for commenting. The history of all religions and artistic, literary traditions, for millennia, demonstrates it is possible... The meta-narrative of modern nihilism celebrates its triumphalism but hollow tones reverberate unceasingly all around it... whistling in the Dark.
September 28, 2010 at 4:36 am
In spite of all "hollow tones reverberate unceasingly all around", we should think for it--we have to think for it. I think, we have thought a lot on the macro aspects of life--but, cared a little the micro aspects.That's why things are fallen apart. We should form a
microscopic (Electronic Microscope) outlook of life legitimating all billions of billions of billions of little narratives. Then, an all inclusive theory might be formed with a clear sense of center. Thanks a lot.
microscopic (Electronic Microscope) outlook of life legitimating all billions of billions of billions of little narratives. Then, an all inclusive theory might be formed with a clear sense of center. Thanks a lot.
September 28, 2010 at 5:04 am
I would say the two go hand in hand. That is where world culture has evolved to. Not either/or... The ruling paradigm, whichever one chooses it to be, is an exclusivism, including triumphal nihilism... The universal, global vision humanity has evolved into includes the many billions... moving forward, not backwards into a "restored" or any other exclusivism, even one that styles itself as universalism.
Universality, with all its pregnant implications, is the only vision worthy of the fullness of humanity... The world has never experience such a vision before, but only the dreams and visions of poets and seers. Its time has now come.
Universality, with all its pregnant implications, is the only vision worthy of the fullness of humanity... The world has never experience such a vision before, but only the dreams and visions of poets and seers. Its time has now come.
September 28, 2010 at 5:23 am
Maybe Yeats was right. Period.
Politics in America certainly supports that possibility.
Politics in America certainly supports that possibility.
September 28, 2010 at 7:16 am
Yeats right in what sense? Can you expand on what you're thinking?
September 28, 2010 at 7:19 am
The center cannot hold. The hostility that's world wide now, the insistence on the part of every faction that IT is the ONLY one that is RIGHT!, the vitriol, the acid in the face advertising, the desire of one group to suppress the others, to remove others' rights or to make sure the others stay at the bottom. Just for starters. (Yes, I'm a disillusioned liberal.)
September 28, 2010 at 8:33 am
I can't argue that Yeats's rough beast hasn't been around for a long time... but then that's what we human beings can be and are, when we choose. In that sense, we ourselves are, of course, the Rough Beast, our own nemesis, "full of passionate intensity."
Yet we can make other choices... and slay the beast, care for the vulnerable and suffering, cooperate, think of and sacrifice self for others, give people a hand up, and so on. Human beings are both the worst and best life has to offer.
I agree things look bleak... but they often have in history, until people shook themselves up, reoriented themselves, changed their thinking, reaffirmed what was worth holding on to and dumped the rest as dead baggage... I think we're at such a major juncture, after over 200,000 years of human evolution. I believe we can and will find a way as homo sapiens to forge forward... global now.
Yet we can make other choices... and slay the beast, care for the vulnerable and suffering, cooperate, think of and sacrifice self for others, give people a hand up, and so on. Human beings are both the worst and best life has to offer.
I agree things look bleak... but they often have in history, until people shook themselves up, reoriented themselves, changed their thinking, reaffirmed what was worth holding on to and dumped the rest as dead baggage... I think we're at such a major juncture, after over 200,000 years of human evolution. I believe we can and will find a way as homo sapiens to forge forward... global now.
September 28, 2010 at 8:50 am
What I'm having so much trouble with in the world now is the tendency people seem to have of overlooking the extended hand and dismissing it as insincere or inconsequential. The moment of nourishment in the world's affairs is far more important to individuals than a whole raft of bad talk. Trouble is, the bad talk results in wars and they drain all we have of patience and love, substituting forbearance and neglect rather than continuing in the assertion of the best in us. --and that goes for friends and family (oh the heartache) as well as all the larger institutions that are supposed to protect us.
September 29, 2010 at 8:57 am
I sympathize and understand what you're talking about. So oftren factionalism and divisiveness have replaced the more conciliatory qualities and attributes. It would be naive in the extreme not to recognize the acrid state of fragmentation that pervades modern culture, whether in the university, politics, or other walks of life.
So I'm not ignoring the overwhelming state of affairs, but saying civilizations, East and West, have often reached such a crossroad. Repeatedly, poets, writers, and artists, those gifted with a sensitive, thoughtful sensibility, have been among the first to realize the nature of the crisis and find, chart, a way through and out of it.
The prevailing mentality, nihilism in all its derivations, hard and soft, is that there can be no way forward but more of the same, exacerbating the situation. The hollow ring of that claim itself reveals how vulnerable the status quo has now become... all around the world; all around the world humanity longs for and desperately needs a new vision of what it means to be a human being in our straitened circumstances.
So I'm not ignoring the overwhelming state of affairs, but saying civilizations, East and West, have often reached such a crossroad. Repeatedly, poets, writers, and artists, those gifted with a sensitive, thoughtful sensibility, have been among the first to realize the nature of the crisis and find, chart, a way through and out of it.
The prevailing mentality, nihilism in all its derivations, hard and soft, is that there can be no way forward but more of the same, exacerbating the situation. The hollow ring of that claim itself reveals how vulnerable the status quo has now become... all around the world; all around the world humanity longs for and desperately needs a new vision of what it means to be a human being in our straitened circumstances.
September 29, 2010 at 9:13 am
For it is the center that historically has been the only effective challenge to such banality.
September 27, 2010 at 5:27 am
Since the values of the so-called avant-garde have come to be identical with the values of today’s complacent society, the only solution to the predicament is a restoration of the center.
September 27, 2010 at 3:06 am
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It is astounding that the loss of the center has often been misinterpreted as the great postmodern "break-through," instead of the spiritual and intellectual failure that it is.
September 26, 2010 at 7:23 am
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Here's my take: https://www.robertpeake.com/archives/394-Post-Postmodernism-and-Hope.html
September 26, 2010 at 5:33 pm
I've long reached similar conclusions regarding postmodernism. Milosz has been an important element. If interested, I have an essay on him in my book The Grove of the Eumenides: https://www.fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
September 26, 2010 at 5:56 pm
Thanks for this; looks fascinating.
September 26, 2010 at 6:13 pm
Vague, embattled nostalgia for love and morality is not enough; John Gardner’s On Moral Fiction boils down to little else.
September 26, 2010 at 6:15 am
And yet in _On Becoming a Novelist_ he writes, "The desire to show people proper beliefs and attitudes is inimical to the noblest impulses of fiction."
September 26, 2010 at 7:12 am
The sentence you quote definitely sounds more in line with modern practice...
September 26, 2010 at 7:23 am
Frederick--perhaps. But it is also in line with Keats and his idea of the chameleon poet. And Shakespeare's work.
September 26, 2010 at 7:31 am
Keats makes sense, his aestheticism. Shakespeare, well, as the first undeniable register of the approaching arrival of modernity, yes, I'd agree. I would argue all that's been done for so many centuries... life has moved on, leaving Gardner and others behind.
September 26, 2010 at 7:42 am
Finally, the dominant religion of modern civilization, materialism, has thoroughly repudiated the truth of life’s basic spiritual reality. There remains no real challenge to this new dogmatism.
September 26, 2010 at 4:49 am
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While nationalism and materialism can travel side by side and often do, I find that nationalism has been the dominant religion of more than the last century. Materialism is perhaps more like the introverted sidekick, persistent and faithful.
Or to be more precise and perhaps more fair, materialism is the world view, the (meta)physic where nationalism is the dogma, the practice, the outcome.
Or to be more precise and perhaps more fair, materialism is the world view, the (meta)physic where nationalism is the dogma, the practice, the outcome.
September 26, 2010 at 6:21 am
Christopher, Thanks for commenting. An interesting way of looking at it. I definitely agree nationalism has been one of the major contenders as a substitute for a spiritual vision of life. Since as far back as the French Revolution, I think those observers, Toynbee comes to mind, who have identified nationalism in the modern and early pre-modern world as taking on an ersatz role have much to offer as a way of understanding the profound social and individual changes that have taken place in understanding the nature and meaning of life.
So I respect your view that nationalism takes precedent over materialism and take it seriously. It's a real question, which precedes or dominates. To my mind, lingering over your point, I find I still think materialism underlies nationalism, as the "worldview," as you say. I like that distinction even, and think it makes sense, is logical, with nationalism being more the result, "the practice, the outcome." Perhaps it's a mute point in the end, since they've worked together to strip consciousness of any sense of transcendent purpose and meaning to life, dehumanizing people into only animalistic things devoid of a spirit or soul, however one might choose to understand the transcendent realm of experience.
If you've never read much of Arnold Toynbee, his Mankind and Mother Earth presents a very comprehensive historical overview that critiques materialism and nationalism, as does his Gifford Lecture, available online,1952–1953: An Historian's Approach to Religion
https://www.giffordlectures.org/Author.asp?AuthorID=170
The Gifford Lecture really touches on the universal strains in Buddhist, Christian, and Hindu thought, as they relate to modernity, a very important source to me in this regard and much of my thinking.
So I respect your view that nationalism takes precedent over materialism and take it seriously. It's a real question, which precedes or dominates. To my mind, lingering over your point, I find I still think materialism underlies nationalism, as the "worldview," as you say. I like that distinction even, and think it makes sense, is logical, with nationalism being more the result, "the practice, the outcome." Perhaps it's a mute point in the end, since they've worked together to strip consciousness of any sense of transcendent purpose and meaning to life, dehumanizing people into only animalistic things devoid of a spirit or soul, however one might choose to understand the transcendent realm of experience.
If you've never read much of Arnold Toynbee, his Mankind and Mother Earth presents a very comprehensive historical overview that critiques materialism and nationalism, as does his Gifford Lecture, available online,1952–1953: An Historian's Approach to Religion
https://www.giffordlectures.org/Author.asp?AuthorID=170
The Gifford Lecture really touches on the universal strains in Buddhist, Christian, and Hindu thought, as they relate to modernity, a very important source to me in this regard and much of my thinking.
September 26, 2010 at 6:45 am
@Christopher McNeese, Huston Smith's Why Religion Matters: The Fate of the Human Spirit in an Age of Disbelief (2000) comes to mind as indicating another major strand in modernity, the turning science into Scientism... another form of dehumanization.
September 26, 2010 at 7:27 am
Christopher, Incidentally, I've read most of Huston Smith's books and have often wondered whether he owes Toynbee more of an intellectual debt than he ever acknowledged. Perhaps he does somewhere I've yet to find. I think they have much in common, in terms of spiritual sensibility, though writing in different disciplines.
September 26, 2010 at 7:52 am
I have read many of Toynbee's works and have and continue to find his perspectives enlivening. I have also read several of Huston Smith's works and in this conversation Beyond the Post-Modern Mind comes to mind. You have probably read much of Ortega Y Gassett? I would add his perspectives to this collection.
As to Huston Smith's debt, I find history to be the backbone of the humanities. A scholar of either philosophy or religious studies as Smith is will by necessity be steeped in the prominent historians of his time. That is, a thoughtful person can't ignore a thinker like Toynbee; agree or disagree, but not ignore.
As to Huston Smith's debt, I find history to be the backbone of the humanities. A scholar of either philosophy or religious studies as Smith is will by necessity be steeped in the prominent historians of his time. That is, a thoughtful person can't ignore a thinker like Toynbee; agree or disagree, but not ignore.
September 26, 2010 at 8:23 am
Yes, I've read Huston Smith's Beyond the Post-Modern Mind a few years ago. I arrived there, though, much earlier through other sources. I've only read Ortega y Gasset's Revolt of the Masses, decades ago, and skimmed one or two other things by him. I've dipped into him many times since, but believe recent observers are more helpful, Christopher Lasch, Philip Rieff, et al.
September 26, 2010 at 8:43 am
Terry Eagleton: Reason, Faith, & Revolution. The Tanner Lectures at Yale.
September 26, 2010 at 10:16 am
@Richard Hoffman, Thanks for mentioning Terry Eagleton. He doesn't really appeal to me, though I've repeatedly looked at his work from time to time, since the '80s. I find him symptomatic, not enlightening. Not one of my heroes, unlike Huston Smith... I don't believe Marxism has anything worthwhile to offer the world, nor that everything is reducible to politics.
Youtube has a selection of some of Eagleton's lectures:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=+Terry+Eagleton&aq=f
Youtube has a selection of some of Eagleton's lectures:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=+Terry+Eagleton&aq=f
September 26, 2010 at 10:48 am
Next, humanism and several forms of aestheticism tried to salvage in one way or another (and the authors who attempted this are legion) the fundamentally humane values that have their highest validation only in religion.
September 25, 2010 at 4:12 am
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British look for a UN makeover - British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg is expected to call for an overhaul of United Nation bodies during a speech at the General Assembly. Clegg will recommend expansion of the Security Council to include additional permanent members, call for the UN rights council to be given a strengthened mandate and endorse multilateral approaches to security issues.
https://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/sep/24/nick-clegg-un-foreign-policy-iraq
September 24, 2010 at 2:25 pm
https://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/sep/24/nick-clegg-un-foreign-policy-iraq
|
Nick Clegg urges radical overhaul of UN | Politics | The Guardian |
"Without a radical overhaul the UN will not provide the leadership the world seeks from it, and needs from it."
September 24, 2010 at 2:25 pm
The last two centuries have witnessed a devolution of man’s perception of life. First, the centrality of revealed religion, whether Christianity, Judaism, orIslam, was diminished by the secularizing influence of materialistic capitalism and communism.
September 24, 2010 at 10:42 am
Yes, as you say, devolution = diminishing, and the ledger seems crucial to most mainstream religions.
September 24, 2010 at 12:24 pm
Yes, more so even than many people realize, if they don't follow the occasional report in the news, which admittedly only dimly reflect where people find meaning in their lives, but give some idea at least. "Numbers" don't always necessarily tell the story. The general tenor throughout modernity has indeed been a diminishing of any transcendent understanding of life.
September 25, 2010 at 4:08 am
It is fitting to cast off humanism because it was and is a mere parasite living upon the desiccated carcass of religion.
September 24, 2010 at 6:50 am
The belief that literature is the "supreme fiction," however, is one beyond which, as has already been noted, some present day writers claim to have gone. They discard humanism, and rightly so, as a fiction based solely on the mind’s propensity for security, the dream for "full presence."
September 24, 2010 at 4:46 am
This strange phenomenon has worsened in so-called postmodern literature. It is unfortunate that writers fail to realize substitution is possible only for a relatively short time.
September 24, 2010 at 2:35 am
1 person likes this
Frederick your reference is missing here. What strange phenomenon?
PoMo is greatly misunderstood I think. I'd love to hear more from you on this subject.
PoMo is greatly misunderstood I think. I'd love to hear more from you on this subject.
September 24, 2010 at 4:20 am
I suggest the referent, broadly speaking, through allusions to Matthew Arnold, Wallace Stevens, Eliot and Auden, a wide transformation in the cultural understanding of the role of literature and art, over many decades, even the last century or two. Partly I'm reflecting on my own repudiation of the impulses underlying PoMo. I will soon sketch in the details.
September 24, 2010 at 4:44 am
When doing do please document your description of PoMo with evidence.
September 24, 2010 at 4:59 am
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are a priority list not only for the United Nations and world leaders, but for all people with global perspective.
https://www.unfoundation.org/global-issues/millennium-development-goals
September 23, 2010 at 3:13 pm
https://www.unfoundation.org/global-issues/millennium-development-goals
|
United Nations Foundation » The MDGs in Action |
UN WEEK DIGITAL MEDIA LOUNGE Join us here for direct access as we talk with experts on issues like poverty, hunger, HIV/AIDs, women’s health, and climate change. In partnership with Mashable and 92Y, the UN Foundation.
September 23, 2010 at 3:13 pm
T. S. Eliot and W. H. Auden were virtually the only poets who pondered and lamented the significance of the "rupture"; all others, W. B. Yeats preeminently, sought substitutes, "What will suffice."
September 23, 2010 at 6:55 am
What is meant by the rupture"? Yeats believed in ETs.
September 23, 2010 at 10:17 am
I really don't want to get down on Yeats too much. The man had an incredible imagination and command of language, and *A Vision* is one of my favorite books... part of a subtitle of one of my own books.
Still, in his own way, he sent many poets off in the wrong direction, towards postmodernism, though W. H. Auden remarked once that the content of Yeats's vision had actually never made the slightest impact on any other poet.
I'm not surprised to learn he believed in ET... he believed in fairies, didn't he? :)
Still, in his own way, he sent many poets off in the wrong direction, towards postmodernism, though W. H. Auden remarked once that the content of Yeats's vision had actually never made the slightest impact on any other poet.
I'm not surprised to learn he believed in ET... he believed in fairies, didn't he? :)
September 23, 2010 at 1:29 pm
Scientologists also believe in extra-terrestrials.
September 23, 2010 at 1:36 pm
Lots of loonies do... I take refuge in the scientists who rely on math.
September 23, 2010 at 1:39 pm
Literature’s raison d’etre has indeed become "something else."
September 23, 2010 at 4:54 am
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aW34W67ZYG0
September 23, 2010 at 5:20 am
Thanks for illustrating the decline of culture... from... to... Wallace Stevens, Eddie Cochran... Lady Gaga... [fill in the blank]...
September 23, 2010 at 5:55 am
If anything suggested Rome's last days it was Lady Gaga wearing that meat dress.
September 23, 2010 at 10:24 am
I actually thought the meat dress was brilliant. The entertainment industry is a meat market, so why not dress like a piece of meat.
September 23, 2010 at 10:32 am
Once you call a living being meat you're on the slippery slope. Does it seem justifiable that a cow went through a slaughterhouse to decorate a pop star? Not to me.
September 23, 2010 at 10:56 am
I seriously doubt it was really meat. I think it was a representation of meat. Pop stars have worn leather for a very long time, so slaughtering animals for fashion is nothing new. Living animals become commodities when they are sold on the market for meat or for their hides. Artistic expression too becomes a commodity when it is sold as pop culture. I think Lady Gaga was commenting on the dehumanization and the commodification of the artist. I am not sure if any of this has anything to do with the point Frederick was making. Is he saying that culture declines when writers stop producing literature for it's own sake? What do you think?
September 23, 2010 at 12:07 pm
Frederic was commenting on the decline of culture, of which disregard for suffering is a symptom.
Animals are not killed for their hides but for food. The skin is left over.
Animals are not killed for their hides but for food. The skin is left over.
September 23, 2010 at 1:10 pm
@@Diana Manister, Unlike Rome we have exponential technical and scientific development, along with the Lady Gagas, popular shlock "civilization," and other social decline. The meat dress is up there with feces smeared on a canvass, etc...
All those leather seats in automobiles, *so necessary*, must come from an animal somewhere.
I'd say "art for art's sake" is part of how civilization has arrived at the pervasive dehumanization and sense of meaninglessness that "culture" now takes for granted, as the only possible state of affairs. What's disturbing is there is so little discussion about it.
All those leather seats in automobiles, *so necessary*, must come from an animal somewhere.
I'd say "art for art's sake" is part of how civilization has arrived at the pervasive dehumanization and sense of meaninglessness that "culture" now takes for granted, as the only possible state of affairs. What's disturbing is there is so little discussion about it.
September 23, 2010 at 1:22 pm
Incidentally, Diana, Philip Rieff is scathing on the decline of art, if you ever have a chance to read My Life Among the Deathworks. Piss Christ, all that...
September 23, 2010 at 1:32 pm
I'll order it right now! Thanks!
September 23, 2010 at 1:40 pm
He's a little on the conservative side but a very insightful observer and voice on the cultural landscape. Let me know what you think. Enjoy!
September 23, 2010 at 1:51 pm
Maybe the problem is some people just lack a sense of humor.
September 23, 2010 at 4:26 pm
I found a used copy on Amazon. Can't wait to read it!
September 23, 2010 at 4:38 pm
@James Fabris, I think Diana's right, once we start reducing human beings to pieces of meat, even for laughter, it's a slippery slope to disposing of them in a grinder, gas chamber, mass grave, a workhouse, and so on. What good is a gypsy? They're dirty, lazy, smelly, ignorant, etc... send them back to Romania, Mexico... Or as in Rome, send them to the forum, meat for the lions.
Literature, art, and all the humanities, cultivate humanitas, jen, the sense of what is valuable in the creature who walks upright, with a brain capable of speech, emotions of empathy and compassion, stewing flowers in an ancient grave, blessed in an unknown, 200,000 years ago...
Lose perspective, and humanity is with Pol Pot bashing in skulls and dumping the remains in a roadside ditch... for degrading theory. Nothing funny about it. Now is the time to stop it...
Literature, art, and all the humanities, cultivate humanitas, jen, the sense of what is valuable in the creature who walks upright, with a brain capable of speech, emotions of empathy and compassion, stewing flowers in an ancient grave, blessed in an unknown, 200,000 years ago...
Lose perspective, and humanity is with Pol Pot bashing in skulls and dumping the remains in a roadside ditch... for degrading theory. Nothing funny about it. Now is the time to stop it...
September 23, 2010 at 5:23 pm
...an unknown rite, a humane gesture of hope, nobility.
September 23, 2010 at 5:26 pm
I think a lack of compassion for animals is the beginning of the slide downward. Bear-baiting is not a spectator sport found in an enlightened society, for instance. It's a continuum. If you have no empathy with things that walk on four legs you will likely not have it for those who walk upright.
September 23, 2010 at 5:36 pm
I do agree with you on that. Cruelty to any animal is a sign of something wrong with a person, an alienation from other living creatures. I believe animals can *feel* even if they can't think and speak as we do. No matter how elementary the life form hurting and killing for the "thrill" of it is a scary sign. I think we modern people have often become out of touch with nature, living in cities, and lost the sense that we too are vulnerable, fragile creatures...
September 23, 2010 at 5:55 pm
A lot of great literature and art is great because it points out the dehumanization and commodification of human beings that goes on all around us. That is exactly the point.
Blaming Lady Gaga for the entertainment industry's ability to capitalize on the bodies of beautiful young women, is blaming the messenger for a problem that has existed since long before she was born. She just presented it to you in a stark unforgettable fashion. Most entertainers (to continue the animal metaphor) aren't so willing to risk biting that hand that feeds them. She did not do anything unusually cruel to an animal. She just wore what we usually eat. So drop that irrelevant argument.
I read up a little on Philip Rieff's My Life Among the Deathworks last night. It seems his problem goes all the way back to Marcel Duchamp. Apparently, he even attacks Picasso. The same kind of people who were scandalized by Dada in the 1920's were scandalized by rock n roll in the 1950's and punk in the 1970's. It seems they are just a little too sanctimonious to get the joke.
Why defend a culture that was built on slavery, genocide, and all kinds of exploitation by attacking those to be aware of those cruelties and clever enough poke a little fun at our cultural pretensions? A lot of our "civilized" ancestors did not behave all that differently than Pol Pot. But I guess real art is above all that.
Blaming Lady Gaga for the entertainment industry's ability to capitalize on the bodies of beautiful young women, is blaming the messenger for a problem that has existed since long before she was born. She just presented it to you in a stark unforgettable fashion. Most entertainers (to continue the animal metaphor) aren't so willing to risk biting that hand that feeds them. She did not do anything unusually cruel to an animal. She just wore what we usually eat. So drop that irrelevant argument.
I read up a little on Philip Rieff's My Life Among the Deathworks last night. It seems his problem goes all the way back to Marcel Duchamp. Apparently, he even attacks Picasso. The same kind of people who were scandalized by Dada in the 1920's were scandalized by rock n roll in the 1950's and punk in the 1970's. It seems they are just a little too sanctimonious to get the joke.
Why defend a culture that was built on slavery, genocide, and all kinds of exploitation by attacking those to be aware of those cruelties and clever enough poke a little fun at our cultural pretensions? A lot of our "civilized" ancestors did not behave all that differently than Pol Pot. But I guess real art is above all that.
September 24, 2010 at 8:47 am
Thanks for commenting. I respect your conscience. I can only share with you how things appear to me after my own lifetime of study and thought.
The negative, "adversarial" approach, Lionel Trilling called it, is typical of a decadence in the arts. Lady Gaga, et al., are mindlessly following the herd... very much cows in her case! I would argue her little escaped is entirely in line with the examples already cited.
Picasso et al. were, largely, decadent, dehumanizing artists... Culture is not a joke, but one of the highest, distinctly human capacities of homo sapiens. "Cleverness" is one of the signs of a decadent, shallow artist and culture.
"Race, gender, ethnicity" are the intellectual canned goods, cliches, of academicians and lemmings, incapable of understanding how mundane and fissiparous their thinking has become.
I would urge anyone interested in Rieff to read for themselves My Life Among the Deathworks, instead of the secondary reviews online.
A lot of artists aren't very far above Pol Pot, preparing the ground, it appears to me, for the next cataclysm. The greatest artists affirm what is unique in the human being, in positive terms. Only a decadent cultural period, such as our own, would lose all sense of what real art is, deriding it with derivative, inferior imitations.
The negative, "adversarial" approach, Lionel Trilling called it, is typical of a decadence in the arts. Lady Gaga, et al., are mindlessly following the herd... very much cows in her case! I would argue her little escaped is entirely in line with the examples already cited.
Picasso et al. were, largely, decadent, dehumanizing artists... Culture is not a joke, but one of the highest, distinctly human capacities of homo sapiens. "Cleverness" is one of the signs of a decadent, shallow artist and culture.
"Race, gender, ethnicity" are the intellectual canned goods, cliches, of academicians and lemmings, incapable of understanding how mundane and fissiparous their thinking has become.
I would urge anyone interested in Rieff to read for themselves My Life Among the Deathworks, instead of the secondary reviews online.
A lot of artists aren't very far above Pol Pot, preparing the ground, it appears to me, for the next cataclysm. The greatest artists affirm what is unique in the human being, in positive terms. Only a decadent cultural period, such as our own, would lose all sense of what real art is, deriding it with derivative, inferior imitations.
September 24, 2010 at 9:15 am
Lemmings? Really? Perhaps race, gender and ethnicity would not seem like such cliches to you if you weren't so quick to label those deeply concerned with those issues as rodents. Academics rarely were interested in them until recently, when certain excluded groups were let into the academy. I'm not an academic, but I am quite proud to be among the lemmings, rats and other vermin. I can enjoy much of the culture you so high prize, plus a whole lot more. Some day perhaps we will all be as human as you.
September 24, 2010 at 9:38 am
I invite you to consider you've confirmed my point... "Sacred doctrines" unquestioningly held injure the mind and culture. Nowhere is that more true than when it comes to the postmodern Trinity: "race, gender, ethnicity." Irrational, non-sensical, but one just has to believe to be among the elect... to be an "intellectual."
I didn't use the word "rodent." That's your interpretation. I used the word in the common meaning of following others over the cliff. Nor did I claim to be more human than others.
I respect your ideas, and I addressed them as such. It seems to me that they are simply uncritically held, widely in our culture, and I believe deficient before the changed nature of life in 2010, versus, oh, 1968...
I didn't use the word "rodent." That's your interpretation. I used the word in the common meaning of following others over the cliff. Nor did I claim to be more human than others.
I respect your ideas, and I addressed them as such. It seems to me that they are simply uncritically held, widely in our culture, and I believe deficient before the changed nature of life in 2010, versus, oh, 1968...
September 24, 2010 at 10:06 am
Here's what the OED has to say on the matter:
1. a. A small arctic rodent, Myodes lemmus, of the family Muridæ, resembling a field-mouse, about 6 in. long, with a short tail, remarkable for its prolific character and its annual migrations to the sea. Also lemming-mouse, -rat.
[1555 OLAUS MAGNUS Hist. de Gentibus Septentr. XVIII. xx. 617 Quod..in Noruegia..euenit, scilicet vt bestiolæ quadrupedes, Lemmar, vel Lemmus dictæ, magnitudine soricis, pelle varia, per tempestates & repentinos imbres è clo decidant.] 1607 TOPSELL Four-f. Beasts 727 There are certaine little Foure-footed beastes called Lemmar, or Lemmus, which in tempestuous and rainy weather, do seeme to fall downe from the cloudes. 1713 DERHAM Phys.-Theol. 56 note, A kind of Mice, (they call Leming..) in Norway, which eat up every green thing. They come in such prodigious Numbers, that they fancy them to fall from the Clouds. 1774 GOLDSM. Nat. Hist. II. 283 The leming..is often seen to pour down in myriads from the Northern Mountains. 1802 BINGLEY Anim. Biog. (1813) I. 376 The Lemming Rat. These animals feed entirely on vegetables. 1822-56 DE QUINCEY Confess. (1862) 69 Under such a compulsion does the leeming traverse its mysterious path. 1862 H. MARRYAT Year in Sweden II. 225 In Elfdal, says the chronicler, on the 2nd of August 1635 there rained from the sky a fall of lemmings. 1884 GURNEY & MYERS in 19th Cent. May 807 The migratory instinct that carries the lemming into the deep sea.
b. Used fig. to denote a person bent on a headlong rush, often towards disaster. Also attrib. or quasi-adj.; lemming-like adj.
[1959 M. GILBERT Blood & Judgement iii. 35 Home~going office workers..potent in mass as a lemming migration.] 1968 M. BRAGG Without City Wall I. x. 116 To opt out..in a way, you could say that was just as lemming~like as what you're doing. 1969 D. F. HORROBIN Sci. is God i. 9 This lemming unconcern may have dangerous consequences. 1969 New Yorker 12 Apr. 61/2 In Dr. Langseth's view, going to the moon is an impulse in~grained in the national character, as though Americans were astronautical lemmings. 1970 Islander (Victoria, B.C.) 15 Feb. 12/1 No one had the slightest idea of what was happening, yet all had joined in the mad lemming~like scramble for the waterfront. 1970 P. MOYES Who saw her Die? xx. 256 It was Saturday, the lemming rush was in full spate, the suburbs pouring their millions in bus, tube, train and car into the central sea. 1972 ‘J. BELL’ Death of Poison-Tongue viii. 80 Lemmings..was only the present vogue word..to describe a collection of mindless people moved by a common purpose. 1972 Guardian 11 Dec. 12/6 The only way to stop multiple motorway crashes is by educating us all in roadcraft so that our individual intelligence becomes more powerful than our lemming instincts. 1975 Sunday Times 16 Feb. 51/1 Last week there were ample signs that the lemming-like rush to pile in at any price was wearing itself out.
2. Applied to other rodents of the same or allied genera. banded lemming (Lydekker, Nat. Hist. 1894 III. 136); collared or Snowy lemming (Riverside Nat. Hist. 1885 V. 105), Cuniculus torquatus.
1. a. A small arctic rodent, Myodes lemmus, of the family Muridæ, resembling a field-mouse, about 6 in. long, with a short tail, remarkable for its prolific character and its annual migrations to the sea. Also lemming-mouse, -rat.
[1555 OLAUS MAGNUS Hist. de Gentibus Septentr. XVIII. xx. 617 Quod..in Noruegia..euenit, scilicet vt bestiolæ quadrupedes, Lemmar, vel Lemmus dictæ, magnitudine soricis, pelle varia, per tempestates & repentinos imbres è clo decidant.] 1607 TOPSELL Four-f. Beasts 727 There are certaine little Foure-footed beastes called Lemmar, or Lemmus, which in tempestuous and rainy weather, do seeme to fall downe from the cloudes. 1713 DERHAM Phys.-Theol. 56 note, A kind of Mice, (they call Leming..) in Norway, which eat up every green thing. They come in such prodigious Numbers, that they fancy them to fall from the Clouds. 1774 GOLDSM. Nat. Hist. II. 283 The leming..is often seen to pour down in myriads from the Northern Mountains. 1802 BINGLEY Anim. Biog. (1813) I. 376 The Lemming Rat. These animals feed entirely on vegetables. 1822-56 DE QUINCEY Confess. (1862) 69 Under such a compulsion does the leeming traverse its mysterious path. 1862 H. MARRYAT Year in Sweden II. 225 In Elfdal, says the chronicler, on the 2nd of August 1635 there rained from the sky a fall of lemmings. 1884 GURNEY & MYERS in 19th Cent. May 807 The migratory instinct that carries the lemming into the deep sea.
b. Used fig. to denote a person bent on a headlong rush, often towards disaster. Also attrib. or quasi-adj.; lemming-like adj.
[1959 M. GILBERT Blood & Judgement iii. 35 Home~going office workers..potent in mass as a lemming migration.] 1968 M. BRAGG Without City Wall I. x. 116 To opt out..in a way, you could say that was just as lemming~like as what you're doing. 1969 D. F. HORROBIN Sci. is God i. 9 This lemming unconcern may have dangerous consequences. 1969 New Yorker 12 Apr. 61/2 In Dr. Langseth's view, going to the moon is an impulse in~grained in the national character, as though Americans were astronautical lemmings. 1970 Islander (Victoria, B.C.) 15 Feb. 12/1 No one had the slightest idea of what was happening, yet all had joined in the mad lemming~like scramble for the waterfront. 1970 P. MOYES Who saw her Die? xx. 256 It was Saturday, the lemming rush was in full spate, the suburbs pouring their millions in bus, tube, train and car into the central sea. 1972 ‘J. BELL’ Death of Poison-Tongue viii. 80 Lemmings..was only the present vogue word..to describe a collection of mindless people moved by a common purpose. 1972 Guardian 11 Dec. 12/6 The only way to stop multiple motorway crashes is by educating us all in roadcraft so that our individual intelligence becomes more powerful than our lemming instincts. 1975 Sunday Times 16 Feb. 51/1 Last week there were ample signs that the lemming-like rush to pile in at any price was wearing itself out.
2. Applied to other rodents of the same or allied genera. banded lemming (Lydekker, Nat. Hist. 1894 III. 136); collared or Snowy lemming (Riverside Nat. Hist. 1885 V. 105), Cuniculus torquatus.
September 24, 2010 at 10:27 am
Thank you for confirming my usage of definition *B*.
September 24, 2010 at 10:33 am
Oh, I'm so relieved!
September 24, 2010 at 10:35 am
Sorry if you've taken offense; none was intended. Skimming over my posts, I think my comments addressed the ideas and were not ad hominem.
September 24, 2010 at 10:35 am
Or ad ratiem?
September 24, 2010 at 10:37 am
The dialogue of the mind with itself has not only commenced but has triumphed over and obliterated objective, historical reality.
September 23, 2010 at 2:29 am
2 people like this
Do you really believe this, or are you saying it merely to be provocative?
September 23, 2010 at 2:57 am
Good morning, Marcus. In the context of my argument, addressing literary culture, its permutations over the last 150 plus years, alluding to Wordsworth and Matthew Arnold, through postmodernism, I would say, yes, I believe poetry has turned increasingly to the self, away from that which exists outside the realm of solipsism, in the sense I mean it.
Deconstruction, language, the many formalisms, etc., are benchmarks on that journey... cultural litter.
Deconstruction, language, the many formalisms, etc., are benchmarks on that journey... cultural litter.
September 23, 2010 at 3:12 am
Okay, so you mean this ONLY in a context of literariness, and NOT in a context of real life?
September 23, 2010 at 3:18 am
Well, the extent to which "literariness" can obliterate real life has been the subject of some delicious satire, in Saul Bellow, for instance, so I wouldn't want to close off such possibilities. But literature is about "real life," isn't it? There's my point. Increasingly, not in the modern world...
September 23, 2010 at 3:23 am
I take the epigraph to my book Into The Ruins from this passage:
"The poetic act changes with the amount of background reality embraced by the poet’s consciousness. In our century that background is, in my opinion, related to the fragility of those things we call civilization or culture. What surrounds us, here and now, is not guaranteed. It could just as well not exist—and so man constructs poetry out of the remnants found in ruins." - Czeslaw Milosz, The Witness of Poetry
"The poetic act changes with the amount of background reality embraced by the poet’s consciousness. In our century that background is, in my opinion, related to the fragility of those things we call civilization or culture. What surrounds us, here and now, is not guaranteed. It could just as well not exist—and so man constructs poetry out of the remnants found in ruins." - Czeslaw Milosz, The Witness of Poetry
September 23, 2010 at 3:27 am
What I'm curious about is the extent to which you take "The dialogue of the mind with itself has not only commenced but has triumphed over and obliterated objective, historical reality." as a guide to your daily life. Do you, for example, say to yourself (dialogue of the mind) "I really believe I can fly" and leap out of tall buildings, successfully landing safely? Do you say to yourself (dialogue of the mind) "Today left will be right." and drive into oncoming traffic, successfully because somehow magically everyone else switches sides of the road, too, because you've had your inner dialogue?
September 23, 2010 at 3:34 am
My, Marcus, how absurd and literal minded. I thought we were having a serious literary discussion. I would expect such questions from a philistine, not someone running a small press...
September 23, 2010 at 3:39 am
So you DO mean it only in a context of literariness, and NOT in a context of real life.
September 23, 2010 at 4:02 am
End Malaria...
https://www.unfoundation.org/global-issues/millennium-development-goals/
September 22, 2010 at 3:05 pm
https://www.unfoundation.org/global-issues/millennium-development-goals/
|
United Nations Foundation » The MDGs in Action |
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are a priority list not only for the United Nations and world leaders, but for all people with global perspective. On September 20, 2010, leaders will converge in New York City to bring new attention to the progress we've all helped make toward achieving the M...
September 22, 2010 at 3:05 pm
This quotation is characteristic of much of modern literature.
September 22, 2010 at 10:57 am
I originally thought that by "quotation" you meant "status update," and the sentence rang true -- understated, ironic, self-referential, etc. What's your take on Hart Crane, or Robert Frost, given that each opposed in different ways some of the same tendencies of modernism you don't like?
September 23, 2010 at 4:37 am
Personally speaking, Robert Frost has always been much more important to me than Hart Crane. In Frost one can see so clearly the moving away from the transcendental tradition of Emerson. For Frost, even E. A. Robinson, whom I wrote my master's thesis on, was still too close to the transcendentalists. Frost introduction of Robinson's King Jasper evinces his parting of ways, unfairly, I think, to Robinson, who now is all too often underrated. His long narrative poems should be better known still than they are. They really explore some of the dimensions of modernity at a deeper level than Robert Frost ever did. Frost played Theocritus too much for his own good and that of the art.
Robinson and Frost were really the formative poets for me in my early twenties, but I look back on them now as each representing a diminishing state of affairs for the art, fighting against yet taking it further away from a serious engagement with life, each in his way making postmodernism possible...
Robinson and Frost were really the formative poets for me in my early twenties, but I look back on them now as each representing a diminishing state of affairs for the art, fighting against yet taking it further away from a serious engagement with life, each in his way making postmodernism possible...
September 23, 2010 at 4:53 am
Wallace Stevens exemplifies this attitude to an extraordinary degree. For example, in his poem "Of Modern Poetry," he writes: "The poem of the mind in the act of finding / What will suffice...."
September 22, 2010 at 5:36 am
1 person likes this
I love his 'Anecdote of the Jar'.
September 22, 2010 at 5:47 am
Stevens has never appealed to my tastes, but glad you enjoy him.
September 22, 2010 at 7:36 am
Some of them elevate solipsism and absurdity into the great truths of existence.
September 22, 2010 at 3:11 am
2 people like this
"This has been a big change. . . .It's surprising, because most U.N. goals are not remembered, they don't last 10 years. They don't necessarily last a year."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/20/AR2010092005974.html
September 21, 2010 at 9:08 am
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/20/AR2010092005974.html
|
|
U.N. foresees dramatic cuts in poverty |
A decade ago, world leaders at the United Nations signed off on eight goals aimed at transforming the lives of the world's least fortunate - including cutting extreme poverty in half by 2015. Many Americans were skeptical; in a poll, only 8 percent thought that was possible.
September 21, 2010 at 9:08 am
One outcome of the "rupture" has been that writers and scholars have redefined anomie as a virtue.
September 21, 2010 at 8:25 am
2 people like this
It is precisely the sea of faith that has disappeared from modern life. Its "Retreating, to the breath / Of the night-wind" has culminated in the horrifying dehumanization of modernity.
September 21, 2010 at 5:51 am
1 person likes this
In "Dover Beach" he considers the"rupture." The speaker hears the sound of pebbles grating against the shore as they are tossed about by the waves and observes that
The Sea of Faith / "Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore / Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled...."
The Sea of Faith / "Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore / Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled...."
September 21, 2010 at 3:02 am
1 person likes this
Everyone remembers the ignorant armies, but that multisensory image of the great, grinding beach really sets the tone for Arnold here. I'm especially interested in developing a more detailed poetics of environment to properly appreciate such deeply signifying elements of literary setting we tend to gloss over and take for granted. Bachelard makes a good start, and my old prof James Bunn makes a scandalously underappreciated contribution, but it looks to me like a field waiting to be worked, especially now in the era of environmental awareness.
September 21, 2010 at 3:42 am
Yes, the environment is an interesting point. Grinding the "naked shingles of the world." Arnold's image is of the "retreating" of the Sea of Faith, sucking back out to sea, as the surf drains and seeps back out through pebbles and rocks of the beach... Really a beautiful metaphor for the loss of religious belief, one I've always relished. It conveys so much the process and what's left behind, small, infertile, inert material...
I suppose now the objective correlative would have to be a poisoned beach, littered with plastic scrapes and rotten marine carcasses, globs of oil... as drear a waste land as the dehumanized landscape of the soul...
I suppose now the objective correlative would have to be a poisoned beach, littered with plastic scrapes and rotten marine carcasses, globs of oil... as drear a waste land as the dehumanized landscape of the soul...
September 21, 2010 at 4:05 am
I'm not so sure humanity's careless pollution is the whole culprit, though, crappy as it is. Plain old entropy, the great leveler, continually eats away quite literally at anything outstanding. Arnold makes it appropriately hard to pinpoint blame for the condition, at any rate. Virginia Woolf plays with a similar trope inTo the Lighthouse, by the way, where Ramsay is imagined as holding a spit of land getting washed away. . .
September 21, 2010 at 4:25 am
Quite right. It's not really about "blame" to me. Life has moved on... despite the lingering of the cliches...
September 21, 2010 at 4:43 am
Whatever, this is a great poem.
September 21, 2010 at 7:22 pm
Yes, "Dover Beach" keeps profoundly resonating down the "shingles" of the decades...
September 22, 2010 at 3:10 am
The Dover Bitch
for Andrews Wanning
by Anthony Hecht
So there stood Matthew Arnold and this girl
With the cliffs of England crumbling away behind them,
And he said to her, “Try to be true to me,
And I’ll do the same for you, for things are bad
All over, etc., etc.”
Well now, I knew this girl. It’s true she had read
Sophocles in a fairly good translation
And caught that bitter allusion to the sea,
But all the time he was talking she had in mind
The notion of what his whiskers would feel like
On the back of her neck. She told me later on
That after awhile she got to looking out
At the lights across the channel, and really felt sad,
Thinking of all the wine and enormous beds
And blandishments in French and the perfumes.
And then she got really angry. To have been brought
All the way down from London, and then be addressed
As a sort of mournful cosmic last resort
Is really tough on a girl, and she was pretty.
Anyway, she watched him pace the room
And finger his watch-chain and seem to sweat a bit,
And then she said one or two unprintable things.
But you musn’t judge her by that. What I mean to say is,
She’s really all right. I still see her once in a while
And she always treats me right. We have a drink
And I give her a good time, and perhaps it’s a year
Before I see her again, but there she is,
Running to fat, but dependable as they come.
And sometimes I bring her a bottle of Nuit d’Amour.
for Andrews Wanning
by Anthony Hecht
So there stood Matthew Arnold and this girl
With the cliffs of England crumbling away behind them,
And he said to her, “Try to be true to me,
And I’ll do the same for you, for things are bad
All over, etc., etc.”
Well now, I knew this girl. It’s true she had read
Sophocles in a fairly good translation
And caught that bitter allusion to the sea,
But all the time he was talking she had in mind
The notion of what his whiskers would feel like
On the back of her neck. She told me later on
That after awhile she got to looking out
At the lights across the channel, and really felt sad,
Thinking of all the wine and enormous beds
And blandishments in French and the perfumes.
And then she got really angry. To have been brought
All the way down from London, and then be addressed
As a sort of mournful cosmic last resort
Is really tough on a girl, and she was pretty.
Anyway, she watched him pace the room
And finger his watch-chain and seem to sweat a bit,
And then she said one or two unprintable things.
But you musn’t judge her by that. What I mean to say is,
She’s really all right. I still see her once in a while
And she always treats me right. We have a drink
And I give her a good time, and perhaps it’s a year
Before I see her again, but there she is,
Running to fat, but dependable as they come.
And sometimes I bring her a bottle of Nuit d’Amour.
September 22, 2010 at 3:47 am
Thanks for posting Anthony Hecht's shallow, cynical poem... It evinces so well how much farther what passes for culture has declined.
September 22, 2010 at 3:55 am
Yes indeed, that last is a great point. The Victorian retreat from easy fideistic convictions generates a sensation of profound desolation in the Arnold poem. At this moment, by comparison, both belief and its vanishing seem symptomatic of an ersatz and too-knowing mentality
September 22, 2010 at 6:22 am
Yes, Arnold clearly links his sense of "profound desolation" to a prevailing loss of "easy" faith, a loss he locates beyond his own personal self, taking in the the social realm, inspires his turning to his "love," seeking consolation in togetherness, exclaiming "Ah, love, let us be true / To one another!" Somewhat of a shrug, what else can "we" do, on this "darkling plain," given their brief span of time and human vulnerability.
I believe it's a mistake to consider "Dover Beach" mere sentimentality and to lampoon it, as Hecht does. Arnold had the courage and insight to recognize and criticize the change in the locus of human meaning. That transformation has largely only continued in thoughtful Western, even worldwide circles and currents, and often led to much of the dehumanization that plagues modernity.
I like your phrase "too-knowing mentality." The triumphalism of the meta-narrative of nihilism comes to mind. Deconstruction and other "advanced," decadent really, theories privilege themselves, denying and distorting the affirmative, humane, loving qualities of the human being throughout time, 200,000 years, as it were...
So many of our global problems stem from that distortion.
I believe it's a mistake to consider "Dover Beach" mere sentimentality and to lampoon it, as Hecht does. Arnold had the courage and insight to recognize and criticize the change in the locus of human meaning. That transformation has largely only continued in thoughtful Western, even worldwide circles and currents, and often led to much of the dehumanization that plagues modernity.
I like your phrase "too-knowing mentality." The triumphalism of the meta-narrative of nihilism comes to mind. Deconstruction and other "advanced," decadent really, theories privilege themselves, denying and distorting the affirmative, humane, loving qualities of the human being throughout time, 200,000 years, as it were...
So many of our global problems stem from that distortion.
September 22, 2010 at 6:47 am
If interested, I discuss "Dover Beach" in my essay "Meditations in an Old Barn" and elsewhere in my book The Grove of the Eumenides.
Earthrise Press® eBooks
https://books.fglaysher.com/Grove-of-the-Eumenides-9780982677841.htm
Earthrise Press® eBooks
https://books.fglaysher.com/Grove-of-the-Eumenides-9780982677841.htm
September 22, 2010 at 6:58 am
Thank you very much for the reading pointers, & that's a very illuminating set of insights you offer in the foregoing comment - the retreat of humane, caring values is perhaps the greatest loss endured by an exaggeratedly instrumentalist epoch, and I agree that the consequential distortions reach far and wide. So...many thanks again :)
September 22, 2010 at 7:03 am
Arnold's metaphor does present it all as a "retreat," but I think actually it's that people have *chosen* to repudiate and reject the transcendent because, in the West, Christianity became so mixed up with irrational reactions to science and reason, denying some of the deepest qualities of the human being, and thereby highlighting religion had become out of touch with human nature in the modern world. The irony is that without a humanizing spirituality science and culture have become increasingly "instrumental" and utilitarian, materialistic, out of touch in its own way, so we're all out of balance, cascading towards one disaster or another, so it seems... both in terms of intellect and emotion.
September 22, 2010 at 7:42 am
Frederick, you might be interested in the writings of my friend and colleague Tom Bertonneau. Unapologetically laberling himself a Cultural Conservative, he follows Eric Gans in analyzing our cultural decay in terms of a modern "gnosticism" very well exemplified by Derrida and his ilk. Also, I imagine you know that Iris Murdoch has interesting things to say about existentialism and, by extension, postmodern theory as a cheap and easy counterfeit for intellectual courage: ~"an exaggerated sense of the power of the machine, together with the illusion of having jumped free of it." something like that.
September 22, 2010 at 7:49 am
That's very true Frederick, although for me "a humanizing spirituality" has its residence within a human sphere rather than somewhere beyond and outside it. It's in that sense that the impoverishment of existence produced by the reign of the instrumental is most dehumanizing. If I rightly follow the trend of what you say, then it should be possible to reactivate the 'lost', 'repudiated' dimensions of life and hold them in a state of dialogue with a 'modern' sense of human-phenomenal possibility which thus implies no quarrel with the attitude of science and secular humanism.
September 22, 2010 at 7:58 am
From a Buddhist perspective, it's simple: there are no spheres. The realm of human possibility is impossible to circumscribe. Modernity dislikes and devalues uncertainty: that is its fatal flaw. A humanizing spirituality must not fall into that trap, or, rather, must help us climb back out of it. Ironically, though, I find American Pragmatism, often inaccurately labelled instrumentalist, to serve very well as a framework for inquiry that does not narrow the field presumptuously. Dewey, Peirce, James.
September 22, 2010 at 8:08 am
@Ahmer Anwer, "A 'humanizing spirituality' has its residence within a human sphere." That's the only place it can, by definition, to my mind, otherwise we're in the next world... This is the one that counts, at least at the moment, unless I learn otherwise... What can be lost, can be recovered and reaffirmed, in an appropriate form that fits our changed experience... an old truism, but the cyclical challenge humanity has always been faced with, I would argue.
@Jim Pangborn, Mmm, Dewey was pivotal in secularizing education, though it's been decades since I've read anything by him. Peirce is only a name I've never felt inspired to explore, so perhaps you're right. James I can understand. I can agree "The realm of human possibility is impossible to circumscribe." Not my desire to do otherwise.
"Gnosticism": I had an early education through Eric Vogel, et al., who wanted to return to 13th century Catholicism. Humanity has been there, done that...
@Jim Pangborn, Mmm, Dewey was pivotal in secularizing education, though it's been decades since I've read anything by him. Peirce is only a name I've never felt inspired to explore, so perhaps you're right. James I can understand. I can agree "The realm of human possibility is impossible to circumscribe." Not my desire to do otherwise.
"Gnosticism": I had an early education through Eric Vogel, et al., who wanted to return to 13th century Catholicism. Humanity has been there, done that...
September 22, 2010 at 8:23 am
One of the most trenchant phrases I've ever heard in the protest against postmodern theory simply pointed out its "icy knowingness," which sounds to me like a fair naming of the gnostic "we have a special insight and you don't" attitude. Most of my previous comment was responding to Ahmer, by the way, not you, Frederick. You're of course right that there's no going back except by going ahead.
September 23, 2010 at 4:05 am
I think I see what you mean here, now, in terms of an esoteric, gnostic knowledge, superior to others, paralleling in a sense the need for initiation into it (graduate school theory!), a form of religious triumphalism or exclusivism, "think what I/we think," as it were. Oh yes, I certainly believe all of that is part and parcel of postmodernism, deconstruction, and so forth...
And what does one find having made the effort? Sophistries, and so forth... I believe Matthew Arnold was aware of those dimensions taking over, over from a purer, more universal spirituality, recognizing the sacredness and unity of life, uniting various walks of life, instead of isolating and driving them further apart...
I had mean Eric Voegelin earlier, Order and History, but was rushing out the door, thinking and typing fast!
And what does one find having made the effort? Sophistries, and so forth... I believe Matthew Arnold was aware of those dimensions taking over, over from a purer, more universal spirituality, recognizing the sacredness and unity of life, uniting various walks of life, instead of isolating and driving them further apart...
I had mean Eric Voegelin earlier, Order and History, but was rushing out the door, thinking and typing fast!
September 23, 2010 at 4:42 am
@ Jim Pangborn: "Modernity dislikes and devalues uncertainty." This would certainly be true of certain strands in science as it developed pace the Enlightenment. On the other hand there is Lyotard's development of the notion of the postmodern in terms of an incredulity towards metanarratives, a notion developed specifically in reference to the aims of science, a line of theorising that includes also the idea that the modern is always postmodern in this precise sense of that which escapes specific and definite nameability and even exceeds the possibility conceiving (the Lyotardian dialogue with the Kantian sublime). It is indeed arguable that the postmodern pulls away rug after rug from under the feet of even provisional certainty and makes of dubiety both something of a privileged "value" and an inescapable condition - even an absolute, the only absolute it might recognize amid a generalized devaluation of avowables. So the icy knowingness of PoMo (which is fair enough as description of at least some things in the attitude and the idiom of utterance) is in the same instance a too-knowing averment of a radical non-knowability, not so much as to 'facts' (PoMo isn't occupied with the realm of the referential) but in the domain of discursive meanings. The 'instrumentalism' of PoMo thus is not in line with the grounds American Pragmatism since there is nothing in PoMo that is concerned with anything phenomenal that 'works' (or doesn't) in any referentially demonstrable way - operating upon the terrain of the self-referentially discursive it merely rehearses a certain 'techicist' protocol in the modalities of form, style and manner - a sort of (anti)methodologism directed at projecting the type of esoteric and specialised (academic and institutional) 'expertise' that, to use Foucault's term for this phenomenon, declares the authority of the 'savant' in modern knowledge performances. Instrumentalism in this sense has not merely a theoretical referentiality, but a much more thoroughly permeated functional actuality in ways that have been indexed from Weber, through Horkheimer, Habermas and beyond.
September 23, 2010 at 6:34 am
I would say postmodernism is incredulous of all metanarratives but its own... discourse, "authority of the 'savant' in modern ["]knowledge["] performances," demonstrating thereby exactly why its bankrupt, like the prevailing culture, at all levels and permutations.
September 23, 2010 at 6:54 am
yes you are entirely right Frederick about the lack of self-interrogation which the predicates of postmodernism should rigorously enforce in relation to its own metanarratives. I do hesitate however to pronounce "everything" in prevailing culture as bankrupt "at all levels". First of all the strengths and weaknesses of cultures are always relative to other extant or previews cultures to which a comparison can be made, since a completely 'ideal' or a completely 'unideal' cultural is a non-verifiable hypothesis (one cannot precisely predict the forms of future cultural constructs), and one would have to say that in some ways prevailing culture improves upon the alternatives (contemporary cultures one would say, since its not unitary, self-identical or fully homogeneous - yet). PoMo does illustrate (although perhaps inexactly) many weaknesses in the contemporary situation. It did in its time have one strength though - coming in the latter part of a century where a series of 'total' explanations and historical macronarratives were pushed through with unqualified energy and at great cost, it reminded one of the value of the tentative and the provisional: of the dangers of complete consensus around totalities. In its limited way that to my mind was a service.
September 23, 2010 at 7:07 am
*previous cultures
September 23, 2010 at 7:13 am
I do agree with you on all of that. I may have been slightly too sweeping... The PoMo impulse, at its best, did serve to call into question totalities, once again, I would say. It was a service. In our world of extremism, I'm in favor of any encouragement to humility and caution, leaving room for dissenting views from any opinion.
September 23, 2010 at 7:16 am
...from any opinion, especially totalities, i.e., claims to exclusive truth and then the actions that so often have stemmed from them.
September 23, 2010 at 8:04 am
Can UN reassert authority through Millennium Development Goals summit?
"The U.N. is not the sun of the international solar system; everything doesn't revolve around it," he said. "But it is the final reference point on most issues, which have to come to the U.N. for legitimacy."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/19/AR2010091904764_pf.html
September 20, 2010 at 9:50 am
"The U.N. is not the sun of the international solar system; everything doesn't revolve around it," he said. "But it is the final reference point on most issues, which have to come to the U.N. for legitimacy."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/19/AR2010091904764_pf.html
| U.N. is at a critical juncture as it struggles to assert its relevance |
U.N. struggles to prove its relevance
September 20, 2010 at 9:50 am
Although Arnold himself was often tainted by what he deplored, he was still perceptive enough to recognize and lament the beginning of a new, virulent self-consciousness.
September 20, 2010 at 5:47 am
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During the last century many people were aware that an anomalous change was taking place. For example, Matthew Arnold, in his preface to Poems in 1853, wrote that "the calm . . . the disinterested objectivity have disappeared: the dialogue of the mind with itself has commenced."
September 20, 2010 at 3:08 am
3 people like this
Instead, he states it is theconsequence of the "spirit of an age, our own" in the broadest sense.
September 19, 2010 at 8:25 am
The realization that a "rupture" has occurred in our relationship with the center is not restricted to our century. Derrida himself does not claim that such a realization is confined to ourtime or that the "rupture" began with a specific individual.
September 19, 2010 at 5:35 am
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Very well put Glaysher ! It clears the clouds and cloudy misgivings about the notion, nature and scope of Deconstruction.
September 19, 2010 at 5:58 am
It's really an extension of a very broad transformation in the understanding of human existence, along with the belief priviliging itself... I.e., arguing that there can be no stage beyond itself that is not secular...
September 19, 2010 at 7:21 am
And yet he does say that an "event" has occurred ("Perhaps"), a "rupture" that has in effect dramatically rewritten the history of the centre in the notion of structure, such that the structurality of structure has become both foregrounded and henceforward problematic...although assuredly such a redefinition isn't something local or specific to one time, date or individual. Indeed the idea of such a transformational event as a radical and more or less violently disruptive break and 'eruption' in Derrida seems owing to Nietzsche....
September 19, 2010 at 8:40 am
Yes, Nietzsche is definitely the source for Derrida, too, like so many in the modern world, building, or desconstructing further upon his eroding foundation...
September 19, 2010 at 9:15 am
The center has never been lost, merely our ability to perceive it.
September 18, 2010 at 6:58 am
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Bravo.
September 18, 2010 at 2:55 pm
Thank you for saying so. I appreciate it. We live in a time under such duress that a single word can mean a lot...
September 18, 2010 at 3:28 pm
Rather, our psychic solar system, despite appearances and assertions to the contrary, is, and always was, and always will be, centered around the sun.
September 18, 2010 at 4:15 am
Hence we are unable torecognize that we do not live in a Ptolemaic universe--that is to say, a solipsistic one.
September 17, 2010 at 5:28 am
the loss of our exalted position
September 17, 2010 at 7:25 am
Solipsism is a tawdry ersatz, leading to debilitating hubris, many delusions, the Ate of the Greeks... alas.
September 17, 2010 at 7:34 am
*icarian sandtrap*
September 17, 2010 at 7:37 am
In effect... Agamemnon, Iliad, Book XIX:
Delusion is the elder daughter of Zeus, the accursed
who deludes all; her feet are delicate and they step not
on the firm earth, but she walks the air above men’s heads
and leads them astray. She has entangled others before me.
(Lattimore)
“Ate,” translated as “delusion,” might be better rendered as “divine destruction,” which follows reckless impulse and ambition.
Delusion is the elder daughter of Zeus, the accursed
who deludes all; her feet are delicate and they step not
on the firm earth, but she walks the air above men’s heads
and leads them astray. She has entangled others before me.
(Lattimore)
“Ate,” translated as “delusion,” might be better rendered as “divine destruction,” which follows reckless impulse and ambition.
September 17, 2010 at 7:47 am
Anomie vitiates perception.
September 17, 2010 at 2:57 am
Context vitiates Truth. . .
September 17, 2010 at 3:02 am
Can you expand on what you mean?
September 17, 2010 at 3:15 am
What you saíd is in brackets. I've removed the brackets. My formula is: Anomie is not abnormal, so doesnt vitiate perception really, merely creates a diffent context. On the other hand, perception is truth within a context. If perception is diff. within a state of anomie [its context], then Truth is dependant on contexts. Context is king, not truth. Or Truth.
September 17, 2010 at 4:01 am
If you look up to the top, you'll see I don't use any "brackets," nor your "formula." All I can say is that your "Truth," capital "T," is not mine. While I'm willing to go with a context, context today can only be what human experience itself today affirms, global, universal. The narrow, purported exclusivisms of the past, the "Truths," before which others were and are sacrificed, in one way or another, have been put increasingly aside by the evolution of life itself, for the diverse, pluralistic fullness of human consciousness.
Our exchange of email messages touches on this. Salman Rushdie's portrayal and interpretation of Emperor Akbar, in Mughal India, distorts Akbar's own life and views, as represented by his councilor and friend Abdul Fazl and others. Akbar's Tent of Worship sought a universal perspective, attempting to explore and reconcile what was held in common by Muslims, Hindus, and other faiths. "Syncretizism" is a word that only a mind under the sway of exclusivism would use. For example, some Christian scholars will of use "syncretism" derisively for what they cannot understand or respect. For Rushdie, it's the exclusivism of the modern secular outlook, which is why his book The Enchantress of Florence fails as a work of art and fails to understand Akbar. As symbol, I think it would be a mistake to say the Tent failed, was or is merely "discursive."
While religious experience can obviously only be *personal* I would not say Akbar failed. Over four hundred years later, I believe his example still resonants with deep meaning for humanity, all the more so for our time... global now.
Our exchange of email messages touches on this. Salman Rushdie's portrayal and interpretation of Emperor Akbar, in Mughal India, distorts Akbar's own life and views, as represented by his councilor and friend Abdul Fazl and others. Akbar's Tent of Worship sought a universal perspective, attempting to explore and reconcile what was held in common by Muslims, Hindus, and other faiths. "Syncretizism" is a word that only a mind under the sway of exclusivism would use. For example, some Christian scholars will of use "syncretism" derisively for what they cannot understand or respect. For Rushdie, it's the exclusivism of the modern secular outlook, which is why his book The Enchantress of Florence fails as a work of art and fails to understand Akbar. As symbol, I think it would be a mistake to say the Tent failed, was or is merely "discursive."
While religious experience can obviously only be *personal* I would not say Akbar failed. Over four hundred years later, I believe his example still resonants with deep meaning for humanity, all the more so for our time... global now.
September 17, 2010 at 4:54 am
The United Nations General Assembly is holding a review summit on the eight Millennium Development Goals from Sept. 20-22.
https://www.unausa.org/worldbulletin/091410/elmendorf
September 16, 2010 at 2:38 pm
https://www.unausa.org/worldbulletin/091410/elmendorf
|
Why Americans Must Support the Millennium Goals Despite Tough Times at Home |
The United Nations General Assembly is holding a review summit on the eight Millennium Development Goals from Sept. 20-22.
September 16, 2010 at 2:38 pm
We have confused the meaning of the word simple with simplistic.
September 16, 2010 at 10:25 am
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We have confused social networking with social avoidance.
September 16, 2010 at 10:50 am
Could be. For some. As with many things that are human, it could just as well be a new form of invention and social interaction that many have difficulty perceiving the value of or making the transition to, while others are catch the excitement of new possibilities for human communication and understanding... global now...
Perhaps like everything in life, it's a matter of how the new is used. There's seldom only one way. I find fascinating the many ways people have come up with using Facebook to suit their own personalities and interests.
Poetry and literature have been a very narrow little world for many decades, with a relatively limited cliquish few in tight control. Though many are attempting to create a sort of Chinese firewall online for publishing and literature, I believe many writers sense a new stimulating freedom that can only be good for the art.
Perhaps like everything in life, it's a matter of how the new is used. There's seldom only one way. I find fascinating the many ways people have come up with using Facebook to suit their own personalities and interests.
Poetry and literature have been a very narrow little world for many decades, with a relatively limited cliquish few in tight control. Though many are attempting to create a sort of Chinese firewall online for publishing and literature, I believe many writers sense a new stimulating freedom that can only be good for the art.
September 16, 2010 at 11:38 am
..."that only can be good for the art." The jury is still out and will be out on that well past our lifetime. That's for future generations to determine, wouldn't you imagine? In medias res we are only able to hold on to our rather feeble hopes.
September 16, 2010 at 12:11 pm
What's the alternative but hope? A hundred years of English departments have only led to talking the art into the ground as far as the general culture is concerned... perhaps the Internet and Post-Gutenberg revolution might be a way to recover lost territory, but it won't be done by the nay-sayers' clutching at their paper books... no one listens to them as it is.
What are they offering the culture that is worth listening to? That life is a meaningless, nihilistic farce? Any despairing fool can repeat that cliche... It takes true human nobility to affirm life, in the face of all the horror.
A university or MFA program can't teach that... The 1.5 Billion a year squandered on them only teaches would-be writers to scribble about themselves, their own pathetic lives, and the endless pc idiocies that have become sacred received wisdom in "literary" circles.
What are they offering the culture that is worth listening to? That life is a meaningless, nihilistic farce? Any despairing fool can repeat that cliche... It takes true human nobility to affirm life, in the face of all the horror.
A university or MFA program can't teach that... The 1.5 Billion a year squandered on them only teaches would-be writers to scribble about themselves, their own pathetic lives, and the endless pc idiocies that have become sacred received wisdom in "literary" circles.
September 16, 2010 at 12:55 pm
We are habituated to the aberrant and abstruse.
September 16, 2010 at 8:20 am
Quotidian? Can you explain what you're thinking?
September 16, 2010 at 8:57 am
The only solution to the predicament is an obvious one; but as in all ages that are indoctrinated with specious, epicyclical systems of thought, it is difficult to perceive because it is so deceptively simple.
September 16, 2010 at 6:18 am
In effect, many people conclude that humanism is dead and that it never had a legitimate philosophical base. And they do so with better logic than did the New Critics and modernists who sought to preserve humanism as a necessary, "supreme fiction."
September 16, 2010 at 3:16 am
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J. Hillis Miller was aware of the difference: "Poetry was meaningful in the same way as nature itself--by a communion of the verbal symbols with the reality they named. The history of modern literature is in part the history of the splitting apart of this communion. This splitting apart has been matched by a similar dispersal of the cultural unity of man, God, nature,and language." --The Disappearance of God.
September 15, 2010 at 7:29 am
Hans-Joachim Schoeps indicated the pervasiveness and smug self-righteousness of modern nihilism: "Jews and Christians are today in much the same situation: one of non-belief. The great break of the ages, the real change in the times which, as is well known, took place in the last 150 years... has brought about an entirely new state of affairs in the last few decades: that of non-belief which refuses all discussion--"
September 15, 2010 at 4:56 am
Schoeps continued, "...even a polemic one--with the witnesses and bearers of faith, which adopts towards the history of the salvation of man witnessed throughout the centuries, an attitude no longer of incredulity aiid doubt but much more one of disbelief and indifference.... This is a catastrophic process which has not remained unnoticed either, but which today is becoming increasingly clear and more threatening.... This age is no longer one of Jewish-Christian belief; as regards its qualitative nature, it is already something quite different."
September 15, 2010 at 4:57 am
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. -- Blaise Pascal
September 15, 2010 at 8:31 am
Care to expand?
September 15, 2010 at 8:52 am
Relitious conviction does not lead necessarily to men doing evil cheerfully and completely, but human history shows that when there is evil to be done the hierarchy of the local religion is either at the root of it, or is easily co-opted to do evil. And once the local religion is involved, then people do the evil completely and cheerfully.
September 15, 2010 at 11:04 am
Often the case... I would say it can be a more complex story. "Religion" can take many forms. The Marxists and Nazi religions had basically the same result, slaughtering many tens of millions of people. Can you name a single incident in religious history when as many people were murdered in such a short period of time? I can think of a number of tens and hundreds of thousands, but many millions is more characteristic of modern hatreds, secular ones at that. Worship of nation states is the most EVIL religion throughout history.
To my mind, whether a religious or secular "religion," it's the human capacity for evil, dehumanizing other people, turning them into things, that is at the root of the problem. With the USSR it took basically 70 years to move away from much of the brutality. Many secular people in the West woefully failed to confront the extent of the horrors in the communist countries. Many still have their Marxist dreams. In China, I saw what they amounted to with my own eyes.
Democracies too have not always had a perfect record, mob hysteria and demagogues causing various injustices, though the record is better to my mind, since a variety of opinion usually is able to survive and restore common sense. Hitler was of course elected. Plato's Republic tells its own story about democracies, leading to luxury, mob violence, irrationality of every sort, and collapse.
I'm all for democracy and separation of church and state, but nothing is fool proof when human beings are involved.
To my mind, whether a religious or secular "religion," it's the human capacity for evil, dehumanizing other people, turning them into things, that is at the root of the problem. With the USSR it took basically 70 years to move away from much of the brutality. Many secular people in the West woefully failed to confront the extent of the horrors in the communist countries. Many still have their Marxist dreams. In China, I saw what they amounted to with my own eyes.
Democracies too have not always had a perfect record, mob hysteria and demagogues causing various injustices, though the record is better to my mind, since a variety of opinion usually is able to survive and restore common sense. Hitler was of course elected. Plato's Republic tells its own story about democracies, leading to luxury, mob violence, irrationality of every sort, and collapse.
I'm all for democracy and separation of church and state, but nothing is fool proof when human beings are involved.
September 15, 2010 at 11:28 am
Well, the short period of time is insignificant, I think -- merely a function of technology. It's not the number of victims that makes something evil.
I agree with you that 'religion' includes the zealotries of all stripes, however the hierarchy presents its zeal.
The great political question in modern societies, though, is how to deal with uninsitutionalized privilege, not the institutionalized privileges we've come to call 'rights'. People want to take care of their own self-interests, and those of their families, and friends, of course. No matter what the political system people plot to get ahead, and to get their allies (often family members, but not only) ahead, too. They are not too concerned with whether their allies and family-members deserve, in any moral or even meritorious sense, their preferment -- that they are allies or family is enough reason to prefer them. It is that unearned preferment I call 'uninstitutionalized privilege' in modern societies.
I agree with you that 'religion' includes the zealotries of all stripes, however the hierarchy presents its zeal.
The great political question in modern societies, though, is how to deal with uninsitutionalized privilege, not the institutionalized privileges we've come to call 'rights'. People want to take care of their own self-interests, and those of their families, and friends, of course. No matter what the political system people plot to get ahead, and to get their allies (often family members, but not only) ahead, too. They are not too concerned with whether their allies and family-members deserve, in any moral or even meritorious sense, their preferment -- that they are allies or family is enough reason to prefer them. It is that unearned preferment I call 'uninstitutionalized privilege' in modern societies.
September 15, 2010 at 12:27 pm
Mmm, I would argue technology has made it ever-easier for a few zealots to kill large numbers of people and much harder to stop them, as government officials speaking publicly over the last several years have testified. The role of technology really became evident with the Russian-Japanese War of 1905. Surprisingly, Tolstoy had was very alert that something new was taking place in terms of warfare. It's only increased through all the decades since then.
"Zealotry" is a good word choice. I'll add bigotry... a lot of that around, as usual, but seems on the increase.
I think "faction" was the old word, Madison and Hamilton called it, in The Federalist Papers, No. 10: "By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community."
I'm also very concerned in about the exacerbated tendency to faction in the country today, as many have been and are. Daniel Bell and Allen Bloom come to mind. Plato discussed faction at length too, many others. I believe the two parties, along with the lobbyists, are doing what you and Madison describe, the concern over the desire for "unearned preferment," self-interest.
Historically speaking, I would ask what has repeatedly demonstrated within and across civilizations to ameliorate self-interest?
George Washington reflected on the problem in his Farewell Address, in a famous passage, when he said,
"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice ? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."
Modernity hasn't escaped these issues. They're with us still. They're part of the perennial dilemmas of human nature and government. The difficulty is that many Christians want to go back to the exclusivism of 13th Century Catholicism, fundamentalism, or whatever. In that regard, all the religions have their fundamentalists, dreaming of their own form of exclusivism, whether Muslim, Hindu, and so on. Anything like that would be utterly out of sync with the entire direction of modernity, which is toward universality...
"Zealotry" is a good word choice. I'll add bigotry... a lot of that around, as usual, but seems on the increase.
I think "faction" was the old word, Madison and Hamilton called it, in The Federalist Papers, No. 10: "By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community."
I'm also very concerned in about the exacerbated tendency to faction in the country today, as many have been and are. Daniel Bell and Allen Bloom come to mind. Plato discussed faction at length too, many others. I believe the two parties, along with the lobbyists, are doing what you and Madison describe, the concern over the desire for "unearned preferment," self-interest.
Historically speaking, I would ask what has repeatedly demonstrated within and across civilizations to ameliorate self-interest?
George Washington reflected on the problem in his Farewell Address, in a famous passage, when he said,
"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice ? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."
Modernity hasn't escaped these issues. They're with us still. They're part of the perennial dilemmas of human nature and government. The difficulty is that many Christians want to go back to the exclusivism of 13th Century Catholicism, fundamentalism, or whatever. In that regard, all the religions have their fundamentalists, dreaming of their own form of exclusivism, whether Muslim, Hindu, and so on. Anything like that would be utterly out of sync with the entire direction of modernity, which is toward universality...
September 15, 2010 at 2:26 pm
Yes, modernity in the last 150 years, or even the last 400, hasn't changed anything, in spite of the modernist, reformed modernist, and postmodernist manifestoes in the arts saying that there has been a 'turn' in history that has cut us (those living at the time of the manifesto) off from the vast dead majority of humanity, and made us different. It's not true.
Technology may have made it easier to kill and maim a lot of people, but 'twas ever thus. No doubt some swordsman bemoaned the cowardly use of the bow and arrow, and lamented that the manly face-to-face of foe to foe had made human beings different, and sighed that you can just kill too many people too fast with a bow and arrow. For that matter, some guy with a rock probably said the same about some other guys with clubs.
Your original quote, and, I assume, your original impetus here, was to regret the loss of religion as a salutary influence in the last 150 years, and that's what your most recent quote does too, it seems to me. But Washington allows for the notion that you can have morality without relgion, and that's the path I'd like to follow. The hard problem here is how to allow for secular morality without segregating people into "brights" who have a secular, and "dumbs" who have a religious, morality. Or vice versa.
For the most part human beings have moral reactions based on their emotions, not on their reason, irrespective of the overlay of secular or religious metaphor in which they choose to, or in which they habitually, frame their actions and reactions. Whether the reason people react with disgust to perceived immorality is the result of some god instilling a sense of virtue in each individual (at whatever point in time, for whatever reason or lack of reason), or the result of genes creating the people-vehicles most likely to propagate more genes, seems irrelevant to me. People have similar moral reactions within cultures.
It may be that there are avant-garde postmodernists out there whose culture is so refined that they feel the same kind of disgust for, say, logic, that I feel for, say, torture, but I rather doubt it. The culture of avant-garde postmodernism is simply not big and pervasive enough to have produced such people -- and we can tell by the way those people still very logically take their children to the hospital when the kids are sick, and the way they drive very logically on the proper side of the road, and so on ad infinitum in their daily lives.
But I dispute with some spirit the notion that there has been any diminution of religioius belief. People in the west still believe in the same values and the same behaviors that they've always believed in. The language framework in which they express it may have widened, so that a Marxist may sound like a Christian, und so weiter, but the broad range of values are the same.
This is the reason that it's so amusing to talk to conservatives in the US: they don't realize what liberal values they are so determined to conserve when they cite the Constitution and the Declaration! There is a difference of emphasis by conservatives in general on loyalty, purity, and tradition, where liberals stress individual liberty and fairness, but most people, whether conservative or liberal, agree that any cohesive group relies on some combination of those five notions.
Technology may have made it easier to kill and maim a lot of people, but 'twas ever thus. No doubt some swordsman bemoaned the cowardly use of the bow and arrow, and lamented that the manly face-to-face of foe to foe had made human beings different, and sighed that you can just kill too many people too fast with a bow and arrow. For that matter, some guy with a rock probably said the same about some other guys with clubs.
Your original quote, and, I assume, your original impetus here, was to regret the loss of religion as a salutary influence in the last 150 years, and that's what your most recent quote does too, it seems to me. But Washington allows for the notion that you can have morality without relgion, and that's the path I'd like to follow. The hard problem here is how to allow for secular morality without segregating people into "brights" who have a secular, and "dumbs" who have a religious, morality. Or vice versa.
For the most part human beings have moral reactions based on their emotions, not on their reason, irrespective of the overlay of secular or religious metaphor in which they choose to, or in which they habitually, frame their actions and reactions. Whether the reason people react with disgust to perceived immorality is the result of some god instilling a sense of virtue in each individual (at whatever point in time, for whatever reason or lack of reason), or the result of genes creating the people-vehicles most likely to propagate more genes, seems irrelevant to me. People have similar moral reactions within cultures.
It may be that there are avant-garde postmodernists out there whose culture is so refined that they feel the same kind of disgust for, say, logic, that I feel for, say, torture, but I rather doubt it. The culture of avant-garde postmodernism is simply not big and pervasive enough to have produced such people -- and we can tell by the way those people still very logically take their children to the hospital when the kids are sick, and the way they drive very logically on the proper side of the road, and so on ad infinitum in their daily lives.
But I dispute with some spirit the notion that there has been any diminution of religioius belief. People in the west still believe in the same values and the same behaviors that they've always believed in. The language framework in which they express it may have widened, so that a Marxist may sound like a Christian, und so weiter, but the broad range of values are the same.
This is the reason that it's so amusing to talk to conservatives in the US: they don't realize what liberal values they are so determined to conserve when they cite the Constitution and the Declaration! There is a difference of emphasis by conservatives in general on loyalty, purity, and tradition, where liberals stress individual liberty and fairness, but most people, whether conservative or liberal, agree that any cohesive group relies on some combination of those five notions.
September 15, 2010 at 2:57 pm
Washington actually chooses his nuanced words very carefully, regarding people of different capacity: "And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."
I.e., "minds of peculiar structure," can, do, have maintained the highest levels of private and public morality. The old saw was the "virtuous pagan." The problem is most of humanity isn't interested in or capable of such self-discipline in reasonable terms. Marxism, for instance, has shown that to be the case. Rationalism is inadequate for inspiring the broad base of humanity. The whole idea of "representative government" was supposed to help and did for a while, with Henry Adams claiming until Andrew Jackson or thereabouts. Downhill ever since, especially with the 20 Century, self-interest now predominating, if not license.
I don't have any nostalgia or "regret" for "the loss of religion" in the usual sense. I'm not interested in going backwards, if you will. I would argue modern life has moved far beyond the exclusive forms of the traditional religions, and I mean all the institutional religions. It's what they have universally in common that's important to me. In various ways, modern life has already lived into universality, more than many realize, taking it for granted, in practical terms, and that's the positive side of the Enlightenment and democracy.
This may be as difficult for liberals to understand as for more traditionally minded people. I find many liberals often think in terms of Christianity, which is logical given our culture, but it tends to prevent serious thinking about what the implications of universality really are.
I.e., "minds of peculiar structure," can, do, have maintained the highest levels of private and public morality. The old saw was the "virtuous pagan." The problem is most of humanity isn't interested in or capable of such self-discipline in reasonable terms. Marxism, for instance, has shown that to be the case. Rationalism is inadequate for inspiring the broad base of humanity. The whole idea of "representative government" was supposed to help and did for a while, with Henry Adams claiming until Andrew Jackson or thereabouts. Downhill ever since, especially with the 20 Century, self-interest now predominating, if not license.
I don't have any nostalgia or "regret" for "the loss of religion" in the usual sense. I'm not interested in going backwards, if you will. I would argue modern life has moved far beyond the exclusive forms of the traditional religions, and I mean all the institutional religions. It's what they have universally in common that's important to me. In various ways, modern life has already lived into universality, more than many realize, taking it for granted, in practical terms, and that's the positive side of the Enlightenment and democracy.
This may be as difficult for liberals to understand as for more traditionally minded people. I find many liberals often think in terms of Christianity, which is logical given our culture, but it tends to prevent serious thinking about what the implications of universality really are.
September 15, 2010 at 5:02 pm
I suppose the fear is always that "religion" wants to or will take over the public space, but that is no longer possible, nor desirable, in the modern world. That's very difficulty for all the institutional hierarchies to accept and understand, given the memory of "back when." Pluralism is the only possible state of affairs that is in the interest of everyone, that's essential to universality; pluralism is simple the way things are... Anything else is delusion and fanaticism. Similar to the balance of various interests in the US Constitution and so forth, religion too has become "balanced" with one another and the public order. Much of the modern world's problem is that it doesn't see and understand what it has, unable to think of religion in any other terms but the past...
September 15, 2010 at 5:09 pm
Washington's, and Plato's, for that matter, nuanced notions about moral capacities is a great elitist-in-the-bad-sense issue.
(Don't get me wrong: I'm an elitist, and proud of it -- but I'm an elitist-in-the-good-sense elitist. The bad-sense elitist is sort of like the educators who view testing as a way to create for administrative and social convenience a hierarchy of student achievement, while the good-sense elitists are sort of like the educators who view testing as a way to identify the areas of learning on which both the educator and the student have to work harder, without any hierarchy.)
Washington's and Plato's elitism is the sort that imagines that there is a vast majority of people who are simply too dumb and ignorant ever to experience or even need critical thinking skills, or the independence and judgment that goes with them, and a group at the top of society who do have such skills and independence and judgment, and are educated and acculturated to govern. Now, they expect those elites to be public-spirited -- but in an abstract and even aristocratic way. They know best what is good for all, and they pursue it. But the sort of political elitism that I advocate is the "public servant" model, where the politicians don't, in fact, know best, or even what is good, and the process of choosing those politicians allows for enough (was it Pareto who said this first?) circulation of elites that you don't get too much of that noninstitutional privilege, or what we commonly call "corruption".
This is not to say that I think that just anyone could serve as well as just anyone else -- though I have been known to advocate a lottery system for government service on the grounds that it certainly couldn't be worse than what we have _now_. I certainly hope that talented and clever people would find a way within a rough system of political merit to climb the ladder of political success, and that it wouldn't be merely a popularity contest, or a well-known-name contest, or the like.
But to address the religion issue in a political context, it seems historically there is always either some degree of separation of Church and State, usually because the Church has managed to become a political power within the State, and is too rich or too useful, or both, to be put down, or the Church is to a large extent one with the State, whether through co-optation or actual Head-of-State-is-Head-of-Church combination. There is always a tendency, though, toward consolidation, it seems to me. The State is always trying to co-opt the Church and, ultimately, to meld the Church's authority into its own.
I'm no fan of institutionalized religions; I think Pascal got it right in the quote above. But I'm no fan of State Religion, either. It's not so much a middle course I'd like to see steered as it is a continuing tension between power centers, whether the 'religion' is god-centered or, like marxism or capitalism, economics-centered, or some other-ism some other-centered.
(Don't get me wrong: I'm an elitist, and proud of it -- but I'm an elitist-in-the-good-sense elitist. The bad-sense elitist is sort of like the educators who view testing as a way to create for administrative and social convenience a hierarchy of student achievement, while the good-sense elitists are sort of like the educators who view testing as a way to identify the areas of learning on which both the educator and the student have to work harder, without any hierarchy.)
Washington's and Plato's elitism is the sort that imagines that there is a vast majority of people who are simply too dumb and ignorant ever to experience or even need critical thinking skills, or the independence and judgment that goes with them, and a group at the top of society who do have such skills and independence and judgment, and are educated and acculturated to govern. Now, they expect those elites to be public-spirited -- but in an abstract and even aristocratic way. They know best what is good for all, and they pursue it. But the sort of political elitism that I advocate is the "public servant" model, where the politicians don't, in fact, know best, or even what is good, and the process of choosing those politicians allows for enough (was it Pareto who said this first?) circulation of elites that you don't get too much of that noninstitutional privilege, or what we commonly call "corruption".
This is not to say that I think that just anyone could serve as well as just anyone else -- though I have been known to advocate a lottery system for government service on the grounds that it certainly couldn't be worse than what we have _now_. I certainly hope that talented and clever people would find a way within a rough system of political merit to climb the ladder of political success, and that it wouldn't be merely a popularity contest, or a well-known-name contest, or the like.
But to address the religion issue in a political context, it seems historically there is always either some degree of separation of Church and State, usually because the Church has managed to become a political power within the State, and is too rich or too useful, or both, to be put down, or the Church is to a large extent one with the State, whether through co-optation or actual Head-of-State-is-Head-of-Church combination. There is always a tendency, though, toward consolidation, it seems to me. The State is always trying to co-opt the Church and, ultimately, to meld the Church's authority into its own.
I'm no fan of institutionalized religions; I think Pascal got it right in the quote above. But I'm no fan of State Religion, either. It's not so much a middle course I'd like to see steered as it is a continuing tension between power centers, whether the 'religion' is god-centered or, like marxism or capitalism, economics-centered, or some other-ism some other-centered.
September 15, 2010 at 6:19 pm
To my mind, "elitist," "non-elitist" thinking and worries today undermine what is of value in education. Someone who has spent their life reading thousands of books usually knows more than the ignoramus who hasn't. .. Unfortunately, many educators today read the wrong books, under the influence of shallow cultural conceptions, theories, about human nature. We've lost touch with what the human being really is. Our now extremely fragmented culture is blindly resistant to considering alternative understandings, exacerbating its fragmentation and decline into licence.
Washington isn't an "elitist" merely seeking to control the masses when he says, "And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion." The notion was already "in the air" deriding religion, with the rationalism of the deists, etc. He and many of the Founders understood they were taking a chance. Almost every precedent was in favor of a State Religion, the monarch's, and so forth. I believe the current state of national morality, among elites and otherwise, largely proves Washington and others like him correct about the necessity of religion for maintaining morality. The problem, from my view, is this word: "religion." Few know what religion means any more. Much of the entire meaning and structure of that phenomenon has changed for the better, but few seem to be able to see it. I fully agree with you that State Religion, institutional religion is anathema for all of the well-known reasons, historical and otherwise. But secular attempts to create substitutes from the French Revolution onward have always failed, Marxism's various deifications of atheism, academic values education, to our own civic religion. None of them reach deeply enough into the human psyche.
To my mind, separation of church and state is the Will of God; that's permanent, for the entire nature of what "religion" is has changed...
I recognize you're asking very profound questions about how to preserve moral health in a society. I believe "religion" in the 21 Century can only exist in a richly dynamic "tension" between the civic government and a universal, non-institutional understanding of "religion," what all of the religions have in common at a very basic level, their unity of affirming the meaning and purpose of human existence, for the individual and society, and from a global context. We've evolved to often living on that level, but our thinking hasn't. "True" religion must help humanity understand itself, not add to the confusion and violence of the unprincipled.
If interested, last month, I wrote an essay on Tolstoy that discusses, in a more coherent, contextual way, many of these issues, Tolstoy and the Last Station of Modernity:
https://fglaysher.com/eReading/2010/08/tolstoy-and-the-last-station-of-modernity/
Washington isn't an "elitist" merely seeking to control the masses when he says, "And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion." The notion was already "in the air" deriding religion, with the rationalism of the deists, etc. He and many of the Founders understood they were taking a chance. Almost every precedent was in favor of a State Religion, the monarch's, and so forth. I believe the current state of national morality, among elites and otherwise, largely proves Washington and others like him correct about the necessity of religion for maintaining morality. The problem, from my view, is this word: "religion." Few know what religion means any more. Much of the entire meaning and structure of that phenomenon has changed for the better, but few seem to be able to see it. I fully agree with you that State Religion, institutional religion is anathema for all of the well-known reasons, historical and otherwise. But secular attempts to create substitutes from the French Revolution onward have always failed, Marxism's various deifications of atheism, academic values education, to our own civic religion. None of them reach deeply enough into the human psyche.
To my mind, separation of church and state is the Will of God; that's permanent, for the entire nature of what "religion" is has changed...
I recognize you're asking very profound questions about how to preserve moral health in a society. I believe "religion" in the 21 Century can only exist in a richly dynamic "tension" between the civic government and a universal, non-institutional understanding of "religion," what all of the religions have in common at a very basic level, their unity of affirming the meaning and purpose of human existence, for the individual and society, and from a global context. We've evolved to often living on that level, but our thinking hasn't. "True" religion must help humanity understand itself, not add to the confusion and violence of the unprincipled.
If interested, last month, I wrote an essay on Tolstoy that discusses, in a more coherent, contextual way, many of these issues, Tolstoy and the Last Station of Modernity:
https://fglaysher.com/eReading/2010/08/tolstoy-and-the-last-station-of-modernity/
September 16, 2010 at 3:09 am
Interesting essay. If I understand what you're saying correctly, you hold that there is an intimate connection between material prosperity and nihilism. You seem to be saying that without some counterweight of some sort of strongly enculturated mysticism, some religion, the best we can do is ask ourselves "Where are we going, and why are we in this handbasket?"
My concern isn't whether there is a sound Church (of whatever character) to separaste from the State, which seems to be the direction you're taking, nor even a lament for the failures of attempted substitutes for a sound Church, which you give a lick and a promise, but rather for the character of elites and how they circulate in a society. It seems to me that there will always be some sort of Church because everybody's got to believe something (and I believe I'll have another sandwich), so I'm not as worried about that as you are. Similarly, it seems to me, the failed attempts to substitute non-god-centered belief systems for god-centered ones have failed in the same way the god-centered ones failed: they centralized power, over-reached their own moral basis, and became tyrannies where they had promised salvation. It's the same dreary story every successful religion tells. And it is because the arc of the narrative of every successful religion, irrespective of whether it is god-centered, is to end in tyranny that there must be a separation of Church and State.
The underlying reason behind the chance Washington and the Founders took by advocating separation was their realization from the recent history of Europe, and the Thirty Years War in particular, and its consequences, that state religions didn't work, politically -- that if there was going to be a great nation on this continent that it would have to be pluralistic, because trying to impose one state religion on such a diverse group of people as the colonies was doomed to fail.
So in my view Tolstoy's struggle to integrate his behavior with his beliefs is merely a private one, and public only in the success his novels have in illustrating and illuminating his struggle in the stories he tells, but I'm wary of the "great artist must suffer greatly" line of malarkey. Art is not a result of suffering, or there'd be a lot more art. Art is about craft and vision and work ethic. No one is an accidental artist; no one blurts out a poem of unpracticed genius; no one spontaneously paints a masterpiece on her day off. There are no mute inglorious Miltons because to be a Milton requires that one be determinedly loud and actively seek whatever glory success in art brings.
Tolstoy's achievement isn't his insight into suffering, or his insight into the dichotomy between wealth and poverty. Tolstoy's achievement is in his novels, not his life. Others have produced art equal and surpassing Tolstoy's without making so many peasants suffer, and without his own private suffering. Too bad for Tolstoy and his serfs, but I don't believe that his personal pain, or his insight into the pain he caused, was the reason his novels are great. His novels are great because he developed his skill at story-telling, worked at it diligently, and embraced a vision that contextualizes his characters.
My concern isn't whether there is a sound Church (of whatever character) to separaste from the State, which seems to be the direction you're taking, nor even a lament for the failures of attempted substitutes for a sound Church, which you give a lick and a promise, but rather for the character of elites and how they circulate in a society. It seems to me that there will always be some sort of Church because everybody's got to believe something (and I believe I'll have another sandwich), so I'm not as worried about that as you are. Similarly, it seems to me, the failed attempts to substitute non-god-centered belief systems for god-centered ones have failed in the same way the god-centered ones failed: they centralized power, over-reached their own moral basis, and became tyrannies where they had promised salvation. It's the same dreary story every successful religion tells. And it is because the arc of the narrative of every successful religion, irrespective of whether it is god-centered, is to end in tyranny that there must be a separation of Church and State.
The underlying reason behind the chance Washington and the Founders took by advocating separation was their realization from the recent history of Europe, and the Thirty Years War in particular, and its consequences, that state religions didn't work, politically -- that if there was going to be a great nation on this continent that it would have to be pluralistic, because trying to impose one state religion on such a diverse group of people as the colonies was doomed to fail.
So in my view Tolstoy's struggle to integrate his behavior with his beliefs is merely a private one, and public only in the success his novels have in illustrating and illuminating his struggle in the stories he tells, but I'm wary of the "great artist must suffer greatly" line of malarkey. Art is not a result of suffering, or there'd be a lot more art. Art is about craft and vision and work ethic. No one is an accidental artist; no one blurts out a poem of unpracticed genius; no one spontaneously paints a masterpiece on her day off. There are no mute inglorious Miltons because to be a Milton requires that one be determinedly loud and actively seek whatever glory success in art brings.
Tolstoy's achievement isn't his insight into suffering, or his insight into the dichotomy between wealth and poverty. Tolstoy's achievement is in his novels, not his life. Others have produced art equal and surpassing Tolstoy's without making so many peasants suffer, and without his own private suffering. Too bad for Tolstoy and his serfs, but I don't believe that his personal pain, or his insight into the pain he caused, was the reason his novels are great. His novels are great because he developed his skill at story-telling, worked at it diligently, and embraced a vision that contextualizes his characters.
September 16, 2010 at 5:22 am
Mmm, I wouldn't connect nihilism and prosperity. There's nothing wrong with material prosperity in and of itself. Individual and social problems arise, I think all religions suggest, when human beings deify the material, that's all. The use of the material for *humane* purposes is a matter of choice, spiritual in the old terminology. The material itself is neutral, usually. Tolstoy, I try to suggest, chose a particular interpretation of Christianity that led him astray, at times, and harmed his personal and public life, including his art, but overall he continued to grow towards a universal understanding of human experience.
Art is craft; but craft alone is not art. Tolstoy understood that at a very deep level. Modern academia has forgotten that completely and has trivialized and vitiated art to the extent that it has.
Separation of church and state is an entirely *positive* evolutionary, progressive development. I would say, again, that it's the tendency to conceive "religion" in terms of Christianity or what one thinks is "Christianity," which become predicated upon *institutional, organized* forms of religion. Let me phrase it this way: everywhere in modern culture, for many decades, revulsion with organized religion has grown, because it is actually not religion at all. Tolstoy fully understood that... especially during his last decade. Only an unorganized sense of what it means to be a human being can affirm the moral imperatives, if you will, that undergird a stable, balanced, secular, neutral government. Tolstoy went astray because of his aristocratic past, but he realized socialism and communism would only be more of the same, as well as democracy, in most ways, with a profoundly deep change in the hearts and minds of humanity. That can't be achieved at the voting box.
The elites, whether religious or civic, often don't believe in anything. A religious ethic provides the sole criterion with which to call them to account and that *sometimes* can be used to instill even in them a sense of humanity when they lose it. Often in this world that's all we can hope for. It makes a crucial difference and shouldn't be underestimated. Secular people often want Utopia. I'm not arguing for that. None of the great religions really do, which is why ultimately they're finitely more realistic about producing pluralistic, human societies than the modern despots and politburos.
Tyranny is the nemesis of mankind. It is not restricted to only religions. A nearly endless list stretches through history, especially since the French Revolution, secular oppression and violence. Our own experiment exhibits many cracks and fissures, evoking all the horrors of the past.
I share all your concerns, actually, about what's wrong with religion, past and present, and about the threat of self-serving elites of any kind.
What I've tried to convey, and my essay on Tolstoy I hope does, is that the definition of WHAT religion is has changed, we're evolving towards a wider, more global, pluralistic, universal, unorganized form of affirming the transcendent meaning of life and the moral imperatives, qualities and attributes, personal and public, require for living together on our now highly planetary level. Not Utopia. But a rich mixture, a tension, between the secular and spiritual, traditional religions and what is universally shared in common by them.
Last week I was speaking with a Sikh who said to me that religions share 99.9 percent of the same beliefs, his implication being people need to wake up more and realize it. That's also what I mean.
With all respect, I think there's much more to suffering and Tolstoy than you grasp but this has become very long already.
Art is craft; but craft alone is not art. Tolstoy understood that at a very deep level. Modern academia has forgotten that completely and has trivialized and vitiated art to the extent that it has.
Separation of church and state is an entirely *positive* evolutionary, progressive development. I would say, again, that it's the tendency to conceive "religion" in terms of Christianity or what one thinks is "Christianity," which become predicated upon *institutional, organized* forms of religion. Let me phrase it this way: everywhere in modern culture, for many decades, revulsion with organized religion has grown, because it is actually not religion at all. Tolstoy fully understood that... especially during his last decade. Only an unorganized sense of what it means to be a human being can affirm the moral imperatives, if you will, that undergird a stable, balanced, secular, neutral government. Tolstoy went astray because of his aristocratic past, but he realized socialism and communism would only be more of the same, as well as democracy, in most ways, with a profoundly deep change in the hearts and minds of humanity. That can't be achieved at the voting box.
The elites, whether religious or civic, often don't believe in anything. A religious ethic provides the sole criterion with which to call them to account and that *sometimes* can be used to instill even in them a sense of humanity when they lose it. Often in this world that's all we can hope for. It makes a crucial difference and shouldn't be underestimated. Secular people often want Utopia. I'm not arguing for that. None of the great religions really do, which is why ultimately they're finitely more realistic about producing pluralistic, human societies than the modern despots and politburos.
Tyranny is the nemesis of mankind. It is not restricted to only religions. A nearly endless list stretches through history, especially since the French Revolution, secular oppression and violence. Our own experiment exhibits many cracks and fissures, evoking all the horrors of the past.
I share all your concerns, actually, about what's wrong with religion, past and present, and about the threat of self-serving elites of any kind.
What I've tried to convey, and my essay on Tolstoy I hope does, is that the definition of WHAT religion is has changed, we're evolving towards a wider, more global, pluralistic, universal, unorganized form of affirming the transcendent meaning of life and the moral imperatives, qualities and attributes, personal and public, require for living together on our now highly planetary level. Not Utopia. But a rich mixture, a tension, between the secular and spiritual, traditional religions and what is universally shared in common by them.
Last week I was speaking with a Sikh who said to me that religions share 99.9 percent of the same beliefs, his implication being people need to wake up more and realize it. That's also what I mean.
With all respect, I think there's much more to suffering and Tolstoy than you grasp but this has become very long already.
September 16, 2010 at 6:17 am
We seem to agree at almost all points, only using different terms and somewhat different approaches. I think where we may differ significantly is on two things: first, whether humanity is actually approaching "a wider, more global, pluralistic, universal and unorganized form of affirming the transcendent meaning of life" and etc. I think that's simply wrong on the face of it. I agree it would be nice if humanity were doing so, and I hope that eventually humanity will -- but now? Not so much. And, second, the role of suffering in art.
About the second, though, you may only be saying that it was through suffering that Tolstoy in particular came to his art, and I'm okay with that. Where I'm disagreeing (if we have a disagreement here at all) is with the notion that everybody has to suffer before they can make art. I think that's wrong. It seems to me that some people come to their art through suffering, but that many people, most people, do not. Suffering is neither a necessary nor a sufficient cause of art.
That Tolstoy suffered and made art are both undeniable. That one was necessary to the other is debatable, but I'm willing to agree, provisionally, that in Tolstoy's special case that's what it took to set him on the path. Still, I'd point out that he'd done a lot of art before he suffered very much, and that seems to point, once again, to suffering not being necessary.
But what I am now interested in hearing your thoughts on is why you say you do not connect materialism and nihilism. There wasn't much nihilism around until there was a lot of prosperity. If you're willing to connect suffering an art on a post hoc ergo propter hoc basis, why not materialism and nihilism?
About the second, though, you may only be saying that it was through suffering that Tolstoy in particular came to his art, and I'm okay with that. Where I'm disagreeing (if we have a disagreement here at all) is with the notion that everybody has to suffer before they can make art. I think that's wrong. It seems to me that some people come to their art through suffering, but that many people, most people, do not. Suffering is neither a necessary nor a sufficient cause of art.
That Tolstoy suffered and made art are both undeniable. That one was necessary to the other is debatable, but I'm willing to agree, provisionally, that in Tolstoy's special case that's what it took to set him on the path. Still, I'd point out that he'd done a lot of art before he suffered very much, and that seems to point, once again, to suffering not being necessary.
But what I am now interested in hearing your thoughts on is why you say you do not connect materialism and nihilism. There wasn't much nihilism around until there was a lot of prosperity. If you're willing to connect suffering an art on a post hoc ergo propter hoc basis, why not materialism and nihilism?
September 16, 2010 at 7:26 pm
One's own experience always flavors one's perception. Sages Buddhist to Christian and others have observed man is his thinking. All cultures demonstrate change and evolution for the human being is that creature capable of change. We are not merely the product of instinct. Atavistic arguments ignore 200,000 years of human evolution.
It seems to me that I barely mention suffering in my essay on Tolstoy. I don't recognize any of my arguments in your interpretation. Post hoc ergo propter hoc trivializes what's involved, both for Tolstoy and in general.
Nihilism has always existed as a very human response to life. It's nothing new in that regard. Only the degree to which it has become pervasive. I don't believe it's a result of materialism alone.
It seems to me that I barely mention suffering in my essay on Tolstoy. I don't recognize any of my arguments in your interpretation. Post hoc ergo propter hoc trivializes what's involved, both for Tolstoy and in general.
Nihilism has always existed as a very human response to life. It's nothing new in that regard. Only the degree to which it has become pervasive. I don't believe it's a result of materialism alone.
September 17, 2010 at 2:57 am
I just don't see the change in humanity that you seem to see. People are still greedy, selfish, short-sighted, and determinedly ignorant of other ways of life than their own, and I'm not just talking about Well Street bankers. I'm talking about everyone. Some people struggle against their human nature, with more or less success; some use religion, some other beliefs, to bolster their struggles. But while there has been some minor progress in political structure over the last 50,000 years, and a lot of progress in material wealth over the last 500 years, there has been almost no progress morally.
I agree with you that treating people as things is one of the central evils of any time, and that it may be marginally easier for one of us everyday folks to treat other people as things because of technological advances and material wealth, while in the past it took a good deal of politicking to get to a position where you could treat people as things.
I don't see nihilism; I see ordinary human behavior: selfish, greedy, short-sighted, and ignorant.
I agree with you that treating people as things is one of the central evils of any time, and that it may be marginally easier for one of us everyday folks to treat other people as things because of technological advances and material wealth, while in the past it took a good deal of politicking to get to a position where you could treat people as things.
I don't see nihilism; I see ordinary human behavior: selfish, greedy, short-sighted, and ignorant.
September 17, 2010 at 5:37 am
Of course people are "still greedy, selfish, short-sighted, and determinedly ignorant of other ways of life than their own," etc... They're human, we all are...
I disagree with the view on the lack of moral progress. There has been much moral progress over the centuries and millennia, slow, often painful growth, but improvement in the human lot none the less, not all in ashes and sackcloth. The human being can learn from experience. Modern relativism is as false and pernicious as its offspring, nihilism... Human reason and compassion have often won out in the end.
I disagree with the view on the lack of moral progress. There has been much moral progress over the centuries and millennia, slow, often painful growth, but improvement in the human lot none the less, not all in ashes and sackcloth. The human being can learn from experience. Modern relativism is as false and pernicious as its offspring, nihilism... Human reason and compassion have often won out in the end.
September 17, 2010 at 6:37 am
That such thinking, without splitting hairs over definition, suffuses other areas of endeavor is indisputable. Hans Kung, in Art and the Question of Meaning, examines the ubiquity of nihilism in modern art. One of his observations is that "Art is seen then no longer against a pantheistic but against anihilistic background. I say this as diagnosing, not as moralizing" (29).
September 15, 2010 at 3:41 am
1 person likes this
Such thinking, perhaps it should be called postnihilistic, is typical of a great deal of contemporary philosophy and critical theory and is shared, in some form or another, by many writers.
September 14, 2010 at 11:46 am
Please enlighten me by elucidating the topic :)
September 14, 2010 at 12:13 pm
If Nietzsche is the formative figure of modern nihilism, with Freud, Weber, Heidegger, et. al., as largely working out the implications, Derrida, while extending Nietzsche's thought, moves basically a little further or deeper into the Western chasm when he wrote, "This affirmation then determines the non-center otherwise than as a loss of the center." This early statement by him was and has been widely hailed as marking a significant change in the course of nihilism.
While it's true that many philosophers, or I should academic philosophers, have not been impressed with Derrida and Deconstruction, its scholastic skepticism, if not Pyrrhonism, he had a tremendous impact on some schools of would-be literary criticism, English and French, and other disciplines, providing them with a critical method that sustained their cynical nihilism and helped to overturn more humanistic scholarship and thought. Deconstruction's influence went global very early on, in Japan, elsewhere, even India, did it not?
It's "post" nihilism in the sense that it found a way to go beyond nihilism, taking it for granted, the "non-center" is not *even* conceived of or construed as a *loss* of the center. One can't lose what never even existed... That's the postmodern breakthrough... and the source of all its triviality. It's why postmodernism has long been a dead cultural period, though an awful lot of people haven't awakened to the fact. So the cleaving and draining of culture continues and widens.
In my view, and argument, it helped clear the ground, more than it ever realized and intended, preparing the way for a reaffirmation, not a return in any of the traditional senses, as with T. S. Eliot, of what it means to be a human being--only a global, universal perspective can provide a sufficient framework within which to address the challenges of the 21 Century. The philosophical implications have moved far beyond the Western and nationalistic levels.
I discuss Deconstruction in more detail in my essay "Mimesis" in The Grove of the Eumenides
https://www.fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
And Nietzsche and his sundry modern followers, the destruction they wreaked on the West, carrying his noxious poison around the globe, along with its political tragedies: The Bower of Nil
https://www.fglaysher.com/bower_of_nil.html
While it's true that many philosophers, or I should academic philosophers, have not been impressed with Derrida and Deconstruction, its scholastic skepticism, if not Pyrrhonism, he had a tremendous impact on some schools of would-be literary criticism, English and French, and other disciplines, providing them with a critical method that sustained their cynical nihilism and helped to overturn more humanistic scholarship and thought. Deconstruction's influence went global very early on, in Japan, elsewhere, even India, did it not?
It's "post" nihilism in the sense that it found a way to go beyond nihilism, taking it for granted, the "non-center" is not *even* conceived of or construed as a *loss* of the center. One can't lose what never even existed... That's the postmodern breakthrough... and the source of all its triviality. It's why postmodernism has long been a dead cultural period, though an awful lot of people haven't awakened to the fact. So the cleaving and draining of culture continues and widens.
In my view, and argument, it helped clear the ground, more than it ever realized and intended, preparing the way for a reaffirmation, not a return in any of the traditional senses, as with T. S. Eliot, of what it means to be a human being--only a global, universal perspective can provide a sufficient framework within which to address the challenges of the 21 Century. The philosophical implications have moved far beyond the Western and nationalistic levels.
I discuss Deconstruction in more detail in my essay "Mimesis" in The Grove of the Eumenides
https://www.fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
And Nietzsche and his sundry modern followers, the destruction they wreaked on the West, carrying his noxious poison around the globe, along with its political tragedies: The Bower of Nil
https://www.fglaysher.com/bower_of_nil.html
September 14, 2010 at 1:48 pm
postnihilistic, mmmm..is that Pre-Hope? I'm with you on this. Believe me.
September 14, 2010 at 11:52 pm
Thanks a lot for taking time to make it clear to me. My recent note where I tagged you is about 'tradition'. Once I uploaded this same note, and also you commented, but that was an unfinished piece. It has gone through lot more addition and edition. Hope you'll check it now
September 15, 2010 at 12:48 am
@Susan Rochette, I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "pre-hope." A little cryptic. Let's see, nihlism, post-nihilism, ah, yes, Pre-Hope, I can go with that! That's the cultural pattern and cycle of 5,000 years of human recorded history, or close enough. Yes, to some extent, that's what I mean...
We human beings start over with every birth, alas, from scratch... so many are content just to fill their bellies...
We human beings start over with every birth, alas, from scratch... so many are content just to fill their bellies...
September 15, 2010 at 3:08 am
@Hisham M Nazer, Thanks for the invitation. Are you familiar with
Tarun Tapas Mukherjee's Rupkatha Journal https://www.rupkatha.com
If you think you have a finished piece, you might consider submitting it to him or elsewhere. Best.
Tarun Tapas Mukherjee's Rupkatha Journal https://www.rupkatha.com
If you think you have a finished piece, you might consider submitting it to him or elsewhere. Best.
September 15, 2010 at 3:15 am
The non-center is "thought" or"discourse." The center has not been lost because it never really existed; it was only a fallacious structuring principle. At last, mankind has passed beyond the dream of "full presence."
September 14, 2010 at 6:04 am
2 people like this
unto what. . .neo-hedonism or neo-existentialism?
September 14, 2010 at 8:16 am
Yes, more of the same... more hedonism, regurgitated existentialism... Nihilism... Western civilization's favorite brew...
September 14, 2010 at 8:20 am
This is apparent in the work of Jacques Derrida, who asserts that an unparalleled "event" or "rupture" has occurred--specifically, the loss of the center. More tellingly, he says, "This affirmation then determines the non-center otherwise than as a loss of the center."
September 14, 2010 at 5:44 am
As for example a mad tea party?
September 14, 2010 at 5:48 am
Derrida is an insightful critic. The trouble we get into, I think, is seeing his system as a final or absolute word and not seeing it merely as one more contribution to the ongoing endeavor of literary criticism.
September 14, 2010 at 5:54 am
@Jim Pangborn, Tea spiked with a particularly virulently blend of nihilism...
@David Wayne Landrum, I think you're right, that, in a sense, for many in the academy, Derrida is a cult figure, a priest of the high-rites of nihilism... devoted to the destruction of the literary and philosophical traditions of transcendence, any form of transcendence.
@David Wayne Landrum, I think you're right, that, in a sense, for many in the academy, Derrida is a cult figure, a priest of the high-rites of nihilism... devoted to the destruction of the literary and philosophical traditions of transcendence, any form of transcendence.
September 14, 2010 at 6:01 am
I have a deep fondness for Derrida, but I don't find his brand of perspectivism (he's quite Nietzschean, seems to me) very useful in my work.
September 14, 2010 at 6:20 am
Take away Nietzsche and what's left of Derrida? Not much. Borrowed goods, borrowed negation, Nada... "Knee-jerk nihilism," as Saul Bellow once phrased it, erroneously titled "literary criticism."
September 14, 2010 at 6:31 am
He's full of nostalgia for the thing he thinks he is overcoming.
September 14, 2010 at 8:42 am
In the quotation above, Derrida claims "the non-center otherwise than as a loss of the center." That is arguably his one original insight in which he tried to move beyond Nietzsche, taking nihilism for granted, presupposed. As long as one stays in a little academic box, cloistered with other devotees, initiates, it can seem to be true... for a while.
September 14, 2010 at 10:30 am
Jacques Derrida, "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences":
"the determination of Being as presence in all senses of this word. It would be possible to show that all the names related to fundamentals,
to principles, or to the center have always designated the constant of a presence---eidos, arche’, telos, energeia, ousia (essence, existence, substance, subject) aletheia, transcendentality, consciousness, or conscience, God, man, and so forth."
"the determination of Being as presence in all senses of this word. It would be possible to show that all the names related to fundamentals,
to principles, or to the center have always designated the constant of a presence---eidos, arche’, telos, energeia, ousia (essence, existence, substance, subject) aletheia, transcendentality, consciousness, or conscience, God, man, and so forth."
September 14, 2010 at 10:39 am
He argues that these centers are constructed and linguistically unstable. I think Derrida's ideas are much more informed by linguistics of Saussure than by the ideas of Nietzsche.
September 14, 2010 at 11:09 am
Derrida's triumphalist myth is just as "constructed and unstable" in its own way, calculated to substantiate his own philosophical tenets. Yes, there's a longer pedigree, Husserl, Hegel, Foucault, Heidegger, Rousseau, et. al, and, yes, Saussure... but I wouldn't drop Nietzsche out of it, his ideas are very much at the core of what Derrida is about, the commanding myth overarching his work, as evidenced in the often-quoted passages above.
September 14, 2010 at 11:40 am
To the extent that one's thinking is informed by Saussure, it is flat and stale--unnecessarily and unrealistically binary. Nietzsche seems to me the origin of what's most attractive (for me) in Derrida: his restlessness, moving creatively from decenter to decenter to decenter, apparently unruffled by the seeming sameness of all those différances.
September 14, 2010 at 1:27 pm
Derrida is so canned and old hat... I really can't take anything he says, or said, seriously any more. I reached long ago, actually, the plane on which Nietzsche's Zarathustra said of Christianity that the only appropriate response was to laugh, scorn the dead thing.
I recognized back in 1980 when I first read Derrida that I was reading the words of a sophist, one who had nothing significant to say to humanity... Given the extent to which culture has declined and changed since then, he only appears all the more hollow...
Real philosophers, the greatest, those worthy of the name, speak in positive terms to the broad culture. Nietzsche and Derrida represent a decadent breed...
I recognized back in 1980 when I first read Derrida that I was reading the words of a sophist, one who had nothing significant to say to humanity... Given the extent to which culture has declined and changed since then, he only appears all the more hollow...
Real philosophers, the greatest, those worthy of the name, speak in positive terms to the broad culture. Nietzsche and Derrida represent a decadent breed...
September 14, 2010 at 2:00 pm
I don't mean to credit them with much except instructive failures--Nietzsche's the more instructive by far.
September 14, 2010 at 5:07 pm
I still maintain that Derrida is a brilliant critic. Like most brilliant critics, lesser lights have taken his theories and run with them. What passes for deconstruction is often very un-Derridian. Those who actually read Derrida will find his ideas much more "tame" than many people think. I taught at an ultra-conservative evangelical college once and Derrida was reviled as the man who wanted to destroy all truth. When I actually read his works I had to laugh and say, *This* is the man who would destroy all truth? His system recognizes the ambiguities of language and the natural tendency of speech (la a Saussure) to decenter itself. I think, in many areas of though, he is exactly right.
September 14, 2010 at 5:38 pm
@Jim Pangborn, Nietzsche has a true literary sensibility, unlike Derrida.
@David Wayne Landrum, Derrida was entirely an academician, never wrote anything with the imaginative, poetic force of Thus Spake Zarathustra... For instance, Of Grammatology is one of the dullest books ever written. He *was* a man who imagined he destroyed all truth... and flaunted himself as such in his writings, as when he reversed the Socrates and Plato, making Socrates the scribe... shallow, witty, little games like that, "play," no real intellectual substance...
To repudiate such sophistry and banality is not tantamount to fundamentalism, but to defend what is worthy of respect in the philosophical and cultural tradition, by which he himself deserves to be judged, and is, has been, and always will be found wanting...
The further literature and culture, the university, especially English departments, move away from his influence, the better...
@David Wayne Landrum, Derrida was entirely an academician, never wrote anything with the imaginative, poetic force of Thus Spake Zarathustra... For instance, Of Grammatology is one of the dullest books ever written. He *was* a man who imagined he destroyed all truth... and flaunted himself as such in his writings, as when he reversed the Socrates and Plato, making Socrates the scribe... shallow, witty, little games like that, "play," no real intellectual substance...
To repudiate such sophistry and banality is not tantamount to fundamentalism, but to defend what is worthy of respect in the philosophical and cultural tradition, by which he himself deserves to be judged, and is, has been, and always will be found wanting...
The further literature and culture, the university, especially English departments, move away from his influence, the better...
September 14, 2010 at 6:23 pm
Well, Socrates was a bit that way (at least I think so). As far as literature departments getting away from Deridda, yes, of course they will. Literary superstars rise and fade quickly. But Derrida has left a permanent mark on literary criticism, and his ideas will always be there to reckon with. I do want to add, by the way, that I was not calling you a fundamentalist or equating your opinion with fundamentalism in that remark I made. I was simply reciting an anecdote.
September 14, 2010 at 6:31 pm
I read Derrida for his musicality of repetition with subtle change of nuance, in which he is quite close to Gertrude Stein. He was also careful, like Nietzsche, not to make one sentence strike a bum note against another. When you say "I really can't take anything he says, or said, seriously any more", it sounds as if you have read the work and contemplated taking it seriously for a moment, or it is empty rhetoric, a nice polite phrase that implies good manners but is not evidence. When you say a line later "I recognized back in 1980 when I first read Derrida that I was reading the words of a sophist", it is said with an implication that, at first reading, you were not taking him seriously. Or perhaps you can indicate otherwise?
September 14, 2010 at 10:18 pm
When Derrida takes on somebody he wants to criticize, he usually finds something positive to say about them too. Even when his work was translated against his will, he included in his essay a remark that journalism tends to leave no gaps, no lacunae, no admission that the journalist doesn't see the whole picture. A simple point, said by others, but it came to me via Derrida first. Derrida's very treatment of words indicates they are not fully his, something perhaps, Frederick, you could benefit from. Look at them looking back at you, and see what they say, not what you will them to say. Wordsworth had misgivings about Blake's madness, but did concede that the work was better than the tame poetasters around him
September 14, 2010 at 10:21 pm
"His ideas will always there to be reckoned with": highly doubtful, given English literary history, especially truly literary people, not academicians; in France, yes, quite possible...
Derrida can perhaps only be taken seriously to the extent one lives isolated in an academic bubble or classroom, from the fullness of human experience. I took him quite seriously for what he was saying--that's why I realized he was a dangerous, corrupting sophist and academician, whose work at a philosophical level was in complete contradiction to the entire humanistic English literary tradition.
The most mindless fundamentalism aside, I respect Christians who criticize Derrida and Deconstruction for their dehumanizing nihilism. As Milosz, Julien Benda, and others have observed, nihilism isn't a plaything, scholars and writers can't fool around with it without consequences, it doesn't *stay* a closeted, personal indulgence in despair and hopelessness. People act on it. As they acted on Nietzsche's... If Nietzsche's brutal glorification of power and meaninglessness, as Benda and Thomas Mann put it, helped to prepared the way for WWI and WWII, leading to the destruction of tens of millions of people, the convulsions Derrida and Deconstruction have made possible, laid partly the groundwork for, may very well prove to be in the hundreds of millions... and even more global.
Derrida can perhaps only be taken seriously to the extent one lives isolated in an academic bubble or classroom, from the fullness of human experience. I took him quite seriously for what he was saying--that's why I realized he was a dangerous, corrupting sophist and academician, whose work at a philosophical level was in complete contradiction to the entire humanistic English literary tradition.
The most mindless fundamentalism aside, I respect Christians who criticize Derrida and Deconstruction for their dehumanizing nihilism. As Milosz, Julien Benda, and others have observed, nihilism isn't a plaything, scholars and writers can't fool around with it without consequences, it doesn't *stay* a closeted, personal indulgence in despair and hopelessness. People act on it. As they acted on Nietzsche's... If Nietzsche's brutal glorification of power and meaninglessness, as Benda and Thomas Mann put it, helped to prepared the way for WWI and WWII, leading to the destruction of tens of millions of people, the convulsions Derrida and Deconstruction have made possible, laid partly the groundwork for, may very well prove to be in the hundreds of millions... and even more global.
September 15, 2010 at 2:52 am
or... Derrida was not to blame, but responding. And in my opinion, and several Christians who like Derrida too, he wasn't nihilist
September 15, 2010 at 4:09 am
the critic David Trotter's book Making the Reader talks about how refusing the position of the lyric subject as a feelingful nice guy can produce some fascinating work. He looks at Hughes' Crow, Geoffrey Hill's Mercian Hymns, and Prynne's Brass as this kind of anti-pathos, becoming at one for a book with the violence of the 20th century. There is also the question of sin: if writing that reflects sin is more sinful than other writing. The rage of Caliban etc
September 15, 2010 at 4:28 am
Derrida upped the ante. He's to blame for his choosing to do that. I'd agree that he was partly responding to the increasing nihilism of modernity, broadly, but failed to seek a way forward out of it. I respect him for at least helping thoughtful people realize how serious the situation was, is... He's merely a critic, an academic annotator, not a writer--the continuing confusion of the two does not and has not served the best interests of culture, however one wants to define it.
Deconstruction has dug the hole deeper, burying and obscuring what is of value in the Greek and Roman, entire Western past... Far be it from me to deprive those who find something of value in him. Beyond the qualification of clearing the ground, demonstrating how serious the issues have become, I find Nothing in his work...
Deconstruction has dug the hole deeper, burying and obscuring what is of value in the Greek and Roman, entire Western past... Far be it from me to deprive those who find something of value in him. Beyond the qualification of clearing the ground, demonstrating how serious the issues have become, I find Nothing in his work...
September 15, 2010 at 4:40 am
at least he's merely something: for me a very good writer indeed
September 15, 2010 at 5:02 am
I respect your conscience.
September 15, 2010 at 5:18 am
thanks
September 15, 2010 at 5:29 am
I'd like to think that in better words I say about all I really have to say about Deconstruction in my poem "Derrida in Doubt," in my book Into the Ruins: Poems
https://www.fglaysher.com/into_the_ruins.html
https://www.fglaysher.com/into_the_ruins.html
September 15, 2010 at 7:48 am
The most characteristic feature of our age is anomie. Whether one looks in the domain of society or of the individual, the lack of a normative standard is abundantly manifest.
September 14, 2010 at 3:08 am
I'm currently reading Chinua Achebe's Arrow of God. As in Things Fall Apart and his other novels, he has a heightened sense of what happens when a culture falls into anomie, the loss of commonly agreed on and shared values, a vision of life. Broadly speaking, modernity, East or West, by definition, constitutes the most highly distilled essence of anomie...
September 14, 2010 at 7:48 am
And yet facebook, twitter, youtube, myspace, etc. thrive. Hmmmm ...
September 14, 2010 at 9:21 am
"How shall the mind keep warm / save at spectral / fires-- / how thrive but by the light / of paradox?" --Robert Hayden
September 14, 2010 at 10:36 am
Perseus (Cellini)
"Winged sandals strapped to my feet,
I stand in the piazza of Florence..."
https://www.mediterranean.nu/?p=1771
September 14, 2010 at 2:35 am
"Winged sandals strapped to my feet,
I stand in the piazza of Florence..."
https://www.mediterranean.nu/?p=1771
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mediterranean.nu » Frederick Glaysher (new contribution) |
"Winged sandals strapped to my feet,
I stand in the piazza of Florence..."
September 14, 2010 at 2:35 am
Perseus (Cellini)
"Winged sandals strapped to my feet,I stand in the piazza of Florence..."
https://www.mediterranean.nu/?p=1771
September 13, 2010 at 10:43 am
"Winged sandals strapped to my feet,I stand in the piazza of Florence..."
https://www.mediterranean.nu/?p=1771
|
|
mediterranean.nu » Frederick Glaysher (new contribution) |
"Winged sandals strapped to my feet, I stand in the piazza of Florence..."
September 13, 2010 at 10:43 am
1 person likes this
"Tolstoy’s daughter Alexandra wrote in 1968, in The Real Tolstoy, that “Troyat . . . shows no respect for Tolstoy’s inner life. He speaks about it in vulgar, cynical expressions…. I fear that the errors in Troyat’s book will be repeated in other works.”
September 12, 2010 at 8:16 am
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Tolstoy and the Last Station of Modernity |
Tolstoy arrived at the last station of modernity, universality, long before he arrived at the station of Astapovo, long before the rest of humanity began to catch up. Though we may still first blow...
September 12, 2010 at 8:16 am
LXXII "The deniers and contradictors hold to four words:
First: Destroying men’s lives.
Second: Burning the books.
Third : Shunning other nations.
Fourth: Exterminating other nations.
Now, by the Grace and Authority of the Word of God, these four great barriers have been demolished. These four manifest decrees have been effaced from the Book, and God hath changed brutal manners into spiritual qualities." --Baha'u'llah
FROM The Universal Principles of the Reform Bahai Faith. Baha'u'llah & Abdul-Baha. Edited by Frederick Glaysher. 148 pages. page 43.
https://books.fglaysher.com/Universal-Principles-of-the-Reform-Bahai-Faith-9780982677803.htm
September 5, 2010 at 9:03 am
First: Destroying men’s lives.
Second: Burning the books.
Third : Shunning other nations.
Fourth: Exterminating other nations.
Now, by the Grace and Authority of the Word of God, these four great barriers have been demolished. These four manifest decrees have been effaced from the Book, and God hath changed brutal manners into spiritual qualities." --Baha'u'llah
FROM The Universal Principles of the Reform Bahai Faith. Baha'u'llah & Abdul-Baha. Edited by Frederick Glaysher. 148 pages. page 43.
https://books.fglaysher.com/Universal-Principles-of-the-Reform-Bahai-Faith-9780982677803.htm
|
Universal Principles of the Reform Bahai Faith |
A collection of many of the early writings of Baha'u'llah and Abdul-Baha, published in the West, seeking to restore and preserve their vision of the oneness of God, humanity, and all religions.
September 5, 2010 at 9:03 am
1 person likes this
"Oh ye people of the world! The virtue of this Most Great Manifestation is that We have removed from the Book whatever was the cause of difference, corruption and discord, and recorded therein that which leads to unity, harmony and agreement. " Baha'u'llah
September 5, 2010 at 6:17 am
1 person likes this
Quotation from The Universal Principles of the Reform Bahai Faith. Baha'u'llah & Abdul-Baha. Edited by Frederick Glaysher. 148 pages. page 52.
https://books.fglaysher.com/Universal-Principles-of-the-Reform-Bahai-Faith-9780982677803.htm
https://books.fglaysher.com/Universal-Principles-of-the-Reform-Bahai-Faith-9780982677803.htm
September 5, 2010 at 9:00 am
"Of course, it is fair to ask the organizers of the mosque to show some special sensitivity to the situation – and in fact, their plan envisions reaching beyond their walls and building an interfaith community." August 3, 2010
https://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703545604575407673221908474.html
September 4, 2010 at 5:34 am
https://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703545604575407673221908474.html
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NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Ground Zero Mosque Vote - WSJ.com |
Here is the full text of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's speech following a vote that clears most major hurdles for the construction of a planned mosque and Islamic center near Ground Zero.
September 4, 2010 at 5:34 am
1 person likes this
"The poll found considerable distrust of Muslim-Americans and robust disapproval of the mosque proposal."
I'm not necessarily against the community center and mosque being built. But after having just read Feisal Abdul Rauf's book What's Right With Islam, I think it is fair to ask him for an explanation of page 48--whether people who DON'T say the shahadah have a right to the protection of their "life and property," whether they may be "harmed by the Muslim community." The ambiguity of the way he handles the shahadah in his book ought to lead to some questions by thoughtful people, if not alarm.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/03/opinion/03fri1.html?hpw
September 3, 2010 at 8:47 am
I'm not necessarily against the community center and mosque being built. But after having just read Feisal Abdul Rauf's book What's Right With Islam, I think it is fair to ask him for an explanation of page 48--whether people who DON'T say the shahadah have a right to the protection of their "life and property," whether they may be "harmed by the Muslim community." The ambiguity of the way he handles the shahadah in his book ought to lead to some questions by thoughtful people, if not alarm.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/03/opinion/03fri1.html?hpw
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|
Mistrust and the Mosque |
A poll has found that even New York City sadly harbors a robust disapproval of the proposal to build a mosque near ground zero.
September 3, 2010 at 8:47 am
I'm not suggesting the decision should be made on the basis of a poll, which are notorious for manipulation. The issue is too serious to be trivialized to the level of a poll.
After describing the Shahahad, "There is no god but God, and Muhammad is His messenger," he writes, "The Prophet emphatically stated that any human being who says this must have his or her life and property protected and may not be harmed by the Muslim community" (48).
He states this, then breezes on, leaving this reader wondering what about those who DON'T say it. Are they NOT protected, fair game for any fanatic? Is that just fine with Feisal Abdul Rauf? That possibly key statement raises the prospect that he is actually using what's called taqqiya, dissimulation, essentially lying and deceiving the infidels. If so, and Islamic history is rife with the practice, it is not one that our representatives should fail to take seriously.
An enlightening article in this regard is by Raymond Ibrahim. "How Taqiyya Alters Islam's Rules of War: Defeating Jihadist Terrorism". Middle East Forum. Winter 2010. Having read a number of articles on taqqiya over the years, I highly recommend Raymond Ibrahim's piece.
https://www.meforum.org/2538/taqiyya-islam-rules-of-war
After describing the Shahahad, "There is no god but God, and Muhammad is His messenger," he writes, "The Prophet emphatically stated that any human being who says this must have his or her life and property protected and may not be harmed by the Muslim community" (48).
He states this, then breezes on, leaving this reader wondering what about those who DON'T say it. Are they NOT protected, fair game for any fanatic? Is that just fine with Feisal Abdul Rauf? That possibly key statement raises the prospect that he is actually using what's called taqqiya, dissimulation, essentially lying and deceiving the infidels. If so, and Islamic history is rife with the practice, it is not one that our representatives should fail to take seriously.
An enlightening article in this regard is by Raymond Ibrahim. "How Taqiyya Alters Islam's Rules of War: Defeating Jihadist Terrorism". Middle East Forum. Winter 2010. Having read a number of articles on taqqiya over the years, I highly recommend Raymond Ibrahim's piece.
https://www.meforum.org/2538/taqiyya-islam-rules-of-war
September 3, 2010 at 8:57 am
god preserve us from god's chosen people.
September 3, 2010 at 8:13 pm
I couldn't agree more. Thinking one has the exclusive truth of all of human history, whether religious or secular, as with Lenin and Hitler, et al., is the surest path to Hell on Earth. To my mind, the only counterbalance is the largely representative, democratic alternative, messy and complicated in its own way, of universal space for all points of view, even fanatics, who seldom fail to reveal the perniciousness of their thinking...
September 4, 2010 at 4:13 am
There's an April 26, 2005 paperback edition of Feisal Abdul Rauf's book What's Right with Islam: A New Vision for Muslims and the West. HarperOne. I wonder if any one following this conversation might have a copy of it? I've read the the 2004 hardback edition. It would be interesting to know if Adbul Rauf change the passage that concerns me on page 48 in any way, toned it down or deleted it.
https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Right-Islam-Vision-Muslims/dp/0060750626/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1283603540&sr=8-1
https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Right-Islam-Vision-Muslims/dp/0060750626/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1283603540&sr=8-1
September 4, 2010 at 4:38 am
It occurred to me that I could check the passage through Google Books, the 2008 edition of Rauf's book. It contains the same statement on page 48... Anyone interested can verify it at the following link, then go to page 48: https://books.google.com/books?id=RgFQ06W5UrkC&pg=PR11&lpg=PR11&dq=rauf+and+#v=onepage&q&f=false
September 6, 2010 at 7:50 am
It appears my unease with page 48 and its possible implications, undermining the entire book, may have been for more extensive reasons than I had realized:
"What's Right with Islam was originally published in 2004 in Malaysia, under a different title: A Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble: Islamic Dawa in the Heart of America Post-9/11. What's Right with Islam was a “special, non-commercial edition” of the book and was produced after the original, with Feisal’s cooperation, by the Islamic Society of North America and the International Institute of Islamic Thought. Both of those organizations are American tentacles of the Muslim Brotherhood. McCarthy explains the meaning of the term dawa, from the book's title:
"Dawa, whether done from the rubble of the World Trade Center or elsewhere, is the missionary work by which Islam is spread.... [D]awa is proselytism... "The purpose of dawa, like the purpose of jihad, is to implement, spread, and defend sharia." " Sources:
https://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2462
JULY 24, 2010 4:00 A.M.
Rauf’s Dawa from the World Trade Center Rubble
https://www.nationalreview.com/articles/243536/raufs-dawa-world-trade-center-rubble-andrew-c-mccarthy
"What's Right with Islam was originally published in 2004 in Malaysia, under a different title: A Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble: Islamic Dawa in the Heart of America Post-9/11. What's Right with Islam was a “special, non-commercial edition” of the book and was produced after the original, with Feisal’s cooperation, by the Islamic Society of North America and the International Institute of Islamic Thought. Both of those organizations are American tentacles of the Muslim Brotherhood. McCarthy explains the meaning of the term dawa, from the book's title:
"Dawa, whether done from the rubble of the World Trade Center or elsewhere, is the missionary work by which Islam is spread.... [D]awa is proselytism... "The purpose of dawa, like the purpose of jihad, is to implement, spread, and defend sharia." " Sources:
https://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2462
JULY 24, 2010 4:00 A.M.
Rauf’s Dawa from the World Trade Center Rubble
https://www.nationalreview.com/articles/243536/raufs-dawa-world-trade-center-rubble-andrew-c-mccarthy
September 6, 2010 at 8:14 am
After a long discussion of various details and history, he writes, "The ecumenical interfaith movement is utterly essential in this day and age. One of its most important objectives is to demonstrate to the public that religions, after all, are not the root causes of conflict." Feisal Abdul Rauf, p. 276.
September 3, 2010 at 6:19 am
I would add that ecumenical interfaith discussion and understanding can not be based on taqqiya and any ambiguous notions that kafirs or non-Muslims are fair game (see p. 48 cited below). The last dozen pages of Abdul Rauf's book hit all the liberal buttons, perhaps too comprehensively? Again, the many commentators on taqqiya come to mind, one of the best Raymond Ibrahim. "How Taqiyya Alters Islam's Rules of War: Defeating Jihadist Terrorism". Middle East Forum. Winter 2010. https://www.meforum.org/2538/taqiyya-islam-rules-of-war
By way of historical comparison, I would set taqqiya next to the Marxist dictum "The end justifies the means." Perhaps that might help more Americans understand the range of possible duplicities potentially involved, for some Muslims. Recalling the darkest range of Shakespeare... the Bible, and Greek tragedy might be of use.
Do Americans have the ability to meet the challenge of Islamic taqqiya? Does the West? Having apparently survived the challenge of the Marxist Kingdom of Freedom is no guarantee of success in the next spiritual battle, but I take it as a sign of hope. If we can go deeper into our own souls, our own spiritual sources of meaning, purpose, values, and tradition, there might be a chance, find there what is universal in the human being. Success is definitely not a foregone conclusion. Bombs and bullets won't be enough. And we can't succeed alone. The challenge is really wider than just to the USA. It is a challenge in the face of all modernity, East and West... which is why only a universal answer appears to be the Will of God.
By way of historical comparison, I would set taqqiya next to the Marxist dictum "The end justifies the means." Perhaps that might help more Americans understand the range of possible duplicities potentially involved, for some Muslims. Recalling the darkest range of Shakespeare... the Bible, and Greek tragedy might be of use.
Do Americans have the ability to meet the challenge of Islamic taqqiya? Does the West? Having apparently survived the challenge of the Marxist Kingdom of Freedom is no guarantee of success in the next spiritual battle, but I take it as a sign of hope. If we can go deeper into our own souls, our own spiritual sources of meaning, purpose, values, and tradition, there might be a chance, find there what is universal in the human being. Success is definitely not a foregone conclusion. Bombs and bullets won't be enough. And we can't succeed alone. The challenge is really wider than just to the USA. It is a challenge in the face of all modernity, East and West... which is why only a universal answer appears to be the Will of God.
September 3, 2010 at 6:36 am
"That the American ideals of good governance also emanate from the Abrahamic ethic as part of natural religion deeply embedded in the human heart, a natural religion grounded in reason, brings out how much the American ideal expresses the common ground of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam." Feisal Abdul Rauf, What's Right With Islam. 2004, p 88.
September 3, 2010 at 3:35 am
1 person likes this
"67 percent said that while Muslims had a right to construct the center near ground zero, they should find a different location."
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/03/nyregion/03poll.html?hp
September 2, 2010 at 1:01 pm
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/03/nyregion/03poll.html?hp
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New Yorkers Conflicted Over Islamic Center, Poll Finds |
The poll indicated that support for a center planned near ground zero is tepid in its home town.
September 2, 2010 at 1:01 pm
Can't really argue with that.
September 2, 2010 at 1:04 pm
However, upholding the principle of bedrock religious freedom trumps everything else. I agree with NYC Mayor Bloomberg that it is essential we do this. As the poet once said, we must listen to the better angels of our nature, and demonstrate to the whole wide world that we mean it when we say that you are free to practice your religion, period; our spiritual health is at stake, and scapegoating Muslims is not generous.
Besides, from what I've heard of the neighborhood around Ground Zero, it could use a house of worship--as well as a basketball court, and whatever else goes in a community center.
Besides, from what I've heard of the neighborhood around Ground Zero, it could use a house of worship--as well as a basketball court, and whatever else goes in a community center.
September 2, 2010 at 4:23 pm
I feel much the way you do. Religious freedom should be preserved. I've read Feisal Abdul Rauf's book What's Right with Islam. Almost the entire book is broadly liberal and appreciative of American culture and values, including religious freedom. There is, however, one highly significant passage that I find quite disturbing, understanding Islamic thinking at a very deep level:
"There is no god but God, and Muhammad is His messenger." "The Prophet emphatically stated that any human being who says this must have his or her life and property protected and may not be harmed by the Muslim community" (48).
He states this, then breezes on, leaving this reader wondering what about those who DON'T say it. Are they NOT protected, fair game for any fanatic? Is that just fine with Feisal Abdul Rauf? That possibly key statement raises the prospect that he is actually using what's called taqqiya, dissimulation, essentially lying and deceiving the infidels. If so, and Islamic history is rife with the practice, it is not one that our representatives should fail to take seriously.
An enlightening article in this regard is by Raymond Ibrahim. "How Taqiyya Alters Islam's Rules of War: Defeating Jihadist Terrorism". Middle East Forum. Winter 2010. Having read a number of articles on taqqiya over the years, I've highly recommend Raymon Ibrahim's piece.
https://www.meforum.org/2538/taqiyya-islam-rules-of-war
It may very well be that the history of religious freedom in the USA has never met such a challenge.
"There is no god but God, and Muhammad is His messenger." "The Prophet emphatically stated that any human being who says this must have his or her life and property protected and may not be harmed by the Muslim community" (48).
He states this, then breezes on, leaving this reader wondering what about those who DON'T say it. Are they NOT protected, fair game for any fanatic? Is that just fine with Feisal Abdul Rauf? That possibly key statement raises the prospect that he is actually using what's called taqqiya, dissimulation, essentially lying and deceiving the infidels. If so, and Islamic history is rife with the practice, it is not one that our representatives should fail to take seriously.
An enlightening article in this regard is by Raymond Ibrahim. "How Taqiyya Alters Islam's Rules of War: Defeating Jihadist Terrorism". Middle East Forum. Winter 2010. Having read a number of articles on taqqiya over the years, I've highly recommend Raymon Ibrahim's piece.
https://www.meforum.org/2538/taqiyya-islam-rules-of-war
It may very well be that the history of religious freedom in the USA has never met such a challenge.
September 2, 2010 at 4:45 pm
OF COURSE but don't you understand that they want it ON PURPOSE there'
September 2, 2010 at 4:52 pm
I'm all for religious freedom bedrock and everything, but I kind of feel for the New Yorkers who are still grieving. As the peerless David Boies said, just because something's legal doesn't mean it's right.
September 2, 2010 at 5:20 pm
dear Americans that mosque will be the symbol of their victory upon you. can't you see that' they are mocking you
September 2, 2010 at 5:23 pm
There's much more at stake than being mocked by terrorists. That happens all the time. Consider the source, as the saying goes. A wit might say, "And besides, They'd sink $800 million in the place! We can get rid of them later, and keep the building!"
I do feel for the people who are aggrieved by it all. If Abdul Rauf is practicing taqqiya, there are other ways to deal with him. I don't believe the only option is sacrificing religious freedom, nor am I sure it's either/or, that preventing it from going forward would have to be on the basis of denying religious freedom. There are other profound issues involved.
Incidentally, I recommend Middle East Quarterly in general for its frequently insight articles: https://www.meforum.org/
I do feel for the people who are aggrieved by it all. If Abdul Rauf is practicing taqqiya, there are other ways to deal with him. I don't believe the only option is sacrificing religious freedom, nor am I sure it's either/or, that preventing it from going forward would have to be on the basis of denying religious freedom. There are other profound issues involved.
Incidentally, I recommend Middle East Quarterly in general for its frequently insight articles: https://www.meforum.org/
September 2, 2010 at 6:13 pm
I'm very uneasy with the idea of this being seen as a symbol of victory, or the events of 9-11 being seen as an all-encompassing Muslim act. Muslims died in the 9-11 atrocity as well. The mosque? I think it's being used by people on the extremes of both sides of the argument to stir up trouble and hatred. There should be a church, a mosque, a mandir, a synagogue, a buddhist shrine close to the site, to show that the great religions of the world reject absolutely what happened there, especially as it was done in the name of God (but then I'm an atheist, so what do I know?)
September 3, 2010 at 6:11 am
@Danuta Reah, Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I share your uneasiness of turning the situation into a symbol of sorts, yet that's what it appears to have become, perhaps inescapably. There is, unfortunately, a lot of uncomprehending bigotry coming out on all sides, Muslim too. For instance, Hamas has jumped on the band wagon, not an encouraging sign. To my mind, most indications suggest that Abdul Rauf might very well be a sincere person.
Muslims of the extremist bent regard many, if not most, Muslims in the West as kafirs, infidels. So killing them isn't anything they'd hesitate over and doesn't prove anything but how complex the motivating ideology is. The "true" Muslims who accidentally died in 9/11 become martyrs, so Allah will know his own. No spilt milk there. The extremist simply don't share the ecumenical vision and have nothing but worse than contempt for secularists and atheists of all persuasions.
I'm not necessarily against the community center and mosque being built. But after reading Feisal Abdul Rauf's book, I think it would be fair to ask him for an explanation of page 48--whether people who DON'T say the shahadah have a right to the protection of their "life and property," whether they may be "harmed by the Muslim community."
The ambiguity of the way he handles the shahadah in his book ought to lead to some questions by thoughtful people, if not alarm.
Muslims of the extremist bent regard many, if not most, Muslims in the West as kafirs, infidels. So killing them isn't anything they'd hesitate over and doesn't prove anything but how complex the motivating ideology is. The "true" Muslims who accidentally died in 9/11 become martyrs, so Allah will know his own. No spilt milk there. The extremist simply don't share the ecumenical vision and have nothing but worse than contempt for secularists and atheists of all persuasions.
I'm not necessarily against the community center and mosque being built. But after reading Feisal Abdul Rauf's book, I think it would be fair to ask him for an explanation of page 48--whether people who DON'T say the shahadah have a right to the protection of their "life and property," whether they may be "harmed by the Muslim community."
The ambiguity of the way he handles the shahadah in his book ought to lead to some questions by thoughtful people, if not alarm.
September 3, 2010 at 6:54 am
That's a fair point. Has he ever been challenged on this?
September 3, 2010 at 6:56 am
Not that I know of.
September 3, 2010 at 7:05 am
Through Google Books, I checked the 2008 edition of Rauf's book. It contains the same statement on page 48... Anyone interested can verify it at the following link, then go to page 48: https://books.google.com/books?id=RgFQ06W5UrkC&pg=PR11&lpg=PR11&dq=rauf+and+#v=onepage&q&f=false
September 6, 2010 at 7:49 am
"Many American Muslims regard America as a better 'Muslim' country than their native homelands. This may sound surprising if not absurd to many Americans, and Muslims outside America, but it found on the argument that the American Constitution and system of governance uphold the core principles of Islamic law." Feisal Abdul Rauf, What's Right With Islam. 2004, p 86.
September 2, 2010 at 5:39 am
3 people like this
Have you read Danusha Goska's piece on Islam? Here's a piece:
It is hard not to conclude that the Islamic repression of questioning and difference, the Islamic insistence on the bonding of church and state, a bond created and maintained by violence, Islamic emphasis on male honor, won through martial conquest, and the profound othering of women in Islam have conspired to produce the prototypical Islamic political system today: one of oppression. There are few to no stable democracies in the Muslim world. Political power is wielded oppressively. The press in many Muslim countries indulges in paranoid fantasies about Jews and Americans; the Holocaust is regularly denied; the September 11 terror attacks are attributed to Israeli agents or the CIA. At the same time, according to Iraqi dissident and author Kanan Makiya, any self-criticism is taboo.
The entire article is online: https://www.answering-islam.org/Terrorism/islam_terror.html
It is hard not to conclude that the Islamic repression of questioning and difference, the Islamic insistence on the bonding of church and state, a bond created and maintained by violence, Islamic emphasis on male honor, won through martial conquest, and the profound othering of women in Islam have conspired to produce the prototypical Islamic political system today: one of oppression. There are few to no stable democracies in the Muslim world. Political power is wielded oppressively. The press in many Muslim countries indulges in paranoid fantasies about Jews and Americans; the Holocaust is regularly denied; the September 11 terror attacks are attributed to Israeli agents or the CIA. At the same time, according to Iraqi dissident and author Kanan Makiya, any self-criticism is taboo.
The entire article is online: https://www.answering-islam.org/Terrorism/islam_terror.html
September 2, 2010 at 9:56 am
Thank you for recommending the I'll read it.
I neither blind to nor ignorant of the history and doctrines of Islam you mention and a fast glance at Goska's article picks up. I've read many such pieces. There is not only one Islam. There are many. I believe essentializing them all into the taliban is mistake. Feisal Abdul Rauf himself demonstrates he many be one of various voices within Islam seeking a productive interpretation of Islam.
I'm not obtuse to Abdul Rauf's own tendentious ambiguity and mention it below, under August 29, citing Raymond Ibrahim, "How Taqiyya Alters Islam's Rules of War: Defeating Jihadist Terrorism". Middle East Forum. Winter 2010. For similar reasons, I highly recommend Raymond Ibrahim's piece. https://www.meforum.org/2538/taqiyya-islam-rules-of-war
So I think that, while striving to understand someone like Abdul Rauf, it's necessary to be open to the possibility that we might be surprised, both ways...
I neither blind to nor ignorant of the history and doctrines of Islam you mention and a fast glance at Goska's article picks up. I've read many such pieces. There is not only one Islam. There are many. I believe essentializing them all into the taliban is mistake. Feisal Abdul Rauf himself demonstrates he many be one of various voices within Islam seeking a productive interpretation of Islam.
I'm not obtuse to Abdul Rauf's own tendentious ambiguity and mention it below, under August 29, citing Raymond Ibrahim, "How Taqiyya Alters Islam's Rules of War: Defeating Jihadist Terrorism". Middle East Forum. Winter 2010. For similar reasons, I highly recommend Raymond Ibrahim's piece. https://www.meforum.org/2538/taqiyya-islam-rules-of-war
So I think that, while striving to understand someone like Abdul Rauf, it's necessary to be open to the possibility that we might be surprised, both ways...
September 2, 2010 at 10:23 am
Symptomatic of the current era to slip so readily from "Islam" to Muslim states and state power. This is an easy way to set aside complex histories, including that of western democracies.
September 2, 2010 at 10:41 am
Fred, thanks for the recommendation. And for the comment about surprise. If anything teaches us anything it's that the world is world of surprises.
September 2, 2010 at 11:20 am
@Sharon Kinoshita, Lumping the vastly different cultures, histories, and interpretations into one abstraction called "Islam" often only confuses the issue, whatever issue it is. Like anything else in life, there are always exceptions. Many Muslims are reluctant to come out in public on one thing or another, so the variety of opinion that exists can be difficult to hear, especially for policy wonks who want to dash off an article and gain notoriety, or whatever.
John, I agree life is a merciless, relentless teacher... I am one who has learnt the meaning of taqqiya on a deeply personal level, not a foreign abstraction for me... which is why I was sensitive to the slightest nuance of Abdul Rauf's in that direction and have brought it to the attention of my friends here... While I doubt either of us has any difficulty in believing evil exists, is it possible we can agree that good is a human capacity?
There are Sufis and other Muslims who hold taqqiya and other such doctrines and duplicities are less than suitable to the times. Fairness to human complexity necessitates that we not forget it, lest we, the West, oversimplify and dehumanize Muslims, commit atrocities ourselves as a result. I believe we human beings have the ingenuity to find ways to resolve these dilemmas, at least enough, overall, to move forward together into a new stage of civilization, not utopia...
John, I agree life is a merciless, relentless teacher... I am one who has learnt the meaning of taqqiya on a deeply personal level, not a foreign abstraction for me... which is why I was sensitive to the slightest nuance of Abdul Rauf's in that direction and have brought it to the attention of my friends here... While I doubt either of us has any difficulty in believing evil exists, is it possible we can agree that good is a human capacity?
There are Sufis and other Muslims who hold taqqiya and other such doctrines and duplicities are less than suitable to the times. Fairness to human complexity necessitates that we not forget it, lest we, the West, oversimplify and dehumanize Muslims, commit atrocities ourselves as a result. I believe we human beings have the ingenuity to find ways to resolve these dilemmas, at least enough, overall, to move forward together into a new stage of civilization, not utopia...
September 2, 2010 at 11:47 am
Fred, thanks for the note. Yes, evil does exist and so does good. And good can come from evil, and be a response to it. My dad spent more than four years in a concentration camp in Germany. It taught him just about all he needed to know about evil, but it also taught him that he had a responsibility to help people, try to lift them up even if lifting wouldn't save them.
I wrote a poem about it that's online. It's called What My Father Believed.
https://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2007/12/28
I wrote a poem about it that's online. It's called What My Father Believed.
https://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2007/12/28
September 2, 2010 at 12:58 pm
Thanks. The old Dutch adage comes to mind, "Many hands make work light." We need as many hands around the entire globe as possible on this one...
Islamic terrorism can't be remedied by the West alone. All our bombs and bullets are only making it worse, playing right into the hands of the terrorists. While it's not a religious war, it is a spiritual battle. We need to go into our own hearts and souls and understand what's wrong with ourselves. That is the real challenge, the one we're avoiding and fleeing, the only one that truly can answer the perniciousness of terrorism and renew civilization.
It's not easy lifting that cross up, because, you're right, it's always falling down, always testing us. Are we humane enough to try, spiritual enough to sacrifice ourselves for others?
Islamic terrorism can't be remedied by the West alone. All our bombs and bullets are only making it worse, playing right into the hands of the terrorists. While it's not a religious war, it is a spiritual battle. We need to go into our own hearts and souls and understand what's wrong with ourselves. That is the real challenge, the one we're avoiding and fleeing, the only one that truly can answer the perniciousness of terrorism and renew civilization.
It's not easy lifting that cross up, because, you're right, it's always falling down, always testing us. Are we humane enough to try, spiritual enough to sacrifice ourselves for others?
September 2, 2010 at 1:18 pm
Alice, one of the books currently being sold in Israel is by a Rabbi that argues that the bible says you can kill the innocents if you feel they threaten you.
This way leads to mutual self-destruction. Here's a short piece about the book.
https://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/police-release-rabbi-arrested-for-inciting-to-kill-non-jews-1.304261
This way leads to mutual self-destruction. Here's a short piece about the book.
https://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/police-release-rabbi-arrested-for-inciting-to-kill-non-jews-1.304261
September 2, 2010 at 2:07 pm
Fred, helping other people takes a kind of rare strength. I don't think they teach it in the schools.
September 2, 2010 at 2:09 pm
War? It seems to be what Americans are good at:
I was born in 1948 in a refugee camp in what used to be Nazi Germany. My parents were there because they had been prisoners in a concentration camp. When we got to the US in 1951, the US was at war with North Korea. That war ended in 1953. Between that time and 1960 when the Vietnam War broke out, US marines fought in Lebanon and the Dominican Republic. Between the end of the Vietnam War (1975) and the beginning of the first Iraq war (1991), the US was involved in a lot of small wars in the Caribbean. The Iraq war ended, and we were involved in the Bosnian war from 1995-1999. Since Sept 11, 2001, we’ve been pretty much at war, against terrorism around the world, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I’m not much good with math (I don’t have the patience for it) but as I look at these years and start tallying up the time we’ve spent at war and the time we’ve spent at peace, it seems like there’s been more of the former and less of the latter.
I was born in 1948 in a refugee camp in what used to be Nazi Germany. My parents were there because they had been prisoners in a concentration camp. When we got to the US in 1951, the US was at war with North Korea. That war ended in 1953. Between that time and 1960 when the Vietnam War broke out, US marines fought in Lebanon and the Dominican Republic. Between the end of the Vietnam War (1975) and the beginning of the first Iraq war (1991), the US was involved in a lot of small wars in the Caribbean. The Iraq war ended, and we were involved in the Bosnian war from 1995-1999. Since Sept 11, 2001, we’ve been pretty much at war, against terrorism around the world, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I’m not much good with math (I don’t have the patience for it) but as I look at these years and start tallying up the time we’ve spent at war and the time we’ve spent at peace, it seems like there’s been more of the former and less of the latter.
September 2, 2010 at 2:29 pm
@Alice Robinson, Osama Bin Laden and other terrorists and fanatics have regularly blamed the USA for all the various things you mention and others, justifying their violence. Many other students of Islam point out none of that truly explains what's really going on. Raymond Ibrahim, for instance, is very perceptive in this regard, as are others: https://www.raymondibrahim.com/
If memory serves, he makes the point in the article I cited earlier on taqqiya: https://www.raymondibrahim.com/7377/taqiyya-islam-rules-of-war
To someone like Osama, we in the West are kafir, infidels. Their interpretation of the Quran justifies an eternal war against infidels until they submit. Killing infidels is a meritorious act, a duty. All that's hard for we liberal Americans and Canadians to understand (I've spent a lot of time in Canada and love the country). Their religious ideology is only using the things you cite as excuses. I believe we can best protect ourselves by making the effort to understand what their thinking really is, taking it seriously, because they do. Then, we, the world, will have a chance to stop them before they use the WMD they probably already have, according to top military analysts, and before they use the fatwa they also have authorizing them to kill up to 10 million Americans.
Peace and love won't work with them. It's their ideology that is entirely pernicious. Only an answer at a deeper spiritual level can defeat them. You're right that the Military Industrial Complex isn't interested in such things, which is partly why we'll mostly likely see millions of Americans killed through acts of terrorism before civilization regains its balance. Most likely people elsewhere won't escape either.
@John Guzlowski, Wow, I love the article on the rabbi. It's always healthy for us Americans to read something about how complex life really is in Israel... There's so little about on the evening news.
While I tend toward Tolstoy when it comes to war, there are times, I think, when only force can protect the innocent. Instead of the US as world cop, I'm for the full implementation of Chapter VII of the UN Charter, after gradual development of a UN rapid reaction force of at least 5,000 for some years till effectiveness is demonstrated and confidence grows. We wait until 10 million are incinerated or whatever, and probably will, but don't have to, if we make the right decisions. I'm for a World Aesthetic Economy that helps wake up humanity to move in the right direction, as I argue in my book The Grove of the Eumenides.
https://books.fglaysher.com/Grove-of-the-Eumenides-9780982677841.htm
If memory serves, he makes the point in the article I cited earlier on taqqiya: https://www.raymondibrahim.com/7377/taqiyya-islam-rules-of-war
To someone like Osama, we in the West are kafir, infidels. Their interpretation of the Quran justifies an eternal war against infidels until they submit. Killing infidels is a meritorious act, a duty. All that's hard for we liberal Americans and Canadians to understand (I've spent a lot of time in Canada and love the country). Their religious ideology is only using the things you cite as excuses. I believe we can best protect ourselves by making the effort to understand what their thinking really is, taking it seriously, because they do. Then, we, the world, will have a chance to stop them before they use the WMD they probably already have, according to top military analysts, and before they use the fatwa they also have authorizing them to kill up to 10 million Americans.
Peace and love won't work with them. It's their ideology that is entirely pernicious. Only an answer at a deeper spiritual level can defeat them. You're right that the Military Industrial Complex isn't interested in such things, which is partly why we'll mostly likely see millions of Americans killed through acts of terrorism before civilization regains its balance. Most likely people elsewhere won't escape either.
@John Guzlowski, Wow, I love the article on the rabbi. It's always healthy for us Americans to read something about how complex life really is in Israel... There's so little about on the evening news.
While I tend toward Tolstoy when it comes to war, there are times, I think, when only force can protect the innocent. Instead of the US as world cop, I'm for the full implementation of Chapter VII of the UN Charter, after gradual development of a UN rapid reaction force of at least 5,000 for some years till effectiveness is demonstrated and confidence grows. We wait until 10 million are incinerated or whatever, and probably will, but don't have to, if we make the right decisions. I'm for a World Aesthetic Economy that helps wake up humanity to move in the right direction, as I argue in my book The Grove of the Eumenides.
https://books.fglaysher.com/Grove-of-the-Eumenides-9780982677841.htm
September 2, 2010 at 4:27 pm
Woman disrespected? Female genital cutting? I realize there is no basis for it in the Quran, but it is prevalent in Islamic countries.
September 4, 2010 at 4:16 pm
Akkas, red necks with myopic vision. Why call names? I thought we were talking here. I said that there is no basis in the Quran for female genital mutilation, but you can't disregard it's prevalence in Islamic countries, not just in Africa. In some regions of Iraq, the numbers are as high as 60% according to the World Health Organization. Why is that?
September 4, 2010 at 4:44 pm
Ladies and gentlemen, the Quran as I said doesn't advocate FGM. Islamic leades from here to there have spoken against it. I admit that and said as much earlier. All of this began as my response to Alice talking about womanhood being disrespected in America. I was suggesting that women are being disrespected in the Islamic world. FGM being an example of this disrespect. There are other examples, of course. Stoning for adultery?
September 4, 2010 at 5:23 pm
Goodbye.
September 5, 2010 at 2:06 am
@John Guzlowski, Sorry for the abusive treatment. I don't believe the one person was a "friend," after all, and have removed him from my list. I'm not on Facebook for flame wars and insulting interchanges, though open to vigorous discussion, disagreement, and debate that respects other people's views.
Taqiyya can take many forms... It doesn't like to be identified for what it is... duplicity.
"How Taqiyya Alters Islam's Rules of War: Defeating Jihadist Terrorism". Middle East Forum. Winter 2010. Raymond Ibrahim.
https://www.meforum.org/2538/taqiyya-islam-rules-of-war
Taqiyya can take many forms... It doesn't like to be identified for what it is... duplicity.
"How Taqiyya Alters Islam's Rules of War: Defeating Jihadist Terrorism". Middle East Forum. Winter 2010. Raymond Ibrahim.
https://www.meforum.org/2538/taqiyya-islam-rules-of-war
September 5, 2010 at 4:45 am
Just a reminder, too, about the passage from Feisal Abdul Rauf's book that started this discussion:
"Many American Muslims regard America as a better 'Muslim' country than their native homelands. This may sound surprising if not absurd to many Americans, and Muslims outside America, but it found on the argument that the American Constitution and system of governance uphold the core principles of Islamic law." Feisal Abdul Rauf, What's Right With Islam. 2004, p 86.
There are "many American Muslims" who think that's true... Obviously, for those who don't, they can only see red and come charging in... that's not friendly discussion, and I'm not playing any games with them.
"Many American Muslims regard America as a better 'Muslim' country than their native homelands. This may sound surprising if not absurd to many Americans, and Muslims outside America, but it found on the argument that the American Constitution and system of governance uphold the core principles of Islamic law." Feisal Abdul Rauf, What's Right With Islam. 2004, p 86.
There are "many American Muslims" who think that's true... Obviously, for those who don't, they can only see red and come charging in... that's not friendly discussion, and I'm not playing any games with them.
September 5, 2010 at 4:54 am
@Alice Robinson, Absurd to equate the two, but that's the typical leftist approach, when the real topic can't be addressed, i.e., Abdul Rauf's claim in the quotation above that Many Muslims believe the HORRIBLE USA is preferable to their own countries. It's always interesting to watch, for instances, people on the extreme left reveal what they have in come with third-world dictators and terrorists, the way Noam Chomsky's so often does...
September 7, 2010 at 5:17 pm
@John Guzlowsk, Sorry John. I'm not sure what that was all about! The thought came to mind that it was sort of like a Facebook mugging!
Or two extremes, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," joining for a common purpose... refutation of any one who would acknowledge in any way that "Many American Muslims regard America as a better 'Muslim' country than their native homelands" and similiar complexities.
I've cooled considerably on Feisal Abdul Rauf, though. I find his intentional ambiguity quite disturbing...
Though probably very challenging in the current pc climate, there's much in Raymond Ibrahim's article well worth mulling over: "How Taqiyya Alters Islam's Rules of War: Defeating Jihadist Terrorism". Middle East Forum. Winter 2010.
https://www.meforum.org/2538/taqiyya-islam-rules-of-war
Best wishes, Fred
Or two extremes, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," joining for a common purpose... refutation of any one who would acknowledge in any way that "Many American Muslims regard America as a better 'Muslim' country than their native homelands" and similiar complexities.
I've cooled considerably on Feisal Abdul Rauf, though. I find his intentional ambiguity quite disturbing...
Though probably very challenging in the current pc climate, there's much in Raymond Ibrahim's article well worth mulling over: "How Taqiyya Alters Islam's Rules of War: Defeating Jihadist Terrorism". Middle East Forum. Winter 2010.
https://www.meforum.org/2538/taqiyya-islam-rules-of-war
Best wishes, Fred
September 8, 2010 at 2:39 am
@John Guzlowsk, An interesting brief video interview with a former PLO terrorist who woke up to what he was actually involved with:
Walid Shoebat, Why I Left Jihad:
https://shoebat.com/videos/cnnUSA.php
Walid Shoebat, Why I Left Jihad:
https://shoebat.com/videos/cnnUSA.php
September 8, 2010 at 4:33 am
"Many Muslims regard the form of government that the American founders established a little over two centuries ago as the form of governance that best expresses Islam's original values and principles." Feisal Abdul Rauf, What's Right With Islam. 2004, p81.
September 2, 2010 at 3:23 am
1 person likes this
For my friend Yaya Dramé in Senegal...
September 1, 2010 at 7:58 am
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Leszek Kolakowski and the Children of Abraham |
We now live in a time of transition, the interregnum, between the decaying of old cities and the renewing and re-adorning of the ancient one. And while many observers are refusing to take any relig...
September 1, 2010 at 7:58 am
"America, in a profound sense, continues the story of establishing the good society attempted by Abraham, by the prophets of the children of Israel, and by the Prophet Muhammad and his four successors in Medina. It offers a theory of governance that has best institutionalized the ethical principles of the Abrahamic ethic and the two greatest commandments common to the Abrahamic faith traditions." Abdul Rauf, 80
September 1, 2010 at 3:02 am
"America is substantially an 'Islamic' country, by which I mean a country whose systems remarkably embody the principles that Islamic law requires of a government" Feisal Abdul Rauf, What's Right With Islam. 2004, p. 80. More so, he argues, than many putatively 'Islamic' countries...
August 31, 2010 at 9:38 am
Regarding Al-Ghazali, "His open-mindedness to those of other faiths combined with his aversion to cheap accusations of heresy make him an important figure in any discussion on bridging the Muslim world and the West." Feisal Abdul Rauf, What's Right With Islam. 2004, p.75.
August 31, 2010 at 5:12 am
"Religion is not the label we attach to our actions, but the quality of our actions expressing devotion to God and ethical behavior to our fellow human beings." Feisal Abdul Rauf, What's Right With Islam. 2004, p. 72.
August 31, 2010 at 3:10 am
4 people like this
You are an interesting person Mr. Glaysher.... I am pleased to meet you. Thanks for befriending me here on Facebook. My best to you... always...
Carl
Carl
September 2, 2010 at 12:52 am
Thanks for choosing to be friends. Pleased to meet you.
September 2, 2010 at 4:27 am
"God made us into many things: great artists and writers who when doing our art feel His pleasure.... But most of all, God made us worshipful beings, and our greatest pleasure actually is in contemplating God." Feisal Abdul Rauf, What's Right With Islam. 2004, p.71.
August 30, 2010 at 12:18 pm
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Abdul Rauf is not Islam. Whatever he says doesn't mean that it is what Islam says. Don't do that confusion. I never mean that he is wrong in his words.
August 30, 2010 at 12:54 pm
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf doesn't claim he is Islam. Do you?
August 31, 2010 at 2:02 am
No I do not. But he express' on the behalf of Islam. Once again, my English is not good enough, therefore you may hear what I don't mean. I am just affraid of seing people considering Abdul Rauf as Islam.
August 31, 2010 at 3:09 am
What I hear you saying is your interpretation of "Islam" is different from his interpretation, and therefore he's wrong, you're right.
Since there are innumerable interpretations of every religion, I defend Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf's right to his own conscience and what he calls "A New Vision for Muslims and the West."
With 40 years as an imam of a Muslim community, he's obviously earned the respect of many of his fellow believers, and many Christians, Jews, and others speak highly of his life and opinions.
Having read most of his nearly 300 page book, he's earned my respect as well by demonstrating he understands the seriousness of the issues involved and isn't attempting to answer them with simplistic, unsophisticated fundamentalism, but a broad and open religious sensibility grounded in the universality of the Abrahamic ethic, as he calls it, the Oneness of God and the Golden Rule, before which people of all persuasions can peacefully find common meaning and purpose.
Since there are innumerable interpretations of every religion, I defend Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf's right to his own conscience and what he calls "A New Vision for Muslims and the West."
With 40 years as an imam of a Muslim community, he's obviously earned the respect of many of his fellow believers, and many Christians, Jews, and others speak highly of his life and opinions.
Having read most of his nearly 300 page book, he's earned my respect as well by demonstrating he understands the seriousness of the issues involved and isn't attempting to answer them with simplistic, unsophisticated fundamentalism, but a broad and open religious sensibility grounded in the universality of the Abrahamic ethic, as he calls it, the Oneness of God and the Golden Rule, before which people of all persuasions can peacefully find common meaning and purpose.
August 31, 2010 at 3:37 am
Religiously speaking, universality and fundamentalism are not but superficial. Where we have apparently too many things in common. But whenever people sit around a table trying to intermingle or even to fusion things in religion, the principles of each side will always give birth to Exclusivity.
August 31, 2010 at 4:28 am
I respect your conscience. Many people from all religious traditions and otherwise continue to believe they have the sole truth of all of human history.
All around the globe, forward-looking human beings have increasingly come to realize humanity is on a journey toward universality, mutual respect, and understanding, the Will of the Divine Being, a much more challenging and demanding vision of what it means to be human than the simple pieties of the past, the truth of our lived experience.
I would argue we human beings can never have too much in common. The more we realize how much we have in common the less likely we are to repeat the mistakes and crimes of the past, the more likely it becomes we can find ways to strive towards the peaceful world of our highest hopes and dreams, make them a reality, to whatever degree possible.
All around the globe, forward-looking human beings have increasingly come to realize humanity is on a journey toward universality, mutual respect, and understanding, the Will of the Divine Being, a much more challenging and demanding vision of what it means to be human than the simple pieties of the past, the truth of our lived experience.
I would argue we human beings can never have too much in common. The more we realize how much we have in common the less likely we are to repeat the mistakes and crimes of the past, the more likely it becomes we can find ways to strive towards the peaceful world of our highest hopes and dreams, make them a reality, to whatever degree possible.
August 31, 2010 at 5:01 am
I don't say the opposit, this universality will only be a sort of protocol, a sort of principal through which the relationship between us is going to be easier. Just like the constitution of a given nation. This is the base of any peace and understanding fore economic and social affairs. But it is still superficial !
August 31, 2010 at 10:08 am
As Abdul Rauf points out, the Quran itself states that every nation has had a prophet sent by God, the essential teachings of which are the Oneness of God and the Golden Rule. There is nothing superficial about either, both are profoundly universal in scope...
August 31, 2010 at 10:46 am
Do the chritians belive in Mahomed (pbuh)
August 31, 2010 at 2:14 pm
Sounds like a rhetorical question. :) Seriously, I've known Christians who understand and respect Islam. As a Bahai, I believe Muhammad was God's messenger and respect the teachings of the Quran that are universal in human nature and reaffirmed by Baha'u'llah.
Do Muslims believe in Baha'u'llah?
Do Muslims believe in Baha'u'llah?
August 31, 2010 at 4:17 pm
I , personally, do not know this Name. Maybe the different Callings betray me to know him under this name. By the way I have been offered three Bibles by Christians after many "face to face " around the table with many of them, they are all foreigners precisly whites. But I have never read the name of Mouhamed (pbuh), or even a small passage which may reffer to him. Therefore I could never belive that Christians belive in the Last prophet of Allah. And this will remain as an absolut exclusion. Because one half of my bases is ignored. It comes again to a superficial universality in the land of Religion.
August 31, 2010 at 4:47 pm
Muhammad is the last messengers of God (Rasul) prior to His universal messenger Baha'u'llah, hearlded in all the religions and traditions. Bahais do believe that Muhammad is foretold in the Bible, though I can't recall the exact passage at the moment. While I was raised a Catholic and accept the universal teachings of Christianity, I primarily consider myself a Bahai, as I mentioned.
September 1, 2010 at 2:56 am
"Few places in India demonstrate so clearly the country’s genius for diversity and tolerance, the twin reasons that India — despite its fractures and fissures — has remained one nation."
August 30, 2010 at 9:28 am
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A Sikh Temple Where All May Eat, and Pitch In |
Each day, volunteers at the Golden Temple serve tens of thousands of free lunches.
August 30, 2010 at 9:28 am
3 people like this
Some of my obstinate hope for our planet's future - in the face of all that turns me toward cynicsm - comes from the time I was in India
August 30, 2010 at 12:02 pm
I'd love to hear more about it. When we're you in India?
August 30, 2010 at 12:13 pm
It's some yrs ago now, spent time in the more obvious places, Mubai, Delhi, there is the cliche of the tender respect for your humanity from even those who would rip you off - with finesse and gentle humour - but I have to say that coming from Africa so water-scarce in parts, it was the greening of areas of formerly desert India that made an impact, and an acceptance that all rather than the few should benefit from it
August 30, 2010 at 12:48 pm
I lived for a few years in the desert in Arizona and can understand the lack of water is a major problem, especially in some regions.
Other than the desperation of poverty, what do you mean when you say "my obstinate hope for our planet's future"?
Other than the desperation of poverty, what do you mean when you say "my obstinate hope for our planet's future"?
August 31, 2010 at 2:16 am
Generally I'm cynical about humanity's relationship with the planet, not just the lines we've always drawn on the world map but the environmental damage and destruction, but - this is more a visceral response than anything reasoned - there are always people in the face of whose intereaction with others and their response to the challenge of living sustainably with and off the earth, hope persists
August 31, 2010 at 8:11 am
I well understand there is good reason for cynicism, in all regards, watching the things we people do. Human beings have the capacity, as you suggest, to make other choices, individually and collectively, when we want to. We seem at a point where a lot desperately needs to change on this planet, most of all, I would say, our thinking. Our values are really a confused mess, all bound up with imaginary "lines" we've "drawn on the world map" and other dilemmas.
I think, though, the past shows there are ways forward, through crisis. Humanity has often risen to challenges caused largely by evolutionary change, genetic and social, probably predominantly social. Our social space has enormously changed during the last 100 years or whatever time frame one might like to use. We keep being mixed and poured together, all the old lines mean less and less, many live with a foot in each world, not quite making it really in either.
I believe writers and artists especially have a sensitivity to this perennial condition of human existence. At such times, they, we, find a way to articulate a more comprehensive vision that can help others, in all walks of life, regain balance, a much needed deeper sense of who we are and where were going.
The Sikhs did this, in a sense, in the 15th Century... within Mughal India.
It's easy to be cynical when we look around at the world of politics, media, so-called entertainment and all its repulsive banalities, the lowering of any serious vision to the crudities of the market, and so on. I choose hope in that fragile but human capacity for change, for finding a way forward, global now...
Thank you for sharing your thinking with me and our friends. I appreciate it.
I think, though, the past shows there are ways forward, through crisis. Humanity has often risen to challenges caused largely by evolutionary change, genetic and social, probably predominantly social. Our social space has enormously changed during the last 100 years or whatever time frame one might like to use. We keep being mixed and poured together, all the old lines mean less and less, many live with a foot in each world, not quite making it really in either.
I believe writers and artists especially have a sensitivity to this perennial condition of human existence. At such times, they, we, find a way to articulate a more comprehensive vision that can help others, in all walks of life, regain balance, a much needed deeper sense of who we are and where were going.
The Sikhs did this, in a sense, in the 15th Century... within Mughal India.
It's easy to be cynical when we look around at the world of politics, media, so-called entertainment and all its repulsive banalities, the lowering of any serious vision to the crudities of the market, and so on. I choose hope in that fragile but human capacity for change, for finding a way forward, global now...
Thank you for sharing your thinking with me and our friends. I appreciate it.
August 31, 2010 at 8:36 am
I like what you say about the Sikhs, it's disconcerting to discover how little is known about the faith's origins, I wonder how many see a similarity between the Sikh 'God cannot be described' and the Baha'i 'humans will never be able to formulate any clear image of ...'
August 31, 2010 at 11:16 am
I think the basic idea of both, and of all the religions, really, is that God or whatever name one chooses to describe what we human beings really cannot understand, but can somehow experience, is transcendent and unknowable. There are ethical implications of such an experience and acceptance of Her existence, the most important of which is to treat others in a humane way, the Golden Rule, to use the old language.
August 31, 2010 at 11:23 am
"After a prophet dies, succeeding generations jostle for power, and the few intimates of the prophet who learned to carry the living presence of God are usually overwhelmed by those who desire power over others in the name of the religion" p. 64. Alas, humanity, not much to argue with there... though some might choose its main premise. Abdul Rauf then presents an insightful analysis of the inner stages of Sufism.
August 30, 2010 at 3:18 am
2 people like this
Is it the man who becomes corrupted by power, or does power become corrupted by the man?
August 30, 2010 at 3:26 am
It can work both ways, I would say. I suppose the emphasis has usually been in Christian thinking that man is corrupted by wanting power for the self versus for service to the community. Islam does make the same distinction at times, to protect the community. Abdul Rauf discusses the transformation of early Islam under the Ummayyad dynasty to royal rule, as does the classical historian Ibn Khaldun, and others, none of which really addresses the issues of Islam and modernity, regarding power. I would say it is partly why Islam, as with Catholicism and other traditional religions, can not address the requirements of modern life. There's always the reversion to the exclusivism of the past, all that baggage, and the past is past... fortunately.
August 30, 2010 at 3:46 am
Power for self vs service to the community is probably the root of all the problems (past and present). I don't think much has changed all though the titles and labels might be different.
August 30, 2010 at 3:52 am
I definitely agree with you on all of that. The human being seems about the same no matter what else changes. The same tests and battles of the soul, under the metaphors, figures of speech, the literal-minded, sanctimonious readers invariably among the worst, while fervently thinking otherwise. It doesn't much matter what "religion."
August 30, 2010 at 4:21 am
I think it is very sad how the quest for power often obscures the good in the world. I worked in big business for more than 20 years and still find it hard to come to terms with the size of many of my former colleagues egos and their sometime bad behaviour. So glad to have left that world.
August 30, 2010 at 6:55 am
"There is no god but God, and Muhammad is His messenger." "The Prophet emphatically stated that any human being who says this must have his or her life and property protected and may not be harmed by the Muslim community" (48). He states this, then breezes on, leaving this reader wondering what about those who DON'T say it. Are they NOT protected, fair game for any fanatic? Is that just fine with Feisal Abdul Rauf?
August 29, 2010 at 11:55 am
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This Statement is as clear as real as the Oneness of GOD (ALLAH). It is a ''sMALL kEY" and the Only kEY that is used to open a Door of a the Protected Community by HIM. This protection is not against the imediate and short life's "dangers", but against the HIS Punishment after life on earth. We all belong to GOD, but we are not all under HIS protection.
August 29, 2010 at 12:11 pm
You sum up well the exclusivism of your understanding of the Shahadah, as relating, you seem to be saying, to the afterlife. Is that the understanding of Feisal Abdul Rauf? Subsequent to making the above statement, he just moves on, leaving it behind, as though its implications were a self-evident truth, one Americans, Christians, Jews, and others shouldn't be concerned about.
August 29, 2010 at 12:22 pm
Those who really ignor are not concerned about. But there are many of them who do know the Reality and disobey. They are the real losers. Therefore unprotected, no matter how numerous they are, HE has booked enough place for them. May ALLAH keeps on protecting the protected, and may HE guides the lost toward the Right Way. Amen !
August 29, 2010 at 12:46 pm
Exclusivity and treating people as kafir or unbeliever, whether from a Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or other religion or worldview, is no longer acceptable in the 21st Century. God's universal mercy rains on all his creation.
Does Feisal Abdul Rauf believe it or does believe there are those who "life and property" are unworthy of protection and may be "harmed by the Muslim community"? This is a valid question for any American or person when seeking to understand Feisal Abdul Rauf and his motives, and the motives of any Muslim of any branch or school of Islam.
Does Feisal Abdul Rauf believe it or does believe there are those who "life and property" are unworthy of protection and may be "harmed by the Muslim community"? This is a valid question for any American or person when seeking to understand Feisal Abdul Rauf and his motives, and the motives of any Muslim of any branch or school of Islam.
August 29, 2010 at 12:54 pm
HE just sends Mouhammad (pbuh) to annunce and warn by showing the Face of Islam to the Ignorans...never the Prophet, nor any other person can bring someone else to the Right way. The final decision belongs to HIM. And undoubtfully GOD Has ONE Right and True Religion. It is that religion which bilives in HIS ONENESS, in all His messengers, in His books, in the Angels, in the other life after the "second death" and in the Hell and Heaven. This is the Religion of GOD.
August 29, 2010 at 1:17 pm
That doesn't answer any of my questions about Feisal Abdul Rauf, nor the valid questions of other people. That tells me only about your own exclusive thinking, "undoubtfully," not his...
August 29, 2010 at 1:42 pm
I don't know this man. What I know is what you said about his words. And I also know that he will not bring something new, religeously speaking.
August 29, 2010 at 1:52 pm
Here is Feisal Abdul Rauf's claim and title, What's Right With Islam: A New Vision for Muslims and the West. 2004. So he makes a claim of bringing something new, as Sufi Muslim and an American.
As a student of Islam for nearly forty years, I believe much of his book up to page 115 offers in some regards a fresh and perhaps "New Vision" for Muslims and his fellow Americans of whatever belief or outlook. Is it taqqiyya (dissimulation)? That is a fair question for any informed person to ask him, given his claims as he presents them in his book and his ambiguous statement cited above from page 48.
As a student of Islam for nearly forty years, I believe much of his book up to page 115 offers in some regards a fresh and perhaps "New Vision" for Muslims and his fellow Americans of whatever belief or outlook. Is it taqqiyya (dissimulation)? That is a fair question for any informed person to ask him, given his claims as he presents them in his book and his ambiguous statement cited above from page 48.
August 29, 2010 at 3:48 pm
Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taqiyya
"2) Reconciliatory taqiyya. The purpose of this type of taqiyya is to reconcile with the other side or to soften their hearts. This kind of taqiyya is permissible but not obligatory."
@Marcus Bales, Page 48 picks up on your concerns?
"2) Reconciliatory taqiyya. The purpose of this type of taqiyya is to reconcile with the other side or to soften their hearts. This kind of taqiyya is permissible but not obligatory."
@Marcus Bales, Page 48 picks up on your concerns?
August 29, 2010 at 3:56 pm
For anyone interested, the Wikipedia article on taqqiya cites an outstanding article by Ibrahim, Raymond. "How Taqiyya Alters Islam's Rules of War: Defeating Jihadist Terrorism". Middle East Forum. Winter 2010. Having read a number of articles on taqqiya over the years, I've highly recommend Raymon Ibrahim's piece. It is available online:
https://www.meforum.org/2538/taqiyya-islam-rules-of-war
https://www.meforum.org/2538/taqiyya-islam-rules-of-war
August 31, 2010 at 1:23 pm
"The cleft between science and religion that occurred in the West did not happen in Islam. In large part this was because the Quran did not say anything about the nature of creation or the physical sciences that has been disproved by science." Feisal Abdul Rauf, What's Right With Islam. 2004, p. 61.
August 29, 2010 at 5:59 am
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Doesn't the Quran say God made man from a clot of blood?
August 29, 2010 at 8:00 am
I believe that's the metaphor. Whether dust or clot of blood, I would say literal-minded reading of the passages miss the poetry and hence the meaning.
August 29, 2010 at 8:04 am
Though I can't offer any detailed analysis, this sounds rather fishy to me. I reduces religion to (an unproblematic reading of) scripture, ignoring the long social, cultural, political, and institutional histories that shape what "Islam" (or "Christianity") is at any single time and place.
August 29, 2010 at 8:21 am
Yes, I agree, so the real question is how do you interpret?--literally or not so? The point of Genesis, I've read in articles by very good scholars, is not a six-day literal creation but that fact that Elohim did not have not fight and battle other gods to create the world (as in the Summeranian and Egyptian creation stories). He simply does it with no interference. So maybe it's not so much what is written as how one reads what is written.
August 29, 2010 at 8:29 am
@Sharon Kinoshita, "Fishy"? Abdul Rauf discusses extensively that "Islam" and "Muslim" are not "essentialist" terms. "Hindu" is a problematically parallel term. We from the West usually have little difficulty in realizing that about "Christianity." The dynamic is clearly part of the trouble with the so-called 9/11 mosque debate at the moment.
From a different point of view, letter versus spirit is a time-honored theological Christian distinction. Abdul Rauf makes the argument in his book from a Sufi perspective. The focus of the academy on the letter, usually a highly select caricature of Christianity, entirely misses the point. In my view, Abdul Rauf speaks within a tradition to today. It would be helpful if more people would actually read and listen to WHAT he has to say. One sound-bite out of a lifetime of study and service to his Sufi community isn't dealing with him in good faith, on the part of the US media.
"Literally or not so?" Having just attended a service this afternoon at a local Sikh Gurdwara, I can't understand why any one would want to interpret religious language *literally.* It seems to me to run counter to the whole purpose of religion, Sufi Muslim or otherwise.
From a different point of view, letter versus spirit is a time-honored theological Christian distinction. Abdul Rauf makes the argument in his book from a Sufi perspective. The focus of the academy on the letter, usually a highly select caricature of Christianity, entirely misses the point. In my view, Abdul Rauf speaks within a tradition to today. It would be helpful if more people would actually read and listen to WHAT he has to say. One sound-bite out of a lifetime of study and service to his Sufi community isn't dealing with him in good faith, on the part of the US media.
"Literally or not so?" Having just attended a service this afternoon at a local Sikh Gurdwara, I can't understand why any one would want to interpret religious language *literally.* It seems to me to run counter to the whole purpose of religion, Sufi Muslim or otherwise.
August 29, 2010 at 10:58 am
Okay, good. It's just that the quote you gave seemed exactly to essentialize both "Islam" and "the West" (aka, in this context, Christianity).
August 29, 2010 at 11:10 am
Mmm, sure the West and Christianity can be read as identical. Many still think so. The picture is much more complex, as you know, which is what he too actually says in his book about Islam. He laments that many Westerns think of Islam as one identical substance when there is enormous variation.
To my mind, the problems of Islam with science are different in their source than Christianity. I think Abdul Rauf is right about that. Up to page 115, he doesn't acknowledge enough what the problems have been... Bernard Lewis remains a more perceptive scholar in that regard.
To my mind, the problems of Islam with science are different in their source than Christianity. I think Abdul Rauf is right about that. Up to page 115, he doesn't acknowledge enough what the problems have been... Bernard Lewis remains a more perceptive scholar in that regard.
August 29, 2010 at 11:18 am
"We should also not seek to create violent differences between the messages that each of these messengers brought, for the differences lay more in details than in substance." Feisal Abdul Rauf, What's Right With Islam. 2004, p. 32.
August 29, 2010 at 4:38 am
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"When Jews, Christians, Muslims, and all people of any faith discover a way to help each other truly adhere to these shared teachings, treating each other as they want themselves treated, religious conflict between them will cease." Feisal Abdul Rauf, What's Right With Islam. 2004, p. 20.
August 28, 2010 at 8:10 am
5 people like this
"But because individual humans can and do freely exercise their will in ways that sow inequality and limit the liberties of others, an ethic of free will judges such violations as wrong, unjust, and tyrannical. Jews, Christians, and Muslims therefore have a particularly strong sense of social justice; they are keen to seek retributive justice."
Feisal Abdul Rauf, What's Right With Islam. 2004, p. 14.
Feisal Abdul Rauf, What's Right With Islam. 2004, p. 14.
August 28, 2010 at 5:40 am
An amusing twist...
Frank Talk With a Cabdriver About Islamic Center
"The driver was not so much worried about ground zero being hallowed ground, but about logistics. So many Muslim cabdrivers; so few places to park nearby."
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/28/nyregion/28bigcity.html?_r=1&hp
August 27, 2010 at 9:57 am
Frank Talk With a Cabdriver About Islamic Center
"The driver was not so much worried about ground zero being hallowed ground, but about logistics. So many Muslim cabdrivers; so few places to park nearby."
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/28/nyregion/28bigcity.html?_r=1&hp
| Frank Talk in Taxi Over Planned Muslim Center |
Kristen Kelch’s chat with her cabdiver, a native of Morocco, moved into risky subject matter.
August 27, 2010 at 9:57 am
"Across the world, the bruising struggle over an Islamic center near ground zero has elicited some unexpected reactions."
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/world/26islamic.html?hp
August 26, 2010 at 7:30 am
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/world/26islamic.html?hp
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Through Islamic Center Debate, World Sees U.S. - NYTimes.com |
For some around the world, the dispute over an Islamic center near ground zero is a confirmation of their views.
August 26, 2010 at 7:30 am
"Yet the American notion of the separation of church and state was not intended to develop an atheistic or agnostic society. Rather, the objective was to allow any and all religions to thrive while preventing the state from using its powers to establish one religion or religious doctrine over any other." Feisal Abdul Rauf, What's Right With Islam: A New Vision for Muslims and the West. 2004, p. 6.
August 26, 2010 at 2:29 am
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Who's meant to think otherwise? Would Mr Rauf be building a strawman perhaps?
August 26, 2010 at 2:38 am
It's not 'building a strawman" to state one's own point. Lots of American right wingnut Christians (see Terry Jones, the guy who wants to burn the Koran on 9/11 as a celebration, for example, https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/us/26gainesville.html) think that America was founded as 'a Christian nation', and simply don't understand the Constitution at all. Obviously Rauf does understand it.
August 26, 2010 at 4:03 am
I would saying he's addressing what has often become the assumption and argument of many. That's not a strawman; that's one that exists... call it ersatz man... much cultural turmoil in the US is over whether it's a corpse, who owns his corpse, by the media, university, other politico aparatchiks... the corpse of modernity, even East and West, I would say.
August 26, 2010 at 4:07 am
I know all that Marcus, I am an atheist myself. Rauf seems to be building a strawman from atheists in the quote, appealing to some kind of idea that the amendment is being interpreted by some to make the state atheistic rather than secular.
August 26, 2010 at 4:09 am
If he is actually arguing against Christian fundamentalists that try to posit America as a Christian country, then I have no beef with him.
August 26, 2010 at 4:11 am
Well, that's just what the rightwingnut Christians DO say about people who want to preserve the church/state separation. They say that the US is a "Christian nation" and that the argument that church/state separation is to guarantee religious freedom instead of the guarantee Christian values, is an attempt to impose an atheist agenda on Christians in general and the Constitution in particular. They're voluble and loud, and Rauf is pointing out they're wrong. I think they're wrong, too. It's not a strawman to argue against a point your opponents have actually made.
August 26, 2010 at 4:11 am
@Marcus Bales, I agree Adbul Rauf demonstrates he understands the Constitution, in the sense that it provides a neutral space, truly separation of church and state, allowing all religious opinions and persuasions, including in my view, "atheistic and agnostic," room and protection--a rich, invigorating tension, life itself... versus any exclusivism, inevitably tending to dominance and producing intolerance and violence.
August 26, 2010 at 4:12 am
It isn't actually clear from the context what Rauf is arguing from the individual quote. It struck me as quite similar to what fundies say when they shout "The amendment means freedom of religion, not freedom from religion"
August 26, 2010 at 4:13 am
Even if he's in favor of Sharia law and changing the Constitution to reflect that, though, he has a right to say what he pleases and campaign for it, too, and to hold his worship services, as well. The idea of freedom of speech and freedom of religion can't be confined only to people with whom you believe, or whose beliefs you are familiar with. So long as he doesn't advocate violence he's entitled to say he thinks the existing laws are bogus and that ones he'd write are better. That's just what the founders of the US said, after all, and that's the basis of the whole consent of the governed idea.
August 26, 2010 at 4:15 am
I agree, just as much as freedom entails being able to say why one thinks what another believes is a load of old bollocks.
August 26, 2010 at 4:18 am
@Niall O'Sullivan, There are certainly secularly minded people and atheists who interpret the amendment to justify a secular and/or atheist state, in the public space...
August 26, 2010 at 4:19 am
But the fundies are right that the amendment says "freedom OF religion, not freedom FROM religion", though they undercut their own point when they argue as well (as they do) that atheists are just religious people after all because they believe something. Still, it seems to me that no religion and any religion are the same -- one is entitled to believe or not believe in any given religion as one pleases, and the state can't compell you to say you believe -- or don't believe -- in any religion.
That doesn't mean that we should limit the fundies' right to misrepresent atheist or agnostic or Constitutional opinion. They have the same right to argue their side that I have to argue mine -- but they are no more entitled, if they get elected, to impose their Christian beliefs on me through state authority than I am to impose my militant agnosticism (I don't know and YOU DON'T EITHER!) on them.
That doesn't mean that we should limit the fundies' right to misrepresent atheist or agnostic or Constitutional opinion. They have the same right to argue their side that I have to argue mine -- but they are no more entitled, if they get elected, to impose their Christian beliefs on me through state authority than I am to impose my militant agnosticism (I don't know and YOU DON'T EITHER!) on them.
August 26, 2010 at 4:20 am
That's what I thought was being inferred. Who are these atheists?
August 26, 2010 at 4:21 am
You seem to be under the impression that I'm arguing that certain people shouldn't be allowed freedom of speech, I'm not.
August 26, 2010 at 4:22 am
Like any Western system of jurisprudence, there are a lot of interpretations of shariah. His is obviously not that of the Taliban. In terms of violence, he writes, regarding Judeo-Christian monotheism, "We should also not seek to create violent differences between the messages that each of these messengers brought, for the differences lay more in details than in substance." p. 32.
August 26, 2010 at 4:27 am
@Marcus Bales, He's really reading and *expanding* the application of the Constitution, in my view, beyond the usual Christian fundamentalism versus secularism battle. I think that strengthens it in an interesting and productive way for all citizens, religious or otherwise, and opens a way to speak to Muslims and Americans about finding common ground.
August 26, 2010 at 4:34 am
The disturbing thing about the Rauf quote Frederick cites is the use of the word "American" instead of, for example, "our" -- since Rauf is an American citizen. That locution suggests that he is himself still distant from the interpretation of the Constitution to which he refers, since he doesn't take care to own it with "our", thus locating himself within the tradition he relies on.
August 26, 2010 at 4:35 am
Mmm, there are a plenty of "ours" in the book, though you might read the quotation that way. While a Sufi, he is a Muslim, as some Christians might say there's a point at which religious identity takes precedence over political documents. So I'm not trying to present him in simplistically friendly American terms, nor does the book thus far, boil down to that.
August 26, 2010 at 4:43 am
I think on the "religion" clause in the Constitution he is right on target. Congress shall not establish a religion; nor shall it interfere with the free exercise of religion. John Adams, himself a very devout Christian, wrote to the Muslim rulers of Tripoli that the United States is *not* a Christian nation and does not aim, as a nation, to promote Christianity or any other religion--though, of course, neither do we interfere with any religion's expression.
August 26, 2010 at 5:19 am
@David Wayne Landrum, Thanks for bring up John Adams well known statement in this context. I think it exactly identifies why religious freedom is so important to social order and stability. It creates a neutral state that allows space for all persuasions and seeks to prevent any one of them from becoming a tyranny.
I think it's legitimate for Christians and others to criticize at times that secularism and its many varieties, nihilism, whatever, have become so dominant that a balance needs to be preserved and protected. Marcus is right that "fundies" can go to extremes on that, but atheists like Lenin and Stalin did too--we human beings can do that with everything. That's what the First Amendment was meant to balance.
Both "Christian" and "Muslim" cover an enormous range of interpretations largely lost sight of in much of the media sensationalism.
I think too the sort of mob mentality against the Muslim center has drifted pretty far from the First Amendment... even scary, given some voices.
I think it's legitimate for Christians and others to criticize at times that secularism and its many varieties, nihilism, whatever, have become so dominant that a balance needs to be preserved and protected. Marcus is right that "fundies" can go to extremes on that, but atheists like Lenin and Stalin did too--we human beings can do that with everything. That's what the First Amendment was meant to balance.
Both "Christian" and "Muslim" cover an enormous range of interpretations largely lost sight of in much of the media sensationalism.
I think too the sort of mob mentality against the Muslim center has drifted pretty far from the First Amendment... even scary, given some voices.
August 26, 2010 at 5:37 am
@Marcus Bales, I respect your concern about the extent to which Abdul Rauf or any Muslim feels he or she is part of America. Having now read over a hundred pages, I believe he's a long way from what you're worrying about, for example, "As powerful as he is, the American president is circumscribed in how he may use his powers--an essential aspect of **our** separatism of powers doctrine." Feisal Abdul Rauf, What's Right With Islam. 2004, p. 93. (italic / "**" added)
August 28, 2010 at 9:25 am
"This is what it looked like decades before the World Trade Center was even envisioned. This is its heritage."
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/nyregion/25quarter.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1282741274-+COnd2PqPq3cbSqkgwVA6w
August 25, 2010 at 5:14 am
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/nyregion/25quarter.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1282741274-+COnd2PqPq3cbSqkgwVA6w
|
When an Arab Enclave Thrived Downtown - NYTimes.com |
Lost in the current debate over an Islamic center and mosque in Lower Manhattan is an awareness of what was once called Little Syria.
August 25, 2010 at 5:14 am
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"Mr. Abdul Rauf talked expansively about religious law, the lessons of Islamic history and his mission to build bridges between the West and the Islamic world...."
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/24/nyregion/24imam.html?hp
August 24, 2010 at 8:39 am
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/24/nyregion/24imam.html?hp
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Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, in Bahrain, Tries to Keep Focus Off Muslim Center - NYTimes.com |
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, leader of the planned Islamic center in Manhattan, is on a tour sponsored by the State Department.
August 24, 2010 at 8:39 am
I recommend listening to the brief video of Feisal Abdul Rauf. I haven't read any of his books, but intend to read What's Right With Islam is What's Right with America. "...a community center guided by the universal values of all religions in their truest form – peace, compassion, generosity, and respect for all." from FAQ (see also for details on funding).
https://www.cordobainitiative.org/
August 22, 2010 at 6:37 am
https://www.cordobainitiative.org/
|
Home Page | Cordoba |
Cordoba Initiative seeks to actively promote engagement through a myriad of programs, by reinforcing similarities and addressing differences.
August 22, 2010 at 6:37 am
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That's must read: people must open their minds and be more accepting. How then will we all learn to get along? Are we supposed to be opposed to each other, and not communicating and sharing?
August 22, 2010 at 4:41 pm
Unfortunately, much of the media and some politicians seem to be more interested in muddying the waters than making the effort to understand who the people involved are and what they really believe. Blindly equating "Muslim" with "terrorist" is definitely a mistake, all the more so with Sufis, though historically there have been some Sufis who were militant, that doesn't seem to be the case with Feisal Abdul Rauf. His current mosque has been there in the neighborhood since 1985...
August 23, 2010 at 3:15 am
Frederick, yes, leave it to politicians to do so. Such a square mindset, and unfair to Islam and many Muslims. If only more Americans would take the time to study the faith, we'd be better off. You shining light on this helps!
August 23, 2010 at 11:48 am
Thanks Christopher, for commenting. This afternoon I've read the first thirty pages of Abdul Rauf's What's Right with Islam. There really isn't anything extreme in what he is saying. Like many Christians and others, he states, "the rise of religious fundamentalism represented the reaction of religion against the anti-religious secular modernism that peaked in the mid-twentieth century." His advice, so far, is to find broadly universal things shared in common by the West and Muslims and to learn from the historical mistakes of both, instead of repeating them.
If anything, I believe he's too optimistic about secularism "peaking" in the "mid-twentieth century." In some sectors, especially the university, I don't believe the dominance has slackening much, sometimes for good reason. So it's complex. I'm not trying to present a simplistic answer to the profound problems that exist. Nor is Abdul Rauf. His argument is more complex than I can type out here, but the book is worth reading. I don't believe he or it merits the uproar in the media and the *political* season, which is probably much of the problem, as you recognized...
The issues are all too serious to me to put the nation through the typical media circus trauma over... He really is a moderate voice for mutual understanding. Can't win an election on that!
If anything, I believe he's too optimistic about secularism "peaking" in the "mid-twentieth century." In some sectors, especially the university, I don't believe the dominance has slackening much, sometimes for good reason. So it's complex. I'm not trying to present a simplistic answer to the profound problems that exist. Nor is Abdul Rauf. His argument is more complex than I can type out here, but the book is worth reading. I don't believe he or it merits the uproar in the media and the *political* season, which is probably much of the problem, as you recognized...
The issues are all too serious to me to put the nation through the typical media circus trauma over... He really is a moderate voice for mutual understanding. Can't win an election on that!
August 23, 2010 at 12:50 pm
"When Jews, Christians, Muslims, and all people of any faith discover a way to help each other truly adhere to these shared teachings, treating each other as they want themselves treated, religious conflict between them will cease." (p. 20)
August 24, 2010 at 5:12 am
"The worshipers, devotees of the Sufi tradition of Islamic mysticism, came from an even wider array of countries .... both [mosques] have existed for decades, largely unnoticed, blocks from the World Trade Center site."
August 22, 2010 at 6:00 am
|
In Lower Manhattan, 2 Mosques Have Firm Roots - NYTimes.com |
At Masjid Manhattan and Masjid al-Farah, blocks away from each other not far from ground zero, worshipers are baffled by controversy over a proposed Muslim center.
August 22, 2010 at 6:00 am
“To stereotype him as an extremist is just nuts,” said the Very Rev. James P. Morton, the longtime dean of the Church of St. John the Divine, in Manhattan, who has known the family for decades.
August 22, 2010 at 5:48 am
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Feisal Abdul Rauf’s Balancing Act in Mosque Furor - NYTimes.com |
For much of his life, Feisal Abdul Rauf, who led the proposal for a Muslim center downtown, has found distrust as he tried to reconcile Islam with America and modernism.
August 22, 2010 at 5:48 am
It's appalling that it's taken months to come out in the press that the mosque near 9/11 would be built by Sufis.... and depressing, since they are exactly the kind of Muslims that Americans should have encouraged building there...
August 17, 2010 at 4:13 pm
|
Op-Ed Contributor - Sufis - The Muslims in the Middle - NYTimes.com |
Sufis, our allies within Islam, may be alienated by the mosque fight.
August 17, 2010 at 4:13 pm
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Partly why I find this whole thing infuriating is I wrote about Rahman Baba in a poem I'm working on last January, because he was such an exemplary Sufi. It's his kind of spirit that the modern world dearly needs... Nothing in Islam could be further from the Taliban. It's like confusing Francis of Assisi with Jim Jones, given the way the issue has been blown up by politicians and much of the media.
Granted, there are many kinds of Sufis, as with Christian monks, but the Sufis, broadly speaking, really have their hearts and heads in the right place.
The government ought to give them a loan to build the place!
Granted, there are many kinds of Sufis, as with Christian monks, but the Sufis, broadly speaking, really have their hearts and heads in the right place.
The government ought to give them a loan to build the place!
August 17, 2010 at 4:28 pm
Rahman Baba
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2010/01/27/emperor-akbar-fatehpur-sikri/
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2010/01/27/emperor-akbar-fatehpur-sikri/
August 17, 2010 at 4:33 pm
Interesting .
August 18, 2010 at 3:32 am
I'm not defending the Sufi imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. His particular record and deeds have to stand on their own merit, if they can and do, and leave that to those knowledgeable about him. Rather, I'm concerned with the general failure to discern, by the media and politicians, the immense variety within Islam and Sufism, the range of individual belief and conscience, that it runs counter to mutual understanding and peace among people.
"Essentializing" Islam into only the Taliban, or something approaching it, will only lead to further lack of understanding on the part of people in the US and elsewhere. From a universal perspective, there's a lot of room for respect and understanding. Sufism, at its enlightened best, can help the world move in the right direction.
"Essentializing" Islam into only the Taliban, or something approaching it, will only lead to further lack of understanding on the part of people in the US and elsewhere. From a universal perspective, there's a lot of room for respect and understanding. Sufism, at its enlightened best, can help the world move in the right direction.
August 18, 2010 at 4:13 am
Frederick, I'm impressed with the depth and range of your knowledge. Thanks for sharing the Op-Ed.
August 18, 2010 at 8:44 am
I'm glad you found it interesting. One thing that bothers me a little about the OP Ed is the notion that Sufism is worthwhile only if it can "can be harnessed to a political end..." That really misses the boat, as they say.
A cynical attempt by the US government to use more peacefully inclined Sufis for ulterior motives is disingenuous. It's bound only to be counter-productive. Sufis and other more pacific Muslims need to be respected on their own terms for who and what they are, the way the Quakers and other dissenters eventually were, though that took a very long time for some, admittedly.
A cynical attempt by the US government to use more peacefully inclined Sufis for ulterior motives is disingenuous. It's bound only to be counter-productive. Sufis and other more pacific Muslims need to be respected on their own terms for who and what they are, the way the Quakers and other dissenters eventually were, though that took a very long time for some, admittedly.
August 18, 2010 at 9:14 am
Well stated.
August 18, 2010 at 9:27 am
Mmm, thanks for saying so. I've had pretty much a life-long interest in Sufi poetry and the more universal interpretations of Islam. Sufism has a lot "orders" or "denominations," usually organized around one saintly imam or scholar, especially in India. I've formally studied Islam, repeatedly. There's really so much misunderstanding in the US about Islam.
To my mind, something like a hybrid model of the US and pluralistic, as well as Sufi, India, minus the occasional communal violence, is the logical evolutionary goal modernity is rocking towards.
See my essay on Tolstoy, who actually had a lot contact with Muslims and Sufis when he was a young soldier, and throughout his life, actually.
https://fglaysher.com/eReading/2010/08/tolstoy-and-the-last-station-of-modernity/
Tolstoy's novella, Hadji Murad
https://fglaysher.com/eReading/2009/09/leo-tolstoy-hadji-murad/
To my mind, something like a hybrid model of the US and pluralistic, as well as Sufi, India, minus the occasional communal violence, is the logical evolutionary goal modernity is rocking towards.
See my essay on Tolstoy, who actually had a lot contact with Muslims and Sufis when he was a young soldier, and throughout his life, actually.
https://fglaysher.com/eReading/2010/08/tolstoy-and-the-last-station-of-modernity/
Tolstoy's novella, Hadji Murad
https://fglaysher.com/eReading/2009/09/leo-tolstoy-hadji-murad/
August 18, 2010 at 9:45 am
Don't miss it. A rare opportunity to read words of truth about American literature...
"Since the onset of poststructuralist theory, humanist critics have been put to pasture. The academy is ruled by "theorists" who consider their work superior to the literature they deconstruct, and moreover they have no interest in contemporary literature. As for the reviewing establishment, it is no more than the blurbing arm for conglomerate publishing...."
August 15, 2010 at 5:01 pm
"Since the onset of poststructuralist theory, humanist critics have been put to pasture. The academy is ruled by "theorists" who consider their work superior to the literature they deconstruct, and moreover they have no interest in contemporary literature. As for the reviewing establishment, it is no more than the blurbing arm for conglomerate publishing...."
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The 15 Most Overrated Contemporary American Writers (PHOTOS) |
Are the writers receiving the major awards and official recognition really the best writers today? Or are they overrated mediocrities with little claim to recognition by posterity?
August 15, 2010 at 5:01 pm
3 people like this
Right on
August 15, 2010 at 5:10 pm
Apparently talking about the New York Times, "the blurbing arm for conglomerate publishing, offering unanalytical "reviews" announcing that the emperor is wearing clothes." The Internet and social networking proffer the possibility of perhaps a rebirth of *real* literature...
August 15, 2010 at 5:15 pm
I'd read a list of the 15 most underrated CAWs.
August 15, 2010 at 5:26 pm
@Alvin Pang, Misread you. Sometimes one can learn a lot from a scathing piece of real criticism. I don't agree with everything he says, but at least he's not a sycophant to the corrupt universities and MFA programs. I respect him for that and trusting in the strength of his own conscience.
August 15, 2010 at 5:34 pm
@FG - agree. But really, I'd love to see what the alternatives are. So much of what mainstream publishing parses to the public is manufactured fluff (or dangerously repackaged dogma)
August 15, 2010 at 5:36 pm
Of course, every writer advances him or herself. A natural predilection.
And not a decent scholar or real critic worthy of the name, since they all turned into academicians seduced by theoorryy... easy to produce that slop... and journalism replaced independent reviewers, corporate conglomerates took over publishing. And that's the sad state of affairs in American literature, all genres and formerly humanistic disciplines... passed all over the world. Scientific literary study!
The soul long gone, lost, in the chase for the almighty American buck...
And not a decent scholar or real critic worthy of the name, since they all turned into academicians seduced by theoorryy... easy to produce that slop... and journalism replaced independent reviewers, corporate conglomerates took over publishing. And that's the sad state of affairs in American literature, all genres and formerly humanistic disciplines... passed all over the world. Scientific literary study!
The soul long gone, lost, in the chase for the almighty American buck...
August 15, 2010 at 5:48 pm
It's just not that bad. Lots of good work out there if you look.
August 15, 2010 at 6:02 pm
A very low, mediocre bar...
August 15, 2010 at 6:06 pm
Well, if you hate it that much, why not ignore it? that's what I do with things I don't enjoy.
August 15, 2010 at 6:07 pm
"Ignore it?" A new critical criterion... Perfectly reflects the banality that Anis Shivani is writing about.
August 15, 2010 at 6:10 pm
It's not personal, nor about anyone's self-esteem...
August 15, 2010 at 6:13 pm
It's difficult to listen through all the noise, esp if access is difficult. I've had the privilege of encountering some truly luminous writing from the US -- mostly serendipitously -- whose authors are well received but by no means "celebrated" by conventional standards. I'm sure there are more of them in the woodwork.
It matters. Our local library doesn't stock em if they aren't well known enough. Surely there must be a booklover's guide to real books out there?
It matters. Our local library doesn't stock em if they aren't well known enough. Surely there must be a booklover's guide to real books out there?
August 15, 2010 at 6:19 pm
There's over 1.5 Billion, yes, BBBBillion a year spent in the USA on "creative writing" MFA programs. That's an awful lot of corrupting lucre... passed through supposedly literary magazines, university departments, great and small, endless ridiculous "awards" and putative "competitions," state and federal funding of every sort, local and national, corporate donations for their own tax write-offs, foundations, art groups, etc., 1.5 BBBillion, handed out and so on... that's a lot of corrupting dough, to use the vernacular.
I'm afraid there aren't any real writers, as conceived by most of the civilizations of the world throughout history. They're just not "professional" enough to qualify... This is what modern "culture" has brought civilization... It's partly why culture is doing so well... East and West.
I'm afraid there aren't any real writers, as conceived by most of the civilizations of the world throughout history. They're just not "professional" enough to qualify... This is what modern "culture" has brought civilization... It's partly why culture is doing so well... East and West.
August 15, 2010 at 6:30 pm
https://scarriet.wordpress.com/
August 15, 2010 at 6:35 pm
On Scarriet, Comment #3, fglaysher said,
November 15, 2009 at 5:01 pm
https://scarriet.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/tenets-of-faith-being-right-on-the-awp-bap-pw-aoap-and-even-the-afp-etc/
November 15, 2009 at 5:01 pm
https://scarriet.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/tenets-of-faith-being-right-on-the-awp-bap-pw-aoap-and-even-the-afp-etc/
August 15, 2010 at 6:38 pm
@Fred - do you have a citable reference for that figure? It's no small potatoes! Yeah, I know MFAs exist largely to give practising writers a supplementary steady income...
August 15, 2010 at 6:53 pm
I cancelled my subscriptions to most poetryreviews and journals because the poems all sound like Mary Oliver.
August 15, 2010 at 6:57 pm
Oh it's worse than that -- they all sound like prose diary entries relineated on the page for a writing assignment that was left to the night before.
August 15, 2010 at 6:59 pm
Perhaps I shouldn't have spent so much of my youth making words out of my alphabet soup. I might have had time to write a poetry collection that would have earned me enough money to buy more than soup today.
August 15, 2010 at 7:41 pm
Poetry takes hearts of stone and makes stone soup.
August 15, 2010 at 7:42 pm
not all poetry.
August 16, 2010 at 12:33 am
@Alvin Pang, The 1.5 Billion figure is from AWP, the Associated Writers & Writing Programs, one of the major pigs at the trough... "since 1967."
https://www.awpwriter.org
And they should know. They specialize in getting as big of a piece of it every year as possible... If memory serves, the figure was cited in an article, a year or two ago, on "creative writing," I read somewhere. Perhaps Poetry Magazine, part of the problem too. It's a genre, bemoaning the low state of poetry in the USA... yet, predictably, no one remembers what poetry and culture used to be about. Nor dares to say it. That's what literature gets for all the "filthy lucre."
@Diana Manister, Milosz... understood quite well what American "literary" magazines were worth and the university po mo biz:
"I try to read contemporary American poetry conscientiously. It's understandable that where there are thousands of poets the overwhelming majority cannot be worth very much, though they provide an incentive and nourishment for the few, just a handful; it's the same everywhere. Something similar is happening in modern painting and the results are similar, too, because the paintings afford little pleasure [Cf. Rieff]. One can say about these poets that their technique is first-rate but that they have nothing to write about. Their 'life experience' shows through every line of verse; it is the life of lectuers on university campuses or in high schools and what they describe most frequently is their family-life complications, their own or heard about in the neighborhood bar. It is a common, monotonous reality...." A Year of the Hunter, 111.
https://www.awpwriter.org
And they should know. They specialize in getting as big of a piece of it every year as possible... If memory serves, the figure was cited in an article, a year or two ago, on "creative writing," I read somewhere. Perhaps Poetry Magazine, part of the problem too. It's a genre, bemoaning the low state of poetry in the USA... yet, predictably, no one remembers what poetry and culture used to be about. Nor dares to say it. That's what literature gets for all the "filthy lucre."
@Diana Manister, Milosz... understood quite well what American "literary" magazines were worth and the university po mo biz:
"I try to read contemporary American poetry conscientiously. It's understandable that where there are thousands of poets the overwhelming majority cannot be worth very much, though they provide an incentive and nourishment for the few, just a handful; it's the same everywhere. Something similar is happening in modern painting and the results are similar, too, because the paintings afford little pleasure [Cf. Rieff]. One can say about these poets that their technique is first-rate but that they have nothing to write about. Their 'life experience' shows through every line of verse; it is the life of lectuers on university campuses or in high schools and what they describe most frequently is their family-life complications, their own or heard about in the neighborhood bar. It is a common, monotonous reality...." A Year of the Hunter, 111.
August 16, 2010 at 4:41 am
Mr. Glaysher, I have read this and it demoralized me as a writer.
August 16, 2010 at 5:42 am
That's about what you have to deal with as a writer, if you're one. Only you can decide. If so, cheer up! Since here's another assessment by the same author of 17 of American literary journals... about which he's entirely wrong... which have lots of "reputation" and absolutely no literary value... but are the quintessence of what Milosz was talking about above.
Anis Shivani: 17 Literary Journals That Might Survive the Internet
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/anis-shivani/anis-shivani17-literary-j_b_673799.html
Anis Shivani: 17 Literary Journals That Might Survive the Internet
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/anis-shivani/anis-shivani17-literary-j_b_673799.html
August 16, 2010 at 6:44 am
There were overrated writers before the rise of MFA programs. If there's no Melville on the American scene at the moment, I doubt it's because people have been talking about books with one another in grad school... Besides, there's nothing more typical of the literary professionalism Shivani derides than his own critique: while lists are always fun, the thinking behind the article is more predictable than fall foliage in a Mary Oliver poem.
August 16, 2010 at 7:38 am
Epitaph on an Army of Free Verse Poets
These, in the day of small press failings,
The hour when art’s foundations sent
Insistent mercenary mailings
So they could pay their uptown rent;
These shoulders hold artistic poses,
Louche beneath each self-crowned head,
And free, free, free, free, each one proses
Sincere, unspoiled, unversed, unread.
These, in the day of small press failings,
The hour when art’s foundations sent
Insistent mercenary mailings
So they could pay their uptown rent;
These shoulders hold artistic poses,
Louche beneath each self-crowned head,
And free, free, free, free, each one proses
Sincere, unspoiled, unversed, unread.
August 16, 2010 at 8:50 am
@Jesse Zuba, I entirely agree with the validity of your view about Anis Shivani, which is why I said it's a genre in itself to bemoan the decline of poetry and literature, for decades really, long before Dana Gioia's Can Poetry Matter, Andrew Delbanco,s The Decline and Fall of Literature, and other such books and articles. My Preface to my poems Into the Ruins was written before either largely academic work.
It's the nature of literary periods, "challenge and revolt," the sribblers, Colley Cibber and Alexander Pope, eighteenth-century London, etc., the nature of literary evolution, if you will.
American Postmodernism has had a very long life and sad aftermath, what with the professionalization of the art and literary study through the university, deconstruction, and MFA programs combined...
The Internet and social networking proffer the possibility of a much more capacious perspective and audience versus the small, stifling situation in the US, truly global...
It's the nature of literary periods, "challenge and revolt," the sribblers, Colley Cibber and Alexander Pope, eighteenth-century London, etc., the nature of literary evolution, if you will.
American Postmodernism has had a very long life and sad aftermath, what with the professionalization of the art and literary study through the university, deconstruction, and MFA programs combined...
The Internet and social networking proffer the possibility of a much more capacious perspective and audience versus the small, stifling situation in the US, truly global...
August 16, 2010 at 9:01 am
@Diana Manister, Milosz... This morning stumbled over a passage from his Visions from San Francisco Bay, which seems apropos, on the periodicals of "American intellectuals": "Their conformism is so far advanced that they are sometimes reminiscent of Pantagruel's sheep, and to convince oneself of this, it is enough to read the periodicals they edit, which are designed to their taste" (214).
August 17, 2010 at 7:05 am
That's my experience, too, of academic journals... Ba, ba, ba....
August 17, 2010 at 9:35 am
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Tolstoy and the Last Station of Modernity |
Tolstoy arrived at the last station of modernity, universality, long before he arrived at the station of Astapovo, long before the rest of humanity began to catch up. Though we may still first blow up much of the world, global modernity has and is increasingly catching up with To
August 15, 2010 at 6:05 am
Perseus(For friends in different time zones.)
https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=141618579201998&id=100000247285397&ref=mf
August 10, 2010 at 4:53 am
https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=141618579201998&id=100000247285397&ref=mf
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Perseus |
Perseus
(Cellini)
Winged sandals strapped to my feet,
I stand in the piazza of Florence,...
August 10, 2010 at 4:53 am
1 person likes this
Perseus by Frederick Glaysher
August 9, 2010 at 6:42 am
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Perseus |
Perseus
(Cellini)
Winged sandals strapped to my feet,
I stand in the piazza of Florence,...
August 9, 2010 at 6:42 am
Heroic and bold!
August 9, 2010 at 11:41 am
I appreciate your good words.
August 9, 2010 at 3:55 pm
Quoted by Julien Benda:
"And the honour of virtue is in contending, not in winning." --Montaigne
"And the honour of virtue is in contending, not in winning." --Montaigne
August 8, 2010 at 11:33 am
Love that.
August 9, 2010 at 7:20 pm
"The religion of the spiritual . . . seems to me a lucky accident in man's history. ...it seems to me a paradox. The obvious law of human substance is the conquest of things and exaltation of the impulses which secure this conquest. Only through an amazing abuse were a handful of men at desks able to succeed in making humanity believe that the supreme values are the good things of the spirit." Julien Benda
August 8, 2010 at 8:58 am
"Civilization as I understand it here--moral supremacy conferred on the cult of the spiritual and on the feeling of the universal--appears to me as a lucky accident in man's development." Julien Benda
August 8, 2010 at 5:13 am
1 person likes this
A tangent or footnote for @John Guzlowski - "Man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips." Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, p. 136.
August 7, 2010 at 11:08 am
5 people like this
This fact is why nihilism is such a distorted vision of the human being...
August 7, 2010 at 11:14 am
I agree with this statement, but I want to add that I believe the question of value to be one of scope. From the perspective of nature or the universe, nihilism seems reasonable. If the universe perceived itself it would accept what is and not choose for or against itself. Even from a nearer perspective nature as red in tooth and claw adequately describes the unbridled self interest of many forms of animal life. Whereas, as a smaller part of nature or member of a social group, and being a species that is capable of imaginatively sharing the pain and discomfort of others, nihilism is not an acceptable or sustainable conclusion. I think is is a continually arising notion because it is an inherent conclusion. The failure is not our inability to banish the notion, but to place it in its proper sphere and to realize that what is true from one perspective is not true or applicable in another.
*
damn binary thinking
*
damn binary thinking
August 7, 2010 at 12:05 pm
According to the greatest mystics of various traditions, the universe does perceive Itself, through the Human Being, as well as the lower case... Attar's Simorgh comes to mind. I think that's the way binary thinking has been resolved, at the deepest level, in way one or another. I wonder if you'd agree? Nothing like a binary question about a binary question!
I agree with you that nihilism is "a continually arising notion," one of the many interpretations of existence always available with which to understand life. I'm not for "banishing the notion." I don't believe that's possible or desirable, merely driving it back a bit into its cave... That's all the victory we human beings can truly hope for, in my view; some may feel that's a spiritual shortcoming on my part to say so, but I believe psychomachia is the nature of life... our spiritual health needs nihilism around as a possibility to help us grow...
I agree with you that nihilism is "a continually arising notion," one of the many interpretations of existence always available with which to understand life. I'm not for "banishing the notion." I don't believe that's possible or desirable, merely driving it back a bit into its cave... That's all the victory we human beings can truly hope for, in my view; some may feel that's a spiritual shortcoming on my part to say so, but I believe psychomachia is the nature of life... our spiritual health needs nihilism around as a possibility to help us grow...
August 7, 2010 at 12:18 pm
Incidentally, that's not pantheism, a bugbear for some.
August 7, 2010 at 12:29 pm
I find it rather comforting and satisfying if God is experiencing the Creation through me. :)
August 7, 2010 at 4:20 pm
A drop out of the ocean, the ear with which He hears, are the kinds of metaphors used. One Sufi mystic, Hallaj, phrased it, "I am He." Hallaj was executed by the orthodox...
August 7, 2010 at 4:27 pm
...for blasphemy.
August 7, 2010 at 4:30 pm
There are, of course, plenty of Christian mystics and people of other traditions than Islam who have believe something comparable. I would call it one of the universal constants open to spiritual reflection, though more esoteric than most historically have found comprehensible. Hallaj and others didn't mean it on the crude level his literal-minded executioners understood.
August 8, 2010 at 4:51 am
This is why the Sufis teach that it is a truth that cannot be spoken. Perhaps I have erred in that regard...
August 8, 2010 at 5:17 am
"Once more Vauvenargue's admirable saying would be verified. 'The passions have taught men reason.' But such a thing only seems to me possible after a long lapse of time, when war has caused far more woes than have yet been endured. Men will not revise their values for wars which only last fifty months and only kill a couple of millon men in each nation." Julien Benda
August 7, 2010 at 3:13 am
1 person likes this
"Nevertheless one thinks of a humanity of the future, weary of its "sacred egotisms" and the slaughterings to which they inevitably lead, coming as humanity came two thousand years ago, to the acceptance of a good situated beyond itself, accepting it even more ardently than before, with the knowledge of all the tears and blood that have been shed through departing from that doctrine." Julien Benda
August 6, 2010 at 5:41 am
3 people like this
excuse me. when did humanity become weary of sacred egotism and slaughter. the US has gone to war about 9 times in my lifetime alone.
war is like fried chicken--eveyone's favorite.
war is like fried chicken--eveyone's favorite.
August 6, 2010 at 5:51 pm
Benda wrote The Betrayal of the Clerks in 1927. He's criticizing modernism as turning away from the transcendent and substituting political ersatzes and mass movements of Marx, Mussolini, etc., "sacred egotisms." True clerks serve the transcendental... assert the possibility of something beyond the "tears and bloods," help keep memory of it alive. So he mourns the loss of a unifying transcendence... and the global marketing of "fried chicken," brought to you by the colonel...
August 7, 2010 at 3:12 am
it's important to dream big dreams--and I give him that.
August 7, 2010 at 3:15 am
What else do human beings have but dreams? If we stop dreaming, then perhaps as Victor Frankl suggested often, there's not much meaning left... but the gas chamber. Benda states in one passage that "the nature of moral action is precisely that it creates its object by affirming it," i.e., a humane transcendence. That he says, is what the modern nihilist has forgotten or repudiated... that tension is the struggle for civilization.
August 7, 2010 at 3:25 am
i think most people are dreamers--small dreamers with small dreams, the dream of TV, of Xbox, of animated and 3D movies. They seem happy with those dreams. They turn to them because they think the world is too sobering, too dark, too depressing.
August 7, 2010 at 9:43 am
It's even worse than they realize... the death march of history wakes up some of the tenth generation for a while... global now. To use the old language, as Benda suggests, and Frankl actually says, the shema is restored; covenant creates community.
August 7, 2010 at 11:05 am
Interesting what you say about Frankl--I've never read him in this context. thanks.
August 7, 2010 at 12:33 pm
The 1984 edition is the one to read, if interested. It's revised with a new piece at the end. Did you see the quotation from him above? Eeer, here is its: A tangent or footnote for @John Guzlowski - "Man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips." Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, p. 136.
August 7, 2010 at 12:57 pm
I read your footnote to me. Thank you for the quote. Yes, some went to the gas chambers saying prayers , and others didn't. My mother survived the camps but never regained her faith. I wrote a poem about it.
What the War Taught Her
My mother learned that sex is bad,
Men are worthless, it is always cold
And there is never enough to eat.
She learned that if you are stupid
With your hands you will not survive
The winter even if you survive the fall.
She learned that only the young survive
The camps. The old are left in piles
Like worthless paper, and babies
Are scarce like chickens and bread.
She learned that the world is a broken place
Where no birds sing, and even angels
Cannot bear the sorrows God gives them.
She learned that you don't pray
Your enemies will not torment you.
You only pray that they will not kill you.
What the War Taught Her
My mother learned that sex is bad,
Men are worthless, it is always cold
And there is never enough to eat.
She learned that if you are stupid
With your hands you will not survive
The winter even if you survive the fall.
She learned that only the young survive
The camps. The old are left in piles
Like worthless paper, and babies
Are scarce like chickens and bread.
She learned that the world is a broken place
Where no birds sing, and even angels
Cannot bear the sorrows God gives them.
She learned that you don't pray
Your enemies will not torment you.
You only pray that they will not kill you.
August 7, 2010 at 2:48 pm
I respect your mother's experience.
It is true that not everyone reached the same conclusion. Frankl's book is exactly about that fact. Far from the Holocaust proving Nietzsche was right, far from proving the death of God, the Holocaust proved the decadence of Nietzsche's philosophy, nihilism as an interpretation of life, its perniciousness. It must and can be purged from the public realm.
Nihilism now threatens as many as a billion people. The fallible hard and software are in place, controlled by fallible human beings, given to hubris.
They who chose to intone the shema as their last witness affirmed both the existence of God and what is noble in the human being...
It is true that not everyone reached the same conclusion. Frankl's book is exactly about that fact. Far from the Holocaust proving Nietzsche was right, far from proving the death of God, the Holocaust proved the decadence of Nietzsche's philosophy, nihilism as an interpretation of life, its perniciousness. It must and can be purged from the public realm.
Nihilism now threatens as many as a billion people. The fallible hard and software are in place, controlled by fallible human beings, given to hubris.
They who chose to intone the shema as their last witness affirmed both the existence of God and what is noble in the human being...
August 7, 2010 at 4:09 pm
Different people do response differently to similar situations. My mother and father were both in concentration camps. His experience deepened his faith in God. Her experience made her a life-long atheist. Or rather a nihilist with a subjective sense of morality that allowed her to join with my father for common goals. Raise a family. Live a good life.
Who are the nihilists you're talking about?
Who are the nihilists you're talking about?
August 8, 2010 at 2:05 am
I recognize and respect that people of good conscience can differ by choice and temperament. I don't view that as a basis of judgment. I think the individual conscience should be respected. I speak only for my own conscience, and, as a writer, invite others to consider for themselves whether there is anything worthwhile that I might have to offer as the fruit of my study and reflection.
Broadly, I'm speaking about much of modernity, literary, academic, cultural elites, but people of every level and walk of life, including many religious people who have become de facto nihilists by the pervasive nature of the culture itself (Tolstoy is very perceptive on this). Part of the culture of nihilism is the distortion of science into Scientism, a dehumanizing interpretation in itself, accepted widely through blind faith, that fragments human nature, inculcated very deeply into modernity.
Broadly, I'm speaking about much of modernity, literary, academic, cultural elites, but people of every level and walk of life, including many religious people who have become de facto nihilists by the pervasive nature of the culture itself (Tolstoy is very perceptive on this). Part of the culture of nihilism is the distortion of science into Scientism, a dehumanizing interpretation in itself, accepted widely through blind faith, that fragments human nature, inculcated very deeply into modernity.
August 8, 2010 at 4:44 am
"It is hard to imagine a body of men of letters (for corporative action becomes more and more important) attempting to withstand the bourgeois classes instead of flattering them. It is still harder to imagine them turning against the tide of their intellectual decadence and ceasing to think that they display a lofty culture when they sneer at rational morality and fall on their knees before history." Julien Benda
August 6, 2010 at 3:13 am
1 person likes this
"When he takes up this position, the clerk is crucified, but he is respected, and his words haunt the memory of mankind." Julien Benda
August 5, 2010 at 8:50 am
1 person likes this
"In other words he declares to them that his kingdom is not of this world, that the grandeur of his teaching lies precisely in this absence of practical value, and that the right morality for the prosperity of the kingdoms which are of this world, is not his, but Caesar's." Julien Benda
August 5, 2010 at 6:00 am
1 person likes this
"From all this it follows that the clerk is only strong if he is clearly conscious of his essential qualities and his true function, and shows mankind that he is clearly conscious of them." Julien Benda
August 5, 2010 at 3:13 am
"As soon as the clerk claims that he does not disregard the interests of the nation or of the established classes, he is inevitably beaten, for the very good reason that it is impossible to preach the spiritual and the universal without underminging the institutions whose foundations are the possession of the material and desire to feel distinct from others." Julien Benda
August 4, 2010 at 9:37 am
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"It may be said that the clerk's defeat begins from the very moment when he claims to be practical." Julien Benda
August 4, 2010 at 7:23 am
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"So that humanity, even if it had any desire for peace, is exhorted to neglect the one effort which might procure it, an effort it is delighted not to make." Julien Benda
August 4, 2010 at 4:50 am
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"A school arose in the nineteenth century which told men to expect peace from enlightened self-interest, from the belief that a war, even when victorious, is disastrous, especially to economic transformations, to "the evolution of production," in a phrase, to factors totally foreign to their moral improvement, from which, these thinkers say, it would be frivolous to expect anything." Julien Benda
August 4, 2010 at 2:48 am
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"...not only do men steel themselves entirely against this, but the very first condition of peace which is to recognize the necessity for this progress of the soul, is seriously menaced." Julien Benda
August 3, 2010 at 11:44 am
"Peace, it must be repeated after so many others have said this, is only possible if men cease to place their happiness in the possession of things "which cannot be shared," and if they raise themselves to a point where they adopt an abstract principle superior to their egotisms. In other words, it can only be obtained by a betterment of human morality." Julien Benda
August 3, 2010 at 8:59 am
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"Peace, if it ever exists, will not be based on the fear of war but on the love of peace. It will not be the abstaining from an act, but the coming of a state of mind. In this sense the most insignificant writer can serve peace where the most powerful tribunals can do nothing, and moreover these tribunals leave untouched the economic war between the nations and the class wars." Julien Benda
August 3, 2010 at 6:26 am
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Yoga, ie union.
August 3, 2010 at 2:58 pm
Sure, I'm in favor of any kind of meditation or prayer leading to more peaceful states of mind and spiritual self-cultivation, love, and service of others.
Julien Benda was Catholic, writing in 1927, really dismissing the League of Nations and other efforts of the time at arbitration as inadequate to creating peace, invoking moral and spiritual renewal beyond the limits of modernism. Tolstoy rejected international peace efforts prior to WWI along similar lines, though not Catholic by any means, rather his unique vision of Christian anarchism.
While I understand such thinking, I believe we've moved far further in history and need both practical, cooperatively democratic efforts and a more open, pluralistic, spiritual vision to heal many of our global problems--a change of heart... the journey we human beings are on.
Julien Benda was Catholic, writing in 1927, really dismissing the League of Nations and other efforts of the time at arbitration as inadequate to creating peace, invoking moral and spiritual renewal beyond the limits of modernism. Tolstoy rejected international peace efforts prior to WWI along similar lines, though not Catholic by any means, rather his unique vision of Christian anarchism.
While I understand such thinking, I believe we've moved far further in history and need both practical, cooperatively democratic efforts and a more open, pluralistic, spiritual vision to heal many of our global problems--a change of heart... the journey we human beings are on.
August 3, 2010 at 4:06 pm
Yoga is practice, not dogma. We make peace by doing peace, not by preaching it.
August 3, 2010 at 6:05 pm
If that's the result, I'm all for it. I must admit my occasional efforts at yoga are only on the level of exercise. "Let deeds not words be your adorning" is an ideal I respect wherever found.
August 4, 2010 at 2:47 am
An afterthought on Tolstoy. I feel compunctions over lumping him into "Christian anarchism," as though that does any justice to him. I'm working on an essay about him at the moment, and there's a tendency out there to use that tag. During the last decade of his life, he's actually very open to all of the various major religions, including Hinduism and Buddhism. His Calendar of Wisdom draws from almost every possible strand of human experience. I don't believe critics and writers, culture in general, have understood that side of Tolstoy. Last year's movie The Last Station really bungled it.
August 4, 2010 at 3:35 am
Here's a sci-fi fantasy: a fleet of spaceships arrives from a civilization as advanced beyond humans as we are beyond ants.
They hover above the government centers of all the countries in the world, making it known that anyone who starts a war will be instantly annihilated.
They hover above the government centers of all the countries in the world, making it known that anyone who starts a war will be instantly annihilated.
August 4, 2010 at 4:19 am
There are about a million versions of that story. That of Marx for instance...
Here's the only story that has consistently uplifted humankind around the globe through the millennia. A Being comes down, like us, and seeks not to murder human beings into conformity to government policies, but sets an example of self-less love and sacrifice, encouraging people to strive to be as humane as possible, instead of like the merciless, rapacious animals, ripping and clawing at one another. Rather than run their lives, S/He reminds humanity that only they run their own individual conscience and life, have the will to choose good, not evil, to treat others as they themselves would be treated... The future lies before them, to shape as they will, versus tyranny...
Here's the only story that has consistently uplifted humankind around the globe through the millennia. A Being comes down, like us, and seeks not to murder human beings into conformity to government policies, but sets an example of self-less love and sacrifice, encouraging people to strive to be as humane as possible, instead of like the merciless, rapacious animals, ripping and clawing at one another. Rather than run their lives, S/He reminds humanity that only they run their own individual conscience and life, have the will to choose good, not evil, to treat others as they themselves would be treated... The future lies before them, to shape as they will, versus tyranny...
August 4, 2010 at 4:45 am
Didn't Jesus save ET? Why not?
Surely this one planet among trillions is not the only one with creatures? ET may be more moral, compassionate and wise, as well as technologically more advanced than we are.
Jesus is limited in his sphere of operations if he only saves humans.
Surely this one planet among trillions is not the only one with creatures? ET may be more moral, compassionate and wise, as well as technologically more advanced than we are.
Jesus is limited in his sphere of operations if he only saves humans.
August 4, 2010 at 4:58 am
It only stands to reason that the One Being has created worlds beyond number...
August 4, 2010 at 5:06 am
Yes but Jesus was human. Are you saying he arrived as an ET on other planets?
August 4, 2010 at 12:05 pm
You seem to be hung up on Jesus. I never mentioned him.
August 4, 2010 at 12:13 pm
Frederick you mentioned Christian anarchism. That's mentioning Jesus.
August 5, 2010 at 4:34 am
Is it? Your cynicism is palpable in comparing Jesus to ET and sci-fi. It's characteristic of the lack of respect that many self-styled liberals have for the conscience of other people, while tauting tolerance when it suits them. Not a truly liberal value, Diana. You're entitled to your views, but derision and caricature are not intellectual arguments.
I'm happy to discuss anything serious on a serious level.
I'm happy to discuss anything serious on a serious level.
August 5, 2010 at 4:52 am
ET is not a reference to the creature in the Spielberg movie, but simply means extra-terrestrials, for whom I can assure you I would show great respect were ever to encounter them.
My question concerns the role of Jesus as savior of all life forms, now that even Stephen Hawking believes extra-terrestrial life to be likely.
Or is Christianity designed only for humans?
Do beings on other planets have souls that Christianity is interested in saving?
My question concerns the role of Jesus as savior of all life forms, now that even Stephen Hawking believes extra-terrestrial life to be likely.
Or is Christianity designed only for humans?
Do beings on other planets have souls that Christianity is interested in saving?
August 5, 2010 at 10:28 am
However you define ET, it amounts to the same thing.
As I've said, you appear hung up on or exhibit animus for Christianity. Ask a Christian... though I don't believe you're asking a serious, genuine question; rather, perhaps, the secular equivalent of how many angels fit on the head of a pin. Anyway, I'm a Bahai. "Saving" is a Christian doctrine.
As I've said, you appear hung up on or exhibit animus for Christianity. Ask a Christian... though I don't believe you're asking a serious, genuine question; rather, perhaps, the secular equivalent of how many angels fit on the head of a pin. Anyway, I'm a Bahai. "Saving" is a Christian doctrine.
August 5, 2010 at 10:56 am
I should add, I mean, that I don't think of myself primarily as a Christian, but I was born and baptized a Catholic. I've read the Bible many times during my life, studied theology on the academic level, and so on. But identify primarily with the universality of the Bahai teachings, as interpreted by Abdul-Baha, who brought them into the modern, Western world, dying in 1921.
August 6, 2010 at 3:20 pm
Frederick we are living in an age of expanded awareness of the likelihood that other planets besides our own are inhabited by intelligent beings, possibly thousands of years more advanced than we are.
How does your humanistic spirituality address this reality or eventuality?
How does your humanistic spirituality address this reality or eventuality?
August 6, 2010 at 5:45 pm
Given your premise, with which scientists from Sagan to countless others have gone on record as believing rational, I would say I accept the statement by the founder of the Bahai Faith, Baha'u'llah, in the late 19th century, that there are beings around every fixed star of the universe... since it appears to agree with science.
August 7, 2010 at 3:20 am
Why does faith have to agree with science, which changes constantly? Newtonian physics evolved into relativity, then string theory and many parallel universes.
If religion needs to agree with science it must constantly change into another religion. The vision of beings existing around fixed stars of this universe would be outmoded if other universes in other dimensions are proved to be true in the future.
And what if advanced rational beings from other star systems are not anthropoids but reptilian? What happens to humanistic religion then?
If religion needs to agree with science it must constantly change into another religion. The vision of beings existing around fixed stars of this universe would be outmoded if other universes in other dimensions are proved to be true in the future.
And what if advanced rational beings from other star systems are not anthropoids but reptilian? What happens to humanistic religion then?
August 7, 2010 at 4:20 am
If religion doesn't agree with science, it becomes superstition, what Tolstoy rightly called "sorcery." True "religion" is just as progressive as your conception of science, just as evolving... non-static. The question becomes the definition of science versus Scientism... one of the false gods of modernity.
Your last questions are based on anthropomorphic presumptions. Rationally speaking, there isn't any reason that what is human cannot take many forms. It's only logical that it would, but that's all mere speculation. We've plenty of monsters right here on earth to worry about...
Your last questions are based on anthropomorphic presumptions. Rationally speaking, there isn't any reason that what is human cannot take many forms. It's only logical that it would, but that's all mere speculation. We've plenty of monsters right here on earth to worry about...
August 7, 2010 at 4:31 am
Aren't you employing an anthropoid paradigm by suggesting that advanced creatures who may be reptilian would be monsters? Maybe anthropoids are the monsters, particularly if advanced reptilians did not wage war.
August 7, 2010 at 4:35 am
One aspect of many religions that strikes me as destructive is homocentricity, or human vanity. We may be as insects to a civilization hundreds or thousands of years ahead of us.
August 7, 2010 at 4:38 am
I didn't say "would be monsters." But since human beings can be either monsters or angels, as well as any mixture thereof, I can only speculate that other beings would possess similar potentialities. Human vanity is not restricted to people of religious sensibility... we all think in terms of what we know. What else do we have but metaphors? I am willing to concede, I suppose, you're right. I readily admit I'm thinking in anthropomorphic terms as well, even when trying not to! "Take many forms..."
August 7, 2010 at 5:08 am
Why speculte that other higher beings would possess similar potentialities? Why not imagine beings more advanced than we are, technologically, scientifically, morally, spiritually? A culture eons ahead of us in evolution might not need organized religion to keep them from evil. Maybe we are comparatively primitive.
On the other hand, other cultures might be less advanced than we are. What if we found Cro-Magnon level creatures on another planet? Would we be free to say they are sub-human and use them for lab experiments or breed them for food? What if they looked like buffalo but were highly intelligent and sensitive in ways different from us?
It's entirely possible that we may be faced with life from other planets, either by discovering them or by being discovered by them. A religion that presumes we are the only planet worth being included in a spiritual vision is very limited and ill-prepared for either of these encounters.
On the other hand, other cultures might be less advanced than we are. What if we found Cro-Magnon level creatures on another planet? Would we be free to say they are sub-human and use them for lab experiments or breed them for food? What if they looked like buffalo but were highly intelligent and sensitive in ways different from us?
It's entirely possible that we may be faced with life from other planets, either by discovering them or by being discovered by them. A religion that presumes we are the only planet worth being included in a spiritual vision is very limited and ill-prepared for either of these encounters.
August 7, 2010 at 5:34 am
I wouldn't limit potentialities to only on par of the moment. I don't consider "organized religion" religion. That is primitive, like secular culture's current thinking about religion.
It's only rational to believe beings exist "out there" at all stages of material and spiritual evolution, as we do here on earth... I largely agree with everything else you say. Of course, it's all speculation until "first contact." We're isolated, as far as we know, by immense time and space and have yet to invent a means to make it otherwise, ourselves...
It's only rational to believe beings exist "out there" at all stages of material and spiritual evolution, as we do here on earth... I largely agree with everything else you say. Of course, it's all speculation until "first contact." We're isolated, as far as we know, by immense time and space and have yet to invent a means to make it otherwise, ourselves...
August 7, 2010 at 5:45 am
...which may be for the best. We have a lot of evolving here still to do, perhaps before we're fit to interact inter-stellarly on a humane level, since can't even behave well on earth.
August 7, 2010 at 5:48 am
"Imposed upon the nations by their Ministers rather than desired by them, dictated solely by interest...and not at all by a change in public morality, these new institutions may perhaps be opposed to war but leave intact the spirit of war, and nothing leads us to suppose that a nation which only respects a contract for practical reasons, will not break as soon as breaking it appears more profitable."
August 3, 2010 at 4:23 am
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"These dark predictions do not seem to me to need as much modification as some people think, on account of certain actions resolutely direct against war, such as the setting up of a supernational institution and the agreements recently made by the rival nations." Julien Benda
August 3, 2010 at 3:37 am
"This humanity is heading for the greatest and most perfect war ever seen in the world, whether it is a war of nations, or a war of classes." Julien Benda
August 2, 2010 at 10:12 am
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"Obviously, attachment to the world of the spirit alone was easier for those who were capable of it when there were no nations to love." Julien Benda
August 2, 2010 at 6:27 am
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"Imagine an observer of the twelfth century.... He would see men of learning, artists and philosophers, displaying to the world a spirit which cared nothing for nations, using a universal language among themselves. He would see those who gave Europe its moral values preaching the cult of the human, or at least of the Christian, and not of the national,
August 2, 2010 at 4:10 am
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...he would see them striving to found, in opposition to the nations, a great universal empire on spiritual foundations. ...All humanity, including the clerks, have become laymen. All Europe, including Erasmus, has followed Luther." Julien Benda
August 2, 2010 at 4:10 am
"The political realism of the clerks, far from being a superficial fact due to the caprice of an order of men, seems to be bound up with the very essence of the modern world." Julien Benda
July 30, 2010 at 8:37 am
"Remember that Nietzsche only truly esteems the thought of the ancients up to Socrates, i.e., up to the time when it begins to teach the universal." Julien Benda
July 30, 2010 at 3:04 am
"This attitude also seems to me to result from the decline of the study of classical literature in the formation of their minds. The humanities, as the word implies, have always taught the cult of humanity in its universal aspect... Notice that this decline of classical culture in the French writers...
July 29, 2010 at 8:00 am
...coincides with the discovery of the great German realists, Hegel and especially Nietzsche, whose genius had the more effect on these Frenchmen because their lack of classical discipline deprived them of the one real barrier which can be opposed to that genuis." Julien Benda
July 29, 2010 at 8:00 am
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"The practice of the life of the spirit seems to me to lead inevitably to universalism, to the feeling of the eternal, to a lack of vigour in the belief in worldly conventions." Julien Benda
July 29, 2010 at 5:39 am
For half a century, such has been the attitude of men whose function is to thwart the realism of nations, and who have laboured to excite it with all their power and with complete decision of purpose. For this reason I dare to call this attitude "The Great Betrayal." Julien Benda
July 29, 2010 at 4:09 am
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"Civilization, I repeat, seems to me possible only if humanity consents to a division of functions, if side by side with those who carry out the lay passions and extol the virtues serviceable to them there exists a class of men who depreciate these passions and glorify the advantages which are beyond the material. ...The truth is that the clerks have become as much laymen as the laymen themselves."
July 28, 2010 at 6:18 am
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Don't you mean "clerics" not "clerks"?
July 28, 2010 at 6:52 am
Julien Benda defines the older English sense of "clerks" as "all those who speaks to the world in a transcendental manner," more akin to today's "intellectuals," writers, poets, others who wield a pen, capable of serious thought and reflection, I would say. Clerics are definitely not part of his definition; he's highly critical of clerics at times.
Benda's point in this passage is that modern "clerks" and "intellectuals" have become no different from the masses, as Ortega y Gasset suggested, all the more so today, I would argue, giving way to pervasive politicization...
Benda was Catholic, so there may be in his language what will strike some as a certain quaintness of expression. It's the broader scope of his discussion that interests me.
Benda's point in this passage is that modern "clerks" and "intellectuals" have become no different from the masses, as Ortega y Gasset suggested, all the more so today, I would argue, giving way to pervasive politicization...
Benda was Catholic, so there may be in his language what will strike some as a certain quaintness of expression. It's the broader scope of his discussion that interests me.
July 28, 2010 at 7:29 am
"The old morality told Man that he is divine to the extent that he becomes one with the universe; the new morality tells him that he is divine to the extent that is in opposition to it." Julien Benda
July 28, 2010 at 3:46 am
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"The educators of the human mind now takes sides with Callicles against Socrates, a revolution which I dare to say seems to me more important than all political unheavals." Julien Benda
July 27, 2010 at 9:05 am
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"Our age has seen priests of the mind teaching that the gregarious is the praiseworthy form of thought, and that independent thought is contemptible. It is moreover certain that a group which desires to be strong has no use for the man who claims to think for himself." Julien Benda
July 27, 2010 at 6:23 am
“And when we hear them reply that ‘they are positive minds and not Utopians,’ ‘that they are concerned with what is, not with what might be,’ we are staggered to see that they do not know that the moralist is essentially a Utopian, and that the nature of moral action is precisely that it creates its object by affirming it” (96). Julien Benda
July 27, 2010 at 4:12 am
“Here again the soul of Greece has given way to the soul of Prussia among the educators of mankind” (93).
July 26, 2010 at 11:01 am
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“The modern ‘clerks’ have preached this realism to the classes as well as to the nations.... This is the teaching of Nietzsche, of Sorel, applauded by a whole thinking (so-called) Europe; this is the enthusiasm of Europe, when it is attracted by Socialism, for the doctrines of Marx...” (91). Julien Benda
July 26, 2010 at 8:53 am
“...I mean all those who speak to the world in a transcendental manner” (88). Julien Benda
July 26, 2010 at 6:51 am
“The cult of the particular and the scorn for the universal is a reversal of values quite generally characteristic of the teaching of the modern ‘clerks’... ...scorn for the mind that seeks to discover genral states of being. ...scorn for the eternal. ...to degrade the ideal, the truly metaphysical side” (78).
July 26, 2010 at 5:28 am
postmodern clerks. the modernists didn't scorn the universal
July 26, 2010 at 5:47 am
Mmm, in your sense, I'd agree for some modernists. Julien Benda wrote The Treason of the Clerks in 1927. His scope is broader than literary, English modernists proper; at times, the last 150 years and more.
July 26, 2010 at 6:44 am
“But the modern ‘clerks’ have held up universal truth to the scorn of mankind, as well as universal morality” (76-77).
July 26, 2010 at 3:11 am
“...to urge their fellow citizens to feel conscious of themselves in what is common to all men...” (65). Julien Benda
July 25, 2010 at 1:49 pm
“...the ‘clerks’ have set out to proclaim as contemptible every tendency to establish oneself in a universal. With the exception of certain authors like Tolstoy or Anatole France, whose teaching moreover is now looked on with contempt by most of their colleagues...the influential moralists during the past fifty years...have praised the efforts of men to feel conscious of themselves in terms of nation and race(60).
July 25, 2010 at 9:24 am
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“Those whose preaching for twenty centuries had been to humiliate the realist passions in favor of something transcendental...” (60). Julien Benda
July 25, 2010 at 7:40 am
"...have ceased to provide the world with the spectacle of hearts solely occupied with God" (39). Julien Benda
July 25, 2010 at 6:29 am
“...the ‘clerks’ did prevent the laymen from setting up their actions as a religion, they did prevent them from thinking themselves great men as they carried out these activities. It may be said that ... humanity did evil for two thousand years, but honoured good. This contradiction was an honour to the human species, and formed the rift whereby civilization slipped into the world (31).” Julien Benda
July 25, 2010 at 5:55 am
"I think it important that there should be men--even if they are scorned--who urge their fellow beings to other religions than the religion of the material.... Most of the influential moralists of the past fifty years in Europe, particularly the men of letters of France, call upon mankind to sneer at the Gospel...." Julien Benda
July 25, 2010 at 5:22 am
FROM The Betrayal of the Intellectuals
July 25, 2010 at 5:23 am
I stand, like Benvenuto Cellini's Perseus, standing in Florence, in the public square, holding in my outstretched left hand the Gorgon-head of nihilism, its putrid black blood and guts dripping from its neck, severed by the sword of my pen, standing over the corpse of Medusa, over the corpse of Nietzsche's Zarathustra...
https://www.guyshaked.com/cellini.html
July 25, 2010 at 3:24 am
https://www.guyshaked.com/cellini.html
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Cellini's Perseus and Medusa |
In his Bronze "Persueus and Medusa", Benvenuto Cellini depicts the scene from Greek Mythology as described in Ovid's Metamorphoses. The eighteen feet Perseus is standing as if at an end of a walk, in his right hand is his swords and in his left hand held up high is the severed head of Medus...
July 25, 2010 at 3:24 am
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Paternal Haplogroup R1b1b2a1a2 |
20,000 years is so incredible that any mention of genealogy becomes absurd. The only rational conclusion is I'm a human being.
July 23, 2010 at 1:59 am
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Well said, Frederick!
July 23, 2010 at 4:23 am
Fred to Fred, In my view, for some decades we've slipped dividing and separating the genome into sub-groups and ethnicities, perhaps in search have righting the balance in some regards, but have gone too far in the other direction, losing what is common to humanity.
I was interested in genealogy as minor hobby for some years a decade or so ago. As most genealogists say, I came out of the experience realizing I'm related to every human being on earth. The genome result of 20,000 years for my son and I has been emotionally even beyond that.
I was interested in genealogy as minor hobby for some years a decade or so ago. As most genealogists say, I came out of the experience realizing I'm related to every human being on earth. The genome result of 20,000 years for my son and I has been emotionally even beyond that.
July 25, 2010 at 8:22 am
FROM "Czeslaw Milosz’s Mythic Catholicism" in The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture
https://www.fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/roadside-dog-czeslaw-milosz"
July 19, 2010 at 3:53 am
https://www.fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/roadside-dog-czeslaw-milosz"
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Roadside Dog. Czeslaw Milosz. « Reviews by Frederick Glaysher |
In A Year of the Hunter, Czeslaw Milosz unequivocally writes, "Poetry’s separation from religion has always strengthened my conviction that the erosion of the cosmic-religious imagination is not an illusion and that the vast expanses of the planet that are falling away from Christianity are the exte...
July 19, 2010 at 3:53 am
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网简体
July 20, 2010 at 10:27 pm
Translation?
July 25, 2010 at 8:15 am
If "There are no direct lessons that American poets can learn from Milosz," the fault lies entirely with us and the age of academic criticism that has almost strangled the life out of poetry.
July 18, 2010 at 11:16 am
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Narrow Catholic hopes aside, history, lower case, moves toward the vindication of both of them, as well as of all those who have stood throughout this century for the further development of international institutions through which the nations may cooperate for the protection of the weak and vulnerable, for the protection of the little ones.
July 18, 2010 at 10:55 am
Its source, beyond his own experience, was, by his own testimony, his uncle, Oscar Milosz, poet and seer, who predicted the "triumph of the Roman Catholic Church."
July 18, 2010 at 10:04 am
This realization of the importance of international community can be found throughout his writings.
July 18, 2010 at 8:57 am
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"We realize that the unification of our planet is in the making, and we attach importance to the notion of international community. The days when the League of Nations and the United Nations were founded deserve to be remembered." Czeslaw Milosz, Nobel Lecture
July 18, 2010 at 6:57 am
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In regard to government, Milosz’s experience prepared him to understand where we have been and where we are going in a manner unique among modern poets. All the more eloquently rings his plea in his Nobel Lecture for sanity eventually to prevail among the nations of the earth:
July 18, 2010 at 6:56 am
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Cut the Publishers! Time for publishing to change. Here's how... Tell your friends.
Earthrise Press® eBooks
https://books.fglaysher.com
July 18, 2010 at 5:41 am
Earthrise Press® eBooks
https://books.fglaysher.com
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Earthrise Press |
Earthrise Press is a Post-Gutenberg Publisher of eBooks, non-DRM. Available worldwide. ePub, Kindle.
July 18, 2010 at 5:41 am
Isn't that just eself-publishing? Or evanity?
July 18, 2010 at 5:59 am
Your questions are based on an acceptance of corporate and putatively literary publishing as constituting some kind of privileged system or means for identifying and promoting the "best" writers, when in fact they are self-serving, commercial enterprises that shore up both the nihilistic vision of life that has become endemic during the last 150 years and the monetary bottom-lines based on such received wisdom.
Little beyond the most predictable, secular, despairing visions of life that have made up the cliched canned goods of modernity can be found coming from most of the publishing industry today.
I stopped looking to them, and the so-called literary magazines, for anything worthwhile in the early 1990s, went into my study, and closed the door. I believe it's the best thing I could ever have done.
If you're serious about wanting to understand my thinking on publishing read these two web pages, in this order:
The Mission of Earthrise Press
https://www.fglaysher.com/mission_of%20earthrise_press.html
Publishing in the Post-Gutenberg Age
https://www.fglaysher.com/Post_Gutenberg_Publishing.html
Little beyond the most predictable, secular, despairing visions of life that have made up the cliched canned goods of modernity can be found coming from most of the publishing industry today.
I stopped looking to them, and the so-called literary magazines, for anything worthwhile in the early 1990s, went into my study, and closed the door. I believe it's the best thing I could ever have done.
If you're serious about wanting to understand my thinking on publishing read these two web pages, in this order:
The Mission of Earthrise Press
https://www.fglaysher.com/mission_of%20earthrise_press.html
Publishing in the Post-Gutenberg Age
https://www.fglaysher.com/Post_Gutenberg_Publishing.html
July 18, 2010 at 6:51 am
This is interesting Frederick. I'd like to have a discussion about this sometime...
don't have time to read the links at present but when I get a chance I will it is a topic I'm concerned about too. Thanks.
don't have time to read the links at present but when I get a chance I will it is a topic I'm concerned about too. Thanks.
July 18, 2010 at 7:11 am
And self-publishers are not self-interested?
July 18, 2010 at 12:38 pm
Were they? >
Mark Twain, James Fenimore Cooper, Walt Whitman, William Blake, Henry Adams, Ezra Pound, e. e. cummings, Edgar Allan Poe, James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, A.E. Housman, Gertrude Stein, Anais Nin, Carl Sandburg, Stephen Crane, George Bernard Shaw, Thomas Paine, William Wordsworth, Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Hardy, Virginia Woolf, Henry David Thoreau, Edgar Allen Poe, Benjamin Franklin, Michel de Montaigne, Alexandre Dumas, Derek Walcott, Upton Sinclair, W. E. B. DuBois, Edwin Arlington Robinson, and Robert Hayden.
https://www.fglaysher.com/mission_of%20earthrise_press.html
Mark Twain, James Fenimore Cooper, Walt Whitman, William Blake, Henry Adams, Ezra Pound, e. e. cummings, Edgar Allan Poe, James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, A.E. Housman, Gertrude Stein, Anais Nin, Carl Sandburg, Stephen Crane, George Bernard Shaw, Thomas Paine, William Wordsworth, Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Hardy, Virginia Woolf, Henry David Thoreau, Edgar Allen Poe, Benjamin Franklin, Michel de Montaigne, Alexandre Dumas, Derek Walcott, Upton Sinclair, W. E. B. DuBois, Edwin Arlington Robinson, and Robert Hayden.
https://www.fglaysher.com/mission_of%20earthrise_press.html
July 18, 2010 at 1:27 pm
*all writers published, self-published can claim that belt-buckle (self-interested) for their own.* Some may just have larger belts or belt buckles then others. Horrible metaphor I know, but you see my point...
July 18, 2010 at 1:32 pm
@Melanie Huber, I would argue that the publishing industry intentionally cultivates the notion that they alone are NOT self-interested, a complete falsehood, especially when one realizes they're taking 88% or more of the profit from the sale of a book! They have no special right to it. Only writers who are gullible fools would give it to them in this age when it is now so easy for authors to reach readers directly by themselves.
It's not merely a matter of money for writers. It's also about the freedom of ideas and communication, censorship, who receives a hearing and who doesn't, the free exchange of ideas. The gatekeepers imagine they know who and what and how society should be influenced and shaped, but, in reality, the cynical, decadent publishing industry, along with the university, has destroyed culture, literature, and poetry, marginalized it by driving it ever further from life, into the pathetic games of deconstruction, "language," and so on.
One part of the Post-Gutenberg Age is that it has provided the technological means to reach, develop, cultivate and entirely new stage of human civilization, purpose, and meaning. The pathetic executives of publishing corporations aren't even remotely interested in exploring anything substantively challenging to the received bottom-line they inherited... figuratively and literally.
The real shift in culture I'm arguing for isn't about me. It's about life outside my head... that is what would constitute an aesthetic revolution today.
It's not merely a matter of money for writers. It's also about the freedom of ideas and communication, censorship, who receives a hearing and who doesn't, the free exchange of ideas. The gatekeepers imagine they know who and what and how society should be influenced and shaped, but, in reality, the cynical, decadent publishing industry, along with the university, has destroyed culture, literature, and poetry, marginalized it by driving it ever further from life, into the pathetic games of deconstruction, "language," and so on.
One part of the Post-Gutenberg Age is that it has provided the technological means to reach, develop, cultivate and entirely new stage of human civilization, purpose, and meaning. The pathetic executives of publishing corporations aren't even remotely interested in exploring anything substantively challenging to the received bottom-line they inherited... figuratively and literally.
The real shift in culture I'm arguing for isn't about me. It's about life outside my head... that is what would constitute an aesthetic revolution today.
July 18, 2010 at 1:48 pm
That there *is* a shift occurring seems to indicate some kind of awareness that the modes of publishing are simply going to have to change to remain viable. I think the defn. of gate-keeper here might need clarification or narrowing before I could have something of value or logic to add. Yes, it's about making money. But not only is it? I don't have enough friends or personal contacts directly in the Publishing (with a capital P) world to assess the motives of those at the helms but perhaps you might be generalizing the problem a bit too much. I don't disagree, I am most certainly for self-publishing but worry about the pitfalls that come with that which may be on a different road but are of similar size and depth. Sorry I can't engage with this more fully...still haven't had a chance to read the articles...running around a conference and the brain drain is starting to kick in. But, you do make valid points the question become: What to do about it? Only self-publish and reach limited audiences? Hope something gets picked up by big publishers. There are still good books out there being published, but the ratio of "good" to "bad" might seem dismal. I really don't know, or have the answers to this..."aesthetic revolution" does not every artistic revolution turn mainstream eventually?
July 18, 2010 at 2:18 pm
"What to do about it?" Mmm, when you can, you might read the details. Here is what every writer on the planet can now do for under a hundred dollars: https://books.fglaysher.com
The publishing industry has been downhill for decades. Jason Epstein is an enlightening source in that regard. eBooks already constitute, by objective industry account, 5 to 8% of all book sales. Within a few years, at present growth, it will be over 50% of ALL BOOKS SOLD. The "big publishers" will only have left about 25% of printed book sales, so "big" isn't a word they're going to be hanging on to.
Any writer who use a word processor ought to be able to create an ePub ebook, all of which will only become easier and easier...
Details:
The Mission of Earthrise Press
https://www.fglaysher.com/mission_of%20earthrise_press.html
Publishing in the Post-Gutenberg Age
https://www.fglaysher.com/Post_Gutenberg_Publishing.html
The publishing industry has been downhill for decades. Jason Epstein is an enlightening source in that regard. eBooks already constitute, by objective industry account, 5 to 8% of all book sales. Within a few years, at present growth, it will be over 50% of ALL BOOKS SOLD. The "big publishers" will only have left about 25% of printed book sales, so "big" isn't a word they're going to be hanging on to.
Any writer who use a word processor ought to be able to create an ePub ebook, all of which will only become easier and easier...
Details:
The Mission of Earthrise Press
https://www.fglaysher.com/mission_of%20earthrise_press.html
Publishing in the Post-Gutenberg Age
https://www.fglaysher.com/Post_Gutenberg_Publishing.html
July 18, 2010 at 2:33 pm
Thanks Frederick...I will look into the links when I get some down time.
July 18, 2010 at 7:37 pm
Milosz has worked more deeply with the spiritual dislocations of modern life than any other poet of the twentieth century since T. S. Eliot.
July 18, 2010 at 4:43 am
You forgot to add "to my knowledge."
Postmodernism addresses that dislocation with exacerberations of Eliot's disjuncts, heteroglossia, and multiple subject positions.
Postmodernism addresses that dislocation with exacerberations of Eliot's disjuncts, heteroglossia, and multiple subject positions.
July 18, 2010 at 6:10 am
Such qualifications are implicit in anyone's views, including yours, which I believe are wrong. Valorizing much of postmodernism marks a further decline of the more profound and spiritual dimensions of human nature, a marginalizing of what is the most resonant in human experience throughout the millennia. Mere technical tinkering with the surface layers of aesthetic practice and consciousness does not reach the foundational level. The entire nihilistic thinking of who and what the human being is needs reassessment and change to a higher, universal, spiritual, global vision of human reality, meaning, and purpose.
The corrupt and decadent universities, the MFA mentality, the cultural deformations they've produced, have failed for decades to help the general culture, national and global, to achieve the more expansive vision now necessary for the good of all peoples. Fortunately, the developments and evolution of culture itself has opened up ever-newer means of communication and technology that make it possible to circumvent the decadence that for decades has exerted a stranglehold on the human soul.
The corrupt and decadent universities, the MFA mentality, the cultural deformations they've produced, have failed for decades to help the general culture, national and global, to achieve the more expansive vision now necessary for the good of all peoples. Fortunately, the developments and evolution of culture itself has opened up ever-newer means of communication and technology that make it possible to circumvent the decadence that for decades has exerted a stranglehold on the human soul.
July 18, 2010 at 6:40 am
Your argument is reductive. Postmodernism is not limited to MFA programs and universities. Eliot however was university-educated to the PhD degree, and engaged in lots of technical tinkering.
My guess is that you've never read Rae Armantrout, or Susan Howe, and don't like Laurie Anderson if you ever heard her. No more profound interrogation of spiritual suffering could be produced than by these brilliant Postmodern artists.
My guess is that you've never read Rae Armantrout, or Susan Howe, and don't like Laurie Anderson if you ever heard her. No more profound interrogation of spiritual suffering could be produced than by these brilliant Postmodern artists.
July 18, 2010 at 6:59 am
Far from reductive, I certainly understand postmodernism extends beyond the university. That's a major part of our cultural problems. Would it were limited to only the university!
Your heroes are not mine. Nor does a single one of them hold a candle to Eliot or Milosz! It's an old game to line up a string of academicians, radicals, and would-be cultural icons as what someone has not read in order to dismiss views contrary to one's own. I choose real writers over the minor ones you mention, any day...
Your heroes are not mine. Nor does a single one of them hold a candle to Eliot or Milosz! It's an old game to line up a string of academicians, radicals, and would-be cultural icons as what someone has not read in order to dismiss views contrary to one's own. I choose real writers over the minor ones you mention, any day...
July 18, 2010 at 7:06 am
Thank you, Dana, for commenting. I definitely agree with everything you say. "Make it possible" obviously doesn't mean everyone realizes it. The Post-Gugtenberg Age is still just unfolding.
Literary journals are good case in point. I've had this list of links for more than a decade, as an easy way for me to jump around from one to another. I've often thought what you say. Very little new and truly innovative, unlike what passes for innovation, more of the same... I mean in terms of vision. While I enjoy many of the techno-experiments for their novelty, I think they're usually old hat, in a way, at the deeper philosophical level. But there are people trying to grasp and achieve a wider perspective. https://www.fglaysher.com/LitLinks.htm
Notice almost all the discussion about publishing is HOW TO SAVE the status-quo, rather than realizing there are incredibly exciting new possibilities! ...opening up for readers, writers, and the public realm in general. The publishing oligarchs? They are the problem!
I remember overhearing as a student once in the late 1970s two librarians talking about the computer changes approaching for librarians and the university. I receive a conventional newsletter the US mail from my alma mater the University of Michigan. The last issue quoted the new current head librarian as remarking on the dissonance some old alumna felt in the 1990s when the card catalog disappeared. She compared it to what would be even more jarring for many when the bookshelves disappear... First, the publishers have to go, in my view...
Most writers seem to have their heads in the sand, to use that old phrase. But not everyone. https://books.fglaysher.com/
I'd be interested in knowing your opinion about my reflections on these things at
The Mission of Earthrise Press
https://www.fglaysher.com/mission_of%20earthrise_press.html
Publishing in the Post-Gutenberg Age
https://www.fglaysher.com/Post_Gutenberg_Publishing.html
Literary journals are good case in point. I've had this list of links for more than a decade, as an easy way for me to jump around from one to another. I've often thought what you say. Very little new and truly innovative, unlike what passes for innovation, more of the same... I mean in terms of vision. While I enjoy many of the techno-experiments for their novelty, I think they're usually old hat, in a way, at the deeper philosophical level. But there are people trying to grasp and achieve a wider perspective. https://www.fglaysher.com/LitLinks.htm
Notice almost all the discussion about publishing is HOW TO SAVE the status-quo, rather than realizing there are incredibly exciting new possibilities! ...opening up for readers, writers, and the public realm in general. The publishing oligarchs? They are the problem!
I remember overhearing as a student once in the late 1970s two librarians talking about the computer changes approaching for librarians and the university. I receive a conventional newsletter the US mail from my alma mater the University of Michigan. The last issue quoted the new current head librarian as remarking on the dissonance some old alumna felt in the 1990s when the card catalog disappeared. She compared it to what would be even more jarring for many when the bookshelves disappear... First, the publishers have to go, in my view...
Most writers seem to have their heads in the sand, to use that old phrase. But not everyone. https://books.fglaysher.com/
I'd be interested in knowing your opinion about my reflections on these things at
The Mission of Earthrise Press
https://www.fglaysher.com/mission_of%20earthrise_press.html
Publishing in the Post-Gutenberg Age
https://www.fglaysher.com/Post_Gutenberg_Publishing.html
July 18, 2010 at 8:51 am
hmmm, there's been a lot of copying of the 70s postmodernists in the 90s and noughties, and hence some of the feeling of merely re-arranging the furniture. But Jenny Holzer and Bruce Nauman and John Cage take my breath away - and I like Eliot, who I think brings his audience along male and female of the time, but brings fewer as his work ages. Not sure Milosz does for me. Eliot had fame, let us remember, not least because of some of the ambition in his work and then some "luck" or timing, and his work modulates technique and fame, again not something I'd say of Milosz but would say of some of the postmodernists. The ones I like though didn't just launch into a ready-made fashionable audience, any more than Eliot, but were not thought of even as art by many when starting out.
I think one has a problem in addressing spiritual dislocation, that one does not have in addressing spirit. This for me is a distinction between the sensual/erotic/communal in Eliot and the alienation in Milosz, like a good man taking holy orders in a church that he knows has no power anymore. Eliot thought of a church that does. When I look at Nauman or Holzer or Cage, I think of the aspiration to church, still, the place of communion but also what is called the "charismatic", the speaking in tongues and the gospel choir; with secular actions speaking with some of the weeping intensity and longing of the convert and the doubter in that place. Not them as preachers, but speaking with hope for one to come, whose sandals they are not fit to unlace. Like Diana, a bit, maybe, I resent slightly the implication that I am not interested in spiritual dislocation and location because my faves don't seem to be in your canon, Frederick.
I think one has a problem in addressing spiritual dislocation, that one does not have in addressing spirit. This for me is a distinction between the sensual/erotic/communal in Eliot and the alienation in Milosz, like a good man taking holy orders in a church that he knows has no power anymore. Eliot thought of a church that does. When I look at Nauman or Holzer or Cage, I think of the aspiration to church, still, the place of communion but also what is called the "charismatic", the speaking in tongues and the gospel choir; with secular actions speaking with some of the weeping intensity and longing of the convert and the doubter in that place. Not them as preachers, but speaking with hope for one to come, whose sandals they are not fit to unlace. Like Diana, a bit, maybe, I resent slightly the implication that I am not interested in spiritual dislocation and location because my faves don't seem to be in your canon, Frederick.
July 18, 2010 at 10:09 am
postmodernism is not reliably all nihilistic. Dead metaphors and style are, reliably. I don't like nihilism either
July 18, 2010 at 11:02 am
I like your phrasing, "re-arranging the furniture." Similarly often said of postmodernism carrying on, extending modernism. More of the same, at the deepest philosophical, spiritual level.
As a lyric poet Milsoz has a great deal of variety of theme and form. His Treatise on Poetry is a longer, quite interesting form.
You and Diana, others, are entitled to your faves, and I to mine. I've tired to express respectfully why. How many centuries shall the same nihilistic dirge be played? It's been exceedingly tiresome to me for decades. It does not do justice to my spiritual experience of life, nor of much of the human population on earth, during the last 200,000 years of human evolution, yet the prevailing mentality in the university and culture, West and East, continues to accept and promote, as in publishing and the media, the same shallow goods, censoring, in effect, any voice who would express a serious, spiritual vision of life.
I've written six books that fully confront the decline and decadence of literature and world culture and explore a new vision of what it means to be a human being in this global age. I invite you and others to read them and seriously consider that in order to move forward into the future, humanity must needs achieve a more universal, spiritual understanding of life, recognizing the oneness of humanity and the veracity of all the religious and wisdom traditions of the globe.
Far from the tawdry intellectual goods of Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud, et al., I stand, as in my book The Bower of Nil, like Benvenuto Cellini's Perseus in the public square of the Loggia della Signoria in Florence, holding in my outstretched left hand the severed Gorgon-head of nihilism, its repulsive black blood and guts dripping from its severed neck, by the sword of my pen, standing over the corpse of Medusa, over the corpse of Nietzsche's Zarathustra...
As a lyric poet Milsoz has a great deal of variety of theme and form. His Treatise on Poetry is a longer, quite interesting form.
You and Diana, others, are entitled to your faves, and I to mine. I've tired to express respectfully why. How many centuries shall the same nihilistic dirge be played? It's been exceedingly tiresome to me for decades. It does not do justice to my spiritual experience of life, nor of much of the human population on earth, during the last 200,000 years of human evolution, yet the prevailing mentality in the university and culture, West and East, continues to accept and promote, as in publishing and the media, the same shallow goods, censoring, in effect, any voice who would express a serious, spiritual vision of life.
I've written six books that fully confront the decline and decadence of literature and world culture and explore a new vision of what it means to be a human being in this global age. I invite you and others to read them and seriously consider that in order to move forward into the future, humanity must needs achieve a more universal, spiritual understanding of life, recognizing the oneness of humanity and the veracity of all the religious and wisdom traditions of the globe.
Far from the tawdry intellectual goods of Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud, et al., I stand, as in my book The Bower of Nil, like Benvenuto Cellini's Perseus in the public square of the Loggia della Signoria in Florence, holding in my outstretched left hand the severed Gorgon-head of nihilism, its repulsive black blood and guts dripping from its severed neck, by the sword of my pen, standing over the corpse of Medusa, over the corpse of Nietzsche's Zarathustra...
July 18, 2010 at 11:18 am
Looking back at the great Modernists is different from standing in the midst of the poets writing now. We don't have the benefit of hindsight. Many mediocre pomos will be forgotten in a decade, but the best will join Eliot in the pantheon. Only a few great poets grace any generation.
Naturally Laurie Anderson and Cage don't resemble Stravinsky, and Susan Howe is not an Eliot clone, which simply means they are as original in their ways as Eliot and Stravinsky were in theirs.
Naturally Laurie Anderson and Cage don't resemble Stravinsky, and Susan Howe is not an Eliot clone, which simply means they are as original in their ways as Eliot and Stravinsky were in theirs.
July 18, 2010 at 12:28 pm
Susan Howe doesn't merit being mentioned in the same breath as Eliot...
July 18, 2010 at 2:13 pm
...that goes for all of the so-called language poets.
July 18, 2010 at 2:21 pm
Well no one can accuse you of lacking an opinion.
July 18, 2010 at 3:15 pm
I respect your opinions as sincerely held. I can't imagine anyone spending a lifetime reading books without arriving at some conclusions. I'm not afraid to express and defend mine.
In the light of the literary and cultural tradition, whether East or West, such poets and writers are small, minor, even deviant from the qualities that are the most worthy of what is the highest and best in the human being. From a similar perspective, the university, broadly speaking, has become the undeniable locus of cultural and literary decadence.
In the light of the literary and cultural tradition, whether East or West, such poets and writers are small, minor, even deviant from the qualities that are the most worthy of what is the highest and best in the human being. From a similar perspective, the university, broadly speaking, has become the undeniable locus of cultural and literary decadence.
July 18, 2010 at 4:04 pm
based on how many minutes reading which of their books? I genuinely wouldn't want to read your books based on that remark, though I like some of your postings here
July 18, 2010 at 9:18 pm
After over 40 years of reading poetry, literature, and criticism, I would say I have developed the ability to detect the nature of a literary sensibility and to what it amounts. The language poets were an artificial, ahistorical, dehumanized, solipsistic dead end from the beginning. No one needs to read everyone of them in order to realize that. Pity that they don't realize it themselves. It would help them move on to something more worthwhile.
July 19, 2010 at 2:15 am
wow, stunning prejudice there. And have you ever met anyone into them whom you respected?
July 19, 2010 at 6:08 am
Definitely not. It's not prejudice. It's literary, aesthetic, and philosophical judgment. They fall short of the tradition. That's my opinion. Others are obviously entitled to think differently, as you are. In my view, the language poets are merely one more example of nihilism, sputtering out its worthlessness...
By way of comparison. Who reads *all* of the Romantics and every piece they wrote? Nobody, including many who have written numerous books on the Romantics. No one would lift a pen if that were the criteria. This is true for any literary period or coterie... the latter of which is all the language poets actually amount to.
By way of comparison. Who reads *all* of the Romantics and every piece they wrote? Nobody, including many who have written numerous books on the Romantics. No one would lift a pen if that were the criteria. This is true for any literary period or coterie... the latter of which is all the language poets actually amount to.
July 19, 2010 at 6:34 am
I'm not arguing for a Maoist year zero. I don't think they're all good, nor that all they've published is good. But you are saying, as an equivalence, that none of the Romantics are good, because they are Romantics. That's judging each word by the assumption that the person writing is it is wrongheaded. Which is prejudice. Have a good word to say for one page of one work by any of them, say by the very Catholic writer non-nihilist Fanny Howe, and I'll retract.
Anyway, the apparent content of the work can be misleading. I personally recoil from the opening lines of the Sex Pistols' song Pretty Vacant, but I recognize it is taking on not Christ but the church even if it seems to say "I am an anti etc".
Anyway, the apparent content of the work can be misleading. I personally recoil from the opening lines of the Sex Pistols' song Pretty Vacant, but I recognize it is taking on not Christ but the church even if it seems to say "I am an anti etc".
July 19, 2010 at 6:43 am
That's obviously not what I was saying about the Romantics.
T. S. Eliot was once asked about the Georgians, if he and others had essentially felt any need to refute them. He replied to the effect that one just went ahead and wrote what was compelling for oneself.
The language poets seem to be to your taste. Enjoy.
T. S. Eliot was once asked about the Georgians, if he and others had essentially felt any need to refute them. He replied to the effect that one just went ahead and wrote what was compelling for oneself.
The language poets seem to be to your taste. Enjoy.
July 19, 2010 at 7:41 am
I know you aren't saying don't read the Romantics, I'm saying you're saying don't read any page by the Language poets, because it is by a Language poet. One can imagine someone saying that about the Romantics, and also being wrong. And prejudiced. Can you describe to me your experience of looking into any of the books? If this experience had no redeeming qualities whatsoever for you, I find that very odd, and unsympathetic. Let's not "agree to disagree" by which we actually don't engage.
Let's see if we can share enthusiasms and see if either of our tastes have something of phobia about them by engaging warmly. You clearly believe in the spiritual in poetry, so do I. You clearly believe in intelligence in poetry. So do I.
Have you read J.H. Prynne's The White Stones, or Geoffrey Hill's The Triumph of Love?
Let's see if we can share enthusiasms and see if either of our tastes have something of phobia about them by engaging warmly. You clearly believe in the spiritual in poetry, so do I. You clearly believe in intelligence in poetry. So do I.
Have you read J.H. Prynne's The White Stones, or Geoffrey Hill's The Triumph of Love?
July 19, 2010 at 7:50 am
You're ignoring the whole point of my recollection from Eliot. Your use of "prejudice" and "phobia" reveal you must have an awful lot invested in them.
Geoffrey Hill's The Triumph of Love... read it when it first came out. I remember it as a pretentiously complicated, dense style, the kind that a poet uses when he or she doesn't know what they want to say, or is afraid to be forthright... to reveal how little they have to offer, a painful plight. I heard Hill read at the U of Michigan, probably early '80s.
I respect him and his work, though. An intelligent voice, yet minor. At least he's not a slap-stick joker or shallow cynic, like so many writers in the US and UK.
Geoffrey Hill's The Triumph of Love... read it when it first came out. I remember it as a pretentiously complicated, dense style, the kind that a poet uses when he or she doesn't know what they want to say, or is afraid to be forthright... to reveal how little they have to offer, a painful plight. I heard Hill read at the U of Michigan, probably early '80s.
I respect him and his work, though. An intelligent voice, yet minor. At least he's not a slap-stick joker or shallow cynic, like so many writers in the US and UK.
July 19, 2010 at 8:36 am
i agree, an intelligent voice, yet minor, in the scale of the great poets. Yes, as someone moved by the injunction Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged, I don't like prejudice in the simplest meaning of the word. However, let's not trade belittlings. It's been a useful discussion
July 19, 2010 at 9:58 am
"Why should we shut our eyes and pretend...Ancient Rome is again in decline, and this time it’s not pagan Rome under the blows of Christianity, but the Rome of the monotheists’ God? Since this, and nothing else, is the undeclared theme of contemporary poetry in various languages, obviously this conflict has already crossed the threshold of universal consciousness. . . . Perhaps . . . new perspectives will open up"
July 17, 2010 at 4:29 am
3 people like this
Just to be clear, that's Czeslaw Milosz, from A Year of the Hunter. I couldn't get his name in there because of the 240 character limit!
July 17, 2010 at 6:50 am
What a fab quote. I believe that we are going through a great change in consciousness and that new possibilities will open up - though many people are oblivious especially those whose minds are fixed. BTW the word limit is irritating isn't it?
July 17, 2010 at 11:32 pm
Yes, 420 characters is annoying and arbitrary. But I suppose there has to be some kind of limit, otherwise FB becomes no different from a website--endless length.
July 18, 2010 at 4:36 am
Although he seems to favor at times reversion to Catholicism, suggests he himself is a heretic, harbors the conceit of possessing the true truth among the great religions, he also writes of going "forward, but on a different track," of a "new vision," "a new awareness," "new perspectives," as in A Year of the Hunter:
July 17, 2010 at 3:02 am
In reference to religion, while recognizing the undeniable damage, Milosz has often expressed his skepticism and uneasiness with Catholicism.
July 16, 2010 at 7:08 am
He certainly had ambivalent feelings regarding Catholicism. From my reading, it was not clear-cut, black/white matter at all. Very complicated as most of life's issues are. Milosz - that's what makes him so complex and interesting!
July 16, 2010 at 7:16 am
I'm so glad to hear you say so. I too think there is such complexity, rather than either/or... the tensions and antinomies of the soul.
July 16, 2010 at 8:01 am
Although from the viewpoint of traditional Catholic belief some might think such lines are suffused with vague gnosticism, accuse him of having fallen off from the faith, of "willing belief," as he says of himself in The Land of Ulro,
July 16, 2010 at 4:48 am
...one must recognize the honest complexity of his commitment if one wishes to confront, as he has, the undeniable damage that has been visited upon all organized forms of religion and government during the modern era.
July 16, 2010 at 4:48 am
Such trust is also the prerequisite to finding "Eternal light in everything on earth."
July 16, 2010 at 3:41 am
1 person likes this
It is that of one tried by experience, who yet believes there are reasons for such a poem as "Thankfulness." To give "thanks for good and ill" manifests a trust that transcends our usual human self-centeredness and that submits to the power of the mystery of being, a trust that acknowledges in another poem "They are incomprehensible, the things of this earth."
July 15, 2010 at 6:57 am
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Perhaps because Milosz perceives our age as an intermediary one, he finds it more possible than most poets to hold out hope for the future. His hope, though, as we have seen, is not naive, foolish, or unaware of the incessant disintegration.
July 15, 2010 at 4:53 am
1 person likes this
I have often thought of Virginia Woolf’s Mr. Ramsay in To The Lighthouse, ascending the island rocks, exclaiming, in one of the most poignant settings of modern literature, "There is no God."
July 15, 2010 at 3:22 am
4 people like this
I am keenly interested in knowing various impressions about Woolf's literary sensibility. Can you please elucidate your words for more clarity and detail. Also, about 'Mrs. Dalloway' if you please.
July 15, 2010 at 7:08 am
Mmm, To The Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway... beautiful, aesthetic, gorgeous, suggestive prose, flowing, streaming consciousness--all the chestnuts come to mind about Woolf. A tragic talent, in the end, I think. The winding down of Western transcendence, as in Mrs. Dalloway, out the window, by implication. Woolf, to me, is a minor novelist; a major one would find a way forward... which is why they're so rare.
What do you think? I'd like to hear.
What do you think? I'd like to hear.
July 15, 2010 at 7:59 am
I like the way she weaves poetry in her novels, aesthetically pleasing and an unsparing use of similes and metaphors ! One of the few writers who could peep through their own consciousness so daringly and more importantly, could comprehend it and express it with an unfailing effect. The way she juxtaposes the inner-thoughts ( without the use of ... See Moreellipses) with the actual speech of the character is a striking feature. Though she takes the reader to and fro connecting past, present and future life of characters and yet, the reader is neither fatigued nor lost. Here understanding of Thanatos was too keen and that dint leave her even for a moment ( atleast thats how the movie 'The Hours' presents it) as long as she lived. Driven by the death-drive largely, her novels presented a view of life which had been lived and experienced but was never articulated so well in the works of earlier writers.
Yes, a tragic talent. Perhaps, her intensity, even after having found a great expression in her creative works was tremendous for her to handle, moderate and preserve.
Yes, a tragic talent. Perhaps, her intensity, even after having found a great expression in her creative works was tremendous for her to handle, moderate and preserve.
July 15, 2010 at 8:24 am
Her father. Leslie Stephens, was a well-known critic. She grew up with an exceptional understanding of English literary & cultural currents. Quite precocious. All the more tragic that she couldn't find a way forward. It's as though she took the whole culture into the water with her...
July 15, 2010 at 10:06 am
Very well put, she took the whole culture into water. I have not been able to forget the poignancy of her way of putting stones into the pockets of her gown while she drowned herself.
July 15, 2010 at 10:09 am
Of course, people in all walks of life commit suicide, but when it's artists there's always a tendency to read more into it, as with Virginia Woolf.
There's a psychologist I've been very interested in, all my adult life, really, named Viktor Frankl, who was a prisoner in Auschwitz. I've found myself repeatedly going back to his book Man's Search for Meaning. There are some brief talks by him on youtube you might find interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EIxGrIc_6g
To my mind, my soul, I believe because he understood the distortions of, say Freud and Adler, his reflections on the human psyche are much deeper, and useful to a writer... He's highly sensitive to the fact that the same spiritual dislocations of the West are truly global... "East," as well, however one wishes to define it. I wonder, at times, do "East" and "West" even exist today?
There's a psychologist I've been very interested in, all my adult life, really, named Viktor Frankl, who was a prisoner in Auschwitz. I've found myself repeatedly going back to his book Man's Search for Meaning. There are some brief talks by him on youtube you might find interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EIxGrIc_6g
To my mind, my soul, I believe because he understood the distortions of, say Freud and Adler, his reflections on the human psyche are much deeper, and useful to a writer... He's highly sensitive to the fact that the same spiritual dislocations of the West are truly global... "East," as well, however one wishes to define it. I wonder, at times, do "East" and "West" even exist today?
July 17, 2010 at 3:00 am
To highlight either side over the other would be a distortion of his psyche. Milosz conveyed his complexity to the Pope when he replied, "Can one write religious poetry in any other way today?"
July 14, 2010 at 5:56 am
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Of these two contrasting poems, Milosz writes in a headnote that "taken together" they "testify to my contradictions, since the opinions voiced in one and the other are equally mine."
July 14, 2010 at 3:30 am
These contradictions achieve their fullest expression in "Two Poems" in Provinces: The first poem celebrates earthly life and its values, while the second poem, "A Poem for the End of the Century," bitterly, ironically recalls the religious past.
July 13, 2010 at 3:54 am
Thanks for your posts on Milosz. Am getting Unattainable Earth out of the library because of them.
July 13, 2010 at 6:44 am
I'm glad to hear my comments have inspired you to take a closer look at Milosz. If unfamiliar with anything else by him, Unattainable Earth is probably a good book to start with, covering most of his major themes.
July 13, 2010 at 2:03 pm
In an essay in New Perspectives Quarterly, Milosz describes himself as a believer, while in A Year of the Hunter he refers to an experience in church on Palm Sunday as an "intuitive understanding that Christ exists."
July 13, 2010 at 2:42 am
Actually the Church does not teach we can have an intuitive understanding of Christ's existence. The two orthodox Polish Chrisian poets seem to be Herbert and Twardowski.Herbert because he focuses on the Catholic God in anger and bewilderment. Twardowski because he sees the vocation of poetry and priesthood as mutually supportive.
July 13, 2010 at 10:14 pm
I'm writing about Milosz, not "Church" doctrine. Milosz spoke eloquently about the integrity of his own conscience.
The "Catholic God"? Come to think of it, I suppose you're right. Catholicism has created its own god. Herbert is a very minor poet, as he comes through in English. I highly doubt the original Polish would make much difference.
The "Catholic God"? Come to think of it, I suppose you're right. Catholicism has created its own god. Herbert is a very minor poet, as he comes through in English. I highly doubt the original Polish would make much difference.
July 14, 2010 at 3:25 am
saying that herbert is a christian poet because he addresses "it" with anger and bewilderment would be like calling me a republican because that's how i address reagan and the the bushees. he addresses classicism with a similar irony and it's a tradtion that stands today in poland even up to ryszard kapuscinski (a travel writer, but an interesting one). everyone on the planet created their own god or gods. even if there may be some real gods and goddesses out there to deal with, we are sorry bunch, little deserving of their attention. i say that ironically but also reserve the right to say it unironically because god only knows why. and i do have that right within certain limits. the sentence... "I highly doubt the original Polish would make much difference."...sounds to me extremely insensitive, sweeping and arrogant. don't be suprised if one day around the campfire in poland no-one throws on another log to hear your pronouncements.
July 14, 2010 at 4:06 am
@Jeff Gburek, I didn't intend any slight to the Polish language. The scope of Herbert's poems is quite small, say, compared to Milosz, who engages with every imaginable social and spiritual issue. That's all I meant. One could argue, with reason, that the political landscape demanded such restraint, but, nevertheless, the result is the same.
July 14, 2010 at 4:12 am
And Milosz, I would say, is small, compared to Gombrowicz, Witkacy or Bruno Schulz. All the latter more significant because of the minute particulars of life one finds in their texts. And they in fact are poets, even though they wrote mainly prose and dramas. Which is not to say also that smallness is not useful nor part of a largeness. Herbert's vision is more microscopic/cosmic and knowing a bit of Polish helps you see this. I once used to be dismissive of Milosz but, as has been the case everytime I lived in a different culture, I found that the works I previously connsidered "minor" connect to the life of the people in ways that can't be so easily appreciated from the outside. That you can be nourished by Milosz or Milton is not something that I care to challenge. But ranking writers is a distracting academic tendency and when it furthermore includes the statement that the language of origin doesn't matter, flags go down. All things in Milosz are in Herbert. Just in a different way.
July 14, 2010 at 4:37 am
I admit your views as you express them are and can be legitimate for Herbert, as with any poet in another language. His scope and importance for poets *outside* Poland is still nowhere near that of Milosz, who was capable of articulating a vision that attempted to grapple with much of modern experience, in fuller terms, than Herbert ever achieved.
I would argue that T. S. Eliot was right when he wrote in "Tradition and the Individual Talent" and "The Function of the Critic" that "comparison and analysis . . . are the chief tools of the critic," whether poet-critic or otherwise, I would say. All becomes a relativistic mush without them...
I would argue that T. S. Eliot was right when he wrote in "Tradition and the Individual Talent" and "The Function of the Critic" that "comparison and analysis . . . are the chief tools of the critic," whether poet-critic or otherwise, I would say. All becomes a relativistic mush without them...
July 14, 2010 at 4:48 am
Right, but a poet of Herbert's stature doesn't mix with the mush. And Milosz knew well enough. Or do you think he just translated it for the money? Hardly. Milosz speaks to you of your concerns. What you might call universalism is what I call the mush. But I'm not sure. I'm not sure whether I criticize you because I am like you or because you are so unlike me. That's sounds mushy. No, I am not like you, no more like you than when my then friend walked down the street with me in Berlin and praised one tree as "better" than another. And then another girls' breasts as more beautiful. Something about these judgements seems on the one hand innocent and ignorable gossip while in another dimension they can be seen as rooted in the most oppressive of human vulgarities. To avoid at all costs the "selection", is my privilige in leaving academia behind me. That is what I call my spiritual value "system". These judgements strike me as vulgar and uneccessary. And I should put them out of my mind. They don't lead to the next poem or composition. Only life and experience do.
July 14, 2010 at 5:16 am
Allowing that minds and sensibilities can differ, I would argue that the human being, by necessity, by nature, lives or dies through the veracity of judgment, cannot do otherwise. I could throw it to the extreme political examples of modernity, or the mild discriminations of flavor and taste, but the rule remains, people do, and often, must judge among good and ill, as well as innocuous variety. Literature also runs the gamet; hence, all the more important that the judgment be sound, which requires the most capacious perspective possible. The more one has read and knows of human culture and civilizations the better, and so forth, for the obvious reasons.
I wouldn't confuse judgment with academia. Academicians have become incapable of sound literary judgment. Their doctrinaire nihilism has corrupted everything into relativistic mush... nescient of literary, aesthetic, and humanistic values.
As I was just remarking to someone else, Tolstoy's last decade shows particularly well the journey of his and modern culture toward universalism, all the more evident today, as with the medium we're using... Einstein was right. Everything has changed but our thinking. But he didn't go deep enough, in my view, when he said that.
I wouldn't confuse judgment with academia. Academicians have become incapable of sound literary judgment. Their doctrinaire nihilism has corrupted everything into relativistic mush... nescient of literary, aesthetic, and humanistic values.
As I was just remarking to someone else, Tolstoy's last decade shows particularly well the journey of his and modern culture toward universalism, all the more evident today, as with the medium we're using... Einstein was right. Everything has changed but our thinking. But he didn't go deep enough, in my view, when he said that.
July 14, 2010 at 5:55 am
One would no more characterise Milosz to be Catholic than one would Akhmatova to be Marxist. Yet to understand a poet such as Mayakovsky you have to understand he's Marxist. To understand Herbert you have to know catholic doctrine. To understand Milosz, you don't. All you need is "pick and mix" Modernism.
July 14, 2010 at 11:40 am
I respect your conscience. But don't share it.
I can certainly imagine that the "church" would want to repudiate Milosz. It's never done too well with people capable of thinking, such as Paul Collins, and others he discusses in The Modern Inquisition: Seven Prominent Catholics and their Struggles with the Vatican. The Overlook Press, 2000.
In my view, Martin Luther spoke eloquently on Catholicism, about 500 years ago. Fortunately, most of modernity has moved on from such exclusivisms to an increasingly universal understanding of the transcendent. Milosz clung too much to the past, but he was headed, at times, in the direction that is the Will of the Divine Being.
I can certainly imagine that the "church" would want to repudiate Milosz. It's never done too well with people capable of thinking, such as Paul Collins, and others he discusses in The Modern Inquisition: Seven Prominent Catholics and their Struggles with the Vatican. The Overlook Press, 2000.
In my view, Martin Luther spoke eloquently on Catholicism, about 500 years ago. Fortunately, most of modernity has moved on from such exclusivisms to an increasingly universal understanding of the transcendent. Milosz clung too much to the past, but he was headed, at times, in the direction that is the Will of the Divine Being.
July 14, 2010 at 11:59 am
It isn't a question of conscience. It's a question of fact.Herbert and Twardowski can only be properly understood in relation to Catholicism.Mayakovsky and Gorki in terms of Marxist Leninism.The fact that the Church has not been kind to its poets or the Soviet Union to its is irrelevant here. Milosz believed in some undifferentiated supernatural that would have belief in Christ be an aspect of what he says in On The Road To what summoned? And to whom? blindly, God almighty,through horizons of woolly haze. His Christ is not the Christ of Catholicism and his poetry should not be strained through some kind of Catholicism.
July 14, 2010 at 8:04 pm
@Duncan, I spent most of yesterday re-reading Herbert and while I can certainly understand that knowing catholic doctrine can be crucial for understanding some points, it certainly doesn't seem the well-spring or the estuary of his poetics. He doesn't come off as Catholic. And if he is Christian it is understated to the degree that it appears almost undetectable and maybe even irrelevant. A few people I asked about this yesterday said yes Twardowski is thought of as Catholic but the idea that Herbert was to read strictly in this light was an alien concept to them. Can you point me to your background and source information? I would really like to see how such an interpretation is supported and grounded.
July 15, 2010 at 1:54 am
@JeffI read it in a review by Clare Kavanagh of Herbert's Collected poems in Times Literary Supplement4 30 2010."The number of Polish ecclesiastical websites that feature Herbert's phrase is striking." She also points out that to some,the phrase, "Be Faithful, Go"was strategic shorthand for" Go in faith to love and serve the lord".Yet this is not the catholicism of the 2nd Vatican Council, or of Blessed Pope John-Paul 2,
Herbert based his figure of Mr cogito on Valery's Monsieur Teste who in turn based it on the Catholic philosopher , Maurice Blondel who used Testis as a pseudonym. Valery opposed Blondel's own immanentism,but used it as a butt to his own abstract paradoxical idiom.Blondel was admired by the Catholic underground during the Soviet period. Herbert takes over the dialogue substituting his own preoccupation with paradox. I am critical of that tendency among the Polish writers I know in Switzerland and Britain who want to tie Catholicism with nationalism and forget that a man can have nothing to do with Marx, be critical of the church and still dare to oppose dangerous authoritarianism. Others used the surface of Catholicism to collaborate.You have conceded my point. "Knowing Catholic doctrine can be crucial for some points" I don't claim any more than that, except that there is no such golden thread for Milosz
Herbert based his figure of Mr cogito on Valery's Monsieur Teste who in turn based it on the Catholic philosopher , Maurice Blondel who used Testis as a pseudonym. Valery opposed Blondel's own immanentism,but used it as a butt to his own abstract paradoxical idiom.Blondel was admired by the Catholic underground during the Soviet period. Herbert takes over the dialogue substituting his own preoccupation with paradox. I am critical of that tendency among the Polish writers I know in Switzerland and Britain who want to tie Catholicism with nationalism and forget that a man can have nothing to do with Marx, be critical of the church and still dare to oppose dangerous authoritarianism. Others used the surface of Catholicism to collaborate.You have conceded my point. "Knowing Catholic doctrine can be crucial for some points" I don't claim any more than that, except that there is no such golden thread for Milosz
July 15, 2010 at 2:51 am
for the Valery Herbert link see t he Recent Poetry of Zbigniew Herbert
# Bogdana Carpenter and John Carpenter
# World Literature Today, Vol. 51, No. 2 (Spring, 1977), pp. 210-214
(article consists of 5 pages)
# Published by: University of Oklahoma
# Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40133286
# Bogdana Carpenter and John Carpenter
# World Literature Today, Vol. 51, No. 2 (Spring, 1977), pp. 210-214
(article consists of 5 pages)
# Published by: University of Oklahoma
# Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40133286
July 15, 2010 at 3:01 am
"Fact": I'm not referring to Herbert, nor interested in him. It is far from irrelevant that Catholicsim has been less than "kind to its poets," when it comes to your attempt to discredit Milosz on religious and doctrinal terms. To say he held "some undifferentiated supernatural," "woolly haze," is redolent of the classic apologia of the so-called Holy Office, which has been trampling on the consciences of people for centuries. In such a light, darkness really, your statement is perfectly comprehensible:
"His Christ is not the Christ of Catholicism and his poetry should not be strained through some kind of Catholicism."
The "golden thread for Milosz" is a genuine spiritual search for meaning and understanding in the modern world, unlike some departments of the Catholic church.
"His Christ is not the Christ of Catholicism and his poetry should not be strained through some kind of Catholicism."
The "golden thread for Milosz" is a genuine spiritual search for meaning and understanding in the modern world, unlike some departments of the Catholic church.
July 15, 2010 at 3:47 am
thanks duncan, i already knew of the link to valery but had rather forgotten about blondel. while it helps to push the interpretation in the direction of the christian symbology (and even my web browsing reveals herbert being used by polish catholic websites) one could very well argue that the archetypes found in his verse can also be drawn out of classical greek and roman mythologies and of course since he lived in the late christian epoch we experience in reading him the parallels of these archtypes peculiarly colored by christianism (as in 'apollo and marsyas' wherein "is joined the backbone of Marsyas/in principle the same A/only deeper with the addition of rust") while it is his irony or humorism with respect to all these systems that makes him readable to me. i couldn't read "report from paradise" without thinking of it in terms of marxism as well. "be faithful, go" of course, can darn well serve any roma, sufi or buddhist peripatetic addressing one's foot to the next step, whatever that may have to be. i take faith in the next step to be the central concern. how to get to it? don't worry, i'm not that worried :) it must happen, even if i stumble into it...
July 15, 2010 at 3:47 am
' Frederick I'm not discrediting Milosz's search for meaning and understanding in the modern world. I like both poets and others too. My claim is that there is no objectively interpretable set of doctrines that can help understand Milosc.The term undifferentiated supernatural is not one used by the church to condemn anyone. The Holy Office and the index does not exist any more. With Milosz you are on your own In poem at the End of a Century, Christ on the cross has the same meaning as anyone who died for his beliefs. Christians don;t hold the view that christ dies every day even when we commemorate Good Friday
July 15, 2010 at 4:18 am
Whereas for Herbert "Be faithful go" refers to the specific Christian belief that you must follow your conscience even if it should bring you to perdition.They're both good poets but I take a different tack in interpreting them
July 15, 2010 at 4:21 am
As Paul Collins suggests, renaming the Holy Office hasn't changed its function... apologias on its behalf are risible.
The Catholic church, you, and other Catholics, whoever, are entirely free to interpret Milosz, or whatever, as you choose, along the lines of whatever doctrines or beliefs you like. To purport that they alone are the Truth and then apply them to someone else's conscience, repudiating a person's expressed self-understanding, is beyond the pale, especially when it crudely distorts the genuine and deeply profound integrity of another's mind and soul.
"No objectively interpretable set of doctrines that can help understand Milosz" is an absurd claim and an attempt to subordinate and subvert a complex body of work to the crude level of Catholic doctrine. You're entitled to belief in your doctrine, as you interpret it; you're not entitled to debase someone else's conscience with impunity.
"Christians don't hold": You've been appointed you to speak for all Christians? And then apply your personal views to dismiss Milosz? Knee-jerk Catholic doctrine doesn't demonstrate the validity of your claims but the animus you harbor against Milosz.
If interested, I've expressed my own views on Milosz more fully in an essay, "Czeslaw Milosz’s Mythic Catholicism," in my book The Grove of the Eumenides:
https://www.fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
The Catholic church, you, and other Catholics, whoever, are entirely free to interpret Milosz, or whatever, as you choose, along the lines of whatever doctrines or beliefs you like. To purport that they alone are the Truth and then apply them to someone else's conscience, repudiating a person's expressed self-understanding, is beyond the pale, especially when it crudely distorts the genuine and deeply profound integrity of another's mind and soul.
"No objectively interpretable set of doctrines that can help understand Milosz" is an absurd claim and an attempt to subordinate and subvert a complex body of work to the crude level of Catholic doctrine. You're entitled to belief in your doctrine, as you interpret it; you're not entitled to debase someone else's conscience with impunity.
"Christians don't hold": You've been appointed you to speak for all Christians? And then apply your personal views to dismiss Milosz? Knee-jerk Catholic doctrine doesn't demonstrate the validity of your claims but the animus you harbor against Milosz.
If interested, I've expressed my own views on Milosz more fully in an essay, "Czeslaw Milosz’s Mythic Catholicism," in my book The Grove of the Eumenides:
https://www.fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
July 15, 2010 at 4:52 am
Did I say that? Did I apologise?
July 15, 2010 at 5:40 am
You simply have not read what I said.Did I or did I not say I liked Milosz' work? I know the teachings of the Catholic church and I do not need to consult a thousand opinions to express, not my personal views, but the views of my church for thousands of years.To understand the Herbert you need to know the doctrine of inerrant conscience. To understand Milosz you can apply any belief to his images.How does that subordinate him? How does it debase his conscience?The last thing I am arguing is that I want to debase his thought to the crude level of Catholic doctrine.where is my animus against Milosz merely because I say Catholicism is not a hermeneutic tool for understanding him.?Catholic poets are no better or worth than any others but to be one you have to have a set of definable as you say knee-jerk doctrines.Having a reference to such does not give you a privileged aesthetic truth.I do not judge Milosz to be any less true than Herbert.
July 15, 2010 at 6:02 am
As I've said, I'm not interested in Herbert and haven't shifted discussion to him. I'm not interested in the church's doctrine of "inerrant conscience," whether applied to Milosz or anyone else, or its other claims to exclusive religious truth... especially applied to poetry.
It's false to say "To understand Milosz you can apply any belief to his images." "Any belief" clearly constitutes exaggeration in order to repudiate him.
It's false to say "To understand Milosz you can apply any belief to his images." "Any belief" clearly constitutes exaggeration in order to repudiate him.
July 15, 2010 at 6:57 am
There are few poets I am not interested in. All poetry fascinates me.When Milosz writes about the Great Book of the Species (In A poor Christian looks at the Ghetto) he invites people to make a creative interpretation of that phrase, even though the interpretation at the end of the poem is more exact about the Jewish or the Christian apocalypse at the conclusion. What else is he or we supposed to do?When Herbert writes in Routine of the Soul about monsieur receiving Heraclitus and Isaiah, it is a licit interpretation to read that monsieur's confusion is between pantheism and monotheism and in the meantime you have to placate the police. Poets have the right to be taken at their word.you can;t make a Sufi out of Dante, or an Evangelical out of Whitman, or a Mormon out of Baudelaire. There is the integrity of witness to consider. Can any poet be repudiated?
July 15, 2010 at 7:43 am
To return to another point: the only universalism that I can admit is on the order of Herodotus and the need to know what is happening on the ground (air-traffic controllers and automatic-pilot satellites included, I suppose, however groundless the latter might seem). The universal medium called the internet, for example, however, is what i call a domain. Some people do not have access to this domain and so it fails to be universal (despite how it is trying to be). Domain and dominion share roots. But there is always something outside the domain. That said, the one thing that the "universal medium" implies for me is dialogism and multiplicities (read: different perspectives). So, I don't think this digression into Herbert is such a great disservice (because he is not knee-jerk catholic, far from it) and if more citation from Milosz were added into the thread, it could be clearer what the contrast is. Milosz doesnt stand outside of history nor does he transcend any of our difficulties. I think i would have noticed it the first time around if he really did. I am (obviously, I hope) saying that I might have missed something there. (And obviously a Polish authors are important to my life right now and I appreciate hearing him speak. (Btw, Frederick, I took some time after previous discussion to review the Milton case and I found that I had been too quick to accuse him of being a reactionary in politics. I still find the verse rather wooden but I did have change in perspective about the man's moral and ethical outlook. I daresay you haven't been able to do the same with Walter Benjamin for example, but that's not because Benjamin didn't have an honest search for meaning and didn't put his finger on some important developing dynamics in our civilization but because you suffered under the influence of bum steerers. Again, all artists (well, most) are involved in a search for meaning. Funny thing is I find the ones who find this meaning in other systems suspicious (Eliot's Anglicanism for example). I recall now that I became interested in your posts because you were quoting a fair amount of text (from Robert Lowell) and since I have lived an itinerant life, I can't keep a real library. So I would appreciate seeing more citations from Milosz of course. (And I also like to get them like new that stays news reports...I don't like reading long texts online because I am sure it is making me blind).
July 15, 2010 at 7:50 am
" Poets have the right to be taken at their word." That's my point... perhaps we can find common ground on that.
July 15, 2010 at 7:51 am
Lets leave it at that for now.I enjoyed the discussion and no doubt will resume soon, with@Jeff more quotations.
July 15, 2010 at 7:57 am
I've enjoyed chatting too. Best wishes.
July 15, 2010 at 7:59 am
Similarly, in "Lecture V" of The Collected Poems, the persona affirms "We plod on with hope," and then allows, "And now let everyone / Confess to himself. Has he risen? ’I don’t know.’" It was perhaps these lines that led Pope John Paul II to say to Milosz, as he reports in A Year of the Hunter, "You always take one step forward and one step back."
July 12, 2010 at 4:33 am
In another entry he writes, "There is only one theme: an era is coming to an end which lasted nearly two thousand years, when religion had primacy of place in relation to philosophy, science and art. . . ." Milosz recognizes the validity of his own honest doubts and the abyss of evil and historical calamity that is swallowing everything before it, yet he does so while continuing to "unite in worship."
July 12, 2010 at 3:45 am
What is this tome you are reading? I am both curious and interested ...
July 12, 2010 at 3:48 am
Hello. "Road-Side Dog" is a collection of short reflections by Milosz, available at Amazon and wherever, https://www.amazon.com/Road-side-Dog-Czeslaw-Milosz/dp/0374526230
Some of my quotations may be from various works by him, as usually identified.
Some of my quotations may be from various works by him, as usually identified.
July 12, 2010 at 3:55 am
And congratulations to South Africa on a great World Cup event! It seems as though Africa is emerging into an exciting new era!
July 12, 2010 at 3:58 am
Polish poets are as great as the Russians. :)
Thank you - we enjoyed surprising and entertaining the world. I think we are one of the friendliest nations, despite our problems.
Thank you - we enjoyed surprising and entertaining the world. I think we are one of the friendliest nations, despite our problems.
July 12, 2010 at 4:09 am
It seems South Africa has surprised even itself and invigorated the world with a new hope for the possible in Africa. Every country has its problems... complex, little understood by many inside and outside the culture... perhaps vision and effort are among the most important ingredients for the unfolding future... maybe the thrill with the World Cup will help.
July 12, 2010 at 4:18 am
There seems to be some kind of momentum. As you suggest, self-belief can do wonders. A couple of months ago, we were politically and morally threadbare. Now we're full of confidence again.
July 12, 2010 at 4:21 am
That's good. A shot of confidence can help energize people to move forward no matter what... It can seem the USA and other parts of the world are running a little low on it at the moment!
At a deeper level, Milosz is struggling with and writing about similar dimensions of the human spirit.
At a deeper level, Milosz is struggling with and writing about similar dimensions of the human spirit.
July 12, 2010 at 4:30 am
O the abyss of evil again. Ho-hum.
July 12, 2010 at 7:33 am
Far from "ho-hum," the prevailing nihilism that has normalized itself as orthodox opinion, literary and otherwise, promises but to lead to the further erosion of humane, spiritual conception of life and further acts of terrible, merciless destruction, on an ever-more exspansive global level--the entirely rational result of the entire drive of modernity.
July 12, 2010 at 11:06 am
It is an enormous, everyday struggle, not so much spiritual as moral, as Josef Brodsky was wont to point out.
July 12, 2010 at 11:17 am
Broadsky is wrong. He never understood modernity to the depth that Milosz did.
July 12, 2010 at 11:26 am
Mmm. Perhaps not - I'd love to hear your reasons for that assertion. But I do love his essays. And poems. He's influenced my own work to a great extent - though one of my mentors told me to use my own voice, not Brodsky's. He's perhaps almost too easy to imitate.
July 12, 2010 at 9:49 pm
Frederick your rant is full of dystopic cliches.
You will not gain converts to your point of view by running around shouting "Repent now! The end is near!"
Of course you are absolutely right. But you sound hysterical.
It's not content that makes your appeal to sanity ineffective, it's your style.
You will not gain converts to your point of view by running around shouting "Repent now! The end is near!"
Of course you are absolutely right. But you sound hysterical.
It's not content that makes your appeal to sanity ineffective, it's your style.
July 13, 2010 at 3:13 am
I would like to think that I can respect an opinion or view that differs from mine, even when critical.
Tragic sense, I would say, not "rant" or "dystopic," which words appear to me to presuppose the form of thinking that renders the precious tenets of modern and postmodern cynicisms privileged, unworthily so, and intimately connected with the unfolding tragedies of the time. The pervasive frivolity of nihilism underlies the modern tragedy... to say so is not a cliche. The cliches today are those held by the morally and spiritually corrupted universities and the derivative literary cliques they've produced, lowering serious literary and cultural reflection into academic play-things.
Milosz was much more insightful into the trajectory of post-WWII culture because he experienced and understood that it's not a diverting game for culture to collapse...
Tragic sense, I would say, not "rant" or "dystopic," which words appear to me to presuppose the form of thinking that renders the precious tenets of modern and postmodern cynicisms privileged, unworthily so, and intimately connected with the unfolding tragedies of the time. The pervasive frivolity of nihilism underlies the modern tragedy... to say so is not a cliche. The cliches today are those held by the morally and spiritually corrupted universities and the derivative literary cliques they've produced, lowering serious literary and cultural reflection into academic play-things.
Milosz was much more insightful into the trajectory of post-WWII culture because he experienced and understood that it's not a diverting game for culture to collapse...
July 13, 2010 at 3:53 am
@Fiona Zerbst, You've asked, so I owe you an honest answer. All I can do is candidly share my views and leave it to you to decide for yourself.
I was a student at the University of Michigan, when Brodsky was there. I had no interest in his writing, nor do I now. In my view, he's a creature of cold war, emigre politics. Compared to someone like Milosz, or Robert Hayden, whom I chose to study with at the University of Michigan, his poems are trivial and have no spiritual depth. I find his prose derivative, journalistic, and unreadable.
The university likes to create plaster saints for its tawdry, ephemeral causes. That's about all Brodsky amounts to in my view.
I was a student at the University of Michigan, when Brodsky was there. I had no interest in his writing, nor do I now. In my view, he's a creature of cold war, emigre politics. Compared to someone like Milosz, or Robert Hayden, whom I chose to study with at the University of Michigan, his poems are trivial and have no spiritual depth. I find his prose derivative, journalistic, and unreadable.
The university likes to create plaster saints for its tawdry, ephemeral causes. That's about all Brodsky amounts to in my view.
July 13, 2010 at 2:29 pm
Frederick, I expect you wouldn't like my poetry very much! I lived in Ukraine and Russia and my first husband was a product of the Cold War, a Commie who also thought for himself but kept that to himself. So I suppose my love for Russian poets is part of my trauma! (Living there was hellish - we lived in a village in 1995.)
However, I subsequently became religious and see everything differently now - that the spiritual is *the* site of the human experience. Doesn't this manifest as moral choices, though? Maybe I'm just a pragmatist.
However, I subsequently became religious and see everything differently now - that the spiritual is *the* site of the human experience. Doesn't this manifest as moral choices, though? Maybe I'm just a pragmatist.
July 13, 2010 at 10:28 pm
Tolstoy and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, for instance, have a much deeper sense of spirituality in human affairs, whether regarding the individual or society, than Brodsky ever gets close to, whatever one might think of their respective religious views--Tolstoy, highly universal by the end of his life, though few realize that about him; Solzhenitsyn, emphatically returning to the exclusivism of Orthodox Christianity.
Morality flows out of that for both Tolstoy and Sohzhenitsyn, but to conceive morality as tantamount to spirituality, instead of largely a result, marks a distinctly instrumental view, usually considered by most theologians, or whoever, as of a lower order, which is to say, religion is more than morality.
Brodsky's poems and prose in English, on the other hand, are pallid things, by comparison. His views on Robert Frost and American literature are simply negligible.
Morality flows out of that for both Tolstoy and Sohzhenitsyn, but to conceive morality as tantamount to spirituality, instead of largely a result, marks a distinctly instrumental view, usually considered by most theologians, or whoever, as of a lower order, which is to say, religion is more than morality.
Brodsky's poems and prose in English, on the other hand, are pallid things, by comparison. His views on Robert Frost and American literature are simply negligible.
July 14, 2010 at 3:09 am
Perhaps I just haven't considered in that way, Frederick. You are correct that spirituality is more than morality, but without the moral dimension it is theoretical. Maybe I feel that way as Islam focuses on praxis. Sometimes that results in petty and short-sighted hypocrisy; more often, though, it is about hands-on help where it's required (living in the developing world has given me a peculiarly literal approach to succour.) I adore Solzhenitsyn, Tolstoy I've read only War and Peace and Anna K. The two poets I have revered since uni. are Akhmatova and Mandelstam. I love the homage Brodsky pays them (and Tsvetayeva). Frederick, perhaps I shall appoint you as a mentor, I am largely self-educated, Masters in Creative Writing notwithstanding (and I only did that because I already had an MS ready).
July 14, 2010 at 3:40 am
Fiona, I'm not at all arguing against morality. But I do believe people can be "spiritual," yet highly immoral, and moral without having any belief in any traditional religion or philosophy. I would resist any easy categorization of human beings; we're a complex mixture of good and ill, in my view. It's a simplistic conception that joining or thinking of oneself as a member of any religion, or whatever, solves all the conundrums of human existence.
Since you mention you're Muslim, you might especially find Tolstoy's last great novella quite interesting and enjoyable, Hadji Murad (circa 1902). I have a brief review of it on one of my blogs: https://fglaysher.com/eReading/2009/09/leo-tolstoy-hadji-murad/
Tolstoy's last decade is full of reflection on all the great religions, including Islam. I prefer being a friend to a mentor...
Akhmatova, Tsvetayeva, and Mandelstam are very great poets, in my view, too. I have a quotation over my writing desk from Mandelstam to keep me focused, as I think of it: "For the artist, a worldview is a tool"; as Saul Bellow expands on it, "like a hammer in the hands of a stonemason."
Since you mention you're Muslim, you might especially find Tolstoy's last great novella quite interesting and enjoyable, Hadji Murad (circa 1902). I have a brief review of it on one of my blogs: https://fglaysher.com/eReading/2009/09/leo-tolstoy-hadji-murad/
Tolstoy's last decade is full of reflection on all the great religions, including Islam. I prefer being a friend to a mentor...
Akhmatova, Tsvetayeva, and Mandelstam are very great poets, in my view, too. I have a quotation over my writing desk from Mandelstam to keep me focused, as I think of it: "For the artist, a worldview is a tool"; as Saul Bellow expands on it, "like a hammer in the hands of a stonemason."
July 14, 2010 at 4:05 am
A friend is great.
And thanks for making me think and keeping me from lazy thinking. Apparently I am a lazy poet, too, and my 2nd ed. said his job was to prevent me from 'ducking behind the ramparts'. Haha.
A worldview is indeed a tool and an important one and I agree that the fine-tuning is hardly reducible to easy categorisations. Mercifully. I am inordinately fond of the cloud of unknowing. :)
And thanks for making me think and keeping me from lazy thinking. Apparently I am a lazy poet, too, and my 2nd ed. said his job was to prevent me from 'ducking behind the ramparts'. Haha.
A worldview is indeed a tool and an important one and I agree that the fine-tuning is hardly reducible to easy categorisations. Mercifully. I am inordinately fond of the cloud of unknowing. :)
July 14, 2010 at 4:17 am
@Diana Manister, I want to thank you for your criticism of yesterday. Perhaps you won't entirely mind my saying, What's a real friend for?
While I say kindly that the repent thing reveals more about you than me, something you might reflect on, how can a poet ever refuse to mull over incessantly such an aesthetic category as style?
While I say kindly that the repent thing reveals more about you than me, something you might reflect on, how can a poet ever refuse to mull over incessantly such an aesthetic category as style?
July 15, 2010 at 5:06 am
Though "loyal and disloyal," he performs what is in itself an act of affirmation. One reason for such tensions must be his recognition that we are "In an intermediary phase, after the end of one era and before the beginning of a new one."
July 11, 2010 at 5:11 am
Like his contemporaries, Milosz is a child of dualities and contradictions, as he discloses in Unattainable Earth: "Sometimes believing, sometimes not believing, / With others like myself I unite in worship."
July 8, 2010 at 5:37 am
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Road-Side Dog exudes this same consciousness, yet, interested only in Christianity, he fails to perceive that vast expanses of the planet have also left behind the Islamic, Hindu, Taoist, Confucian, and Buddhist religions.
July 7, 2010 at 5:59 am
Not to mention having a relationship with the divine and the universe that is not about religion.
July 7, 2010 at 10:28 am
If I understand you correctly, you mean "religion" in the organized sense, versus spirituality, from whatever perspective? From my reading of Milosz, I believe pagan tended to be used in a fairly traditional Catholic meaning, a rather negative word...
For instance, in Visions from San Francisco Bay (1983), he mentions "the erosion of the system of ideas and customs which form the American way of life," alluding elsewhere to "what is now overtaking people all over the world," "hanging between something which is ending and something which has not yet begun."
In the last few pages of the book, he mentions what he finds of value in America is "the Biblical tradition, against the search for individual or collective nirvana." Paganism might fall in there somewhere...
Reading Milosz, even decades ago, I always feel that I am reading someone who realizes that it is no longer possible to move backwards, while apprehensive of the future, unable to respect any form of spirituality that does not assert an exclusivism as the truth. I believe that tendency must have played a part in why he chose to flee back to Poland before he died. The spiritual landscape was simply more than he could grasp...
For instance, in Visions from San Francisco Bay (1983), he mentions "the erosion of the system of ideas and customs which form the American way of life," alluding elsewhere to "what is now overtaking people all over the world," "hanging between something which is ending and something which has not yet begun."
In the last few pages of the book, he mentions what he finds of value in America is "the Biblical tradition, against the search for individual or collective nirvana." Paganism might fall in there somewhere...
Reading Milosz, even decades ago, I always feel that I am reading someone who realizes that it is no longer possible to move backwards, while apprehensive of the future, unable to respect any form of spirituality that does not assert an exclusivism as the truth. I believe that tendency must have played a part in why he chose to flee back to Poland before he died. The spiritual landscape was simply more than he could grasp...
July 7, 2010 at 12:06 pm
A relationship with the divine and the Universe will now lead to a new finite image of the infinite Spirit. This new finite image will use current science for its details. Hinduism has made the most forward-looking moves along these lines, its gurus often stating their beliefs and practices in harmony with current science. I'm trying to move this direction out of the Shinto-derived approach of Morihei Ueshiba's aikido and the Ki principles of Koichi Tohei. I like your comment, Kathy. Your observation about Milosz is interesting and seems probable to me, Frederick.
July 7, 2010 at 2:57 pm
@Howard Robertson Thanks for commenting. In my first post on Milosz, below, I quote him as seeing the planet as "falling away from Christianity," while I think it is more accurate to say growing beyond the exclusivisms of all of the traditional religions. To my mind, that's a definite *positive* development, but for many generations Jews, Muslims, and Christians have only been able to understand modernity in such terms, as did Milosz, "return," "renewal," "recovery." The Divine Being appears not to be interested in such simplistic conceptions.
Life has simply moved on beyond such narrow, stifling terms to a wide and open embrace of a much more universal acceptance of other people as fellow human beings, of whatever persuasion. Unfortunately, many cling to the old conceptions of truth.
I've been reading Tolstoy's Circle of Reading (1908) for months, a day book of excerpts from Taoism, Buddhism, Confucius, Christianity and so on. A hundred years ago, he really reached a very pluralistic, universal perspective during his last decade but the dominant nihilism of our current culture has turned him into a religious crackpot, as in Michael Hoffman's movie “The Last Station,” instead of understanding what his spiritual struggles and achievements really were. You might find it of interest. Amazon has a good 1997 translation.
Life has simply moved on beyond such narrow, stifling terms to a wide and open embrace of a much more universal acceptance of other people as fellow human beings, of whatever persuasion. Unfortunately, many cling to the old conceptions of truth.
I've been reading Tolstoy's Circle of Reading (1908) for months, a day book of excerpts from Taoism, Buddhism, Confucius, Christianity and so on. A hundred years ago, he really reached a very pluralistic, universal perspective during his last decade but the dominant nihilism of our current culture has turned him into a religious crackpot, as in Michael Hoffman's movie “The Last Station,” instead of understanding what his spiritual struggles and achievements really were. You might find it of interest. Amazon has a good 1997 translation.
July 7, 2010 at 4:16 pm
Thanks, I like Tolstoy. I don't know if I've mentioned that I made my living building the Russian collection at the University of Oregon Library. I entirely agree with your statement above.
July 7, 2010 at 4:22 pm
Oh, well, then, you must be more knowledgeable than I on Tolstoy, though I've read much of his work in translation. I started reading him back in the '70s and have been going through another binge of late. Just finished his Confessions this morning. Ever read his What is Religion, and Wherein Lies its Essence? ? circa 1902. Surprisingly universal, if only world culture could catch up with him...
July 7, 2010 at 4:43 pm
No, I haven't read much of his late writing. Now I will, thanks to your recommendations. Thanks!
July 7, 2010 at 4:44 pm
From about 1880 he went through a long thirty year journey away from what he felt were all the problems with Orthodox Christianity towards what all the great religious traditions have in common. He wrote many quite remarkable pieces along the way, though modernity has failed to understand what he was really trying to do. Tolstoy was really a spiritual genius, not only a literary one, in my view. I don't mean he was prophet or anything like that, but a seeking soul, who longed for truth in rational and transcendent terms that were really very far ahead of his time in many ways. Pity Russia had not followed him instead of Lenin...
July 7, 2010 at 4:56 pm
"The Death of Ivan Il'ich" was written during this late period. It's my favorite work by Tolstoy.
July 7, 2010 at 4:59 pm
Gosh you two have given me a lot to think about. I will be back soon to comment....wonderful. What a gift.
July 7, 2010 at 10:33 pm
Have just looked up Czesław Miłosz. What an amazing guy. And humbling too. The more I find out, the more I realise that there is so much more to learn which makes me feel smaller and smaller until I return to my poetry writing.
July 7, 2010 at 10:44 pm
In A Year of the Hunter, Czeslaw Milosz unequivocally writes, "Poetry’s separation from religion has always strengthened my conviction that the erosion of the cosmic-religious imagination is not an illusion and that the vast expanses of the planet that are falling away from Christianity are the external correlative of this erosion."
July 7, 2010 at 3:12 am
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I think, though, with time, many writers are going to come to the realization that I have. The technology now exists to market and sell one's own books, both POD and ebooks, directly to the entire world through Lightning Source and one's own ebook website and global credit card services.
Far from publishers having a "reason to be happy about how the book market is evolving," Shatzkin's claim demonstrates that neither he nor they really understand that the dynamics involved embrace the entire world culture, of which they are only one small part, guaranteeing that the day approaches when they, too, like the music oligarchs, will be swept aside with the fiber-optic speed of the up-loaded gigabytes of the Post-Gutenberg Revolution.
Publishing in the Post-Gutenberg Age.
https://www.fglaysher.com/Post_Gutenberg_Publishing.html
https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.idealog.com%2Fblog%2Fbig-publishers-have-reason-to-be-happy-about-how-the-book-market-is-evolving&h=5eb3bW3TisgM7ErFDmMaMeY-nPg
June 27, 2010 at 7:17 am
Far from publishers having a "reason to be happy about how the book market is evolving," Shatzkin's claim demonstrates that neither he nor they really understand that the dynamics involved embrace the entire world culture, of which they are only one small part, guaranteeing that the day approaches when they, too, like the music oligarchs, will be swept aside with the fiber-optic speed of the up-loaded gigabytes of the Post-Gutenberg Revolution.
Publishing in the Post-Gutenberg Age.
https://www.fglaysher.com/Post_Gutenberg_Publishing.html
https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.idealog.com%2Fblog%2Fbig-publishers-have-reason-to-be-happy-about-how-the-book-market-is-evolving&h=5eb3bW3TisgM7ErFDmMaMeY-nPg
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Big publishers have reason to be happy about how the book market is evolving – The Shatzkin Files |
Why should writers worry about corporate publishers? Writers have been exploited by them for centuries.
June 27, 2010 at 7:17 am
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Insightful comment. I am very interested in exploring how technology will affect the written word but here I seem to be in a minority of one! But I suppose that books have existed for hundreds of years and so they are a big habit to give up.
July 6, 2010 at 4:24 am
Thanks the kind word. Unfortunately, many writers do seem to be passively sitting by waiting for publishers to decide their fate! I can't understand it myself. The Internet and the entire digital revolution has opened up one thing after another for the last 20 years, so why should the "book" be any different? To my mind, it all asks the question, What is a book? I've tried to explore that for over three years now, occasionally, if interested, on my blog eReading. The experience of eReading. https://fglaysher.com/eReading/
I don't believe paper books will or should be entirely replaced with ebooks. Too often we human beings think in either/or. Ultimately, I think, over the coming years, beginning more than a decade ago, a transition to a rich Post-Gutenberg mix, one definitely bringing about major changes in production and distribution, with incredible possibilities for writes and readers all over the world.
I, for one, am NOT about to live without books... printed in all forms. Ebooks to me are a new and EXCITING way of conveying, now worldwide, to readers WHAT a book truly is, the encoded thoughts of a human being... capable of passing down even to people centuries later... https://books.fglaysher.com/
I don't believe paper books will or should be entirely replaced with ebooks. Too often we human beings think in either/or. Ultimately, I think, over the coming years, beginning more than a decade ago, a transition to a rich Post-Gutenberg mix, one definitely bringing about major changes in production and distribution, with incredible possibilities for writes and readers all over the world.
I, for one, am NOT about to live without books... printed in all forms. Ebooks to me are a new and EXCITING way of conveying, now worldwide, to readers WHAT a book truly is, the encoded thoughts of a human being... capable of passing down even to people centuries later... https://books.fglaysher.com/
July 6, 2010 at 7:44 am
It sounds as though you enjoyed the book, though I'm not sure what it would be without the "existential overtones."
July 9, 2010 at 12:20 pm
great piece of writing...I like this kind of writing...thanks for sharing.
July 10, 2010 at 5:15 am
Please sign and repost to your friends. The petition will be presented to the United Nations in the fall. The Millennium development goals must be in there somewhere...
https://1billionhungry.org
June 21, 2010 at 4:28 pm
https://1billionhungry.org
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1billionhungry.org |
1 000 000 000 PEOPLE live in chronic hunger and I'M MAD AS HELL.
June 21, 2010 at 4:28 pm
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Millennium Development Goals
https://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/
https://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/
June 21, 2010 at 5:13 pm
Excerpt from "Epopee," in The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture. https://www.fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/john-milton-harold-bloom
June 20, 2010 at 4:36 am
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/john-milton-harold-bloom
| John Milton. Harold Bloom. « Reviews by Frederick Glaysher |
John Milton’s reputation has unjustly suffered a diminution during the last two centuries. The romantics, repulsed by his religious theme of the earthly pilgrimage of the soul, corrupted his poem by maliciously ...
June 20, 2010 at 4:36 am
Read your Milton essay. Paradise Lost remains on my shelf as a favorite but I don't know that I agree that post-modernism or modernism are "perversions." I think that depends a lot on the poet and a lot on the poem.
Nor do I think one era of man has been more "spiritually healthy" then another era I just think awareness of the darkness has increased not that the darkness itself has. There's always been genocide, rape, murder (from the beginning of man, and in the Bible.) What's happening now seems to me that with the communication venues of TV, the internet etc... we see and hear more about the negative and also there is just a lot more people now than then.
I wrote a paper on Paradise Lost regarding "God's Voice" and how Eve and Adam interpreted "laws" differently and why. I think there's a lot to the essay you wrote and I agree there is something of a cesspool of poetry reflecting humanity at it's worst...but isn't that what poetry should do? Reflect? Even if the image is ugly...
Nor do I think one era of man has been more "spiritually healthy" then another era I just think awareness of the darkness has increased not that the darkness itself has. There's always been genocide, rape, murder (from the beginning of man, and in the Bible.) What's happening now seems to me that with the communication venues of TV, the internet etc... we see and hear more about the negative and also there is just a lot more people now than then.
I wrote a paper on Paradise Lost regarding "God's Voice" and how Eve and Adam interpreted "laws" differently and why. I think there's a lot to the essay you wrote and I agree there is something of a cesspool of poetry reflecting humanity at it's worst...but isn't that what poetry should do? Reflect? Even if the image is ugly...
June 20, 2010 at 6:52 am
Thank you for choosing to be friends and reading my excerpt on Milton. I do highly qualify there my comments: "healthier only in terms of possessing to a degree a unified spiritual vision that provided universal standards with which to confront the damnable deeds of their day." "To a degree" acknowledges a lot of nuance in all directions, I would argue.
While I think media has functioned as you suggest, I don't believe the moral and spiritual dimensions of the prevailing conception of what is involved has. Paradoxically, the modern world has moved simultaneously further into dehumanizing, secular, nihilistic modes of understanding and interpretation of life, scientism undergirding much of the decline, as it has become increasingly the sole, publicly acceptable, dominant vision, especially in the media, humanities, and so on.
I'd like to think I've held the mirror up to the world around me in my book Into the Ruins, where I make the point that much of postmodern literature chose mistakenly to hold it up to the self. In the traditional sense of all the great religious and wisdom traditions, I believe, as with Milton, a humane, spiritual social order can only be founded upon the sacrifice of self for the good of others... The modern image is indeed ugly... and tending to violence.
https://books.fglaysher.com/Into-the-Ruins-9780982677810.htm
While I think media has functioned as you suggest, I don't believe the moral and spiritual dimensions of the prevailing conception of what is involved has. Paradoxically, the modern world has moved simultaneously further into dehumanizing, secular, nihilistic modes of understanding and interpretation of life, scientism undergirding much of the decline, as it has become increasingly the sole, publicly acceptable, dominant vision, especially in the media, humanities, and so on.
I'd like to think I've held the mirror up to the world around me in my book Into the Ruins, where I make the point that much of postmodern literature chose mistakenly to hold it up to the self. In the traditional sense of all the great religious and wisdom traditions, I believe, as with Milton, a humane, spiritual social order can only be founded upon the sacrifice of self for the good of others... The modern image is indeed ugly... and tending to violence.
https://books.fglaysher.com/Into-the-Ruins-9780982677810.htm
June 20, 2010 at 7:30 am
@Melanie Huber It occurs to me that I have another short piece on Milton you might find interesting on one of my other blogs. Of True Religion. John Milton.
https://fglaysher.com/eReading/2010/02/of-true-religion-john-milton/
https://fglaysher.com/eReading/2010/02/of-true-religion-john-milton/
June 20, 2010 at 8:01 am
Thanks for the link. I'll check it out soon. I like how you say " a humane, spiritual social order can only be founded upon the sacrifice of self for the good of others... " But am uncertain Paradise Lost points to this completely. There are some misogynistic points he professes concerning "woman" and the role of woman in a relationship with a man and in society that I take a few issues with, but as a whole, and for literary merit, I like the depth of compassion he expresses towards mankind/humanity in it's "fallen" state. I'm not sure if I agree that scientism is what adds to the social decline, perhaps any man-made institution is bound to have flaws, including the religious ones as some of the worst atrocities directed towards humanity have been done in the name of God. I think Physics, for example, is much like poetry and some of the theories (Mulitiverses, string theory) seem to point towards a more spiritual existence rather than away from.
Thanks for the interesting discussion.
Thanks for the interesting discussion.
June 20, 2010 at 8:21 am
Well, yes, Milton is very limited by his times. I would point to the closing lines as expressing hope for the future spiritual development of humanity, and asides and so forth throughout, implicit.
Yes, perhaps physics intimates a way forward, in a philosophical, spiritual sense, much needed, and is beyond the Scientism in the way I meant. Broadly, though, I'm afraid humanity continues to place an irrational level of trust in science, especially after all the slaughters of the 20th Century, over 100 million souls were done to death by one ideology or another...
Yes, perhaps physics intimates a way forward, in a philosophical, spiritual sense, much needed, and is beyond the Scientism in the way I meant. Broadly, though, I'm afraid humanity continues to place an irrational level of trust in science, especially after all the slaughters of the 20th Century, over 100 million souls were done to death by one ideology or another...
June 20, 2010 at 10:56 am
In terms of physics, I actually make the case in my narrative poem, The Bower of Nil. See excerpt at https://www.fglaysher.com/bower_of_nil.html
June 20, 2010 at 1:49 pm
For by faithfully treading the dark way of horror, by weighing the modern loss of belief, humankind may begin to regain the path in the twenty-first century, and, like Dante’s persona, attain the highest summit of peace and glory.
June 17, 2010 at 5:36 am
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Here at the threshold of the 21st century when humankind still stands technologically capable of destroying much of the vast expanse of the globe and much, though not all, of its population, here when a more trustworthy political form has yet to be securely established to channel the will of the citizens of the international community,
June 17, 2010 at 3:48 am
...epopee must again take account of the social domain and man’s earthly journey through these immense atrocities.
June 17, 2010 at 3:47 am
Whereas Virgil denounced war except as the last resort for establishing peace, modern poets have often ignored the inhumanities of the 20th Century--save for those like Pound whose totalitarianism abetted the brutalizing of millions of innocents and the early Auden who approved "the necessary murder."
June 16, 2010 at 6:55 am
The violent, arrogant, insidious deeds of the archvillains of modern political nihilism alone account for the suffering and deaths of hundreds of millions of people, while much of the so-called intelligentsia of the West and East defended or prepared the way for the slaughter.
June 16, 2010 at 5:10 am
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eh oui. sigh.
June 18, 2010 at 7:45 am
Despite Freud’s "freeing" man from sin, the twentieth century proved to be the most sinful in history, precisely because the unique spiritual reality of each soul and its fundamental limitations were denied.
June 16, 2010 at 3:00 am
3 people like this
Far from the banal optimism of the modern era, as in Whitman, they know that the long hard way of man is through suffering and turmoil and that the assurance Michael gives Adam about future generations abides eternally: "Doubt not but that sin / Will reign among them."
June 15, 2010 at 9:37 am
An interesting review article by Diana Manister of Ira Sadoff's History Matters: Contemporary Poetry on the Margins of American Culture.
https://www2.widener.edu/~cea/382manister.htm
June 15, 2010 at 7:15 am
https://www2.widener.edu/~cea/382manister.htm
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Review: History Matters: Contemporary Poetry on the Margins of American Culture |
Ira Sadoff. History Matters: Contemporary Poetry on the Margins of American Culture. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 2009. 230 pp. $39.95 (cloth).
June 15, 2010 at 7:15 am
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[I'm posting my comments on the article here too.]
Interesting, Diana. I think the issues run much deeper.
"Postmodern critical theories dismantle and disperse the humanistic paradigm." "a literary mode that the postmodern theorists he names have thoroughly deconstructed."
To which I would say, only in the academic land of their delusions and hubris... Theorists of various camps don't own or run literature and poetry, nor universities, neither is there the slightest reason that poets and artists should take seriously the sophistry of Marxists and other cultural decadents... inside or out of the universities.
"the monumental shift in literature brought about by literary theories now included in the curricula of most university English departments."
Much to the detriment of our extremely fragmented culture... and the English department itself, as has long been acknowledged and discussed... for decades even by writers and scholars who still understand the value of the humanistic, literary tradition, as they themselves are similarly incapable of finding a way forward, sequestered in their own small niche of cultural politics.
Literary history, since as far back as the Greeks, irrefutably demonstrates, that though the humanistic tradition may be subverted for a time, it also retains the resources necessary for recovery. By providing the culture with the undeniable, pervasive fact of its betrayal of the humanistic tradition, academicians have and continue to demonstrate their intellectual bankruptcy, as shamelessly as the shysters on Wall Street, and have unintentionally helped to prepare the soil for a humane landscape beyond postmodernism, often by inspiring revulsion and contempt for what they themselves present as “scholarship.”
In 1980, in a seminar at the University of Michigan on deconstruction, I recognized I was being introduced to a virulent form of academic sophistry and decadence. The intervening thirty years has only served further to fragment and undermine the cultural and intellectual integrity of the literary tradition, whether East or West, and has destroyed literary studies worthy of the name.
Following Saul Bellow’s admonition that “a real writer would bury them,” I've spent the intervening years largely in solitary study, reflection, and writing, and invite anyone tired of the cliches of deconstruction and other academic absurdities to consider the possibility of a very different vision, not only for poets and writers, but for humanity, the humanity literature used to address, the only readership worth trying to write for, unlike the frivolous, nihilistic, decadent American English department. https://books.fglaysher.com
Interesting, Diana. I think the issues run much deeper.
"Postmodern critical theories dismantle and disperse the humanistic paradigm." "a literary mode that the postmodern theorists he names have thoroughly deconstructed."
To which I would say, only in the academic land of their delusions and hubris... Theorists of various camps don't own or run literature and poetry, nor universities, neither is there the slightest reason that poets and artists should take seriously the sophistry of Marxists and other cultural decadents... inside or out of the universities.
"the monumental shift in literature brought about by literary theories now included in the curricula of most university English departments."
Much to the detriment of our extremely fragmented culture... and the English department itself, as has long been acknowledged and discussed... for decades even by writers and scholars who still understand the value of the humanistic, literary tradition, as they themselves are similarly incapable of finding a way forward, sequestered in their own small niche of cultural politics.
Literary history, since as far back as the Greeks, irrefutably demonstrates, that though the humanistic tradition may be subverted for a time, it also retains the resources necessary for recovery. By providing the culture with the undeniable, pervasive fact of its betrayal of the humanistic tradition, academicians have and continue to demonstrate their intellectual bankruptcy, as shamelessly as the shysters on Wall Street, and have unintentionally helped to prepare the soil for a humane landscape beyond postmodernism, often by inspiring revulsion and contempt for what they themselves present as “scholarship.”
In 1980, in a seminar at the University of Michigan on deconstruction, I recognized I was being introduced to a virulent form of academic sophistry and decadence. The intervening thirty years has only served further to fragment and undermine the cultural and intellectual integrity of the literary tradition, whether East or West, and has destroyed literary studies worthy of the name.
Following Saul Bellow’s admonition that “a real writer would bury them,” I've spent the intervening years largely in solitary study, reflection, and writing, and invite anyone tired of the cliches of deconstruction and other academic absurdities to consider the possibility of a very different vision, not only for poets and writers, but for humanity, the humanity literature used to address, the only readership worth trying to write for, unlike the frivolous, nihilistic, decadent American English department. https://books.fglaysher.com
June 15, 2010 at 7:16 am
Well said.
June 15, 2010 at 9:45 am
Such errors in judgment, such fundamental confusion of values, mark the modern era and set it off from the spiritually healthier times of Dante, Langland, Spenser, and Milton--healthier only in terms of possessing to a degree a unified spiritual vision that provided universal standards with which to confront the damnable deeds of their day.
June 15, 2010 at 5:37 am
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You assume our world is as large as theirs, Mr. Glaysher. We cannot have Dantes or Miltons, in their sense as being definitives, today, any more than that their contributions, great as they seem in our notalgic eyes, would have been Universal today.
June 15, 2010 at 5:44 am
Our world is even LARGER than theirs, truly global. Our conversation proves it. "We cannot have" is the cry of every exhausted literary period, every academic hack, spewing out cliches, whether Western or that of the East, and I dare say African...
Every time and age awaits the new artist and writer who can find and herald the way forward, the vision that has been strangely lost, recover what it means to be a human being, alive today, not in the encrusted, hallowed past.
I've been reading Chinua Achebe's The Education of a British-Protected Child. Is he the last great novelist Nigeria and Africa will ever have? Is there never to be a writer now or ever capable of saying, yes, he's great, but this is Africa to me... Is no one ever to stand on his shoulders and sing a mightier song?
Every time and age awaits the new artist and writer who can find and herald the way forward, the vision that has been strangely lost, recover what it means to be a human being, alive today, not in the encrusted, hallowed past.
I've been reading Chinua Achebe's The Education of a British-Protected Child. Is he the last great novelist Nigeria and Africa will ever have? Is there never to be a writer now or ever capable of saying, yes, he's great, but this is Africa to me... Is no one ever to stand on his shoulders and sing a mightier song?
June 15, 2010 at 6:03 am
My thinking is that the world of Dante and all those past worlds were far larger and emptier than ours. All it took in those days was to be a virtuoso and fame and glory, and greatness within a generation or three, would be yours. In our world, things are far smaller for there are virtuosos in every corner, calling at every mart, every University. Dante was great to a large part because he was a virtuouso from a time when there existed, compared to the pupolation of the learned world, very few of them. Today, Dante would have had stiff competition – hence our world is far smaller than theirs was. Smaller, crowded.
I think the internet and the rise in the use of IT has been a factor in all these. All it takes these days is a kid with a laptop computer and a head for algorithms. And there are many of those. The rise of technology has led to the death of greatness. Why? Because it has democratized greatness. And when some things have been democratized, the bars of achievement come down, and drag ‘greatness’ down – hardly more noticeable than a particular red apple in a basket half full or red apples and green ones.
On Chinua Achebe: God forbid I think he is great and so his achievements are unattainable! But he is, sadly, the last of the Greats as seen in the old sense of being definitive. Were I to write a classic, such as his Things Fall Apart today, I would merely be another in a large class of possibly talented African writers. His world was far larger than mine is.
But I understand that you are saying artists must not abdicate their role in moving their age forward. I just don’t think our times can be compared so directly with the times of the master before us.
I think the internet and the rise in the use of IT has been a factor in all these. All it takes these days is a kid with a laptop computer and a head for algorithms. And there are many of those. The rise of technology has led to the death of greatness. Why? Because it has democratized greatness. And when some things have been democratized, the bars of achievement come down, and drag ‘greatness’ down – hardly more noticeable than a particular red apple in a basket half full or red apples and green ones.
On Chinua Achebe: God forbid I think he is great and so his achievements are unattainable! But he is, sadly, the last of the Greats as seen in the old sense of being definitive. Were I to write a classic, such as his Things Fall Apart today, I would merely be another in a large class of possibly talented African writers. His world was far larger than mine is.
But I understand that you are saying artists must not abdicate their role in moving their age forward. I just don’t think our times can be compared so directly with the times of the master before us.
June 15, 2010 at 6:37 am
Although I agree with you, "exhausted literary period" and "academic hack" certainly are cliche-esque.
June 15, 2010 at 6:38 am
@Richard Ali I believe you overvalue the currently prevailing literary and academic milieu. It is profuse with derivative talents, minor, especially among the academy, who churn over the same ground, having settled into the received fads as though they were wisdom, and so on. Similarly, I would have to disagree with your overestimation of mere technical Internet developments. Mediocrity is not and never has been the equal of real talent, craft, and serious learning, nor is it in the Digital Age, for those with eyes and minds to see and understand.
Every age is propitious. Ours more so than any previous time. .. The real question is always whether one has the ability, courage, the gift to embrace it, a compelling vision.
@Terry Savoie I would say precise technical terms that describe the prevailing milieu... Unless one can see that, one doesn't begin to understand the actual state of affairs in the literature and culture of our time.
Every age is propitious. Ours more so than any previous time. .. The real question is always whether one has the ability, courage, the gift to embrace it, a compelling vision.
@Terry Savoie I would say precise technical terms that describe the prevailing milieu... Unless one can see that, one doesn't begin to understand the actual state of affairs in the literature and culture of our time.
June 15, 2010 at 7:13 am
Okay Mr Glaysher, I appreciate your perspective on Academe especially. I'm not an academic but I doubt you would have left if there was anything redeeming about it, which is too bad. If you could leave Academe in the West, man, ours here is just a cesspit. . .incompetents being back slapped with Phd's and all that.
And yes, I agree, it does take a lot of courage. Our age seems good at the creation of matyrs. So, one has to go against the grain of the times, embrace and embody the zeigeist to be, and do one's bit to bring it to be.
Thanks a lot. I'll keep in touch.
- Ra.
And yes, I agree, it does take a lot of courage. Our age seems good at the creation of matyrs. So, one has to go against the grain of the times, embrace and embody the zeigeist to be, and do one's bit to bring it to be.
Thanks a lot. I'll keep in touch.
- Ra.
June 15, 2010 at 7:48 am
Were Nuclear Weapons Inevitable?
https://humanrights.change.org/blog/view/were_nuclear_weapons_inevitable
June 15, 2010 at 2:49 am
https://humanrights.change.org/blog/view/were_nuclear_weapons_inevitable
|
Were Nuclear Weapons Inevitable? | Human Rights | Change.org |
I found the quote in Frederick Glaysher's deep essay on the nuclear question, "Poetry in the Nuclear Age."
June 15, 2010 at 2:49 am
Edith Sitwell was actually an eccentric British poet of aristocratic lineage and manner... The author's heart is the right place, as the saying goes, and the nuclear dreadnought is now merely one of the ways in which modern civilization stands capable of bringing about "cosmic disaster," as Brian Urquhart has written, in the NYRB. See June 6th message, below.
June 15, 2010 at 2:57 am
Such totalitarian dictators were the inevitable product of the romantic fascination with Satan, as though he were a hero and not an arrogant aspirant after power. Such cultural confusion reveals itself in Goethe’s Faust as well as in Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra.
June 14, 2010 at 8:22 am
Is it possible that you elucidate more on how you feel that Nietzsche's nihilistic human emerges from his recollection of Satan's character ? Or how do you find this work as a cultural relic passed on since we came to know of Milton's Satan ?
June 14, 2010 at 8:34 am
Thanks for commenting. I'm not sure I really understand what you mean. But I'm not suggesting Satan has an individual existence distinct from the human capacity to choose and commit acts that are essentially self-centered and evil in that sense. As symbol, of course, Satan does not originate with Milton. All cultures have their symbolic representations of the human potential for negative actions. I think of the asuras in the Ramayana or Mara in Buddhism. I don't believe Satan has an address.
To return to Western literature, the Romantics develop a noticeably new perspective on evil, say, from Milton and his more traditionally Christian conception and generation. Numerous historians and writers have explored the connection between that and the rise of evil in the social and political realms, in the early modern world, at a more pronounced level, for instance, in Marxism and Nazism. I'm suggesting that I, too, believe the connection exists on the philosophical level of modernity. The philosophical and ontological problem has not been sufficiently resolved to help protect humanity from our own capacity for evil. This seems to be the situation modernity, East or West, is still in, a continuing reason for concern.
To return to Western literature, the Romantics develop a noticeably new perspective on evil, say, from Milton and his more traditionally Christian conception and generation. Numerous historians and writers have explored the connection between that and the rise of evil in the social and political realms, in the early modern world, at a more pronounced level, for instance, in Marxism and Nazism. I'm suggesting that I, too, believe the connection exists on the philosophical level of modernity. The philosophical and ontological problem has not been sufficiently resolved to help protect humanity from our own capacity for evil. This seems to be the situation modernity, East or West, is still in, a continuing reason for concern.
June 14, 2010 at 9:18 am
Or also explain how it is that Nietzsche critiqued Christianity to degree zero showing Satan (with his long Jewish or Arabic nose) into a laughable buffoon and puppet for Christian leaders and duped poets-soldiers alike. No one takes Satan seriously. Nietzche was exploited and not understood by the Nazis. The bulk of his work was unavailable to them then and also written in a language of extreme sophistication that was beyond the grasp of those thugs.
June 14, 2010 at 9:27 am
Thanks Fredrick ! I used Satan as a proper noun whereas I too meant 'negative capacities' when I said that without an agenda to locate his address or whereabouts. But your reply is quite lucid and amply answers and addresses my query.
June 14, 2010 at 9:29 am
Nazism cannot be explained alone by a series of archetypes used in literature. If you go this route then you should also talk about Marvel comics influence on George Bush. It's obvious that the interplay between popular literature (Nietzsche was not popular literature!) and the imagination of a people is very crucial. Umberto Eco's essay called The Powers of Falshood is an extremely good essay on this point. In that essay he doesn't need even one reference to Nietzsche to explain how popular literature and pseudo-science formed the Nazi mythology.
June 14, 2010 at 9:53 am
@Monika Kumar Perhaps you'd agree, in a figurative sense, Satan's address is the human heart... alas, for all of us, but a cause of hope, since it makes us each responsible for our own choices and actions, and holds out the possibility for good. Hanuman defeats the Asuras... though they escape into the jungle, the jungle of the soul...
@Jeff Gburek I've read it's an historical fact that Nazi soldiers carried a copy of Thus Spake Zarathustra in their backpack... Many Nazism understood quite well the message of the Will to Power. I recommend Julien Benda's The Treason of the Clerks for a very insightful discussion of Nietzsche's influence on Germany. There are many other such books on his pernicious influence on Germany history and philosophy.
@Jeff Gburek I've read it's an historical fact that Nazi soldiers carried a copy of Thus Spake Zarathustra in their backpack... Many Nazism understood quite well the message of the Will to Power. I recommend Julien Benda's The Treason of the Clerks for a very insightful discussion of Nietzsche's influence on Germany. There are many other such books on his pernicious influence on Germany history and philosophy.
June 14, 2010 at 9:55 am
Believe me, Frederick, I have read pretty long and hard into this issue. The Will to Power was not a completed text and it needed Heidegger's crapola interpretation to pass as something the Nazi's might have been able to use. How is it that many Nazi's could understand the Will to Power whereas many philosophers can barely understand this completely bizarre metaphysics? It was bowdlerized by his sister and exploited by the Nazis, that means it was the source of fictionalizing and yellow journalism.
Almost any kid can carry a copy of this or that book, like Siddhartha among the hippies, in their backpack. That they were not carrying as many copies of Mein Kampf as first choice reading maybe could tell us something. Zarathustra perhaps gave someone the courage to not kill himself. Zarathustra's value is as a survivalist text. It's a text about standing your ground as an individual because everyone around you is a monster. Anyone who really reads Nietzsche finds an author who was thoroughly at odds with German decadence, sentimentality and militarism. Sure, people read what they want to see in almost any text. This is what the real problem is for any writer: thugs can twist your words to mean what suits their ideology the best. Why do you think so few American leaders quote from literature? It's because we have a society where ideally freedom of the press also implies, in my view, freedom of interpretation. And so, it can mean too many things potentially and because our leaders don't think and communicate deeply (because of the way they must use the media to be competitive), so they don't take time to explain themselves. But beyond this, it means also, that we as free-thinking persons look through interpretation to the spirit of the law, not only to the letter.
Nazism's rise cannot be explained as a mere spiritual perversity. The German people starved during the twenties because of the war reparations. Hungry and angry people might not be thinking too clearly. It is in a climate of economic desperation that scapegoating occurs. That said, Nazism didn't arise alone in Germany. Anti-semites and fascists existed everywhere in Europe. London as well.
Almost any kid can carry a copy of this or that book, like Siddhartha among the hippies, in their backpack. That they were not carrying as many copies of Mein Kampf as first choice reading maybe could tell us something. Zarathustra perhaps gave someone the courage to not kill himself. Zarathustra's value is as a survivalist text. It's a text about standing your ground as an individual because everyone around you is a monster. Anyone who really reads Nietzsche finds an author who was thoroughly at odds with German decadence, sentimentality and militarism. Sure, people read what they want to see in almost any text. This is what the real problem is for any writer: thugs can twist your words to mean what suits their ideology the best. Why do you think so few American leaders quote from literature? It's because we have a society where ideally freedom of the press also implies, in my view, freedom of interpretation. And so, it can mean too many things potentially and because our leaders don't think and communicate deeply (because of the way they must use the media to be competitive), so they don't take time to explain themselves. But beyond this, it means also, that we as free-thinking persons look through interpretation to the spirit of the law, not only to the letter.
Nazism's rise cannot be explained as a mere spiritual perversity. The German people starved during the twenties because of the war reparations. Hungry and angry people might not be thinking too clearly. It is in a climate of economic desperation that scapegoating occurs. That said, Nazism didn't arise alone in Germany. Anti-semites and fascists existed everywhere in Europe. London as well.
June 14, 2010 at 10:28 am
I can agree that the story is a complex one. There's a very long prelude for the Germans to the 20th Century. Nietzsche is only a part of it. I had Heidegger in mind earlier but thought I'd leave him out to keep things simpler. Anyway, Satan can definitely take many forms!
June 14, 2010 at 11:10 am
In Satan, Milton presents the picture of the rebel, almost a type of the Renaissance hero Benvenuto Cellini, who through pride usurps power and whose fundamental actions and motives have their most appropriate modern analogue, as many have observed, in the archvillains Hitler, Mussolini, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. Such men fully embody the will to power that the nihilist Nietzsche, as Thomas Mann put it, glorified.
June 14, 2010 at 6:02 am
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Milton's Satan is much more vulnerable and more full of doubt as to his undertaking than these characters. One gets the feeling, from Milton, that there are points in the epic when Satan would take it all back if he could. He is not compelled by confidence or ambition after the initial defeat, but fear of his ablity (or lack thereof) to humble himself and "sue for grace with suppliant knee." I don't believe there is an appropriate modern analogy for the depth of Satan's character as depicted in Paradise Lost. And the only literary character that quickly comes to mind as truly analgous is Hamlet.
June 14, 2010 at 11:05 am
Hamlet is an interesting comparison.Your comment makes me wonder if Milton might have had Hamlet in mind to any extent and the philosophical problems of the play. If so, I would guess they're buried fairly deeply but I wouldn't rule out the possibility of an allusions or whatever. I think you're right about his hesitant, slithering character. Milton assertively answers the existential doubt, to which Satan becomes the foil, I would say.
June 14, 2010 at 11:31 am
Milton originally planned PL as a play, as Frederick intuits, and Shakespeare's use of soliloquies is certainly the model for those passages in which Satan expresses his doubts. It seems pretty clear to me, though, that Richard III, who is often figured in the play as satanic (and who is also associated with hounds of hell) is the model for Satan and the will to power. One has to imagine though, that Milton's own experience as a revolutionary and a propagandist for regicide, and his close observation of Cromwell, informs his representation of Satan as a rebel.
June 14, 2010 at 3:22 pm
I wasn't aware that Milton had first thought of PL as a play. How surprising. I can't take credit for intuiting that. Shakespeare's soliloquies are an interesting analog. So many of Shakespeare's are shorter, though, than Milton's torrents of verse paragraphs, thundering down, as it were, into Hell and elsewhere.
Richard the III is a very nice touch: "and with a piece of scripture / Tell them that God bids us do good for evil; / And thus I clothe my naked villainy / With odd old ends, stol'n forth of Holy Writ, / And seem a saint when most I play the devil." No writer has ever understood treachery better than Shakespeare...
Last year I was at Milton's house in Chalfont St. Giles, where he fled the plague for a few years. There's an excellent exhibit on his political experience, with associated documents. They really gave me a much deeper appreciation of his government service and involvement with Cromwell. It probably did help strengthen his emotional intensity in the way you suggest.
Richard the III is a very nice touch: "and with a piece of scripture / Tell them that God bids us do good for evil; / And thus I clothe my naked villainy / With odd old ends, stol'n forth of Holy Writ, / And seem a saint when most I play the devil." No writer has ever understood treachery better than Shakespeare...
Last year I was at Milton's house in Chalfont St. Giles, where he fled the plague for a few years. There's an excellent exhibit on his political experience, with associated documents. They really gave me a much deeper appreciation of his government service and involvement with Cromwell. It probably did help strengthen his emotional intensity in the way you suggest.
June 14, 2010 at 4:31 pm
Unlike in the work of Jacques Derrida and his academic flies, the "presence" of God is a reality for Milton. Here in the abstract Milton gives us what throughout Paradise Lost he has been dramatizing--the "principles and presuppositions" to which Adam, representative man, must obediently submit, not merely in Eden, but for the fulfillment of his life during his journey on the earthly plane.
June 13, 2010 at 8:43 am
Are you calling Derrida's work a pile of crap above?
June 18, 2010 at 7:50 am
While I wouldn't choose those words, that's one way of expressing it. Other than betraying the humanistic tradition of over 5,000 years of recorded cultural history, West or East, what have Derrida and his academic minions achieved?
June 18, 2010 at 1:07 pm
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June 13, 2010 at 7:15 am
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June 13, 2010 at 7:24 am
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June 13, 2010 at 10:31 am
Equally banished from the modern conception of poetry is all respect for positive values, morals, and virtues. The story of twentieth-century literature is the abuse and misguided replacement of such healthy standards with the perversions of modernism and postmodernism. In brief, "the modern problem."
June 13, 2010 at 5:21 am
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Don't you think literature reflects it's environment? It doesn't exist in a vacuum.
Perversion is as old as the human race. There's plenty of it in Beowulf, and the Illiad and Odyssey.
Older forms of poetry seem rational because of their orderly cadences and rhymes. I think modern poetry more honestly expresses what formalized verse hides, namely the polymorphous perversity of human life.
Perversion is as old as the human race. There's plenty of it in Beowulf, and the Illiad and Odyssey.
Older forms of poetry seem rational because of their orderly cadences and rhymes. I think modern poetry more honestly expresses what formalized verse hides, namely the polymorphous perversity of human life.
June 13, 2010 at 5:30 am
I certainly do agree literature doesn't exist in a vacuum, reflects its time, confronts and encompasses it. And all the negative, bestial qualities of the human being are perennial and pervade all the great works of the past. But literature at its best also pushes beyond its time in the very act of grasping and expressing it, expanding reflection and consciousness, as it reevaluates what it means to be alive now... The rapacious qualities are not the only ones the human being possesses.
If you say "polymorphous perversity" in a strictly Freudian sense, I'd have to disagree. Freud was as wrong about the human being as Marx.
Speaking broadly, I don't believe the poetry of the last several decades has a healthy vision of life, but rather often expresses a declining sense of what it means to be human being in our time, a narrowing of vision, and a sinking into nihilism of sundry brands, academic and otherwise, its many intellectually shallow cliches, the rigid tenets of a defunct coterie.
If you say "polymorphous perversity" in a strictly Freudian sense, I'd have to disagree. Freud was as wrong about the human being as Marx.
Speaking broadly, I don't believe the poetry of the last several decades has a healthy vision of life, but rather often expresses a declining sense of what it means to be human being in our time, a narrowing of vision, and a sinking into nihilism of sundry brands, academic and otherwise, its many intellectually shallow cliches, the rigid tenets of a defunct coterie.
June 13, 2010 at 6:18 am
the problem with the opening line is that nobody has any power really to do any "banishing" of any kind and that almost everyone who bothers at all to write or make art is on the deepest level concerned with revealing the truth to humanity about what a mess it's making for itself to live in or trying to create a sense of beauty that is transcendent and inspiring. so they are all positive value-based activities. some try to create the sense of value through a depiction of the the ugly and destructive tendencies that exist within or among us. sometimes these "contrary" strategies are successful in bringing about consciousness of what ought to be, or what could be instead... and sometimes they are not. successful. @diana, it's often crossed my mind and in a few instance been shown to me quite clearly that the crisis of modernity began with heraclitus. concerning the "irrational" origins of poetry, giambattista vico can help put certain things in perpspective. but as frederick replied in the last post, these kinds of writings maybe be helpful as overviews but not neccessarily helpful in getting one to write great works. a poet has to found something like a personal religion, learn to speak with rocks, charm lightning bolts, build houses that a few generations of people can live in. it has to be started all over again everyday too. don't forget to read pinnocchio again every once in a while.
June 13, 2010 at 6:26 am
I highly respect dystopias and other similar works for their critique and implied positive vision, yet believe that the greatest works of art are those that find a way to articulate a positive vision.
Vico is an interesting writer to bring up in this context. I think especially of Saul Bellow's use of Vico at times, Herzog and elsewhere, if memory serves. Anyway, that vast bestial past... how to humanize the feral beasts. This again is what modernity has brought us back to, global now.
The visionary power and gift that the Muses proffer poets imply a profound test and duty that all too few have understood and taken seriously for a very long time in Western civilization, I hasten to add, in the East as well... Universities are worthless in this regard. Tawdry cliches of nihilism... corrupting everything.
On one hand I'd say we've had a 150 years and more of "personal religions." The list almost *is* modern poetry. On the other, a sense of the transcendent can only be experienced by the individual. The conception and understanding of what "religion" is constitutes part of the modern problem. Assumptions follow so fast upon the use of that word reflection and understanding rarely follow, are closed off. Yet the call of the shaman powers are the same, in a sense, in every age. Global now...
Vico is an interesting writer to bring up in this context. I think especially of Saul Bellow's use of Vico at times, Herzog and elsewhere, if memory serves. Anyway, that vast bestial past... how to humanize the feral beasts. This again is what modernity has brought us back to, global now.
The visionary power and gift that the Muses proffer poets imply a profound test and duty that all too few have understood and taken seriously for a very long time in Western civilization, I hasten to add, in the East as well... Universities are worthless in this regard. Tawdry cliches of nihilism... corrupting everything.
On one hand I'd say we've had a 150 years and more of "personal religions." The list almost *is* modern poetry. On the other, a sense of the transcendent can only be experienced by the individual. The conception and understanding of what "religion" is constitutes part of the modern problem. Assumptions follow so fast upon the use of that word reflection and understanding rarely follow, are closed off. Yet the call of the shaman powers are the same, in a sense, in every age. Global now...
June 13, 2010 at 6:59 am
Milton knew the "consistence of a true poem," and both Paradise Lost and many passages scattered throughout his prose attest to it. In The Reason of Church Government he surveys the abilities of such masters as Homer, Virgil, Job, and Sophocles. Along with the modern loss of belief in God has gone his high and serious belief in the office of the poet.
June 12, 2010 at 5:22 am
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job? job is not an author. job is text compiled from other texts. job is a figure in a tale (and a very moving one, i should say, that is, one can believe his sufferings and their inexplicability). do you have scholarship that reveals that job ever existed as a person? please let me know! homer also is the resultant compendium of centuries of story-telling by wandering poets in the balkans, a traditon that only started to die off after wwII! what is amazing about blake is that he understood all of this and wrote about it in his theory of the types long before materialist scholars caught up with him. i would even think auerbach stands with me on this one.
June 12, 2010 at 11:53 am
It's been decades since I read Auebach's Mimesis, so I can't recall anything in precise detail in this regard, and am too lazy this beautiful early summer morning to get up and dig around for him in my library! I don't care at all about all the debunker myths about who existed and who didn't, and so on. I leave that to them who care more for secondary squabbles than the deeply human and commanding visions of the poets...
June 13, 2010 at 4:21 am
minutes after leaving the house for the evening i rather wanted to delete my post anyway. i realized that i would never have written it you had instead of "masters" written "masterpieces" (although it then transforms the author sophocles the man into a masterpiece...etc...which in some sense he is...and in some dimension all beings are some kind of masterpiece..."a work not made by hands".
June 13, 2010 at 5:52 am
This sorry state of affairs has become so common in postmodern poetry that anyone who would attempt to restore epopee to its glorious heights of noble seriousness and serenity would find ranked against him every academic hack and, as Milton phrased it, every "libidinous and ignorant" poetaster who has "scarce ever heard of that which is the main consistence of a true poem."
June 11, 2010 at 10:35 am
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Which state of affairs is "this"? When you refer to glorious heights, do you refer to the time when poetry was written by affluent white males? Or am I misreading?
June 11, 2010 at 10:40 am
Scroll down for details. Assumptions and cliches aren't intellectual arguments. Please try reading.
June 11, 2010 at 10:44 am
This turned up in my newsfeed as an independent post. I asked if I was misreading. I am not sure how benefit of the doubt has been misconstrued as an assumption.
I'm not sure what you want me to "scroll down" on, but I'll pass. I'm clearly not worthy.
I'm not sure what you want me to "scroll down" on, but I'll pass. I'm clearly not worthy.
June 11, 2010 at 11:58 am
Ms. Defoe, You treated me with assumptions and cliches, the common coin of a decadent academy... You obviously had not read enough to know what you were talking about. Your further comments confirm it. Instead of following your schoolroom masters, running away, I challenge you to make an effort.
June 11, 2010 at 12:16 pm
I responded to your painting me in terms based only on my physical appearance, which you labeled "affluent white male," as though that said it all. Substitute any other race on earth for white and how does it sound? That is why I urged you to do some reading, because you did me an injustice. If you care to rectify it, you might begin at this page:
https://www.fglaysher.com/about.html
Despite your class and race assumptions, I am not white nor affluent, but a human being from a poor-working class background who today barely make ends meet... if you must know.
I invite you to start afresh and actually make an attempt to know who I am and what I believe I am doing as a writer.
https://www.fglaysher.com/about.html
Despite your class and race assumptions, I am not white nor affluent, but a human being from a poor-working class background who today barely make ends meet... if you must know.
I invite you to start afresh and actually make an attempt to know who I am and what I believe I am doing as a writer.
June 13, 2010 at 7:18 am
[I'm not sure why technically on FB these last two post of mine are not appearing, so here is another attempt to communicate.]
It seems to me you're evading the issue you yourself brought up, I didn't, in regard to me personally, and by implication to Milton, as though race-based assumptions and cliches have any relevance to literary and aesthetic values. They don't.
Such thinking is one of the characteristics that marks the literary deficiencies of our time and lead to the type of decline Milton and I both are addressing.
As a student, personal friend, and editor of the poet Robert Hayden, I have unique experience and insight into the importance of these issues. Again, you brought them up; I didn't. Tar and feathering poets on the basis of perceived, misperceived, class and race, in our day and time, should be beyond the pale.
I'm puzzled about why you continue to evade the issue and refuse to start afresh, as I've invited you to do. Regardless, if you can't admit you were wrong, that the entire academic tactic of discrediting writers on the basis of class and race is wrong, and apologize, fine. Go in peace. We each know where the other stands.
about a minute ago ·
It seems to me you're evading the issue you yourself brought up, I didn't, in regard to me personally, and by implication to Milton, as though race-based assumptions and cliches have any relevance to literary and aesthetic values. They don't.
Such thinking is one of the characteristics that marks the literary deficiencies of our time and lead to the type of decline Milton and I both are addressing.
As a student, personal friend, and editor of the poet Robert Hayden, I have unique experience and insight into the importance of these issues. Again, you brought them up; I didn't. Tar and feathering poets on the basis of perceived, misperceived, class and race, in our day and time, should be beyond the pale.
I'm puzzled about why you continue to evade the issue and refuse to start afresh, as I've invited you to do. Regardless, if you can't admit you were wrong, that the entire academic tactic of discrediting writers on the basis of class and race is wrong, and apologize, fine. Go in peace. We each know where the other stands.
about a minute ago ·
June 13, 2010 at 7:20 am
Like Yeats they have often thrown together every decadent principle or superstition that has ever happened along.
June 11, 2010 at 8:21 am
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Milton possesses a serious vision of history and humankind that could only achieve full expression in the most demanding form of poetry--the epic. But most poets of the last few hundred years have not found themselves entrusted with such a vision. Much to the contrary, they excel in every imaginable type of turpitude and triviality that the human mind is capable of producing.
June 11, 2010 at 5:06 am
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Too true. That's why every poet's attempt to produce an epic with even a fraction of Milton's scope should be applauded loudly!
June 11, 2010 at 12:53 pm
I like your choice of the phrase "of Milton's scope." That drive towards scope, toward embracing and expressing an expansive vision is what unifies all the great epics. Behind each of the great epic poets is a sense of human experience so compelling that only a capacious form can hope to attain even "a fraction" of it. Homer pours his sense of the entire Greek world into his poems, Virgil of Rome, Dante of the Christian Dispensation, all these are worldviews, embodied in dramatic and literary terms, as do all the great epics of the world from other cultures.
During the last few hundred years, we have the tremendous modern experience of moving ever-more so into the global and universally human, but no song that dares to attempt to embrace and make sense of it in the fullness of epic vision...
The gods willing, it has long been my hope to restore epopee to its rightful, glorious heights: The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem
https://www.fglaysher.com/works_in_progress.html
During the last few hundred years, we have the tremendous modern experience of moving ever-more so into the global and universally human, but no song that dares to attempt to embrace and make sense of it in the fullness of epic vision...
The gods willing, it has long been my hope to restore epopee to its rightful, glorious heights: The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem
https://www.fglaysher.com/works_in_progress.html
June 12, 2010 at 4:49 am
John Keats’s Endymion and the Hyperion poems fail as much because of their superficial content as their poor structure and execution. In Auden’s analysis, "the modern problem" hamstrings the romantics as much as Yeats or Pound. Milton never suffered from such a malady and hence the envious detestation he has received from minor poets who are unquestionably his inferiors.
June 10, 2010 at 9:48 am
keats is melos. he dies young. the lyric is what embalms him. his shroud. it served him well and he is not outclassed by milton in that realm but just for milton's sake let's say he lived in a different time and felt different pulsions. nor bogey anglic christ so simply nor crowns compelled, nor supported him. eat keats in peace.
June 10, 2010 at 5:23 pm
Lyric poetry is minor song compared to the epic. Milton is a greater poet than Keats for he dared to confront the most demanding form of verse and triumphed against all odds.
June 11, 2010 at 5:05 am
still i think it's not fair to accuse keats of having falied because, as i hoped to point out, he didn't live long enough to try again. we still have beautiful and compelling work from keats to celebrate. poets are never really in competition with one another. they are translating in every moment the experience of being alive from the ancientmost shamanic bards singing while thumping on a log up to those publishing on facebook. anyway, the issue of how to triumph in writing the epic poem: if we want to present models for study towards success in that form: if we want to have that form in verse. then i think better is dante's comedia and the odyssey and the aeneid. if milton could speak now he would be pointing us towards these authors. the real work in my estimation is to find a format for epic that is communicable to people. it is rather paradoxical but the communicability of the resultant work will declare its contents. and i am not sure the christian "fall of man" is going to be enough content to generate an epic that is interesting and which also tells the truth of us now, up to where we stand. we keep finding the idea of the origins our species constantly shifting as we learn more about how the earth lives it's more than gargantuan more than titanic life. there is much more we need to put inside our story than ever before. but we are daily under pressure to try to bring to account the actions of rogue governments and corporations. if we keep in mind the idea of living a good life (in the many sense of the word good) then we certainly have our work cut out for us. there are many things we can do to make a good life for ourselves and for our human community and the extended family of all creatures. if anyone one of us absorbed in this process of life should succeed in many ways, against all the odds, but fail to create an epic poem, i don't think we should fail to praise the goodness that has been created nor should we make a malebolge for them: circle of the failed epic poets, for example.
June 12, 2010 at 3:39 am
Keats wrote some beautiful poems, but he never got close to an epic vision, nowhere near Milton's equal. His and Blake's criticism of Milton needs to be understood in such a light. Milton is much more than the "fall of man." Unfortunately, that is how many see or read him, missing the real vision, caricatured. It would be a mistake for any epic poet to take only one of the masters of the art as the exemplar. It is the nature of literary growth and development that the poet who can embrace the maximum of the literary tradition and find a way to use all of it for his or her purposes, to serve the tradition, stands the greatest possibility of achieving what is worthy of the art.
June 12, 2010 at 5:00 am
T.S. Eliot and those who ape his opinions also find Milton the man and his religious beliefs repellent. The poets of the modern era deride Milton because, in general, they have abandoned religious belief and turned to vague forms of idealism, as in Whitman’s Democratic Vistas, and to the creation of idiosyncratic ersatzes, as in Poe’s Eureka.
June 10, 2010 at 5:42 am
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You are vast. You contain multitudes.
June 10, 2010 at 6:08 am
Yes, that's in Whitman; Democratic Vistas is a narrowing of vision. If you haven't read it, you might find it interesting for the different view of Whitman you'll find there.
June 10, 2010 at 6:42 am
poets don't get overly enamoured of milton because shakespeare is quite demosntrably better. and then the whole cloth of the arts and civilization took a turn after that. milton represented reactionary forces and he still does. eliot too. but this is rather an english problem, not even an american one. there are no transcultural models inside milton to make him a world-wide poet such as dante was. milton wasn't as lucky as dante: the world was already greatly schismatic and modern colonialism well under way. only contemporary london now has something like the voice of the world, albeit garbled, inside it.
June 10, 2010 at 5:23 pm
Shakespeare's a completely different genre and approach to life. Milton acknowledged his accomplishment, even as he chose a different path and understanding of life. I don't believe Shakespeare is "better." Shakespeare failed, sub specie aeternatatis, as all poets do, in his own way. Nothing could be clearer four hundred years later, though it's blasphemy to say it...
Milton is not reactionary. That's a false perception of him concocted by the Romantics. I've address it in my essay on Milton's Of True Religion.
https://fglaysher.com/eReading/2010/02/of-true-religion-john-milton/
I would say it's a global problem, not exclusively English nor American. All cultures have been sucked into the maelstrom of modernity's nihilism. You give Milton short-shrift. He stands beyond Dante, in my view. Milton was *fortunate* that the world had been enriched by the assertion of Protestant conscience and liberation, now we're back to the peculiar energy of Satan...
I was in London last summer. Why should London not become the world, like every place else? I see no harm in that. All the better for humanity that we be mixed and poured together. I live here in London myself, on the edge of the collapsing city known as Detroit... a constantly sober reminder that civilizations can and do collapse.
Milton is not reactionary. That's a false perception of him concocted by the Romantics. I've address it in my essay on Milton's Of True Religion.
https://fglaysher.com/eReading/2010/02/of-true-religion-john-milton/
I would say it's a global problem, not exclusively English nor American. All cultures have been sucked into the maelstrom of modernity's nihilism. You give Milton short-shrift. He stands beyond Dante, in my view. Milton was *fortunate* that the world had been enriched by the assertion of Protestant conscience and liberation, now we're back to the peculiar energy of Satan...
I was in London last summer. Why should London not become the world, like every place else? I see no harm in that. All the better for humanity that we be mixed and poured together. I live here in London myself, on the edge of the collapsing city known as Detroit... a constantly sober reminder that civilizations can and do collapse.
June 11, 2010 at 4:54 am
@Christopher McNeese I was thinking of such words from Democratic Vistas as the famous "The priest departs, the divine literatus comes." That's 1870, so the drift of Matthew Arnold is already there in culture. We're talking about 140 years ago... Whitman proceeds to his Personalism, emphasizing the individual, and Idealism. Vague was my operative word. I think all the more so now. I discuss this in Whitman more in my essay The American Journey into the Land of Ulro, and leave it at that.
https://www.fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
OR
https://books.fglaysher.com/Grove-of-the-Eumenides-9780982677841.htm
Whitman is a great master, but 140 years has brought the world a lot of change that he doesn't comprehend.
https://www.fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
OR
https://books.fglaysher.com/Grove-of-the-Eumenides-9780982677841.htm
Whitman is a great master, but 140 years has brought the world a lot of change that he doesn't comprehend.
June 11, 2010 at 5:00 am
perhaps not the best choice of word to say shakes is better than milty but this dynamics of ranking, choosing who is superior or inferior, somehow has seeped into my sentences, i'm not exactly sure why. but you anticipated my further defense of keats (see the other post above) in your own statements: they all had different approaches to life and genre, agreed. (and i could extend that and say each of us in a different life and different genre!). it's the content of the particular life that interests me. i don't find milton's fascinating. he's not my kind of guy. i actually don't find blake's so interesting either anymore. more interesting to me recently has been tolstoy. perhaps this comes from the very specific geography, the city of poznan in the country of poland, in the middle east of europe and far western china: and i find myself concerned with writing now--amid my musical activities by which i earn a meagre living--something coming out of me from what is coming into me at this particular point i want to say but feel it is more an aperture. regarding your pov of just outside detroit via london: every time i walk in warsaw and compare what i see with what warsaw was said to have been 100 years ago, i too see the rise and fall of civilization. but i should add that contemporary warsaw is quickly becoming as international a city as it once was, albeit disastrously more polluted (air noxious, noise a matter of brutal fact, tap-water undrinkable etc.). regarding failure sub specie aeternitatis of all poets, well, not much can be said about that. we do what we can until we slip off the mortal coil.
June 12, 2010 at 4:18 am
Keats remains for me an immature poet. His youth enabled but ultimately worked against his poetry, despite the beauty of his lyrics.
I think it's unfortunate that readers confuse what they think is Milton's religious beliefs with what they actually were, in their historical context. It takes a lot of effort and study to place Milton in his milieu. He truly was much more liberal in his time than most readers understand.
Tolstoy, too, though, has suffered a very serious misreading and distortion by contemporary readers, exhibited currently in the skewed morality play of the movie The Last Station, with Christopher Plummer in the lead role. I hope to correct that before long in an essay on Tolstoy that I've working on.
I had chat with Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana not long ago:
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2009/11/06/tolstoy-yasnaya-polyana/
I think it's unfortunate that readers confuse what they think is Milton's religious beliefs with what they actually were, in their historical context. It takes a lot of effort and study to place Milton in his milieu. He truly was much more liberal in his time than most readers understand.
Tolstoy, too, though, has suffered a very serious misreading and distortion by contemporary readers, exhibited currently in the skewed morality play of the movie The Last Station, with Christopher Plummer in the lead role. I hope to correct that before long in an essay on Tolstoy that I've working on.
I had chat with Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana not long ago:
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2009/11/06/tolstoy-yasnaya-polyana/
June 12, 2010 at 5:12 am
and if the world were filled with no one but ascetics and mystics we would all starve. Even so the world needs holy men just as it needs great poets. One era's idealistic poet is another era's religion, and has often been and the difference is small and the secret of all great religion is in the forceful veracity of its' poetry. Great ideas are not easily carried or pushed into practical houses.
June 19, 2010 at 4:49 pm
Quite true that if the world consisted of only poets and mystics, it would be much to the detriment of all of us. We live in an era, fortunately, even, I would say, when that is definitely not the case. The pendulum has swung all in favor of the Nay Sayers...
The challenge is finding a satisfying, convincing way to affirm a balance and harmony between the antinomies that do constitute the human psyche, in all ages, especially now. Many of our current problems stem from the materialistic vision of life that pervades world culture, skewing where value and meaning are found and deleteriously affecting action.
I don't believe, as did Emerson, Whitman, et al., at times, that poets are the creators of the religions, if that's what you're suggesting. Many such passages exist, one might cite, Matthew Arnold, and so on. Say, with Jung and on down, that notion is still with us, but it is not helpful to the profundity of the problem; rather, its relativizing tendency obscures and makes it even more difficult to achieve an integrating understanding and vision that's moderate, balanced, but sufficiently historically connected to the past to make sense for all levels of society, people in all walks of life, not merely the intellectually gifted.
While literature and culture have broadly lost touch with any sense of spirituality, they merely reflect what has happened throughout modern life. I do agree that the imagination (lower case) serves, in the best sense, spiritual search, in every age; first, for the poet, then, to the degree that his or her vision is genuine, for the culture.
I've just read the Dali Lama's “Toward a True Kinship of Faiths: How the World’s Religions Can Come Together,” and the many works by Tolstoy, during the last decade of his life, on religion. Unlike the derision of him, Tolstoy actually achieved a very universal, non-exclusive, pluralistic vision. In that sense, though they're compatible, Tolstoy was even ahead of the Dali Lama. You might find interesting Tolstoy's little known collection of writings from the world religions, A Circle of Wisdom (Amazon), and the short piece in his Essays and Letters, What is Religion, and Wherein Lies Its Essence (on Google Books, tr Alymer Maude).
It's not ideas modern culture needs, but prayer, meditation, and worship, the cultivation of the inner soul.
The challenge is finding a satisfying, convincing way to affirm a balance and harmony between the antinomies that do constitute the human psyche, in all ages, especially now. Many of our current problems stem from the materialistic vision of life that pervades world culture, skewing where value and meaning are found and deleteriously affecting action.
I don't believe, as did Emerson, Whitman, et al., at times, that poets are the creators of the religions, if that's what you're suggesting. Many such passages exist, one might cite, Matthew Arnold, and so on. Say, with Jung and on down, that notion is still with us, but it is not helpful to the profundity of the problem; rather, its relativizing tendency obscures and makes it even more difficult to achieve an integrating understanding and vision that's moderate, balanced, but sufficiently historically connected to the past to make sense for all levels of society, people in all walks of life, not merely the intellectually gifted.
While literature and culture have broadly lost touch with any sense of spirituality, they merely reflect what has happened throughout modern life. I do agree that the imagination (lower case) serves, in the best sense, spiritual search, in every age; first, for the poet, then, to the degree that his or her vision is genuine, for the culture.
I've just read the Dali Lama's “Toward a True Kinship of Faiths: How the World’s Religions Can Come Together,” and the many works by Tolstoy, during the last decade of his life, on religion. Unlike the derision of him, Tolstoy actually achieved a very universal, non-exclusive, pluralistic vision. In that sense, though they're compatible, Tolstoy was even ahead of the Dali Lama. You might find interesting Tolstoy's little known collection of writings from the world religions, A Circle of Wisdom (Amazon), and the short piece in his Essays and Letters, What is Religion, and Wherein Lies Its Essence (on Google Books, tr Alymer Maude).
It's not ideas modern culture needs, but prayer, meditation, and worship, the cultivation of the inner soul.
June 20, 2010 at 4:32 am
and here then I find a poet; a man of profound sensibilities wrestling with the world snake for the prize of religion while his intellect turns away from poets as founders... curious.
I would add that I do not just mention the growth of religion from some secular impulse called poetry as would Emerson et al. The books of the great religions, almost every one, were written by or about poets.
On the whole I do not disagree with your conclusion. I spent several years, years ago, with my head stuck in utopias and the like and pondering periods of history an so forth. One of my stranger conclusions was that I believe the people of the Dark Ages to have ironically been some of the happier people on the whole barring periods of massive tragedy, plague, petty wars, etc...
In our own time progress, while she was certainly a comely mistress, has shown herself to be an unfaithful whore.
I would add that I do not just mention the growth of religion from some secular impulse called poetry as would Emerson et al. The books of the great religions, almost every one, were written by or about poets.
On the whole I do not disagree with your conclusion. I spent several years, years ago, with my head stuck in utopias and the like and pondering periods of history an so forth. One of my stranger conclusions was that I believe the people of the Dark Ages to have ironically been some of the happier people on the whole barring periods of massive tragedy, plague, petty wars, etc...
In our own time progress, while she was certainly a comely mistress, has shown herself to be an unfaithful whore.
June 20, 2010 at 8:11 am
I can agree with a lot of all that. Emerson shares your view much more than you may realize, as in his "The Poet." In my view, that's a particular historical view. I stand on the other side of more than a century of intervening nihilism, reigning still for most. One cannot go "backwards" even to that, in my view.
It would be like trying to restore or recover the Christianity of the feudal Dark Ages. That's part of the current problem. People so often want to go backwards, not forwards, which is the only possibility for human beings. It's frightening and disorienting to many because they think in terms of what they know, believing the future must rigidly repeat the past. While building on the past, as natural growth, the future, non-utopian, finds ways that usually always surprise those who through hubris imagine they control it.
"Progress" for modernity has invariably been defined in material terms, resulting in moral and spiritual decline, loss of belief and hope in life itself, and so on. You know the whole litany. Whitman, whom we began with, while celebrating the forward rush of democracy and material development sensed there had to be more, striving for universality, drawing from the traditions of East and West, at times. I don't fail to honor that, but he was limited by the historical moment, which has been my only point, really, about him. Globally, we're far, far beyond what Whitman could have imagined, yet strangely threatened by the lack of recognition and respect for the spiritual dimension that earlier peoples and civilizations took for granted, at least more commonly honored.
In my writing I explore the modern experience into nihilism and suggest what the way is out of its dark bower, in terms of my poetry and prose, what the way out has been for me, speaking only for my own conscience. I have come to realize that, lugging baggage from the past, people usually misunderstand what that means, using outdated terms and modes of conception.
Let me shift referents. Instead of the previous pervasive exclusivisms, part of the definition of modernity was that all religions were false and were relativized into meaninglessness, transvaluing values, as Nietzsche said. I believe just the reverse, not going backwards, but forwards. All religions are true, at their deepest level, as many have said, though widely ignored or marginalized, e.g., Tolstoy and others, treated with disdain by the regime of deconstruction, advanced nihilism, etc. An entirely different vision and scale of literary and humanistic meaning and purpose are inescapable. Lived life already exceeds expectations. Far from the rise of an organizational beast, in Yeats' sense, humanity's spirituality has moved beyond organization... and its primitive problems...
I must confess that while I think the Dali Lama basically has the right idea in his recent book, he's clinging a little to the past, his own tradition, which is all right and understandable. The marvelous thing about universality is that no one needs leave their own tradition, if they choose not to. It's all up to them, what opens their soul to the One. Only they know.
D. H. Lawrence comes to mind: “It is hard to hear a new voice… We just don’t listen.” Whitman didn't give up; he persevered, trusting in the glowing coal the gods placed on his tongue.
It would be like trying to restore or recover the Christianity of the feudal Dark Ages. That's part of the current problem. People so often want to go backwards, not forwards, which is the only possibility for human beings. It's frightening and disorienting to many because they think in terms of what they know, believing the future must rigidly repeat the past. While building on the past, as natural growth, the future, non-utopian, finds ways that usually always surprise those who through hubris imagine they control it.
"Progress" for modernity has invariably been defined in material terms, resulting in moral and spiritual decline, loss of belief and hope in life itself, and so on. You know the whole litany. Whitman, whom we began with, while celebrating the forward rush of democracy and material development sensed there had to be more, striving for universality, drawing from the traditions of East and West, at times. I don't fail to honor that, but he was limited by the historical moment, which has been my only point, really, about him. Globally, we're far, far beyond what Whitman could have imagined, yet strangely threatened by the lack of recognition and respect for the spiritual dimension that earlier peoples and civilizations took for granted, at least more commonly honored.
In my writing I explore the modern experience into nihilism and suggest what the way is out of its dark bower, in terms of my poetry and prose, what the way out has been for me, speaking only for my own conscience. I have come to realize that, lugging baggage from the past, people usually misunderstand what that means, using outdated terms and modes of conception.
Let me shift referents. Instead of the previous pervasive exclusivisms, part of the definition of modernity was that all religions were false and were relativized into meaninglessness, transvaluing values, as Nietzsche said. I believe just the reverse, not going backwards, but forwards. All religions are true, at their deepest level, as many have said, though widely ignored or marginalized, e.g., Tolstoy and others, treated with disdain by the regime of deconstruction, advanced nihilism, etc. An entirely different vision and scale of literary and humanistic meaning and purpose are inescapable. Lived life already exceeds expectations. Far from the rise of an organizational beast, in Yeats' sense, humanity's spirituality has moved beyond organization... and its primitive problems...
I must confess that while I think the Dali Lama basically has the right idea in his recent book, he's clinging a little to the past, his own tradition, which is all right and understandable. The marvelous thing about universality is that no one needs leave their own tradition, if they choose not to. It's all up to them, what opens their soul to the One. Only they know.
D. H. Lawrence comes to mind: “It is hard to hear a new voice… We just don’t listen.” Whitman didn't give up; he persevered, trusting in the glowing coal the gods placed on his tongue.
June 20, 2010 at 10:49 am
John Milton’s reputation has unjustly suffered a diminution during the last two centuries. The romantics, repulsed by his religious theme of the earthly pilgrimage of the soul, corrupted his poem by maliciously interpreting Satan as the hero, despite Milton’s unequivocal condemnation of Satan and his equally lucid characterization of the repentant Adam as the true hero.
June 10, 2010 at 3:34 am
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And they said that Milton was on the devil's party without knowing it. Possibly because of his intense portrayel of Satan as a character like a character and not just an allegorical representation of vice.
June 10, 2010 at 3:46 am
Exactly, that's how Milton and epic poetry were repudiated and marginalized by the Romantics, much of modern English literature.
I read your Info and Favoriite Quotations, including Sartre's "Existence precedes and rules essence," which is similar to what the Romantics said and did. Like Nietzsche, et al., Sartre reverses the ancient insight that Essence precedes existence. The greatest epic poets, of all cultures, understood otherwise, such as Vyasa, Tulsidas, Kalidasa, etc.
I read your Info and Favoriite Quotations, including Sartre's "Existence precedes and rules essence," which is similar to what the Romantics said and did. Like Nietzsche, et al., Sartre reverses the ancient insight that Essence precedes existence. The greatest epic poets, of all cultures, understood otherwise, such as Vyasa, Tulsidas, Kalidasa, etc.
June 10, 2010 at 4:34 am
Eve has always seemed more to me to be more heroic (in the Christian sense) than Adam, who is more often a clueless jerk. It's Eve, not Adam, who first falls to her knees, "watering the ground with her tears," and says, "I'm sorry."
June 10, 2010 at 4:48 am
who said he was of the devil's party without knowing it? not "they" but william blake--a poet who remained on the margins (and still in sense does, despite being in the cannon) of english literature, scoffed aside by the romantics. he was right, in my opinion, about milton and many other issues. not so much a character as an "energic principle" this satan nee lucifer, has a great volatile and ambiguous tradition: and while i would not go as far as to say that every "devil's advocate" is on the same level, or worth listening to, the role that the so-called "satanic" energies played in blake's work are clearly on the side of poetic creation and liberation of the senses from the narrow and one-sided morality of the papists and those chinese elms growing out of calvin's ear. the reading of blake forced me to really read milton and see much more in it than i had been able to beforehand. because of the light principle. few people know how to treat of angels at all in our age. i am lucky to have known and to still know a few. not an easy interaction. the but once the characters in this "epic" were made capable of acting in ways not by schematic design of christian orthodoxy, certains simplistic elements in the became simultaneosly incredible. comes with the rise of the novel and socialist movements. epic would have to move through prose. as such it's results are also mixed, for example, manzoni's promessi sposi, in which the character exemplary of the highest evil converts for mysterious reasons. the attempt of poets to reclaim epic have been more or less fragmentary and certainly unpopular since (even if their failures remain suggestive).
June 10, 2010 at 5:09 am
@Jeff Gburek Yes, it's Blake who says Milton was of the devil's party--wrong, in my view. I just reread Blake's Milton early this year, and Blake's attempts toward epic vision are far below the mark of Milton, as you suggest are the would-be epics of modernity. Milton understood that true epic requires epic vision. One can't get that in a university or an MFA program.
June 10, 2010 at 5:41 am
but it's shyster trick to pass off onto the ill-defined blanket term of "the romantics" this singular statement--let's call it for argument's sake, a bit of an outrageous and provocative one, but in the final blush, i will stick by my guns and say it's an accurate one)-- a perception of one poet, blake, who stood against empire (while also being, in my view, wrong about certain things--his rather strangely veiled anti-semitism and homophobia chiefly amongst). and when you don't object immediately to this and differentiate blake from the other romantics he is classed with i object thoroughly and will fight to the last, just as i won't accept somebody bashing walter benjamin who doesn't really read him and try to understand what he is saying or trying to achieve. this type of sound-byte generalization of human imaginative labor is what i call "post-modernism": lazy generalization and propagandizing. nevertheless, in my book, blake is the begining of what i call the intimate renegotiation of visionary space: an inter-personal space--it is no longer cultural, no longer national and, as olson pointed out, the begining of "the smaller life as epic". vision as you put it is infitinitely corrupted. and i am relatively sure that milton's time is gone forever except in the mfa (mafia) programs. (i read milton out of duty to blake--when you get this sense an author is speaking directly into your ear, you are no longer concerned with what professors are saying (as was my case: blake gave me the energy to rip to shreds the structuralist and post-structuralist readings that were being heaped on us all in the 80's. i can even say honestly now, yes, go, read milton, maybe this can be a poet who speaks into your ear. though what needs to come in its place is a new manner of imagining and i do not believe that means epic was ever "lost". it was translated into diverse media. good examples are the german television series called "heimat" and rossellini's "il novecento". but it is not beyond criticism. (vision is no guarantee of truth). epic can be addressed in film beyond the new age space fantasies of star wars. you seem to hold borges in high esteem but borges is no visionary. he is a fine writer, a great synthetic imagination but after all he is a man more at home in his library than he is on the streets in communion with his people. gombrowicz, who borges slighted, is what i call a writer of vision. and he is funny. just as bruno schulz. i never once laughed reading milton. blake brought giddy tears of indefineable emotions. we laugh and cry with our dearest and most beloved people. it is with our dearest and most beloved people we live our lives and try to survive the cruelty of history's cyclone and swings. and some of these will never publish a darn thing. every poet has his lines: what thy lovest well shall not be reft from thee, what thy lovest well is thine true heritage". and i no less revile pound for his defending mussolini and his anti-semitic blather. but those lines remain with me as true. i never speak about my university education because in retropspect it's like all the other education: baby steps. long gone are those days. i have among my friends the most ignored american writers who have made leaps far beyond even the ones we have been discussing or mentioning. and they write alone, seeing little in print---irrelevant anyway, as one point we both seem to agree on---and they are outcast precisely because of the regnant po-mo centrisms, from the candian structurlaists, lang-po to the conceptuals to the flarfists. but i have a feeling, they will find their readership sooner or later. because they are at least in my mind and heart and they both remain open to the pulsation of eternal life their words resonate with.
June 10, 2010 at 10:29 am
No “shyster trick” but the general tendency of an age, broadly speaking. Anachronisms don't wear well, especially with literature.
Walter Benjamin may be one of your heroes, but he's not mine. I've read his "On the Mimetic Faculty, and he doesn't even come close to Aristole's Poetics or Sideny's Defense for usefulness to a practicing poet. I don't need to read anything further by him. Philip Rieff in his My Life Among the Deathworks rightly identifies Benjamin as among the Third Culture. As a member of the Fourth Culture, I find Benjamin is of no use or interest to me, but a distant artifact of the long line of the Frankfurt School and all its corrupt progeny, Derrida, et al. Rieff insightly remarks, "For Benjamin was unable to part with his Marxism, that dustiest of all third culture doctrines. ...for he is led by a disenchantment with Marxist theory that makes him a prophet of its demise at the same time that he cannot give it up...(182). Benjamin is a Hamlet figure, one in whom there is a rediscovery of sacred order that is itself so alarming that he finds himself unable to admit it...."
I respect Blake deeply, but he was among a Romantics, of their party and impulse. Nothing could be clearer from our vantage point in history, so it seems to me. Far be from me to detract from your regard for Blake. I share it. Perhaps we can find common ground in your observation "though what needs to come in its place is a new manner of imagining and i do not believe that means epic was ever "lost"." Blake has helped open that door for me too, in some way. I, however, do not accept that epic has passed to novels and movies and so on. It's a tawdry cliche of the classroom and modernity, nor is it lost, nor dead, nor is it impossible in our age to write an epic. Quite the reverse. Our time is epic experience crying out for a song that strives to do it justice. The schlock popular culture can't even get close to understanding it, nor the pedants and their sophistries...
The epic is possible in any age if the Muses are willing, and a real poet chooses to consecrate himself to the ordeal. Real vision is truth. Borges is visionary, but perhaps you have not gone deep enough into his life and work to understand him. Life in the crucible of one's library can embrace the entire world. What hope but that have poets ever embraced? The greatest Exemplars of poetry have been those poets who have written their way out of their libraries; they are the true masters of the art. Out of the darkness of the soul, into the light of day.
I respect your conscience.
Walter Benjamin may be one of your heroes, but he's not mine. I've read his "On the Mimetic Faculty, and he doesn't even come close to Aristole's Poetics or Sideny's Defense for usefulness to a practicing poet. I don't need to read anything further by him. Philip Rieff in his My Life Among the Deathworks rightly identifies Benjamin as among the Third Culture. As a member of the Fourth Culture, I find Benjamin is of no use or interest to me, but a distant artifact of the long line of the Frankfurt School and all its corrupt progeny, Derrida, et al. Rieff insightly remarks, "For Benjamin was unable to part with his Marxism, that dustiest of all third culture doctrines. ...for he is led by a disenchantment with Marxist theory that makes him a prophet of its demise at the same time that he cannot give it up...(182). Benjamin is a Hamlet figure, one in whom there is a rediscovery of sacred order that is itself so alarming that he finds himself unable to admit it...."
I respect Blake deeply, but he was among a Romantics, of their party and impulse. Nothing could be clearer from our vantage point in history, so it seems to me. Far be from me to detract from your regard for Blake. I share it. Perhaps we can find common ground in your observation "though what needs to come in its place is a new manner of imagining and i do not believe that means epic was ever "lost"." Blake has helped open that door for me too, in some way. I, however, do not accept that epic has passed to novels and movies and so on. It's a tawdry cliche of the classroom and modernity, nor is it lost, nor dead, nor is it impossible in our age to write an epic. Quite the reverse. Our time is epic experience crying out for a song that strives to do it justice. The schlock popular culture can't even get close to understanding it, nor the pedants and their sophistries...
The epic is possible in any age if the Muses are willing, and a real poet chooses to consecrate himself to the ordeal. Real vision is truth. Borges is visionary, but perhaps you have not gone deep enough into his life and work to understand him. Life in the crucible of one's library can embrace the entire world. What hope but that have poets ever embraced? The greatest Exemplars of poetry have been those poets who have written their way out of their libraries; they are the true masters of the art. Out of the darkness of the soul, into the light of day.
I respect your conscience.
June 11, 2010 at 4:42 am
i've read this quote about benjamin before and while i'm not really sure i believe in having heros of any kind in any genre, i can say that the rift between you and me right here concering benjamin and a few other things concerns the phrase "unable to drop his marxism". i will take no time defending marx anymore than i will milton. living in eastern europe almost biologically creates a situation wherein marxism is out of the question. but the repressive and comformist cultural artefacts of catholicism here are deeply reactionary and many of their practiioners also infintely corrupt and hypocritcal. the ideology of high-speed development capitalism however, the route that is being taken here, is already rearing its ugly corporatist head. what is terrible first of all is that the conditioning of the people towards not looking authority directly in the eye under the soviet regime has created a situation wherein the people can be exploited by the corporations, accepting a trickier form of authoritarianism. but there is still nothing like a level playing field, not even a free market (the only free market in eastern europe is the black market), when the ex-soviets on one side control the gas-lines and keep the country in a energy-dependant choke-hold. merkel on the otherside...another isssue a small post like this can't broach...obama's rethinking of the missile corridor brings mixed results: the developers cry betrayal of poland while the people continue to say we don't really want your weapons here but we don't trust our neighbors...we really want your money here but not all your cultural pluralism. the situation demands that people at grass roots level discover a means to sustain life. it will take a long time still to restructure the byzantine government that still, despite the russians being gone, acts more or less as it please because it's an oligarchy. the trains fall off tracks, never running on time, homeless people die in the streets, educators work 60 hr paid for 20 and to have any kind of job depends largely on nepotism of the richest families whose children are also not doing very well in schools because they think that all that is necessary is to be in the family in order to have dad or uncle's position. the youngest of the poorer who are doing their best in studying do so for little or no economic advancement. the smarter of those will leave the country. putting marxism aside entirely: these are all socio-economic and political problems.
a comment from a friend last night "we need these idiotic leaders in order to have something to make fun of..." a classic stop-gap measure for what seems often a hopeless situation. for me to be in love with a polish woman and desire to remain here and have children demands of me a high level of industry and artistry and i will have to create through this situation. i offer from benjamin a simple idea: one's passage through any street is a double corridor through time. the visionary is
compelled by seeing both directions of time flowing in his or her very steps. every pause creates a wormhole in time. history and spirit gyre around each person pulling in different directions. one needs to think which pull to go with which to resist. inventing one's self is essential. these are some things i learned somehow from reading benjamin. some of these rhyme with blake.
benjamin essay on art in the age of mechanical reproduction helps describe why people read less and less and also cannot appreciate works of art. they no longer can sense the aura. for this "aura" benjamin lost all credit among marxist and his frankfurt school chums. he believed in the source of this aura and it was related to jewish messianic mystical traditons for him and then again to the traditons of the kabbalah. benjamin had a different life and a different genre. the traditions he could have continued exploring had he lived where attacked and butchered out of europe by the nazis although the historical traces of these traditions remain. how speak this loss? the frankfurt school in a sense was created by the betrayal of the jewish people, the polish people, the gypsy people, by the nazis and by those so-called allies who didn't step in soon enough to fight the nazis. this betrayal created the situation for the birth of their critiques as much. what decadence prevented the english from fulfilling their obligation to defend poland in the nazi's invaded. what decadence led fdr to delay so long knowing european jewry's slaughter was well underway?
ah, aristotle. have to save that one for another day.
a comment from a friend last night "we need these idiotic leaders in order to have something to make fun of..." a classic stop-gap measure for what seems often a hopeless situation. for me to be in love with a polish woman and desire to remain here and have children demands of me a high level of industry and artistry and i will have to create through this situation. i offer from benjamin a simple idea: one's passage through any street is a double corridor through time. the visionary is
compelled by seeing both directions of time flowing in his or her very steps. every pause creates a wormhole in time. history and spirit gyre around each person pulling in different directions. one needs to think which pull to go with which to resist. inventing one's self is essential. these are some things i learned somehow from reading benjamin. some of these rhyme with blake.
benjamin essay on art in the age of mechanical reproduction helps describe why people read less and less and also cannot appreciate works of art. they no longer can sense the aura. for this "aura" benjamin lost all credit among marxist and his frankfurt school chums. he believed in the source of this aura and it was related to jewish messianic mystical traditons for him and then again to the traditons of the kabbalah. benjamin had a different life and a different genre. the traditions he could have continued exploring had he lived where attacked and butchered out of europe by the nazis although the historical traces of these traditions remain. how speak this loss? the frankfurt school in a sense was created by the betrayal of the jewish people, the polish people, the gypsy people, by the nazis and by those so-called allies who didn't step in soon enough to fight the nazis. this betrayal created the situation for the birth of their critiques as much. what decadence prevented the english from fulfilling their obligation to defend poland in the nazi's invaded. what decadence led fdr to delay so long knowing european jewry's slaughter was well underway?
ah, aristotle. have to save that one for another day.
June 12, 2010 at 5:23 am
I find your picture of Poland very interesting. I've always relished the writing of Czeslaw Milosz, including his works on Marxism. I don't doubt the truth of the complex, painful reality you draw. I have an essay on Milosz in my book The Grove of the Eumenides. https://books.fglaysher.com/Grove-of-the-Eumenides-9780982677841.htm
To my mind, Benjamin and the entire tradition of literary, political, and social criticism with which he is associated is part of the problem, not a solution to it. I too feel pain and grief for the injustices and betrayals of modern history, but know there's no sorting out or righting past wrongs. The misguided efforts of American Marxists and academics to get Marxism right, whether deconstruction or whatever, leads literature and culture in the wrong direction, one already proven to be an appalling tragedy for humanity.
As a poet, as I've tried to suggest, I find myself living in what, in Philip Rieff's terms, appears to me to be the Fourth Culture.
To my mind, Benjamin and the entire tradition of literary, political, and social criticism with which he is associated is part of the problem, not a solution to it. I too feel pain and grief for the injustices and betrayals of modern history, but know there's no sorting out or righting past wrongs. The misguided efforts of American Marxists and academics to get Marxism right, whether deconstruction or whatever, leads literature and culture in the wrong direction, one already proven to be an appalling tragedy for humanity.
As a poet, as I've tried to suggest, I find myself living in what, in Philip Rieff's terms, appears to me to be the Fourth Culture.
June 12, 2010 at 5:45 am
milosz is perhaps the one polish writer who has been able to portray the complexity of polish/russian relations to me clearly. but in recently re-reading one of his essays, my fiance translating certain passages, found a deep ambiguity still; it concerns the idea of who created "the eastern aristocratic" traditons. mliosz maintins russians had to imitate this from poland and austro-hungarian empire. but to read tolstoy its the other way around---or to be honest, not really a flip-flop but rather, tolstoy see the aristocracies as already present in russia and poland at the same times. tolstoy doesn not represent the russian statud quo opinion however. in both cases you have both cultures saying they are culture-bringer to the other. sounds like dumb schoolyard argument between kids. but one that get played out with big weapons and very cutting propaganda on either side. being under the sign of the number 4 or any number doesn't appeal to me anymore than being branded with an x. for sure an artist is "something other" in almost every society and in almost all times. sometimes we can do our best steeping more inside. other times by being more outside (gombrowicz for example). benjamin is a freak. he has tools for those who know how to use them. there are no solutions inside the tools. that comes from the imaginative work, the solution i mean. and also, let's be wary of "final solutions: of any kind. they create endless problems!
June 12, 2010 at 6:12 am
As someone who has read most of Milosz's writing in English, I enjoy your bringing up his "deep ambiguity," which seems to me to run through all his writing, on various topics. His and Tolstoy's connection on aristocracy is interesting, since I just read Hadji Murad, his last great novel, early this year. In it, Tolstoy scathingly critiques the Tsar and the entire Russian aristocratic system. You might find it interesting if you haven't had a chance to read it.
I am not one who believes in final solutions of any type, rather evolutionary, developmental ones of the human being, in this world, in so far as that is possible, and, alas, with much struggle, pain and suffering, so it seems.
I am not one who believes in final solutions of any type, rather evolutionary, developmental ones of the human being, in this world, in so far as that is possible, and, alas, with much struggle, pain and suffering, so it seems.
June 12, 2010 at 7:29 am
hadji murad i had read a long time ago and it was even the provisional name of a rock band i played in! the critique is already there in anna karenina anyway, in various guises (or do i see it there clearly because of an older memory of hadji murad reading? hard to say.). the more heroic the aristocracy waxeth the more moronically they seem to wane. so, from the point of view of poets, being some kind of aristocrat has not been an option since goethe's time at least. (benjamin's critique of goethe on this account is a querrelous gem, in the first volume of the collected works). that said, poland is a deeply ambiguous place! as is the whole series of steppes formed by the ice. one thing one can note clearly is that the forrests of poland, ukraine, lithuania, estonia all the way minsk--all these countries, the people feel like it is their very own forrest, so similar are they. i muse at times to begin telling the story of "poland' with the words issuing from the mouth of a przewalski horse who roamed some thousand kilometers in their grazing patterns--they were saved from complete extinction and i sometimes think that we can best represent salvific aspects of humanity only on this kind of environmentalist perspective level. when i think about the big story, you have to at least find a trope, some figure that will permit the tale to evolve at least. it's no guarantee of success however.
milosz never struck me a knock-out poet but he was respectable in many other ways as an intellectual and man of conscience. as i pointed out however, there is a problem of being and seeing the history from only one side. so i remain a marxist in one vital in the sense: the person telling the story assumes his or her perspective and is often ideologically bound in one way or another, it goes deep into the language we use to tell the story. milosz is a good example. herbert rather excellently comes at it from a number of sides actually and his locution comes under the pressure of needing to veil his opposition to the regime. oddly enough, it is this quality that permits his work to remain readable even now because sadly enough not enough has changed. his mr. cogito is a far cry from valery's mssr. la tete (no french accent marks available to me on this computer). but i must add that milosz is one of the translators of the herbert i have to hand. so i am happy he was there to help us out.
just another aside: it was my encounter with post-structuralist critics that eroded my own faith in my youthful marxism in fact. i think this was no accident on the behalf of european intellectuals who were hearing the bullets flying on one side from the american free-market capitalists and on the other from the soviet communists. one strategy was to erode the delusional behavior of either of these political camps through putting the foundations of these materialistic systems into question. they succeeded, but with a lot of collateral damage i am afraid.
i close this report by telling you i and karolina are just about to leave the house to attend what might be called and "exile party". a young russian girl, a student really, who was singing with us on a project, has been forced to leave poland because of a visa violation. by tommorrow. she didn't read the fine print in her visa and on a lark she went one weekend to visit berlin not knowing her visa forbade exit from poland. the german authorities grabbed her and branded her persona non grata.
the polish authorities took three months to decide her case and now this extremely dangerous 19 year old theater student will not be allowed to enter poland or the EU for three years even after newspapers have printed her story and declared it to be unjust. another living example of russian-polish-german tension.
milosz never struck me a knock-out poet but he was respectable in many other ways as an intellectual and man of conscience. as i pointed out however, there is a problem of being and seeing the history from only one side. so i remain a marxist in one vital in the sense: the person telling the story assumes his or her perspective and is often ideologically bound in one way or another, it goes deep into the language we use to tell the story. milosz is a good example. herbert rather excellently comes at it from a number of sides actually and his locution comes under the pressure of needing to veil his opposition to the regime. oddly enough, it is this quality that permits his work to remain readable even now because sadly enough not enough has changed. his mr. cogito is a far cry from valery's mssr. la tete (no french accent marks available to me on this computer). but i must add that milosz is one of the translators of the herbert i have to hand. so i am happy he was there to help us out.
just another aside: it was my encounter with post-structuralist critics that eroded my own faith in my youthful marxism in fact. i think this was no accident on the behalf of european intellectuals who were hearing the bullets flying on one side from the american free-market capitalists and on the other from the soviet communists. one strategy was to erode the delusional behavior of either of these political camps through putting the foundations of these materialistic systems into question. they succeeded, but with a lot of collateral damage i am afraid.
i close this report by telling you i and karolina are just about to leave the house to attend what might be called and "exile party". a young russian girl, a student really, who was singing with us on a project, has been forced to leave poland because of a visa violation. by tommorrow. she didn't read the fine print in her visa and on a lark she went one weekend to visit berlin not knowing her visa forbade exit from poland. the german authorities grabbed her and branded her persona non grata.
the polish authorities took three months to decide her case and now this extremely dangerous 19 year old theater student will not be allowed to enter poland or the EU for three years even after newspapers have printed her story and declared it to be unjust. another living example of russian-polish-german tension.
June 12, 2010 at 9:28 am
Five ebooks now available on KoboBooks.com - worldwide.
Earthrise Press eBooks are in the universal ePub format for eReaders, smartphones, iPad, and other devices. Also available worldwide on https://books.fglaysher.com and for the Kindle. Time for publishing to change! Here's how... Tell your friends...
https://www.kobobooks.com/search/search.html?q=glaysher&
June 9, 2010 at 8:42 am
Earthrise Press eBooks are in the universal ePub format for eReaders, smartphones, iPad, and other devices. Also available worldwide on https://books.fglaysher.com and for the Kindle. Time for publishing to change! Here's how... Tell your friends...
https://www.kobobooks.com/search/search.html?q=glaysher&
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Search: glaysher - Kobo |
eReading: anytime. anyplace. The Bower of Nil. A Narrative Poem by Frederick Glaysher
June 9, 2010 at 8:42 am
2 people like this
On pain of sounding trite, all things change... and publishing has already gone through a lot of change during the last three decades, as has everything else, obviously. If one follows people intimately involved in publishing, like Jason Epstein, it's clearly an industry in immense ferment. The digitization of one area of human endeavor after another has long been working its way toward publishing. Hope this helps.
Further details at Publishing in the Post-Gutenberg Age
https://www.fglaysher.com/Post_Gutenberg_Publishing.html
Further details at Publishing in the Post-Gutenberg Age
https://www.fglaysher.com/Post_Gutenberg_Publishing.html
June 9, 2010 at 11:06 am
What's happening is "definitely change for change's sake." But the driving force of the entire Internet and digital revolution, finally reaching one of the oldest and most enfeebled dinosaurs...
June 9, 2010 at 3:16 pm
NOT...
June 9, 2010 at 3:35 pm
Actually, I don't think of Publishing in the Post-Gutenberg Age as an "essay." It's merely the record of my struggles and reflections over the last three or four years to grapple with the changes I've been experiencing, as a reader, and with the digital transformation of publishing that is and has been relentlessly taking place. We've entered a truly historic new age for poets and writers, publishers, the whole culture, worldwide. Many don't see it yet, but they will, all around the globe. For instance, think what this means for *writers* and*poets*... Whitcoulls, New Zealand,
https://www.whitcoulls.co.nz/search/frederick+glaysher/mediatype/all/
https://www.whitcoulls.co.nz/search/frederick+glaysher/mediatype/all/
June 10, 2010 at 2:28 am
If interested, I've also written about ebooks in one of my blogs. Just skim around in it: eReading. The experience of eReading.
https://fglaysher.com/eReading/
https://fglaysher.com/eReading/
June 10, 2010 at 2:42 am
I believe his vision of modern life and Japan is true, for it has been my own experience, lived not only in Japan but also in the United States, where "without decadence" the culture sinks to ever more dehumanized levels of violence, depravity, and social fragmentation. The importance of Tamura’s poetry has not been sufficiently recognized in the West, nor in Japan.
June 9, 2010 at 4:08 am
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Borges. A Signature. |
Jorge Luis Borges. Borges On Writing, 1973. His signature is on the title page! Perhaps a fellow writer can help us more than we are able to understand, reach out even from across the grave...
June 8, 2010 at 5:33 am
All the dreams have vanished as off the edge of a cliff. Vertical dreams have been replaced by the horizontal, exactly the information that fills the newspaper. Like the best of modern writers, W. H. Auden or Robert Lowell, Tamura has the honesty and strength of intellect and spirit to recognize it is all "gone."
June 8, 2010 at 3:50 am
Next in dream half nightmare, he sees his own inner cliff protruding "between dreams / spiraling" down. Waking in the dawn, lying horizontally across the bed, he reads the morning newspaper full of massacre and civil war: "Vanishing / cliff dream / vertical dream / elementally / Gone."
June 7, 2010 at 11:57 am
1 person likes this
The ambiguity of the question "am I the hunter / or the prey?" acknowledges the complexity of modern life where all are somehow complicitous in human tragedy. Terrified by "blank paper," by "what dreams will live and die there," Tamura accepts the writer’s obligation to struggle for values worthy of all human beings, not just Japanese.
June 7, 2010 at 5:56 am
"Now, with global problems predominant, it [United Nations] needs to reinvent itself once again." Sir Brian Urquhart, NYRB MAY 27, 2010, Volume 57, No. 9.
https://www.nybooks.com/issues/2010/may/27/
June 7, 2010 at 2:15 am
https://www.nybooks.com/issues/2010/may/27/
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Volume 57, Number 9 | The New York Review of Books |
Kissing theMask: Beauty, Understatement and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater, with Some Thoughts on Muses (Especially Helga Testorf), Transgender Women, Kabuki Goddesses, Porn Queens, Poets, Housewives, Makeup Artists, Geishas, Valkyries and Venus Figurines
June 7, 2010 at 2:15 am
The "high places" are both those of earlier mentioned "boardrooms / of huge corporations," East and West, in a manner reminiscent of Kaneko Mitsuharu’s Book of Mud, and the "modern-day cliff" of confusion, now "the cliff in me."
June 6, 2010 at 12:43 pm
"...the stakes are now surely high enough for nations to take the risk." Brian Urquhart, NYRB MAY 27, 2010, Volume 57, No. 9.
https://www.nybooks.com/issues/2010/may/27/
June 6, 2010 at 8:01 am
https://www.nybooks.com/issues/2010/may/27/
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Volume 57, Number 9 | The New York Review of Books |
Kissing theMask: Beauty, Understatement and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater, with Some Thoughts on Muses (Especially Helga Testorf), Transgender Women, Kabuki Goddesses, Porn Queens, Poets, Housewives, Makeup Artists, Geishas, Valkyries and Venus Figurines
June 6, 2010 at 8:01 am
Like a roller coaster, "our century ends on pure speed." Recalling the photo of the deer, he thinks, "I’m afraid of high places/ the cliff in me/ am I the hunter/ or the prey?"
June 6, 2010 at 6:57 am
1 person likes this
"If governments really considered the effectiveness of the United nations an urgent priority, this would be the first problem they would have to tackle [virus of nationalism]. As it is, one can only wonder which of the great global problems will provide the cosmic disaster that will prove beyond doubt, and probably too late, that our present situation demands a post-Westphalian international order." Brian Urquhart, NYRB MAY 27, 2010, Volume 57, No. 9.
https://www.nybooks.com/issues/2010/may/27/
June 6, 2010 at 5:42 am
https://www.nybooks.com/issues/2010/may/27/
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Volume 57, Number 9 | The New York Review of Books |
Kissing theMask: Beauty, Understatement and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater, with Some Thoughts on Muses (Especially Helga Testorf), Transgender Women, Kabuki Goddesses, Porn Queens, Poets, Housewives, Makeup Artists, Geishas, Valkyries and Venus Figurines
June 6, 2010 at 5:42 am
In "our century," the values requisite for perceiving and defining "decadence" have disappeared, "crime and evil disconnected," all restraining sense of the soul lost. As a result, unimaginable horror has been perpetrated in every region of the globe on an appalling scale affecting both the social and individual realms.
June 6, 2010 at 4:53 am
1 person likes this
Sir you are correct!
June 6, 2010 at 5:00 am
Very, very true. And well stated.
June 6, 2010 at 5:06 am
@Mitchell Waldman Thanks for saying so. I'm posting my comment to your article here too. https://www.worldwidehippies.com/?p=6770
I just read in the Detroit News this morning that the military budget for 2009 was an incredible 1.53 TRILLION. I remember being shocked when it was 300 billion under Ronald Reagan. Peanuts now. All the bombs and bullets on earth can't bring us peace and security. It's really our whole vision of life that's askew.
I just read in the Detroit News this morning that the military budget for 2009 was an incredible 1.53 TRILLION. I remember being shocked when it was 300 billion under Ronald Reagan. Peanuts now. All the bombs and bullets on earth can't bring us peace and security. It's really our whole vision of life that's askew.
June 6, 2010 at 5:34 am
Then, what you have to do, Mr. Glaysher?
June 6, 2010 at 8:40 pm
What literary scholars can do?
June 6, 2010 at 10:46 pm
What poets and writers have always done, in all civilizations, change and renew the vision of life, the heart of the people, upon which all else is built...
https://www.books.fglaysher.com
https://www.books.fglaysher.com
June 7, 2010 at 1:34 am
Life becomes a Borges story? For a few months I've been reading and writing about Jorge Luis Borges. This afternoon tidying up my study I stumbled upon a used paperback copy of Borges On Writing, 1973, which I bought in Ann Arbor, Michigan, during the winter, and sat down to read it. His signature is on the title page! It looks a lot like this one online for $31,000! https://www.biblio.com/bibliozoom/image_viewer.php?imgURL=https://i.biblio.com/b/533x/100349533-0-x.jpg
June 5, 2010 at 1:03 pm
| Detailed book zoom - Biblio.com |
June 5, 2010 at 1:03 pm
3 people like this
Click Detailed book zoom for the page, then scroll down.
June 5, 2010 at 1:06 pm
Really I just found this no longer than twenty minutes ago. Creeps me out...
June 5, 2010 at 1:09 pm
Surreal, South American magic fiction kind-of-thing... Of the couple of thousand books I have, I've never found any other signed copies... and then to find one that is signed by someone I've been thinking and writing about for months is strange. I like to think I'm largely a rational person, realizing it's merely coincidence, but it's still creepy, given all his creepy, bizarre stories and poems...
June 5, 2010 at 1:22 pm
All right, I've scanned it in. Somebody tell me I'm wrong! Compare it to the link above "Detailed book zoom - Biblio.com"
https://www.fglaysher.com/images/Borges_signature2.JPG
https://www.fglaysher.com/images/Borges_signature2.JPG
June 5, 2010 at 1:38 pm
Saturday evening party game. Another sample signature:
https://www.biblio.com/bibliozoom/image_viewer.php?imgURL=https://i.biblio.com/b/499x/100349499-0-x.jpg
https://www.biblio.com/bibliozoom/image_viewer.php?imgURL=https://i.biblio.com/b/499x/100349499-0-x.jpg
June 5, 2010 at 1:40 pm
Uncanny Borges..
June 7, 2010 at 2:34 am
Yes, good word choice. It is uncanny to me. Surreal... For some reason, Borges' story "The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim" has kept coming to mind since Saturday, the search for Attar's Simurgh. It connects intimately with a poem I've been writing. There are times when the intuition can surpass and lead aright the rational mind. Perhaps a fellow writer can help us more than we are able to understand, even from across the grave.
June 7, 2010 at 3:13 am
"...the probable eventual need for some form of world government, a respectable subject at least since Grotius and Dante, but now widely regarded as a dangerous heresy in the Congress of the United States." Sir Brian Urquhart, NYRB MAY 27, 2010, Volume 57, No. 9.
https://www.nybooks.com/issues/2010/may/27/
June 5, 2010 at 11:11 am
https://www.nybooks.com/issues/2010/may/27/
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Volume 57, Number 9 | The New York Review of Books |
Kissing theMask: Beauty, Understatement and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater, with Some Thoughts on Muses (Especially Helga Testorf), Transgender Women, Kabuki Goddesses, Porn Queens, Poets, Housewives, Makeup Artists, Geishas, Valkyries and Venus Figurines
June 5, 2010 at 11:11 am
As late as 1982, in what is one of his greatest poems, "Spiral Cliff," Tamura looks soberly at modern world history. After the speaker reflects on a photograph of a deer "falling off a cliff" and wonders "what’s after it," he says,
June 5, 2010 at 3:04 am
"Our century ends without decadence/ after the night and fog of Nazi gas chambers/ after Soviet forced labor camps/ after two U.S. atomic bombs on Japan/ there’s no thrill left in killing,/ no fear of the soul, no crime in adultery. . . ." Ryuichi Tamura
June 5, 2010 at 3:04 am
1 person likes this
Saigyo and Basho both believed poetry must consider the transcendent and involve conceptual knowledge outside the self, not merely aesthetic formalism.
June 4, 2010 at 6:50 am
4 people like this
Absolutely. I think this is true of any art form.
June 4, 2010 at 8:12 am
Increasingly forgotten by modernity. I think of Philip Rieff's My Life among the Deathworks.
June 4, 2010 at 9:56 am
I don't know it...a poem, collection, essay?
June 4, 2010 at 11:19 am
A book on the decline of modern art into nihilism and the other trivialities of postmodernism. Univ. of Virginia Press. "Deathworks are mile-stones on the road to a culture that does not imagine itself on any road to truth."
June 4, 2010 at 2:40 pm
Interesting. Thanks! I'll check it out.
June 4, 2010 at 3:43 pm
It's volume I in a trilogy, if interested. I've read large chunks of all three and highly recommend them. They're rare works that actually criticize modernity, instead of joining it in self-congratulating applause. Rieff spent twenty or thirty years mulling over and writing them.
June 4, 2010 at 4:02 pm
Frederic I'm confused. Isn't aesthetic formalism conceptual knowledge outside the self? I'm not trying to be snarky. I really don't get it.
June 5, 2010 at 10:26 am
There are formalists in that sense, who want to revive rhyme and traditional stanzas and so on, thinking that's all it would take, in some instances, to return to some idealized past, of whatever. Yet that doesn't necessarily mean the subject matter of individual poets isn't solipsistic. Some of the confessional poets come to mind, like Sylvia Plath, Ann Sexton, who might fit, at times. I was probably thinking of the extremes, especially more formalistic academic poetry, long on form and technicalities, short on fresh experience and insight. We've chatted enough that I know you're not snarky!
June 5, 2010 at 11:09 am
Frederick I posted to this thread but it disappeared!
June 5, 2010 at 2:29 pm
Are you sure you didn't accidentally hit the delete word? It was here last time I responded or maybe I by mistake hit when posting. If so, sorry. I have it from the email copy alert I my account setup for. Here it is (am I'm not being snarky!):
"Speaking of solopsists, did you hear about the solopsists' convention? They spent three days arguing about which one of them was really there!" Diana Manister
PS What's your opinion on the Borges signature I've just found in my library? See above.
"Speaking of solopsists, did you hear about the solopsists' convention? They spent three days arguing about which one of them was really there!" Diana Manister
PS What's your opinion on the Borges signature I've just found in my library? See above.
June 5, 2010 at 3:18 pm
It's freaking me out!
June 5, 2010 at 3:22 pm
Diana, oops, I just noticed your solipsist post was to the message below, so I'm not sure what you meant.
June 5, 2010 at 3:30 pm
Like Lowell and so many postmodern Western poets, Tamura also goes through a time of fairly formalistic writing, but he seems to outgrow it and returns to engaging universal experience outside his own little personal consciousness. Many other Japanese poets, as in the United States, are still stuck in such solipsism.
June 4, 2010 at 4:58 am
Is this from a longer piece? I'd love to read it if it exists.
June 4, 2010 at 5:06 am
Yes, thanks for asking. It's an excerpt from my essay "Japan's Floating Bridge of Dreams" in my book The Grove of the Eumenides, available either as a printed book or ebook (ePub or Kindle): https://books.fglaysher.com/Grove-of-the-Eumenides-9780982677841.htm
Printed book almost anywhere online via links at
https://www.fglaysher.com/order_books.html
Hope you enjoy it. The essay meditates on the traditional and modern in Japanese literature, as much of the book does with world literature.
Printed book almost anywhere online via links at
https://www.fglaysher.com/order_books.html
Hope you enjoy it. The essay meditates on the traditional and modern in Japanese literature, as much of the book does with world literature.
June 4, 2010 at 6:47 am
Thanks so much!
June 4, 2010 at 5:04 pm
Speaking of solopsists, did you hear about the solopsists' convention? They spent three days arguing about which one of them was really there!
June 4, 2010 at 5:20 pm
Ah Haaa! And on the fourth day, they called in a Deconstructionist for her theory... been arguing ever since... realizing only Language was there! Though no one could understand anyone else, or anything outside their own limited experience, they all individually declared themselves brilliant, resulting in multiple proposals to co-chair a Special Session at the next MLA Convention. That should settle who or what was really there!
June 5, 2010 at 3:02 am
Poets & writers. Time for publishing to change! Cut the publishers. Here’s how... Tell your friends... https://books.fglaysher.com
June 3, 2010 at 4:27 pm
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Earthrise Press |
Earthrise Press is a Post-Gutenberg Publisher of eBooks, non-DRM
June 3, 2010 at 4:27 pm
Having known and read Tamura’s work for more than thirty years, I have often thought of him as akin somehow to Robert Lowell. He has a memory of Japan’s past that he never idealizes, but works with and probes it, pondering always without sentimentality the modern and by-gone days.
June 3, 2010 at 12:10 pm
Blending together the perspective of the subjective "I" and objective "he," aware of the horror, Tamura introduces into Japanese poetry a voice of detachment, observing life outside his own personal existence with meditative restraint, seeking a deeper understanding of modern human experience.
June 3, 2010 at 6:21 am
Atsumi suggests the father "possibly refers to the emperor system in Japan, and the mother he made beautifully insane to Japan’s aesthetic consciousness." Like the West, the East too descended into a wasteland of madness and violence, the ancient now discredited and rendered nugatory. This is the "Etching" come to light, etched into Tamura’s consciousness and all postwar Japanese writers of worth.
June 2, 2010 at 5:57 am
1 person likes this
The critic Ikuko Atsumi has said of this poem that it aims at a universal vision of East and West, ancient and modern. The extreme nationalism of the Japanese fascists now defeated, the "he" can view the fullness or "landscape" of Western culture, specifically German, declining into "darkness" or rising as "a modern-day cliff," ominous, dehumanized, marked by loss and angst.
June 2, 2010 at 3:18 am
The first poem in which Tamura finds his true voice and distance from his material is the prose poem "Etching," published in 1956:
June 1, 2010 at 6:24 am
"Now he sees a landscape he saw in a German etching it appears to be an aerial view of an ancient city between twilight and darkness or a realistic drawing of a modern-day cliff being taken from midnight toward dawn This man the one I began to describe killed his father when he was young that autumn his mother went beautifully insane" (tr. Christopher Drake) Ryuichi Tamura
June 1, 2010 at 6:24 am
In a literary magazine called Arechi or "wasteland," Tamura and other postwar poets gave voice to the despair and horror they felt, unequivocally stating, in an early manifesto, "The present is a wasteland."
June 1, 2010 at 2:27 am
Briefly a student of Hagiwara Sakutaro, Tamura had little interest in classical Japanese poetry, which emphasized the unity of man and nature, but read widely in Western literature and was especially influenced by T. S. Eliot, Steven Spender, C. Day Lewis, and W. H. Auden, whom Tamura eventually met in New York in 1971.
May 31, 2010 at 5:03 am
2 people like this
Better than any other postwar poet, Tamura Ryuichi (1923-) registers, since his own hometown in the suburbs of Tokyo no longer existed, the shock and disorientation of the modern Japanese psyche.
May 30, 2010 at 12:38 pm
As writers returned from one front or another of the war, they found a Japan devastated by the Allied bombing. Maebashi, for instance, where I lived for a few years, was reduced to rubble along with its bridges. Before long, the entire country was restructured by the Occupation. Japanese writers now understood much more deeply the experience of the Western World War I generation.
May 30, 2010 at 9:52 am
Into the Ruins: Poems.
Now available worldwide. ePub and Kindle formats.
Beyond Postmodernism, overturning the nihilism of the age, Into the Ruins confronts much of the human experience left out of the balance by postmodern poetry, often compared to the Alexandrians and the Neoterics, when writers similarly concentrated on the minor themes of personal life, while ignoring the challenging experience of the public realm. Suffused with a global tragic vision...
https://books.fglaysher.com/
May 30, 2010 at 7:00 am
Now available worldwide. ePub and Kindle formats.
Beyond Postmodernism, overturning the nihilism of the age, Into the Ruins confronts much of the human experience left out of the balance by postmodern poetry, often compared to the Alexandrians and the Neoterics, when writers similarly concentrated on the minor themes of personal life, while ignoring the challenging experience of the public realm. Suffused with a global tragic vision...
https://books.fglaysher.com/
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Earthrise Press |
Earthrise Press is a Post-Gutenberg Publisher of eBooks, non-DRM
May 30, 2010 at 7:00 am
For Japan and its writers, the modern darkness deepens during the period of military fascism and World War II. With the defeat and unconditional surrender, immense shock waves rocked the entire culture calling into question the pseudo-Shinto and Confucian values Japan had based its society on for almost a century.
May 30, 2010 at 6:57 am
1 person likes this
I like your term "pseudo-Shinto." I'm a practitioner of aikido and found Thomas Kasulis' SHINTO: THE WAY HOME to be very helpful in understanding why the Shinto sources of what I practice seem to have nothing to do with the state-sponsored Shinto of imperial Japan.
May 30, 2010 at 2:29 pm
I'll note the title and maybe explore it sometime. I can't recall specially what I read that informed me of the distortion of Shinto after the Meiji Restoration, but it is a well known historical observation, I believe. Part of it was the marginalization of Buddhism, also reflected in the literature.
I have recently been reading Borges, and if you're not aware of it, might find interesting that he visited the Ise Shrine and other Shinto sites. He has a few poems about Shinto too, in Collected Poems, perhaps elsewhere.
I have recently been reading Borges, and if you're not aware of it, might find interesting that he visited the Ise Shrine and other Shinto sites. He has a few poems about Shinto too, in Collected Poems, perhaps elsewhere.
May 30, 2010 at 2:38 pm
Thanks, Frederick. I'm very interested in any connections between Borges and Shinto. I'll dig into that.
May 30, 2010 at 2:44 pm
Edwin Williamson's biography Borges: A Life has material you might enjoy too on his interest in Shinto.
May 30, 2010 at 5:21 pm
Terrific! Thanks for the reference.
May 30, 2010 at 9:10 pm
Five books now available through Earthrise Press eBooks. Available worldwide. ePub and Kindle formats. https://books.fglaysher.com
May 28, 2010 at 11:17 am
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Earthrise Press |
Earthrise Press is a Post-Gutenberg Publisher of eBooks, non-DRM
May 28, 2010 at 11:17 am
1 person likes this
Gao Xingjian
https://the-diplomat.com/new-emissary/2010/05/28/gao-xingjian/
May 28, 2010 at 4:40 am
https://the-diplomat.com/new-emissary/2010/05/28/gao-xingjian/
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Gao Xingjian | New Emissary |
Reality exists only through experience, and it must be personal experience. However, once related, even personal experience becomes a narrative. Reality
May 28, 2010 at 4:40 am
interesting piece. hope to read him one day..
May 28, 2010 at 5:50 am
i ahve to admit I have not read anything of his.
May 28, 2010 at 9:32 am
I have copies of his Soul Mountain and One Man's Bible. I hope to read them when I come back around to China in the book I'm working on. From articles I've read, I think his emphasis on individual experience may be highly analogous to what many Western writers have done, under the onslaught of modernity, turn to the inner space as refuge from the strangely threatening quotidian realm.
May 29, 2010 at 5:34 am
Kenzaburō Ōe
https://the-diplomat.com/new-emissary/2010/05/27/kenzaburo-oe/
May 27, 2010 at 2:31 am
https://the-diplomat.com/new-emissary/2010/05/27/kenzaburo-oe/
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Kenzaburō Ōe | New Emissary |
Frederick Glaysher calls Oe's The Silent Cry a ‘very profound and provoking novel that goes deep into modern life, East and West.’
May 27, 2010 at 2:31 am
2 people like this
I'll have to pick up tThe Silent Cry. I read A Personal Matter and teach us to outgrow Our Madness.
May 27, 2010 at 12:04 pm
The Silent Cry is a very dark book, but very deep... like the muddy waters of modernity.
May 27, 2010 at 2:07 pm
Do you know where I can get Oe's book in Japanese? and I will buy one of your poem books very soon, Frederick.
May 27, 2010 at 2:18 pm
Tonatiuh, Kinokuniya comes first to mind in Tokyo! But I don't know if they'll ship to Mexico City! Here's their link for my poems Into the Ruins: https://bookweb.kinokuniya.co.jp/htmy/0967042194.html Just search Oe.
Since we first spoke, my poems and The Grove of the Eumenides are now available as ebooks, online at https://books.fglaysher.com
Incidentally, I've been reading Octavio Paz and Neruda. We'll have to talk about them sometime.
Since we first spoke, my poems and The Grove of the Eumenides are now available as ebooks, online at https://books.fglaysher.com
Incidentally, I've been reading Octavio Paz and Neruda. We'll have to talk about them sometime.
May 27, 2010 at 3:50 pm
Paz and Neruda are both very great Poets. I love Neruda's Reidence on Earth. I also love Paz's prose Poems.
May 27, 2010 at 6:16 pm
I meant Residence on Earth.
May 27, 2010 at 6:45 pm
I just reread Neruda's Heights of Macchu Picchu last month, along with the Canto General. I was far from impressed with his paeans to Stalin and Fidel Castro. How sad when a poet, like Ezra Pound, prostitutes his pen to a murderous, oppressive regime. I've not read Residence on Earth. Is another one of his Marxist fantasies? Borges understood very well that, while Neruda was a great poet, he was a bad man--a justifier of murder and social mayhem, whitewashing the barbarity of communism.
May 29, 2010 at 5:41 am
Borges was a hardly a sweetheart either. He was a proto-fascist supporter of Peronism. I didn't find REsidence on Earth to be terribly Communist.
May 29, 2010 at 3:00 pm
You're wrong about Borges. He was opposed to Peron and spoke out publicly against him when no one else did. Peron himself is on record as saying once nothing could be done about Borges because of his international reputation. See Edwin Williamson's biography Borges for further choice details. He was a democrat, but recognized the reality of having to defend public space from the Marxists who would have dragged South America into a continent-wide Gulag had they not been opposed. Thank God they were and still are...
Residencia en la Tierra. Ah, actually, I had read a few select poems from it last month. "Song to Stalingrad," closing lines: Stalingrad, there is not yet a Second Front, but you will not fall... because other red hands, when your hands fall, will sow throughout the world the bones of your heroes so that your seed may fill all the earth" (The Poetry of Pablo Neruda, 128). etc., etc... a murderous vision of inhumanity is what Neruda offer the world.
If memory serves, it was Robert Conquest who calculated the number of corpses at 60 to 100 million. Dostoyevsky realized what the results would be as early as The Possessed, the book Lenin and Stalin suppressed; in fact, it was suppressed until after 1989. THAT's the world you think the United States needs! Then I'm glad to hear you can't find a job and hope it remains that way, if Marxism is all you have to offer students. In fact, I take it as a sign that perhaps there's hope for the American university, after all. I perhaps tend too much to the negative...
Residencia en la Tierra. Ah, actually, I had read a few select poems from it last month. "Song to Stalingrad," closing lines: Stalingrad, there is not yet a Second Front, but you will not fall... because other red hands, when your hands fall, will sow throughout the world the bones of your heroes so that your seed may fill all the earth" (The Poetry of Pablo Neruda, 128). etc., etc... a murderous vision of inhumanity is what Neruda offer the world.
If memory serves, it was Robert Conquest who calculated the number of corpses at 60 to 100 million. Dostoyevsky realized what the results would be as early as The Possessed, the book Lenin and Stalin suppressed; in fact, it was suppressed until after 1989. THAT's the world you think the United States needs! Then I'm glad to hear you can't find a job and hope it remains that way, if Marxism is all you have to offer students. In fact, I take it as a sign that perhaps there's hope for the American university, after all. I perhaps tend too much to the negative...
May 30, 2010 at 5:23 am
That, is having had bitter experience of American university classrooms, where freedom of speech and conscience is CRUSHED by dictatorial, self-styled dons, would accept the repulsive cliches of Marxism, and demand their students do the same, if they want a decent grade... demand they *degrade* themselves to get it.
Perhaps there are a few scholars worthy of the name left in American English departments, though names don't come to mind.
Perhaps there are a few scholars worthy of the name left in American English departments, though names don't come to mind.
May 30, 2010 at 6:15 am
First of all, I do not teach in a university and never have, and do not want to. I worked in a factories driving a forklift. Secondly, if you think a hack like Robert Conquest is a reputable source you obviously do not know your ass from a whole in the ground. Obviously, you, like many right-wing cranks, could not hack it in a university and came up with a big rationalization in order to justify lleaving your job.
There may be scholars worthy of the name , but it sure as hell isn't you. I read your screeds on your and I really don't think they would be useful for toilet paper.
There may be scholars worthy of the name , but it sure as hell isn't you. I read your screeds on your and I really don't think they would be useful for toilet paper.
May 30, 2010 at 1:41 pm
Sorry to hurt your feelings. But Marxism was (note the verb tense) quite possibly the worst idea in human history. Far from a hack, Robert Conquest was one of the most courageous scholars of the West, who largely stood alone for many years while fellow travels demeaned intellectual life in many American universities. Those who still cling to Marxist debacle, as though the Soviet Union didn't collapse because of its violent, decadent ideology, like Eric Hobsbawn, Terry Eagleton, Frederic Jameson, et al., have simply become farcical, as well as willfully deaf to the tragic testimony of the murdered millions.
It's entirely characteristic of Leftist and Marxist tactics to deride opponents as "right-wing cranks," etc., though it's been my experience that few truly right-wing people find my advocacy of world governance palatable. For other classic Marxist tactics, I recommend, to any one interested, "The Moulding of Communists : The Training of the Communist Cadre" by Frank S. Meyer, but perhaps you'd dismiss him too in similar terms, for wanting to preserve civilization, not take it down a bottomless gulag. Ad hominem does not address the profoundly important intellectual issues that Marxism raises.
It's entirely characteristic of Leftist and Marxist tactics to deride opponents as "right-wing cranks," etc., though it's been my experience that few truly right-wing people find my advocacy of world governance palatable. For other classic Marxist tactics, I recommend, to any one interested, "The Moulding of Communists : The Training of the Communist Cadre" by Frank S. Meyer, but perhaps you'd dismiss him too in similar terms, for wanting to preserve civilization, not take it down a bottomless gulag. Ad hominem does not address the profoundly important intellectual issues that Marxism raises.
May 30, 2010 at 2:28 pm
Patrick White
https://the-diplomat.com/new-emissary/2010/05/26/patrick-white/
May 26, 2010 at 2:20 am
https://the-diplomat.com/new-emissary/2010/05/26/patrick-white/
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Patrick White | New Emissary |
‘Because he had nothing to hide, he did perhaps appear to have forfeited a little of his strength. But that is the irony of
May 26, 2010 at 2:20 am
2 people like this
I enjoyed The Eye of The Storm and The Cockatoos, which is his book of shorter works. I have a shelf of White books that I plan to get around to somme day.
May 26, 2010 at 6:53 am
I've known his name for years, but I must admit my ignorance of his writing. I'll have to explore his work sometime.
May 26, 2010 at 7:53 am
Frederick, you must get to know this great writer's work.
May 26, 2010 at 2:23 pm
@Peter Nicholson @Thomas Baughman Thanks for speaking up for White. The Vivisector sounds interesting. I'll have to get to it in time.
May 26, 2010 at 3:53 pm
The Vivisector makes me think too of Thomas Mann's Dr. Faustus. Any connection between the books?
May 26, 2010 at 5:08 pm
Well, Mann is, perhaps, more interested in the socio-political aspect of the creative process—the composer there is based on Schoenberg. White's vision of the artist is, maybe, more personal, spiritual. Hurtle Duffield in The Vivisector was supposedly inspired, partly, by Sidney Nolan, with whom he subsequently had a spectacular falling out. These are two great books.
May 26, 2010 at 5:38 pm
That clinches it for me. It's on my list after the pile I'm struggling to get above!
May 26, 2010 at 6:04 pm
@Peter Nicholson Did White ever put in writing his reasons for revulsion with the "award" industry?
May 27, 2010 at 2:50 am
He can't be pinned down so easily on that subject. He's complex. Best to read his Letters in David Marr's edition. That gives the sense of his 'multitudes' on the subject of awards and much else.
May 27, 2010 at 1:21 pm
Peter, Thanks for the reference. I'm not really trying to "pin" him down in a shallow and easy way. It's an unusual position, one I somewhat share. I decided in the early 1990s largely to stop submitting my writing to "award" competitions and literary magazines. For concentrating on my own thoughts and writing, it was the best thing I could ever have done, and don't regret it. In the USA literary community, there's an awful lot of sleaze and fraud... but that's human beings for ya.
May 27, 2010 at 2:07 pm
Please consider reposting to your friends. Make the Dalai Lama's OP ED viral... to your friends, the mega-millions... on Facebook and elsewhere.... Humanity needs the universality of this vision:
Dalai Lama on "finding common ground among faiths" and "the oneness of humanity." Many Faiths, One Truth. New York Times. 5/25/2010.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/opinion/25gyatso.html?hp
May 25, 2010 at 5:26 am
Dalai Lama on "finding common ground among faiths" and "the oneness of humanity." Many Faiths, One Truth. New York Times. 5/25/2010.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/opinion/25gyatso.html?hp
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Op-Ed Contributor - Many Faiths, One Truth - NYTimes.com |
Though every religion has a sense of exclusivity as part of its core identity, there is genuine potential for mutual understanding.
May 25, 2010 at 5:26 am
Please consider reposting to your friends. Make the Dalai Lama's OP ED viral... to your friends, the mega-millions... on Facebook and elsewhere.... Humanity needs the universality of this vision:
Dalai Lama on "finding common ground among faiths" and "the oneness of humanity." Many Faiths, One Truth. New York Times. 5/25/2010.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/opinion/25gyatso.html?hp
May 25, 2010 at 5:23 am
Dalai Lama on "finding common ground among faiths" and "the oneness of humanity." Many Faiths, One Truth. New York Times. 5/25/2010.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/opinion/25gyatso.html?hp
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Op-Ed Contributor - Many Faiths, One Truth - NYTimes.com |
Though every religion has a sense of exclusivity as part of its core identity, there is genuine potential for mutual understanding.
May 25, 2010 at 5:23 am
Please consider reposting to your friends. Make the Dalai Lama's OP ED viral... to your friends, the mega-millions... on Facebook and elsewhere.... Humanity needs the universality of this vision:
Dalai Lama on "finding common ground among faiths" and "the oneness of humanity." Many Faiths, One Truth. New York Times. 5/25/2010.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/opinion/25gyatso.html?hp
May 25, 2010 at 5:19 am
Dalai Lama on "finding common ground among faiths" and "the oneness of humanity." Many Faiths, One Truth. New York Times. 5/25/2010.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/opinion/25gyatso.html?hp
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Op-Ed Contributor - Many Faiths, One Truth - NYTimes.com |
Though every religion has a sense of exclusivity as part of its core identity, there is genuine potential for mutual understanding.
May 25, 2010 at 5:19 am
Please consider reposting to your friends. Make the Dalai Lama's OP ED viral... to your friends, the mega-millions... on Facebook and elsewhere.... Humanity needs the universality of this vision:
Dalai Lama on "finding common ground among faiths" and "the oneness of humanity." Many Faiths, One Truth. New York Times. 5/25/2010.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/opinion/25gyatso.html?hp
May 25, 2010 at 5:13 am
Dalai Lama on "finding common ground among faiths" and "the oneness of humanity." Many Faiths, One Truth. New York Times. 5/25/2010.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/opinion/25gyatso.html?hp
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Op-Ed Contributor - Many Faiths, One Truth - NYTimes.com |
Though every religion has a sense of exclusivity as part of its core identity, there is genuine potential for mutual understanding.
May 25, 2010 at 5:13 am
Please consider reposting to your friends. Make the Dalai Lama's OP ED viral... to your friends, the mega-millions... on Facebook and elsewhere.... Humanity needs the universality of this vision:
Dalai Lama on "finding common ground among faiths" and "the oneness of humanity." Many Faiths, One Truth. New York Times. 5/25/2010.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/opinion/25gyatso.html?hp
May 25, 2010 at 5:10 am
Dalai Lama on "finding common ground among faiths" and "the oneness of humanity." Many Faiths, One Truth. New York Times. 5/25/2010.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/opinion/25gyatso.html?hp
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Op-Ed Contributor - Many Faiths, One Truth - NYTimes.com |
Though every religion has a sense of exclusivity as part of its core identity, there is genuine potential for mutual understanding.
May 25, 2010 at 5:10 am
Please consider reposting to your friends. Make the Dalai Lama's OP ED viral... to your friends, the mega-millions... on Facebook and elsewhere.... Humanity needs the universality of this vision:
Dalai Lama on "finding common ground among faiths" and "the oneness of humanity." Many Faiths, One Truth. New York Times. 5/25/2010.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/opinion/25gyatso.html?hp
May 25, 2010 at 5:01 am
Dalai Lama on "finding common ground among faiths" and "the oneness of humanity." Many Faiths, One Truth. New York Times. 5/25/2010.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/opinion/25gyatso.html?hp
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Op-Ed Contributor - Many Faiths, One Truth - NYTimes.com |
Though every religion has a sense of exclusivity as part of its core identity, there is genuine potential for mutual understanding.
May 25, 2010 at 5:01 am
Please consider reposting to your friends. Make the Dalai Lama's OP ED viral... to your friends, the mega-millions... on Facebook and elsewhere.... Humanity needs the universality of this vision:
Dalai Lama on "finding common ground among faiths" and "the oneness of humanity." Many Faiths, One Truth. New York Times. 5/25/2010.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/opinion/25gyatso.html?hp
May 25, 2010 at 4:59 am
Dalai Lama on "finding common ground among faiths" and "the oneness of humanity." Many Faiths, One Truth. New York Times. 5/25/2010.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/opinion/25gyatso.html?hp
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Op-Ed Contributor - Many Faiths, One Truth - NYTimes.com |
Though every religion has a sense of exclusivity as part of its core identity, there is genuine potential for mutual understanding.
May 25, 2010 at 4:59 am
Please consider reposting to your friends. Make the Dalai Lama's OP ED viral... to your friends, the mega-millions... on Facebook and elsewhere.... Humanity needs the universality of this vision:
Dalai Lama on "finding common ground among faiths" and "the oneness of humanity." Many Faiths, One Truth. New York Times. 5/25/2010.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/opinion/25gyatso.html?hp
May 25, 2010 at 4:58 am
Dalai Lama on "finding common ground among faiths" and "the oneness of humanity." Many Faiths, One Truth. New York Times. 5/25/2010.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/opinion/25gyatso.html?hp
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Op-Ed Contributor - Many Faiths, One Truth - NYTimes.com |
Though every religion has a sense of exclusivity as part of its core identity, there is genuine potential for mutual understanding.
May 25, 2010 at 4:58 am
Please consider reposting to your friends. Make the Dalai Lama's OP ED viral... Humanity needs the universality of this vision:
Dalai Lama on "finding common ground among faiths" and "the oneness of humanity." Many Faiths, One Truth. New York Times. 5/25/2010.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/opinion/25gyatso.html?hp
May 25, 2010 at 4:54 am
Dalai Lama on "finding common ground among faiths" and "the oneness of humanity." Many Faiths, One Truth. New York Times. 5/25/2010.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/opinion/25gyatso.html?hp
|
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Op-Ed Contributor - Many Faiths, One Truth - NYTimes.com |
Though every religion has a sense of exclusivity as part of its core identity, there is genuine potential for mutual understanding.
May 25, 2010 at 4:54 am
Please consider reposting to your friends. Make the Dalai Lama's OP ED viral... Humanity needs the universality of this vision:
Dalai Lama on "finding common ground among faiths" and "the oneness of humanity." Many Faiths, One Truth. New York Times. 5/25/2010.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/opinion/25gyatso.html?hp
May 25, 2010 at 4:53 am
Dalai Lama on "finding common ground among faiths" and "the oneness of humanity." Many Faiths, One Truth. New York Times. 5/25/2010.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/opinion/25gyatso.html?hp
|
|
Op-Ed Contributor - Many Faiths, One Truth - NYTimes.com |
Though every religion has a sense of exclusivity as part of its core identity, there is genuine potential for mutual understanding.
May 25, 2010 at 4:53 am
Please consider reposting to your friends. Make it viral... Humanity needs the universality of this vision:
Dalai Lama on "finding common ground among faiths" and "the oneness of humanity." Many Faiths, One Truth. New York Times. 5/25/2010.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/opinion/25gyatso.html?hp
May 25, 2010 at 4:50 am
Dalai Lama on "finding common ground among faiths" and "the oneness of humanity." Many Faiths, One Truth. New York Times. 5/25/2010.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/opinion/25gyatso.html?hp
|
|
Op-Ed Contributor - Many Faiths, One Truth - NYTimes.com |
Though every religion has a sense of exclusivity as part of its core identity, there is genuine potential for mutual understanding.
May 25, 2010 at 4:50 am
Please consider reposting to your friends. Make it viral... Humanity needs the universality of this vision:
Dalai Lama on "finding common ground among faiths" and "the oneness of humanity." Many Faiths, One Truth. New York Times. 5/25/2010.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/opinion/25gyatso.html?hp
May 25, 2010 at 4:32 am
Dalai Lama on "finding common ground among faiths" and "the oneness of humanity." Many Faiths, One Truth. New York Times. 5/25/2010.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/opinion/25gyatso.html?hp
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Op-Ed Contributor - Many Faiths, One Truth - NYTimes.com |
Though every religion has a sense of exclusivity as part of its core identity, there is genuine potential for mutual understanding.
May 25, 2010 at 4:32 am
1 person likes this
Viral... to the mega-millions... on Facebook and elsewhere.
May 25, 2010 at 4:34 am
You might be interested in this : https://charterforcompassion.org/
May 25, 2010 at 5:51 am
Thanks for the link. I noticed it when it first came out and "affirmed" it then. I respect the vision of Karen Armstrong. Sad to think only "47,173" have been willing to click on "The best idea humanity has ever had…" compassion...
May 25, 2010 at 5:59 am
@Fred - yes, shocking. But better 47,000 than not. It's enough to restart civilisation with... You might have noticed a Singaporean offshoot of the project in one of the "partner" sections...
May 25, 2010 at 6:01 am
Thanks for the link. Restart civilization? Best to hold on to what we have... at all costs... given the WMD that exist.
Change the software, the thinking, from Nihilism to "finding common ground among faiths" and "the oneness of humanity." Many Faiths, One Truth. - That's what most of the great poets, writers, and religious teachers of the past did. I think the Dalai Lama has got that right.
Change the software, the thinking, from Nihilism to "finding common ground among faiths" and "the oneness of humanity." Many Faiths, One Truth. - That's what most of the great poets, writers, and religious teachers of the past did. I think the Dalai Lama has got that right.
May 25, 2010 at 6:41 am
@fred - Civilisation could be rebooted without destroying it first...at least not in a physical sense.
May 25, 2010 at 6:43 am
Exactly. Definitely preferable to what happened twice in the 20th century.
May 25, 2010 at 6:49 am
Yasunari Kawabata
https://the-diplomat.com/new-emissary/2010/05/25/yasunari-kawabata/
May 25, 2010 at 3:18 am
https://the-diplomat.com/new-emissary/2010/05/25/yasunari-kawabata/
|
Yasunari Kawabata | New Emissary |
This iconic writer and Asian Nobel Laureate who made 'beauty' and 'Japan' come together is known for works such as Snow Country and A Thousand Cranes.
May 25, 2010 at 3:18 am
1 person likes this
i love Snow Country and A Thousand Cranes. I am going to read The Sound of the Mountain really soon.
May 25, 2010 at 11:27 am
Oe on Kawabata... I can't recall exactly a quotation, or where, but... imagine T. S. Eliot of The Waste Land on Wordsworth.
May 25, 2010 at 4:09 pm
We should not miss his short stories, either. Especially, 「片腕」(I don't know its English translation's title --- "An Arm"? --- Sorry!) , which is a surreal story about a man who borrows a live arm from his lover's live body. Also, 「眠れる美女」("A Sleeping Beauty"?) can be hardly forgotten. For many Japanese readers (including me), Kawabata's Japanese writing is sometimes too ambiguous, sometimes too grammatically odd, and sometimes too unclear. I personally credit his Nobel Prize mainly to his translator's laborious (and sometimes excessive) efforts to make Kawabata's original as accessible as possible to non-Japanese readers.
May 25, 2010 at 5:24 pm
Ah, that's interesting, too much Japanese ambiguity! ...even for a Japanese! :) I love it.
May 26, 2010 at 2:08 am
@ Goro: I think the English translation is "One Arm." I have two books of Kawabata's short stories that I plan to read eventually. As for his translator, I am sure you are probably right. It does seem to me that Edward Seidensticker was Kawabata's main translator.
May 26, 2010 at 6:49 am
You'll like both of the two Kawabata books you have, Thomas. And, yes, Seidensticker. That's him.
May 26, 2010 at 7:01 am
I am sure that I will. I have read many of his novels and admired them immensely. I think I liked Beauty and Sadness (Sorry, I do not know its Japanese title ) as Much as I did Snow Country and A Thousand Cranes. I think I probably will like anything he has written.
May 26, 2010 at 7:05 am
Edward Seidensticker also translated The Tale of Genji, which I read a long ago in its entirety after it first came out in 1976. A very different sensibility, from modernity...
May 26, 2010 at 7:52 am
Rabindranath Tagore.
https://the-diplomat.com/new-emissary/2010/05/24/rabindranath-tagore/
May 24, 2010 at 8:28 am
https://the-diplomat.com/new-emissary/2010/05/24/rabindranath-tagore/
|
Rabindranath Tagore | New Emissary |
This popular literary figure, a friend of Gandhi and the first Asian to win a Nobel Literature prize, is the first Laureate covered in our latest series.
May 24, 2010 at 8:28 am
1 person likes this
I like Tagore's books a lot; Especially Gitangali.
May 25, 2010 at 11:28 am
It's heavily influenced by his study of the Baul poets, who represent a remarkable tradition in their own right. Are you familiar with Tagore's translation of Kabir's poems? You might enjoy it too. It's on Gutenberg.org
Title: Songs of Kabir. Author: Rabindranath Tagore (trans.) [EBook #6519]
Title: Songs of Kabir. Author: Rabindranath Tagore (trans.) [EBook #6519]
May 25, 2010 at 4:05 pm
I will certainly look into them at some point.
May 26, 2010 at 6:50 am
Publishing in the Post-Gutenberg Age
https://www.fglaysher.com/Post_Gutenberg_Publishing.html
Poets & writers. Cut the publishers... Here's how. Tell your friends.
Briefly, if you're a poet or writer, the challenge of the Post-Gutenberg Age is for you to realize that there isn't any reason why you shouldn't sell your books directly to the reader, that you can, and that in fact there is every reason why you should.
May 23, 2010 at 8:19 am
https://www.fglaysher.com/Post_Gutenberg_Publishing.html
Poets & writers. Cut the publishers... Here's how. Tell your friends.
Briefly, if you're a poet or writer, the challenge of the Post-Gutenberg Age is for you to realize that there isn't any reason why you shouldn't sell your books directly to the reader, that you can, and that in fact there is every reason why you should.
| Publishing in the Post-Gutenberg Age |
Briefly, if you're a poet or writer, the challenge of the Post-Gutenberg Age is for you to realize that there isn't any reason why you shouldn't sell your books directly to the reader, that you can, and that in fact there is every reason why you should.
May 23, 2010 at 8:19 am
6 people like this
Maybe I'm hidebound, but I still prefer the old-fashioned book.
May 25, 2010 at 11:32 am
I have a room full of bound books. I just bought another hardcover one today. And Chinua Achebe's Education of a British-Protected Child a few days ago, as an ebook. I read the Preface and first chapter yesterday, and was absorbed and enjoyed it every bit as much as anything I've ever read. So, I think the question remains, What's a book?
May 25, 2010 at 3:53 pm
It occurs to me, if I haven't already mentioned it to you, that I have a blog about "eReading. The experience of eReading." I've been thinking about this for years now:
https://fglaysher.com/eReading/
I've also just updated my ebook site:
https://books.fglaysher.com/
https://fglaysher.com/eReading/
I've also just updated my ebook site:
https://books.fglaysher.com/
May 26, 2010 at 3:28 am
I am sure that eventually I will have to make the jump to e-books, but I will resist it as long as I can. Llike many people, I am less than enthusiastic about technology, and always drag my feet as long as I can.
May 26, 2010 at 6:43 am
I'm just the opposite on the technological side. To me, I have seen the *literary* potential for a long time and have spent many years trying to understand *how* to use it for aesthetic purposes. The Internet and digital revolution has opened up the literary community from the extremely insular and stultifying one that existed for many decades, under the thumb of an exhausted vision of life, nihilism and its academic, postmodern offsprings, the narrow little journals and national magazines that churn out the same unreadable thing decade after decade.
I'm well aware of the negative sides, but believe they're evolutionary, and anyway the Post-Gutenberg Age has a vitality and energy that has long since moved beyond old paradigms. Many literary people have increasingly fallen out of touch with the younger generations, which is only adding to the marginalization of the art.
What's happening really comes down to Vision, and the old modes and schools of literary thought and conception are appallingly exhausted, inert. I've tried to address some of these things in my response to an article in The American Scholar - Decline of the English Department
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2009/09/17/american-scholar-decline-of-the-english-department/
I'm well aware of the negative sides, but believe they're evolutionary, and anyway the Post-Gutenberg Age has a vitality and energy that has long since moved beyond old paradigms. Many literary people have increasingly fallen out of touch with the younger generations, which is only adding to the marginalization of the art.
What's happening really comes down to Vision, and the old modes and schools of literary thought and conception are appallingly exhausted, inert. I've tried to address some of these things in my response to an article in The American Scholar - Decline of the English Department
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2009/09/17/american-scholar-decline-of-the-english-department/
May 26, 2010 at 7:50 am
I am all for publishing things on the Internet. I would agree that it makes books and writers more available to everyone. (For example, I am reading the complete works of Lenin online, which would have been an expensive thing to do if I aquired all the bound books) This part of the Internet revolution I am all for. But I have grave reservations about Handheld e-readers. This is the part of the Technological Revolution that i am less than thrilled with.
May 26, 2010 at 7:59 am
"Grave reservations"? Why?
May 26, 2010 at 10:59 am
Maybe grave reservations is a little strong. Can they crash and you lose data? I do not know the answer to this question. I also find that reading off a screen is hard on the eyes.
May 26, 2010 at 11:04 am
Anything electronic will crash, occasionally. As with a computer, you reboot. My 3,000 ebooks and articles are on my hard drive and an SD card on my Sony Reader. In three years of reading on it, I've never lost a single book.
Most of the dedicated ereaders all use eInk technology, which is entirely different from a computer screen. EInk does not omit light into your eyes, so it doesn't create eye strain as on a laptop or desktop. In fact, it's exceedingly comfortable to read on. All the problems you raise have actually been solved. Google some ereaders for more details.
Most of the dedicated ereaders all use eInk technology, which is entirely different from a computer screen. EInk does not omit light into your eyes, so it doesn't create eye strain as on a laptop or desktop. In fact, it's exceedingly comfortable to read on. All the problems you raise have actually been solved. Google some ereaders for more details.
May 26, 2010 at 11:12 am
Okay, that is good to know. At some point, I'm sure I will have to make the jump. Right now, It's cheaper to buy used books than it is to invest in new equipment. Economics is kind of an issue.
May 26, 2010 at 11:14 am
Incidentally, what do you find interesting about Lenin's writings?
May 26, 2010 at 12:36 pm
I think there are some answers there to our current political, social and economic problems that are plaguing us in the West. Needless to say, freemarket economics has certainly screwed the middle and working classes.
May 27, 2010 at 12:07 pm
What answers do you think are there?
I've reading Tolstoy today, and on and off since winter. So, a lot of Russian decline and collapse are fresh in mind, again.
I've reading Tolstoy today, and on and off since winter. So, a lot of Russian decline and collapse are fresh in mind, again.
May 27, 2010 at 3:56 pm
Solving the problem of gross inequality that characterizes the U.S. economy is not going to be a peaceful or easy thing. Entrenched elites are going to have to be dislodged one way or another. The top 10% can't go on controlling 90% of the wealth in the US. Now mind you, this does not mean I am advocating Bolshevism.
May 27, 2010 at 6:21 pm
Marxism never solved the "problem of gross inequality" in Russia or any other country where it took over the public space. Are you suggesting some form of Marxism is needed to take over the "U.S. economy"? Through a "means that's "not going to be peaceful," namely violence?
There are many problems with capitalism as a religion, which renders it no better than Marxism as a religion. In my view, both are based on a grossly materialistic assessment of human nature and purpose, out of touch with the reality of over 200,000 years of human experience. History clearly shows that any effort to "dislodge one way or another" "entrenched elites" through violence results in social collapse, violence, and the upheaval of any decently human space, dragging all walks of life into the maw of Destruction and tyranny. Lenin and Stalin brought nothing but woe and misery to Russia. American and European academics who cling to their failed tyrannies are no better than the worst, extreme, unbridled capitalists.
There are many problems with capitalism as a religion, which renders it no better than Marxism as a religion. In my view, both are based on a grossly materialistic assessment of human nature and purpose, out of touch with the reality of over 200,000 years of human experience. History clearly shows that any effort to "dislodge one way or another" "entrenched elites" through violence results in social collapse, violence, and the upheaval of any decently human space, dragging all walks of life into the maw of Destruction and tyranny. Lenin and Stalin brought nothing but woe and misery to Russia. American and European academics who cling to their failed tyrannies are no better than the worst, extreme, unbridled capitalists.
May 29, 2010 at 6:00 am
Maybe so Frederick, but I don't exactly see the Dalai Lama coming up with any answers that will keep us from being homeless and starving.As for violence, Thomas Jefferson once wrote " A little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as neccessary in the political world as storms in the physical. "
Let me put it another way, you have made it very clear about your aversion to Marxism and socialism, so tell me, how do we deal with the 10% who control 90% of the wealth. What does 200,000 years of human histrory tell us to do about a Corporate Elite so entrenched that it forstalls any sort of reform legislation from being passed by the U.S. Government? What does the the Reform Bahai faith say about how I'M going to make my house payment and support my family since since I lost my job and have not been able to find another in six months?
Let me put it another way, you have made it very clear about your aversion to Marxism and socialism, so tell me, how do we deal with the 10% who control 90% of the wealth. What does 200,000 years of human histrory tell us to do about a Corporate Elite so entrenched that it forstalls any sort of reform legislation from being passed by the U.S. Government? What does the the Reform Bahai faith say about how I'M going to make my house payment and support my family since since I lost my job and have not been able to find another in six months?
May 29, 2010 at 4:16 pm
Underlying all your comments is a materialistic conception of life, no better than the gross materialism of consumer capitalism, the general run-of-the-mill nihilism that purports to be the great Truth of human existence, which pervades the American university, a false and pernicious doctrine, East or West, having led at times to the slaughter and sacrifice of the murdered millions, whether communism or the paltry nationalistic gods of modernity.
The Dali Lama has a much healthier vision of life than Lenin or Stalin ever remotely got close to. The Marxist attempt at co-optation of Thomas Jefferson represents a distortion of who he actually was and what he thought, a pitiful attempt to subvert a superior political philosophy. Corporate monopolies and plutocracy have been bridled in the past and can be again to the extent needed through democratic channels and mechanisms, not the violence of Marxism, which would be merely a route back to Hell on earth.
The Dali Lama, the Reform Bahai Faith, and all the great religious traditions, as I understand them, teach people, whether Marxists or otherwise, to pray and meditate on the purpose and nature of human existence, spurn Utopias, secular or religious, spurn violence for the plague it is, seek to control themselves, not others, live for something worthy of the human being, not crude materialisms, seek love, compassion, and spiritual enlightenment and the detachment that comes through love of the Divine and selfless service of other human beings. Only then, East or West, as the individual chooses spiritual growth and inner development, does the exterior, social order begin to be changed and improved in a healthy, non-violent, evolutionary way.
Prayers of Abdul-Baha
https://www.reformbahai.org/Prayers_of_Abdul-Baha.html
The Dali Lama has a much healthier vision of life than Lenin or Stalin ever remotely got close to. The Marxist attempt at co-optation of Thomas Jefferson represents a distortion of who he actually was and what he thought, a pitiful attempt to subvert a superior political philosophy. Corporate monopolies and plutocracy have been bridled in the past and can be again to the extent needed through democratic channels and mechanisms, not the violence of Marxism, which would be merely a route back to Hell on earth.
The Dali Lama, the Reform Bahai Faith, and all the great religious traditions, as I understand them, teach people, whether Marxists or otherwise, to pray and meditate on the purpose and nature of human existence, spurn Utopias, secular or religious, spurn violence for the plague it is, seek to control themselves, not others, live for something worthy of the human being, not crude materialisms, seek love, compassion, and spiritual enlightenment and the detachment that comes through love of the Divine and selfless service of other human beings. Only then, East or West, as the individual chooses spiritual growth and inner development, does the exterior, social order begin to be changed and improved in a healthy, non-violent, evolutionary way.
Prayers of Abdul-Baha
https://www.reformbahai.org/Prayers_of_Abdul-Baha.html
May 30, 2010 at 5:50 am
Nobel Literature Series By The Diplomat. Know the Asia-Pacific
Art, life, culture & style in Asia
https://the-diplomat.com/new-emissary/2010/05/21/nobel-literature-series/
May 23, 2010 at 5:21 am
Art, life, culture & style in Asia
https://the-diplomat.com/new-emissary/2010/05/21/nobel-literature-series/
|
Nobel Literature Series | New Emissary |
Despite big changes in literature, we've found reason to turn the focus back on it. Specifically we look at 5 Asia-Pacific recipients of the Nobel Prize.
May 23, 2010 at 5:21 am
|
Borges. Moon Mirror. Mirror Moon. |
Borges. Moon Mirror. Mirror Moon. On the pampas. Buenos Aires. “O Poet of the Moon!” Under the Southern Cross, bitter juntas of the soul.
May 22, 2010 at 6:20 am
2 people like this
I can feel almost the same about Borges. Thanks.
May 22, 2010 at 10:00 pm
Probably you know Borges has some interesting connections to Japan. He visited twice later in life, speaking on the decline of the West in Toyko and went to various temples in Nara and Kyoto, and apparently was especially impressed with the Ise Shrine.
His companion at the end of his life was Maria Kadoma, a Japanese-Argentine. While there is a lot of the usual gaijin in Japan syndrome, I think some of his poems grappling with his brief visits to Japan are suggestive, "Shinto" and "The Web"--"Those modest gods touch us-- / touch us and move on."
His companion at the end of his life was Maria Kadoma, a Japanese-Argentine. While there is a lot of the usual gaijin in Japan syndrome, I think some of his poems grappling with his brief visits to Japan are suggestive, "Shinto" and "The Web"--"Those modest gods touch us-- / touch us and move on."
May 23, 2010 at 5:07 am
Thanks for this precious info. I'll keep it in mind. I'm very glad that I can have a connection with a well-informed literary critic like you.
May 23, 2010 at 5:11 am
You're more than welcome. I appreciate having a friend in Japan who is serious about writing and literature.
May 23, 2010 at 5:16 am
Excerpt on Kobo Abe from "Japan’s Floating Bridge of Dreams." The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture.
Excerpt available on my Reviews blog, The Woman in the Dunes. Kobo Abe.
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/woman-in-the-dunes-kobo-abe
https://www.fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
May 20, 2010 at 4:24 am
Excerpt available on my Reviews blog, The Woman in the Dunes. Kobo Abe.
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/woman-in-the-dunes-kobo-abe
https://www.fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
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The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture, Frederick Glaysher |
East and West meet in a new synthesis of a global vision of humankind, United Nations, epic poetry
May 20, 2010 at 4:24 am
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I am planning on reading this book soon. It should be most interesting and instructive.
May 21, 2010 at 8:35 am
Thank you for your interest. Let me know what think.
May 22, 2010 at 4:13 am
Would this book be available in India in print, or should I just see the e-version? Advice!
May 22, 2010 at 8:22 pm
It's available through several different booksellers in or to India, including Flipkart (Karnataka) and Infibeam:
https://www.flipkart.com/book/grove-eumenides-frederick-glaysher-essays/0967042186
https://www.infibeam.com/Books/info/Frederick-Glaysher/The-Grove-of-the-Eumenides-Essays-on/0967042186.html
Deliverable Countries: This product ships to United Arab Emirates, Australia, Belgium, Bahrain, Switzerland, China, Germany, Spain, Finland, France, Hong Kong, Indonesia, India, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Thailand, South Africa.
Thanks for your interest. Hope this helps. For other booksellers worldwide see https://www.fglaysher.com/order_books.html
https://www.flipkart.com/book/grove-eumenides-frederick-glaysher-essays/0967042186
https://www.infibeam.com/Books/info/Frederick-Glaysher/The-Grove-of-the-Eumenides-Essays-on/0967042186.html
Deliverable Countries: This product ships to United Arab Emirates, Australia, Belgium, Bahrain, Switzerland, China, Germany, Spain, Finland, France, Hong Kong, Indonesia, India, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Thailand, South Africa.
Thanks for your interest. Hope this helps. For other booksellers worldwide see https://www.fglaysher.com/order_books.html
May 23, 2010 at 4:01 am
Thanks ! I'll surely lend you my perspective on it.
May 23, 2010 at 6:30 am
Though seeking answers from others, he "alone was lost, uncomprehending." Physically, materially, like the West, Japan exists; in terms of spiritual or psychological time, the "vacuum," quintessentially the same as in the West, has swallowed everything: "The town I knew was gone." What lies beyond the curve, if anything, remains to be seen.
May 19, 2010 at 8:47 am
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And so it is for modern Japan. He takes a taxi up the hill, beyond the curve:
"Spatially, the town had a solid physical existence, but temporally, it was a vacuum. It existed--yet horribly, it had no existence whatever . . . the town I knew was gone."
"Spatially, the town had a solid physical existence, but temporally, it was a vacuum. It existed--yet horribly, it had no existence whatever . . . the town I knew was gone."
May 19, 2010 at 5:05 am
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Abe expresses here not only the universally modern sense of existential void but especially the Japanese fear of the loss of traditional identity under the onslaught of modernity. Abe’s persona significantly and desperately says, "Until I found that town beyond the curve, there could be no resolution."
May 18, 2010 at 8:45 am
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Nausea overtakes him. He manages to turn around and walk back down the hill. His "old confidence was gone." Taking refuge in a coffee shop, he wonders, no longer sure, who he is since he has forgotten his name and where he works. Frantically fumbling with the contents of his wallet and pockets, looking for clues, he realizes, "I had mislaid . . . myself."
May 18, 2010 at 5:30 am
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What is this from? One of my themes is the fiction of selfhood. I'd like to read more of this.
May 18, 2010 at 5:39 am
"Beyond the Curve" (1966), Kobo Abe. I can't recall what collection the story was in when I read it. Shouldn't be too hard to find.
May 18, 2010 at 7:08 am
Perhaps it is a separate novel or novella... glancing at my bookshelf, in despair, I recommend checking google or Amazon. They're easier!
May 18, 2010 at 7:17 am
Okay thanks, I'll do that. Thanks for posting it.
May 18, 2010 at 7:51 am
By the way did you see Dan Chiasson's article on contemporary poetry in the last New Yorker? It made some Language Poets mad!
May 18, 2010 at 7:52 am
Here's the link. I see in the news feed that Ron Silliman is over-reacting to Chiasson's comments about LangPo, one of which follows:
These days, it’s hard to remember how hard Language poets once tried to submerge their individual differences: the aim was to be understood as a collective. One reason Armantrout has become so good is that she takes the basic premises of Language writing toward the mapping of a single individual’s extraordinary mind and uniquely broken heart. “Versed” (Wesleyan; $22.95) is the book that got Armantrout the Pulitzer. Mentions previous books, “Up to Speed” (2004) and “Next Life” (2007). In them, she puts her mind to big philosophical questions. But the mind in these poems is attached to a person, and people have all kinds of troubling entanglements. Mentions Armantrout’s 2006 cancer diagnosis; she is now in remission: “Versed” is a book about illness, and about the jargon-replete culture of being kept alive. Like Ashbery’s “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror,” “Versed” is the kind of crossover book that makes the border disappear.
Read more: https://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/05/17/100517crbo_books_chiasson#ixzz0oIKafBEa
These days, it’s hard to remember how hard Language poets once tried to submerge their individual differences: the aim was to be understood as a collective. One reason Armantrout has become so good is that she takes the basic premises of Language writing toward the mapping of a single individual’s extraordinary mind and uniquely broken heart. “Versed” (Wesleyan; $22.95) is the book that got Armantrout the Pulitzer. Mentions previous books, “Up to Speed” (2004) and “Next Life” (2007). In them, she puts her mind to big philosophical questions. But the mind in these poems is attached to a person, and people have all kinds of troubling entanglements. Mentions Armantrout’s 2006 cancer diagnosis; she is now in remission: “Versed” is a book about illness, and about the jargon-replete culture of being kept alive. Like Ashbery’s “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror,” “Versed” is the kind of crossover book that makes the border disappear.
Read more: https://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/05/17/100517crbo_books_chiasson#ixzz0oIKafBEa
May 18, 2010 at 7:53 am
Thanks, Diana, for mentioning the New Yorker review. I seldom read it, and when I do I usually remember why I don't... Language poets mad? Wow, momentous...
May 18, 2010 at 8:42 am
When ordering The Woman in the Dunes I also ordered Masks by Fumiko Ueda Enchi
based on customer reviews. Do you know this author's work at all?
based on customer reviews. Do you know this author's work at all?
May 18, 2010 at 9:40 am
No, I don't. But found this on google: https://www.yourdictionary.com/biography/enchi-fumiko-ueda
She sounds interesting. I can really understand how oppressive it is for women in Japan. Let me know, if you would, what you think.
She sounds interesting. I can really understand how oppressive it is for women in Japan. Let me know, if you would, what you think.
May 18, 2010 at 9:51 am
Masks is pretty good.
May 18, 2010 at 1:16 pm
He stands there agonizing in his mind about what might or ought to be around the curve until he is overcome by anxiety, fearing "the town’s very existence would fade away and then vanish." He considers, "I myself was no longer myself, but some mysterious other."
May 17, 2010 at 8:48 am
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Hola Frederick...I just finished writing some pages in my novel in progress, the final quote, I feel like this, gracias...and it's wonderful.
May 17, 2010 at 9:07 am
Rereading the above now, it makes me think of something out of Borges... out or into a mirror...
May 18, 2010 at 7:09 am
In the story "Beyond the Curve" (1966), Abe writes about a man who, while climbing up a hill, comes to a halt before a curve in the road:
"For the life of me, I couldn’t visualize what lay beyond the curve. . . . I knew perfectly well that beyond the curve was the town on the hilltop where I lived. My temporary lapse of memory in no way altered the fact of its existence."
"For the life of me, I couldn’t visualize what lay beyond the curve. . . . I knew perfectly well that beyond the curve was the town on the hilltop where I lived. My temporary lapse of memory in no way altered the fact of its existence."
May 17, 2010 at 6:03 am
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When the opportunity for escape finally comes, drained of all inner meaning, strength, and purpose, he no longer has the will to leave.
May 17, 2010 at 3:32 am
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Robert Hayden was appointed Consultant in Poetry because of his poetry, not his race.
May 16, 2010 at 4:22 pm
Modern Japanese writers have found the transition easy to make from the illusion of samsara to the illusion of nihilism which is quotidian reality. Similarly, the old woman turns out not to be so old after all, and Jumpei learns social customs are merely illusions too, as he rapes her brutally and repeatedly while she at times enjoys or submits to it.
May 16, 2010 at 1:56 pm
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The Woman in the Dunes. Kobo Abe.
May 16, 2010 at 2:04 pm
It's probably the greatest existentialist, Japanese classic. The book is better than the movie, mentioned here somewhere, but also worth watching, in its own right.
May 16, 2010 at 2:10 pm
Let me know what you think.
May 16, 2010 at 3:32 pm
This "illusion" is not the illusion of Buddhism, the floating world of Genji symbolizing a world of spiritual import. It is the illusion of everyday life through which the nihilist sees "the meaningless of existence," at last confronted, the real truth of human experience. "The world," Abe has Jumpei say in a simile, "is like sand."
May 16, 2010 at 9:42 am
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Reading the usual headlines of political, business, and domestic crimes and intrigues, Jumpei thinks,
"There wasn’t a single item of importance. A tower of illusion, all of it, made of illusory bricks and full of holes. . . . And so everybody, knowing the meaninglessness of existence, sets the center of his compass at his own home."
"There wasn’t a single item of importance. A tower of illusion, all of it, made of illusory bricks and full of holes. . . . And so everybody, knowing the meaninglessness of existence, sets the center of his compass at his own home."
May 16, 2010 at 4:34 am
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The men, however, are careful to provide the woman and man with the necessities of life as long as they continue to perform the nightly work of clearing back the everdrifting sand of reality, for the sand is manifestly symbolic. Upon his request, they even give Jumpei a newspaper.
May 15, 2010 at 5:36 am
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Later, the narrator explains, "the only certain factor was its movement; sand was the antithesis of all form." Despite his many appeals for help from the village men, the village benefits from the sand being fought back and they refuse to permit him to leave.
May 14, 2010 at 11:32 am
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The sex scene of the actress Kishida Kyoko (the woman in the dune) and the actor Okada Eiji (the protagonist) in the film version of the novel is still overwhelming for me.
May 15, 2010 at 5:10 am
Good evening in Kyoto. I remember is as cold, desperate, and brutal, basically a rape. I wonder if there isn't something different in the sensibility of Japanese towards sex from more Puritanical Americans. Japanese TV has much more graphic depictions of such things. Or am I wrong? How do you understand it?
I suppose I've always thought Abe was suggesting the dehumanization of intimacy between women and men, as part of the existential angst.
I suppose I've always thought Abe was suggesting the dehumanization of intimacy between women and men, as part of the existential angst.
May 15, 2010 at 5:32 am
Also, there's much more the sense of male dominance, at times, Japanese drama, I think, and culture. I wonder if that isn't part of what discourages some young women from wanting to get married even, other husbands often not being around, etc. Is Abe in some way, early, dealing with such cultural motifs?
May 15, 2010 at 5:34 am
Sorry, Goro, you're in Hiroshima, I misremembered.
May 15, 2010 at 6:11 am
I didn't necessarily see the very scene as a rape, Frederick, and that's not necessarily because, I believe, I'm a Japanese male and I'm badly influenced by this nation's excessive lenience with every erotic depiction in public.
Every time I read Abe's works, I cannot help feeling that most of his important female characters are depicted as more or less "willing" to be dominated by his male protagonists (One of the students in my last year's Japanese lit class exclusively on Abe was wondering seriously why the woman in the dune is behaving rather voluntarily as something like a "whore," and I thought this student's question not a little important --- Have you read Abe's another novel The Ark Sakura? The only female character in it keeps behaving that way, too).
For Abe, I now assume, a mysterious femme-fatale (and, apparently "whore-like") character was often necessary, not particularly because of his strong interest in "the dehumanization of intimacy between two sexes," but rather because she could be effectively used as a "tool" to "snare" a conventionally-oriented male protagonist into an extraordinarily surreal world. Some feminist readers might feel easily irritated by Abe's descriptions of women in general, and, although I don't see myself as a feminist, I can understand such a reading.
Every time I read Abe's works, I cannot help feeling that most of his important female characters are depicted as more or less "willing" to be dominated by his male protagonists (One of the students in my last year's Japanese lit class exclusively on Abe was wondering seriously why the woman in the dune is behaving rather voluntarily as something like a "whore," and I thought this student's question not a little important --- Have you read Abe's another novel The Ark Sakura? The only female character in it keeps behaving that way, too).
For Abe, I now assume, a mysterious femme-fatale (and, apparently "whore-like") character was often necessary, not particularly because of his strong interest in "the dehumanization of intimacy between two sexes," but rather because she could be effectively used as a "tool" to "snare" a conventionally-oriented male protagonist into an extraordinarily surreal world. Some feminist readers might feel easily irritated by Abe's descriptions of women in general, and, although I don't see myself as a feminist, I can understand such a reading.
May 15, 2010 at 6:15 am
Well, in fact, I'm now living in Saga, Kyushu. Hiroshima is my hometown. And I spent four years in Kyoto as an undergrad of Kyoto Univ.
May 15, 2010 at 6:17 am
Eve in "The Magic Chalk" is also more or less depicted as sexually seductive for the male protagonist, I think. She once threatens him with a gun, yes, but she cannot dominate him at all in the end --- Rather, she ends up functioning as a kind of "tool" to invite Argon to the inside of the wall, which is the center of the surreal in that short story.
May 15, 2010 at 6:28 am
All very interesting. I don't mean to imply the USA has anything superior, necessarily, in terms of sex to Japanese culture. We have our own numerous, complex problems, perhaps. Often it's really a matter of individuals, though broader generalizations can be made, in terms of modernity. I'll keep The Ark Sakura in mind, since I've never read it.
While I've never considered myself a feminist either, as I've aged to my mid-fifties I've become much more concerned and aware of the depiction and abuse of women, in and out of literature. Your student's question too may show some young women are able to criticize such depictions, which certainly don't help create a healthier climate for women. I'm not suggesting crude moralizing and idealizing. Literature is often only literature when it is about things not going right.
I still think there has been a lot cultural change for both Japan and the world since 1962, enough to where existential modes seem very dated now.
While I've never considered myself a feminist either, as I've aged to my mid-fifties I've become much more concerned and aware of the depiction and abuse of women, in and out of literature. Your student's question too may show some young women are able to criticize such depictions, which certainly don't help create a healthier climate for women. I'm not suggesting crude moralizing and idealizing. Literature is often only literature when it is about things not going right.
I still think there has been a lot cultural change for both Japan and the world since 1962, enough to where existential modes seem very dated now.
May 15, 2010 at 7:16 am
Every night the woman shovels sand into baskets which the village men haul up by rope and carry away, just enough to prevent their suffocation. Watching her, Niki Jumpei remarks, "you’ll never finish, no matter how long you work at it."
May 14, 2010 at 8:54 am
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This "law" soon becomes clear when village men trick him into going sixty feet down in a cavity to spend the night at an old woman’s house. Before long, he realizes that there is probably no way to get back out. The "ceaselessly flowing sand," "this shapeless, destructive power," which "had no form" of its own, was continually pouring down on the little house threatening to destroy it and bury its occupants alive.
May 13, 2010 at 1:38 pm
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In Kobo Abe’s masterpiece The Woman in the Dune (1962), the protagonist Niki Jumpei, an amateur entomologist, travels to the seaside to collect specimens. He happens on a village built in the midst of the dunes with houses at the bottom of huge craters or cavities of sand. Peering down into one of the cavities at a small house "submerged in silence," he muses, ". . . there was no escaping the law of the sand."
May 13, 2010 at 8:24 am
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A truly great book.
May 13, 2010 at 10:51 am
Its film version is also a masterpiece.
May 13, 2010 at 11:59 am
Yes, the book is a strange tale, and the black and white of the movie conveys so well the bleak absurdity and dehumanization sucking everything into it.
May 13, 2010 at 1:54 pm
It is truly an inspirational piece.
May 14, 2010 at 6:37 am
What kind of "inspiration" is it? It's really a very dark and gloomy vision of life, isn't it? Has life not changed at all since 1962?
May 14, 2010 at 9:01 am
Literary type.
I know life has changed.
It's just, lovely expresssion. I like dark stuff.
But I also feel its a touch pessimist.
I know life has changed.
It's just, lovely expresssion. I like dark stuff.
But I also feel its a touch pessimist.
May 14, 2010 at 9:56 am
It is a profound and even lovely literary expression of what it means to be a human being in 1962, though bleak.
I have a rather dark streak in my own soul... something about being human. What's it mean today? There's the challenge for every writer...
I have a rather dark streak in my own soul... something about being human. What's it mean today? There's the challenge for every writer...
May 14, 2010 at 10:35 am
No i do not think life has changed that much since 1962. Frederick.
May 14, 2010 at 1:18 pm
Always a matter of one's experience, the individual writer, poet, artist, whatever... We forget that when we look around at the great monuments of art. Yeats comes to mind, in that regard... They get taken for granted. Life moves on. But few see or appreciate it, though the many millions live it.
And then, like a bolt from the blue, Melville publishes Moby Dick, Hawthrone The Scarlet Letter, Whitman Leaves of Grass, etc., etc... Frequently, the world just goes on, as it always does, as W. H. Auden phrased, "dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse / Scratches its innocent behind on a tree." Eventually, someone says, This Whitman guy, he's a bit eccentric and unusually compared to Longfellow, but... and the culture is never the same again. Everyone says, yes, that's how life is for me too!
And then, like a bolt from the blue, Melville publishes Moby Dick, Hawthrone The Scarlet Letter, Whitman Leaves of Grass, etc., etc... Frequently, the world just goes on, as it always does, as W. H. Auden phrased, "dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse / Scratches its innocent behind on a tree." Eventually, someone says, This Whitman guy, he's a bit eccentric and unusually compared to Longfellow, but... and the culture is never the same again. Everyone says, yes, that's how life is for me too!
May 14, 2010 at 1:28 pm
I'll get the movie from Netflix. Book from Amazon.
May 18, 2010 at 8:29 am
Writing shortly after World War II, Abe understands modern Japan has lost something of immense value, and a mere artist can not replace it.
May 13, 2010 at 5:46 am
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"After everyone left, there came a murmuring from the wall. 'it isn’t chalk that will remake the world . . .’ A single drop welled out of the wall. It fell from just below the eye of the pictorial Argon." Kobo Abe (tr. Alison Kibrick)
May 13, 2010 at 3:45 am
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He would have "to draw the world all over again" and begins with Eve, "stark naked," to whom he identifies himself as Adam and "also an artist, and a world planner." Eve, however, borrows his chalk, draws a gun, and shoots him. Other people in the building hear the gunshot: "By the time they ran in, Argon had been completely absorbed into the wall and had become a picture."
May 12, 2010 at 2:30 pm
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I've been enjoying the posts about Abe.
May 12, 2010 at 7:47 pm
Thanks for saying so. As someone who has lived in the urban landscape of Japan, I can really *feel* the world Abe is evoking. He's marvelously creative in probing around in its soft spots.
May 13, 2010 at 3:49 am
And Eve's entire figure is dissolved because she goes out of Argon's room, which she should not have done, in order to enjoy the finally-achieved freedom --- Right?
May 13, 2010 at 5:42 am
Mmm, I'm not so sure. It's been some time since I read it, so I"m reluctant to comment so specifically on it, not fresh in my mind. Is Abe suggesting and acknowledging her as a fantasy? But one that reveals the plight of modernity?
How do you understand it?
How do you understand it?
May 13, 2010 at 5:49 am
As long as I remember, Eve's destiny ends that way. My interpretation changes every time I read Abe's "The Magical Chalk" (Is the English translation's title different?), but now I see it as a unique literary device to imply Abe's uncanny desire to blur the borderline between the creator and the created.
As the story goes, the creator Argon's authorial power is downgraded into a mere character on the wall, while the created Eve's subordinate status is gradually transformed into a kind of Jeanne d'Arc who can squash her creator's power by force. So, no more authorial "exploitation" in the room. Revolution, you might say. May be an embodiment of Abe's early-stage obsession with communism.
Yet --- This story doesn't end there, because Abe cannot help exposing this kind of revolution as a transient illusion. Despite Argon's "dethronement," Eve is not bestowed the next master's rank in his "kingdom" room --- When Argon vanishes, she is destined to vanish together. And they are completely blurred on the wall --- Equality finally achieved between the two, but no more options for the room's "true" master.
"The Magic Chalk" seems to symbolize Abe's smoldering dream of revolution and ironical view about the dream's fatal limit. The former made his world's beginning quite surreal. The latter made his world's conclusion rather classically realistic.
As the story goes, the creator Argon's authorial power is downgraded into a mere character on the wall, while the created Eve's subordinate status is gradually transformed into a kind of Jeanne d'Arc who can squash her creator's power by force. So, no more authorial "exploitation" in the room. Revolution, you might say. May be an embodiment of Abe's early-stage obsession with communism.
Yet --- This story doesn't end there, because Abe cannot help exposing this kind of revolution as a transient illusion. Despite Argon's "dethronement," Eve is not bestowed the next master's rank in his "kingdom" room --- When Argon vanishes, she is destined to vanish together. And they are completely blurred on the wall --- Equality finally achieved between the two, but no more options for the room's "true" master.
"The Magic Chalk" seems to symbolize Abe's smoldering dream of revolution and ironical view about the dream's fatal limit. The former made his world's beginning quite surreal. The latter made his world's conclusion rather classically realistic.
May 13, 2010 at 7:00 am
Yes, the title is rendered in English translation as "Magic Chalk." Interesting reading in terms of his Marxism, remaking the world, but failing. It was in 1950 in the postwar ruins, still, that he wrote the story, which perhaps led logically to the dire poverty of Argon. I wonder if the magic chalk itself isn't partly the ability of the writer, Abe, to create an imaginary world with which to replace the devastated postwar one. His realistic admission that chalk alone cannot remake the world can be taken, I think, in so many ways. Very evocative, for modern, as well as Japanese experience. There's a type of poignant tragedy in the thought, I think, implicitly understanding loss and the difficulty of renewing civilization after such devastation and ruin. "A single drop fell out of the wall..."
May 13, 2010 at 8:23 am
The realization hits him that he can create an entirely new world and spends four weeks contemplating just how to do it. Driven to despair by the burdensome responsibility, he finally decides merely to draw a door to the new world, but upon opening it finds, "an awesome wasteland glaring in the noonday sun."
May 12, 2010 at 9:29 am
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To Terry Eagleton and the trite piece on poetry in the New York Times, compare my essay on the article last fall in The American Scholar, by William M. Chace, “The Decline of the English Department: How it happened and what could be done to reverse it.”
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2009/09/17/american-scholar-decline-of-the-english-department/
May 12, 2010 at 6:24 am
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2009/09/17/american-scholar-decline-of-the-english-department/
| The Globe » Blog Archive » The American Scholar – Decline of the English Department |
Having readThe American Scholar for probably over thirty years, I could only feel the most seething contempt for theAutumn 2009 article byWilliam M. Chace, “The Decline of the English Department:How it happened and what could be done to reverse it.”
May 12, 2010 at 6:24 am
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I think that theory has been detrimental to the study of literature. But I do think Marxism and Decontruction are useful in Philosophy and the study of Politics. I'm sure I'll get rebuked for this, but I think we need to go back to kind of Literarary criticism Edmund Wilson , Lionel Trilling , Leslie Fiedler or even William Troy wrote. I also think Randell Jarrell and Kenneth Burke might be good models.
May 12, 2010 at 7:55 pm
I respect your views. I'm not trying to "rebuke" you, just state candidly how things appear to me. I agree with you that theory has indeed been "detrimental to the study of literature." I'd even go way beyond that, and say VERY to utterly corrupting of literature, for it has confused young writers, poets, and scholars, by undermining the humanistic and aesthetic values that alone constitute the raison d'etre of literature. Deconstruction, reader-response, etc., all have inculcated a dogmatic, intolerant relativism into literary and philosophical thought, crushing and driving out, at times, capable young people who might have proffered a deeper vision than the banal little cliches of postmodernism--obscenities against the human soul.
Other than Lionel Trilling, none of my heroes, to speak honestly. His insight into the "adversarial" nature of modern literature has always meant a great deal to me, one I've never forgotten, proof to me of its truth and power.
Wilson, Burke, Fiedler, Jarrell, well, they're all part of the winding down of the literary tradition, as far as I'm concerned...
In terms of theory and its dregs, I have often recalled and been animated by the words of Saul Bellow on the Deconstructionists—a real writer would bury them. That's been the goal of my life, as a poet and poet-critic, since about 1980. It's the whole vision of life, endemic in the university and literary circles, and broadly in our culture, that has to change from the cheap, repulsive goods of Nietzsche, Marx, and company...
I've written a number of books that chart a different course, in harmony with the tradition, not, I hope, parasites on it.
I had your comments below in mind also, below, when responding about Terry Eagleton.
Other than Lionel Trilling, none of my heroes, to speak honestly. His insight into the "adversarial" nature of modern literature has always meant a great deal to me, one I've never forgotten, proof to me of its truth and power.
Wilson, Burke, Fiedler, Jarrell, well, they're all part of the winding down of the literary tradition, as far as I'm concerned...
In terms of theory and its dregs, I have often recalled and been animated by the words of Saul Bellow on the Deconstructionists—a real writer would bury them. That's been the goal of my life, as a poet and poet-critic, since about 1980. It's the whole vision of life, endemic in the university and literary circles, and broadly in our culture, that has to change from the cheap, repulsive goods of Nietzsche, Marx, and company...
I've written a number of books that chart a different course, in harmony with the tradition, not, I hope, parasites on it.
I had your comments below in mind also, below, when responding about Terry Eagleton.
May 13, 2010 at 3:43 am
How about Guy Davenport? His essays always struck me as informed by wide reading and a sensible viewpoint. Also I might mention Jonathan Williams.His essay often struck me as well informed.
May 13, 2010 at 10:45 am
The latest feeble dirge for American poetry. Neither the political nor the common reader is the problem, both of which are mere symptoms of a much deeper malaise, the loss of belief in a serious purpose to human existence, namely belief in the Transcendent, the One of all civilizations, all of which have plunged into, or been disrupted, by the modern plague of nihilism.
https://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/11/does-poetry-matter/
May 12, 2010 at 5:18 am
https://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/11/does-poetry-matter/
|
Does Poetry Matter? - Paper Cuts Blog - NYTimes.com |
Even among poets there seems to be a nervous consensus that poetry isn't relevant.
May 12, 2010 at 5:18 am
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I couldn't agree more, Frederick.
May 12, 2010 at 5:21 am
Huzzah. Thank you, sir. I am sharing this on my page today.
May 12, 2010 at 5:41 am
crock o' hogwash -
May 12, 2010 at 5:43 am
@Fiona Zerbst Thanks for saying so. Anything may be said in the modern world, but Nothing believed... the shape of our time. Poetry and art, once celebrants of the Mystery of life, now testify to its triviality and meaninglessness. To question that modern secular doctrine is worse than heresy...
@Molly Fisk, I respect your conscience, but don't share it. If you want to expand on your thinking, I'd be happy to discuss it.
@Molly Fisk, I respect your conscience, but don't share it. If you want to expand on your thinking, I'd be happy to discuss it.
May 12, 2010 at 6:22 am
oh, sorry! i was agreeing with you, and commenting on the piece. too early in the morning here for me to be trying to be pithy.
May 12, 2010 at 6:25 am
Yes - we're the new heretics. :)
May 12, 2010 at 6:27 am
Yes, I do believe in the late stage of postmodernity we seem to be in, if one is in it, I've never conceived of myself as "belonging" to it, construes any sense of transcendence as heretical. That is, the meta-narrative of advancing Enlightenment progress, through whatever sources, Nietzsche, Marx, etc., all presuppose a secular to atheistic or agnostic understanding of life, cynical post-modernism constituting merely a variation of the dis-ease...
Far from reversion, the common variation, I repudiate the modern historicism that undermines all religious belief, for culture has reached a stage at which, if one thing is clear, it is blatant that culture is not a substitute for the Transcendent.
Far from historicism, the universality of the Transcendent resides at the core of all the great religious traditions, offering not fanaticism, as a caricature of faith, but what is held in common, the experience of the Mystery of Being.
Poetic and so-called literary Theeooorrry often operate on a level analogous to the worst religious fanaticisms...
Far from reversion, the common variation, I repudiate the modern historicism that undermines all religious belief, for culture has reached a stage at which, if one thing is clear, it is blatant that culture is not a substitute for the Transcendent.
Far from historicism, the universality of the Transcendent resides at the core of all the great religious traditions, offering not fanaticism, as a caricature of faith, but what is held in common, the experience of the Mystery of Being.
Poetic and so-called literary Theeooorrry often operate on a level analogous to the worst religious fanaticisms...
May 12, 2010 at 7:11 am
If I've understood correctly, you take a more sweeping sense of history than the narrow theoretical model that rationalism called into being. Though I'm rusty as an academic, very rusty, so forgive any imprecision!
May 12, 2010 at 7:50 am
I would phrase it as the *fullness* of human history and experience. I prefer lived life to theory. The latter has brought the world a long line of dehumanizing tragedies.
Rationalism, in my view, is only a problem when it's turned into a substitute religion... a common phenomenon, especially in universities.
Rationalism, in my view, is only a problem when it's turned into a substitute religion... a common phenomenon, especially in universities.
May 12, 2010 at 7:59 am
Well, that's precisely the issue. It is now a substitute for religion. One wonders what these new atheists make of poetry. I suppose they have no use for it, or they view it as some atavistic instinct that should be treated with a certain amount of patronising indulgence. ;)
May 12, 2010 at 8:22 am
You're right that all of those derisive attitudes are used often to marginalize poetry as an art, when it's stripped of being involved with the spiritual dimension in any way, which is almost always the case during the last hundred years or so.
May 12, 2010 at 8:35 am
Yep. But it shall prevail.
May 12, 2010 at 8:42 am
was searching the NYT for some information when I came across this article. I read it and shared it. I was wondering is it true? what is your opinion on this. I have read some submissions of yours concerning issues like this on this platform.
May 12, 2010 at 8:46 am
I am lame when it comes to such academic discussion for my background and learning is not in the classics. Hence, permit me if I am wrong to ask a question. Are you perchance, by your submission saying that Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Co are turning reasoning or the new atheism, if there be a thing like that, into a new religion?
May 12, 2010 at 8:54 am
@Fiona, With the long view of the history of Western civilization, i.e., from Greece and Rome forward, the transcendent has always been part of the office of the poet and artist. Indeed, it is the defining characteristic of art, what often distinguishes art as worthy of attention, respect, and passing on to the next generation.
Modernity has lost such an understanding of art, and the university has usually been at the center of destroying and draining the transcendent from literature and art. Indeed, it is the raison d'etre of Deconstruction and other theeooorries... an ersatz religion if there ever was one.
@Nana, For many American poets, the art has been turning in on itself for many decades. Merely a statement of fact. All decadent literary periods go through something analogous.
In terms of "new" atheists," I'd go so far as to say, they are nothing new, old really, a rationalistic fundamentalism gasping in fear and loathing. The secular Enlightenment myth has always been a substitute religion for many, especially in literary and academic circles. One can find it in the writing of Matthew Arnold, well over a hundred years ago.
Modernity has lost such an understanding of art, and the university has usually been at the center of destroying and draining the transcendent from literature and art. Indeed, it is the raison d'etre of Deconstruction and other theeooorries... an ersatz religion if there ever was one.
@Nana, For many American poets, the art has been turning in on itself for many decades. Merely a statement of fact. All decadent literary periods go through something analogous.
In terms of "new" atheists," I'd go so far as to say, they are nothing new, old really, a rationalistic fundamentalism gasping in fear and loathing. The secular Enlightenment myth has always been a substitute religion for many, especially in literary and academic circles. One can find it in the writing of Matthew Arnold, well over a hundred years ago.
May 12, 2010 at 9:25 am
@Glaysher do you then believe in organised religion?
May 12, 2010 at 10:28 am
"Organized religion" entails nearly an endless number of entities and phenomenon. The question is usually which one, when I believe, speaking broadly, they're all true.
From another perspective, true religion is a frame of mind, an "attitude to life," not an organization that immediately moves to a narrowing of the field of experience and definition, so often, perhaps for some inevitably exclusion. Speaking positively about modernity, it has created a space that is wider and open, pluralistic, seeking universality.
I wouldn't want to say one or the other. Life isn't that simple. The rich variety of modern, global culture constitutes a new stage of human spiritual development, a challenge and hope for us all.
To connect with where this conversation began, I'd say poetry and literature at their best have usually explored the dimensions of experience that touch on the frontiers of states of consciousness often thought religious. Our modern substitutes are disappointing, that's where we are... globally.
From another perspective, true religion is a frame of mind, an "attitude to life," not an organization that immediately moves to a narrowing of the field of experience and definition, so often, perhaps for some inevitably exclusion. Speaking positively about modernity, it has created a space that is wider and open, pluralistic, seeking universality.
I wouldn't want to say one or the other. Life isn't that simple. The rich variety of modern, global culture constitutes a new stage of human spiritual development, a challenge and hope for us all.
To connect with where this conversation began, I'd say poetry and literature at their best have usually explored the dimensions of experience that touch on the frontiers of states of consciousness often thought religious. Our modern substitutes are disappointing, that's where we are... globally.
May 12, 2010 at 11:07 am
@Nana Fredua-Agyeman, I'm having pangs of conscience that you asked me a simple question but I gave you a circuitous, vague answer. I apologize. I'm a member of the Reform Bahai Faith, which is largely not an "organized" religion in the usual sense, but accepts and looks to the universal teachings of all the great religious traditions. The emphasis tends to be on the individual cultivating humane, spiritual qualities of character and what is held in common, etc. Hope this helps.
May 12, 2010 at 2:16 pm
thanks...I think your last response answered my question. I have for sometime now been dodging religion. I don't want to be caught up in some box. Yet I tend to ask myself 'where is the source?' because there must be one. So I do say I am spiritual and not religious. Religion to me is divisive and parochial. It pitches a brother against a brother and leads to unncessary and unwarranted deaths. Examples can be found all over the world the Chinese muslims, the Catholics of Ireland, Christians and Muslims in Nigeria etc. And even throughout history the deeds and misdeeds of religions are there for all to see.
May 13, 2010 at 12:06 am
Yes, exactly how I feel too. Often the words "religion" or "faith" can become a little "box" that people interpret as cutting off thinking and agency, in place of easy, unearned answers. Life is much more complex. Every secular worldview hasn't done too well, either, from time to time. Being human is always a challenge.
May 13, 2010 at 2:19 am
Terry Eagleton's "The Death of Criticism?" A very belated swan song... Rather old news...
He typically brings it all down to politics, the ersatz of every good Marxist critic. To the barricades! Let's redeem the pathetic corpse of Theeooorrrry!
https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D-20dZxUAfu0%26feature%3Dplayer_embedded&h=975f9
May 12, 2010 at 4:25 am
He typically brings it all down to politics, the ersatz of every good Marxist critic. To the barricades! Let's redeem the pathetic corpse of Theeooorrrry!
https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D-20dZxUAfu0%26feature%3Dplayer_embedded&h=975f9
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Terry Eagleton: "The Death of Criticism?" |
One of Britains most influential literary critics, Terry Eagleton is Distinguished Professor of English Literature at the University of Lancaster, and Visiting Professor at the National University of Ireland, Galway. ...
May 12, 2010 at 4:25 am
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Thanks for posting this, though I don't think your synopsis accurate.
May 12, 2010 at 3:45 pm
He brinbs it arMound to politics at the end, a theory in itself, typically Marxist,,, How is that not accurate?
May 12, 2010 at 4:50 pm
Eagleton has always reflected ruefully about the way(s) in which both literature and literary criticism can seem or be indifferent to the vast human suffering and injustice of the world, but to say that he "brings it all down to politics" seems an exaggeration. He has both a moral and a social conscience, and he speaks it. My sense is that while he declares Theory dead and literary criticism gravely ill, he's not at all interested in "redeeming" theory's "pathetic corpse," much less rallying his auditors to the barricades. The most elegiac moments in the talk seem, on the contrary, to be when he's talking about F. R.Leavis and about the inability of many current readers, the children of theory, to talk intelligently or appreciatively about literature.
May 12, 2010 at 5:19 pm
Brian, Thank you for commenting again. I respect your opinion and Eagleton's and Marxism's concern for human suffering, the poor and exploited of the earth. I myself have much more social conscience in my writing than the typical postmodern impulse has usually ever been able to understand or tolerate. I know you're only being fair about Eagleton when you say he has not had much interest in deconstruction and other inert theories of literature. And it's true he has held on to a moral and social conscience. I respect him for that. Most of what passes in universities for scholarship and criticism lost both long ago.
I read Leavis decades ago, The Great Tradition, a secondary work, like Eagleton's, but more humanistic. I've always preferred the prose of poet-critics, the best, like Samuel Johnson and T. S. Eliot. They repay study, unlike all the sophistry of Derrida, et al. In the end, for me, Eagleton is basically in the same cadre--critics who want to use literature for something else.
Your use of "ruefully" and "elegiac" brings to mind, for me, wistful... and wishful thinking. Eagleton, and other Marxist critics, have all played their part in undermining literary studies and respect for literature, in and out of the university, and they have all helped corrupt university studies and literature, while imagining otherwise. They have the students they deserve... they're the ones they've produced, passing their bile down to the lower levels of education, ever lowering the university itself...
I read Leavis decades ago, The Great Tradition, a secondary work, like Eagleton's, but more humanistic. I've always preferred the prose of poet-critics, the best, like Samuel Johnson and T. S. Eliot. They repay study, unlike all the sophistry of Derrida, et al. In the end, for me, Eagleton is basically in the same cadre--critics who want to use literature for something else.
Your use of "ruefully" and "elegiac" brings to mind, for me, wistful... and wishful thinking. Eagleton, and other Marxist critics, have all played their part in undermining literary studies and respect for literature, in and out of the university, and they have all helped corrupt university studies and literature, while imagining otherwise. They have the students they deserve... they're the ones they've produced, passing their bile down to the lower levels of education, ever lowering the university itself...
May 13, 2010 at 3:06 am
Suddenly, he is awakened by the sound of food and crockery crashing to the floor: "The pictures he had chalked on the wall had vanished." Seeing food all around, he eats his fill and reflects, "the laws of the universe have changed." He then draws a bed, since he lacks one, as well as other furniture and food.
May 11, 2010 at 12:46 pm
1 person likes this
In the short story "Magic Chalk" (1950), Abe tells the tale of "a poor artist named Argon." Flat broke and starving, Argon discovers in his shabby apartment a piece of red chalk with which he mindlessly draws pictures of food and dishes on the wall. Falling asleep, he groans, "I’ve got to eat!"
May 11, 2010 at 9:26 am
2 people like this
Rather than casting his experience into Kafkaesque terms, he is responding to his own experience of modern Japanese life. I believe Westerners need to think deeply about what that means for modern Japan, especially those dreamy Westerners who romantically idealize the traditional image of medieval Japan, as though it still exists.
May 11, 2010 at 6:18 am
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His early stories following World War II already express a profoundly existentialist angst and absurdity that has often led to his being compared to Kafka, Camus, Sartre, or Samuel Beckett. To my mind, though, it is precisely the fact that Abe is Japanese that is important and to view him as a mere imitator of the West would be a mistake.
May 11, 2010 at 2:40 am
2 people like this
Dear Frederick,
Some of your ideas in the last a few months ,I have been tracking ,are intellectually stimulating to me.Mail the most representative article paper you think ,which discusses your prophecies to MY MAIL ACOUNT.I want to popularise it on a wider scale.
Some of your ideas in the last a few months ,I have been tracking ,are intellectually stimulating to me.Mail the most representative article paper you think ,which discusses your prophecies to MY MAIL ACOUNT.I want to popularise it on a wider scale.
May 11, 2010 at 5:41 am
I'm a poet and poet-critic, not a prophet, no more than any other poet... Some of my essays and reviews are available on my website and blogs at https://www.fglaysher.com
My printed books that present the fullness of my work are available worldwide through links to various online booksellers at https://www.fglaysher.com/order_books.html
My eBooks are available worldwide through and as ePub books through
https://books.fglaysher.com/
Thanks for your interest.
My printed books that present the fullness of my work are available worldwide through links to various online booksellers at https://www.fglaysher.com/order_books.html
My eBooks are available worldwide through and as ePub books through
https://books.fglaysher.com/
Thanks for your interest.
May 11, 2010 at 6:17 am
Many poets, writers and philosophers have been prophetic in their vision.I WONDER ,WHY DO YOU ,MAKE SO SECTARIAN USE OF THE WORD 'PROPHECY'?
May 11, 2010 at 7:11 am
Modesty... a virtue too many modern poets lost or have lost. I think of Ezra Pound and Pablo Neruda, for instance, the latter "a servant of fascism," as Octavio Paz phrased it.
I speak only for the integrity of my own conscience and invite others to consider my words as merely those of a fellow human being, not a prophet, leading the way to a new gulag, but, I hope, a new humanism, worthy of what is noble in humanity, global now.
I speak only for the integrity of my own conscience and invite others to consider my words as merely those of a fellow human being, not a prophet, leading the way to a new gulag, but, I hope, a new humanism, worthy of what is noble in humanity, global now.
May 11, 2010 at 7:18 am
Comparing Abe to European writers does not necessarily view him as a mere imitator. That's where the contrasting comes in.
May 11, 2010 at 6:03 pm
@Howard Robertson, I agree that comparison, in and of itself, does not "necessarily" imply he's an imitator. My argument, though, does take that attitude into account because I do believe, at times, there's a tendency to consider writers of other cultures as "influenced" by the West, instead of realizing they're responding to their own analogous experience in original terms.
@Mahesh Dutt, I'm not sure I understand what you're saying, which is?
@Mahesh Dutt, I'm not sure I understand what you're saying, which is?
May 12, 2010 at 6:44 am
When you speak of a "servant of fascism" you are talking about Pound, not Neruda, right?
May 12, 2010 at 2:12 pm
That's a direct quotation of the Mexican poet Octavio Paz on Pablo Neruda. In my view, it equally applies to Pound. He served Mussolini, for instance, by denouncing the United States in the most despicable terms on many occasions. Neruda, of course, wrote many poems extolling Stalin and Fidel Castro, until the later spurned him.
May 12, 2010 at 2:21 pm
Frederick, How do you feel about the critical treatment of Haruki Murakami's writings? Do you think their Japaneseness has been slighted and the Western influences on them exaggerated?
May 12, 2010 at 5:44 pm
I have to admit that i have not gotten around to Murakami yet.
May 12, 2010 at 6:03 pm
I've never read anything by Haruki Murakami. My sense is he's largely a minor writer, and life is short...
May 13, 2010 at 3:14 am
Well, a review in the GUARDIAN in 2000 called him "among the world's greatest living novelists," and I have read similar opinions about him here and there.
https://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2000/may/27/fiction.harukimurakami
https://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2000/may/27/fiction.harukimurakami
May 13, 2010 at 3:35 am
I doubt Murakami compares well to the breadth of Kenzaburo Oe's work, which is much more ambitious in scope. His writing sounds very derivative to me. I'm glad you appreciate him, though. Perhaps there's more to him. My real interest has been more in Japanese poetry than fiction.
May 13, 2010 at 4:41 am
Inside Japan, I believe the literati think as you do; outside Japan, he's widely recognized as a major novelist. THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE is his most significant novel, in my humble opinion. He deals with the Japanese atrocities on the mainland of East Asia in that book. He is closely associated with America's Chekhov, Raymond Carver, another of my favorite fiction writers.
May 13, 2010 at 6:13 am
I really enjoyed Tokio Blues.
May 14, 2010 at 3:09 pm
should be Tokyo Blues in English, right?
May 14, 2010 at 3:09 pm
In English, it's actually NORWEGIAN WOOD. The reference to the Beatles' song is typical of the way Murakami takes pop-culture references from beyond the shores of Japan and brings them home with poignancy and unexpected depth. I like this novel a lot too.
May 14, 2010 at 3:24 pm
Thank you Howard, yes, I read it in Spanish (Tokio Blues) but now you made me remember the English title.
May 14, 2010 at 3:26 pm
I didn't like Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, tough. I was trapped at the beginning but my attention faded away afterwards...
May 14, 2010 at 3:27 pm
It was a daring attempt at a difficult formal gambit, and he pulled it off, I think, but just barely. It gets tedious, and the solipsistic destination of the narrative bores me by the end.
May 14, 2010 at 3:30 pm
His childhood in Manchuria helped him to look harder and more objectively than other writers at modern Japanese life, particularly in Tokyo, where Abe lived the rest of his life, while his growing up in Manchuria surely added to the sense of alienation that pervades his work.
May 10, 2010 at 12:39 pm
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The Shifting Sands of Modernity.... Shortly after the Meiji Restoration of 1868 narrative writing became heavily influenced by Western literature. Although there are many excellent early fiction writers and those who, like Junichiro Tanizaki and Yasunari Kawabata, tend to reflect more traditional aesthetics, or those of the "I-novel," Kobo Abe 1924-1993, a Marxist, is the first significantly modern Japanese novelist.
May 10, 2010 at 10:05 am
1 person likes this
Abe is one of my favorite novelists.
May 11, 2010 at 9:11 pm
Yes, mine too. His dramatizing, through metaphor and analogy, without intrusive commentary, is a very profound handling of his experience.
May 12, 2010 at 7:28 am
I do also like Tanizaki and Kawabata. When I was younger I really admired Mishima.
May 12, 2010 at 12:16 pm
I highly recommend Kenzaburo Oe. He's fully in the modern world. I believe he's a better writer than even Abe. If interested, I have a brief review of The Silent Cry on one of my blogs:
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/silent-cry-kenzaburo-oe
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/silent-cry-kenzaburo-oe
May 12, 2010 at 1:03 pm
I read A Personal Matter and Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness. Liked them a great deal. I have't kept up with his subsequent work though. So many books-so little Time.
May 12, 2010 at 1:13 pm
His writing dealing with other than the emperor system and his son's condition confronts quite sensitively modern nihilism in a Japanese context. I believe it's his best work.
May 12, 2010 at 2:04 pm
Earthrise Press® eBooks. https://books.fglaysher.com/
Attention, poets & writers: Time for publishing to change! as with music... Tell your friends...
Earthrise Press eBooks are in the universal ePub format for eReaders, smartphones, iPad, and other devices. ePub books can be read on your computer with the free Adobe Digital Editions (Windows and Mac) and other free software.
Kindle users can buy my books at and/or use Kindle for PC on various devices.
Please tell your friends about Earthrise Press eBooks, on Facebook and other social networks.
In an increasingly Post-Gutenberg Age, why support a corporate conglomerate...
May 7, 2010 at 5:31 am
Attention, poets & writers: Time for publishing to change! as with music... Tell your friends...
Earthrise Press eBooks are in the universal ePub format for eReaders, smartphones, iPad, and other devices. ePub books can be read on your computer with the free Adobe Digital Editions (Windows and Mac) and other free software.
Kindle users can buy my books at and/or use Kindle for PC on various devices.
Please tell your friends about Earthrise Press eBooks, on Facebook and other social networks.
In an increasingly Post-Gutenberg Age, why support a corporate conglomerate...
|
Earthrise Press |
Earthrise Press is a Post-Gutenberg Publisher of eBooks, non-DRM
May 7, 2010 at 5:31 am
5 people like this
CHANGE IS THE NATURAL PROCESS OF LIFE.EVERY CREATURE IN THIS UNIVERSE KNOWS, HOW TO ADAPT TOTHIS LAW OF NATURE.But I WANT TO KNOW ,FOR WHOM THE BELLS TOLL?
May 7, 2010 at 7:42 am
According to John Donne, "It tolls for thee," I.e., for all humanity, including us. In context, I would say, the Post-Gutenberg transformation of publishing...
May 7, 2010 at 11:02 am
To My Opposite Number in Texas.
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/to-my-opposite-number
People around our small planet need to value pluralism and universality more, not less.
May 3, 2010 at 6:49 am
https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/to-my-opposite-number
People around our small planet need to value pluralism and universality more, not less.
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To My Opposite Number « Reviews by Frederick Glaysher |
Daniel Rifenburgh studied with Donald Justice and Richard Wilbur, with the latter providing an Introduction to Rifenburg’s only book of poems, Advent. Though not mentioned on the book flaps or in Wilbur’s ...
May 3, 2010 at 6:49 am
Reposted since the world is round...
Crow Hunting: Songs of Innocence. eChapbook. ePub format, non-DRM.
"So I sought in words of poetry to intimate to an age of doctrinaire nihilism that God still exists, calls us always, if only we will pray and listen to Her." Nine poems written after such mystic poets as Henry Vaughan, Blake, Bryant, Emerson, Basho, Hafez, Attar, Rumi, and Tagore.
Read it on your eBook reader, computer, smartphone, or other ePub device, Kindle, etc.
https://www.fglaysher.com/order_books.html
April 27, 2010 at 3:17 am
Crow Hunting: Songs of Innocence. eChapbook. ePub format, non-DRM.
"So I sought in words of poetry to intimate to an age of doctrinaire nihilism that God still exists, calls us always, if only we will pray and listen to Her." Nine poems written after such mystic poets as Henry Vaughan, Blake, Bryant, Emerson, Basho, Hafez, Attar, Rumi, and Tagore.
Read it on your eBook reader, computer, smartphone, or other ePub device, Kindle, etc.
https://www.fglaysher.com/order_books.html
|
Time for publishing to change! Already happened with music. Tell your friends. |
In an increasingly Post-Gutenberg Age, why support a corporate conglomerate? Tell your friends.
April 27, 2010 at 3:17 am
2 people like this
Reposted because the world is round, for friends elsewhere,
a poem, “To Penelope,” by Frederick Glaysher, mediterranean.nu it's all about poetryhttps://www.mediterranean.nu/?p=1714
April 27, 2010 at 2:08 am
a poem, “To Penelope,” by Frederick Glaysher, mediterranean.nu it's all about poetryhttps://www.mediterranean.nu/?p=1714
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mediterranean.nu » Frederick Glaysher |
Frederick Glaysher studied writing at the University of Michigan, where he earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, the latter in English.
April 27, 2010 at 2:08 am
Time for publishing to change! Already happened with music. Tell your friends.
Crow Hunting: Songs of Innocence. eChapbook. ePub format, non-DRM.
"So I sought in words of poetry to intimate to an age of doctrinaire nihilism that God still exists, calls us always, if only we will pray and listen to Her."
Nine poems written after such mystic poets as Henry Vaughan, Blake, Bryant, Emerson, Basho, Hafez, Attar, Rumi, and Tagore.
https://www.fglaysher.com/order_books.html Please repost to your wall.
April 25, 2010 at 9:07 am
Crow Hunting: Songs of Innocence. eChapbook. ePub format, non-DRM.
"So I sought in words of poetry to intimate to an age of doctrinaire nihilism that God still exists, calls us always, if only we will pray and listen to Her."
Nine poems written after such mystic poets as Henry Vaughan, Blake, Bryant, Emerson, Basho, Hafez, Attar, Rumi, and Tagore.
https://www.fglaysher.com/order_books.html Please repost to your wall.
|
|
Time for publishing to change! Already happened with music. Tell your friends. |
In an increasingly Post-Gutenberg Age, why support a corporate conglomerate? Tell your friends. Please repost to your wall.
April 25, 2010 at 9:07 am
2 people like this
This is the future of publishing. We just have to secure the rights of the producers of content to get paid. For example, cuts from my spoken word CD are all over the Internet, downloadable. I haven't received a cent. While I'm happy for it to serve as good PR for me as a poet, I'm not happy about the outright theft. Some things have to be worked out, but eBooks are the future ... the not-distant future! Thanks for helping to blaze the trail.
April 25, 2010 at 9:13 am
Thanks for commenting. I understand what you're saying. The issue is DRM, digital rights management, which is often advanced as the solution. I've thought about this more than a decade and have raised two highly technically proficient sons who have helped me with it at times. My conclusion: DRM is dead, because it doesn't work, and never can. Anything a software engineer can create can be hacked.
The issue is much deeper and runs to the very core of what the digital, Internet, Post-Gutenberg age is about. If interested, my rather extensive struggle, as a poet and publisher, and which we're all trying to figure out, can be read at
Publishing in the Post-Gutenberg Age
https://www.fglaysher.com/Post_Gutenberg_Publishing.html
I agree, too, that it's not distant. Indeed, it's already here, but many don't yet realize, out of Luddite, aversion, whatever. I have a blog on eReading, too, that might of interest to some.
The experience of eReading.
https://fglaysher.com/eReading/
The issue is much deeper and runs to the very core of what the digital, Internet, Post-Gutenberg age is about. If interested, my rather extensive struggle, as a poet and publisher, and which we're all trying to figure out, can be read at
Publishing in the Post-Gutenberg Age
https://www.fglaysher.com/Post_Gutenberg_Publishing.html
I agree, too, that it's not distant. Indeed, it's already here, but many don't yet realize, out of Luddite, aversion, whatever. I have a blog on eReading, too, that might of interest to some.
The experience of eReading.
https://fglaysher.com/eReading/
April 25, 2010 at 9:35 am
Actually, re: eReading, this is probably the page to read:
Papyrus, cuneiform, rice paper, vellum…
https://fglaysher.com/eReading/2009/02/papyrus-cuneiform-rice-paper-vellum/
Papyrus, cuneiform, rice paper, vellum…
https://fglaysher.com/eReading/2009/02/papyrus-cuneiform-rice-paper-vellum/
April 25, 2010 at 9:39 am
Thanks, Frederick. I am very interested in this topic and in following the evolution of epublishing and how content providers will be cut in for a bigger or smaller share than in conventional publishing. I'll read your essays and perhaps come back with more comments and questions. Now that the iPad and Kindle are out, more reading will be done on electronic media, I don't care what the Luddites say. Print isn't dead, but it has competition now.
April 25, 2010 at 9:40 am
everything that speaks for re-installation of traditional views of copyright stands against the reality of the computing environment.
if the ruling classes believe, correctly, in the information/power correlation, they have valorized the socio-economic position of the hacker as a robin hood simultaneously in service of the people's right to access and the only one capable of advancing the technology and technocracy. but the next generations will see even the youngest programmers capable of subverting all but the most intensively think-tanked of proprietary codes. doubtless a number of them will be easily co-opted. but the security of open information is crucial, the security of anti-security. the future will not be classified. anyone who doesn't have his or her head truly in the sand, as you might say, frederick, will understand the implications of this. check out the following link. https://irevolution.wordpress.com/2009/06/15/digital-security/ start releasing your ideas into the world where they can take effect asap. the artist of valor has always done so and sought no cash reward. the artist of no valor dies anyway.
if the ruling classes believe, correctly, in the information/power correlation, they have valorized the socio-economic position of the hacker as a robin hood simultaneously in service of the people's right to access and the only one capable of advancing the technology and technocracy. but the next generations will see even the youngest programmers capable of subverting all but the most intensively think-tanked of proprietary codes. doubtless a number of them will be easily co-opted. but the security of open information is crucial, the security of anti-security. the future will not be classified. anyone who doesn't have his or her head truly in the sand, as you might say, frederick, will understand the implications of this. check out the following link. https://irevolution.wordpress.com/2009/06/15/digital-security/ start releasing your ideas into the world where they can take effect asap. the artist of valor has always done so and sought no cash reward. the artist of no valor dies anyway.
April 25, 2010 at 9:58 am
Yes, all good points. There are many, many other developments under way if you watch the Net carefully for ebooks, etc., postgutenberg, etc. Over 330 million in ebooks sold last year and it's growing significantly beyond that already, right now, this year.
In my view, it's a tremendous opportunity for *writers* to take control of their own work. The monopolies of all the publishers have always been extremely self-serving, leaving pathetic percentages for the writer who has done the actual study, sacrifice, and work of writing the book. The word "content," as it has become used, rankles me, as a poet and writer... but I understand. The mega publishers are clearly trying to transfer their monopolies to the internet...
My view is fully explained at
Publishing in the Post-Gutenberg Age
https://www.fglaysher.com/Post_Gutenberg_Publishing.html
Writers DON'T need them anymore... not to the extent of the past. There's the REALITY of the Internet and the entire Post-Gutenberg Revolution... For over two decades now, each innovation has been succeeded by another, out-dating the previous answer for publishing...
Read my Publishing in the Post-Gutenberg Age and THEN reflect carefully on this link:
https://shop.fglaysher.com/
That's what EVERY writer can now do. The technology is NOT that difficult to master and use... From writer, to reader... no self-appointed, self-serving gatekeeper, librarian, mega-corporation, review journal with its own agenda, whether political, religious, academic, etc., etc., in between the writer and the reader... the reader ALONE empowered and choosing what is worthy of her or his time...
...I argue, truly a democratic REVOLUTION, global in scope, bound to have tremendous impact for intellectual and literary stimulation, cultural, etc., in every sense. Just beginning to dawn on all of us now...
In my view, it's a tremendous opportunity for *writers* to take control of their own work. The monopolies of all the publishers have always been extremely self-serving, leaving pathetic percentages for the writer who has done the actual study, sacrifice, and work of writing the book. The word "content," as it has become used, rankles me, as a poet and writer... but I understand. The mega publishers are clearly trying to transfer their monopolies to the internet...
My view is fully explained at
Publishing in the Post-Gutenberg Age
https://www.fglaysher.com/Post_Gutenberg_Publishing.html
Writers DON'T need them anymore... not to the extent of the past. There's the REALITY of the Internet and the entire Post-Gutenberg Revolution... For over two decades now, each innovation has been succeeded by another, out-dating the previous answer for publishing...
Read my Publishing in the Post-Gutenberg Age and THEN reflect carefully on this link:
https://shop.fglaysher.com/
That's what EVERY writer can now do. The technology is NOT that difficult to master and use... From writer, to reader... no self-appointed, self-serving gatekeeper, librarian, mega-corporation, review journal with its own agenda, whether political, religious, academic, etc., etc., in between the writer and the reader... the reader ALONE empowered and choosing what is worthy of her or his time...
...I argue, truly a democratic REVOLUTION, global in scope, bound to have tremendous impact for intellectual and literary stimulation, cultural, etc., in every sense. Just beginning to dawn on all of us now...
April 25, 2010 at 10:03 am
@Rachel Dacus... a book is NOT print, but the encoded thoughts, which can be conveyed to another human being via many forms. We human beings have always known this fact, but forgot it after five hundred years of the Gutenberg Age.
@Jeff Gburek Thanks for the iRevolution link. I read that last fall sometime, and it's in my head and ramblings too... It's why China, Burma, et al., can't possible oppress forever and will come to grief in the end if they continue to choose to resist change. Here's the great thing for writers. The same holds true for NY publishers!
@Jeff Gburek Thanks for the iRevolution link. I read that last fall sometime, and it's in my head and ramblings too... It's why China, Burma, et al., can't possible oppress forever and will come to grief in the end if they continue to choose to resist change. Here's the great thing for writers. The same holds true for NY publishers!
April 25, 2010 at 10:33 am
Art is encoded thoughts and feelings, especially about transcendence... (alluding to Tolstoy, What is Art?)
April 25, 2010 at 10:59 am
Very interesting discussion. I've been watching the eReader discussions from a distance, wondering when will be the right time to get in on it (even as a paper fanatic, I've accepted that the question is When, not If). I'm just commenting here so that I get notified of further comments, because I'd like to learn more about the writing and publishing attitude toward ePublication and Distribution.
April 25, 2010 at 11:07 am
@Kendra Meinert Hodson Welcome. For more background on the long history of self-publishing, a Who's Who of writers and poets, and Post-Gutenberg, read The Mission of Earthrise Press
https://www.fglaysher.com/mission_of%20earthrise_press.html
https://www.fglaysher.com/mission_of%20earthrise_press.html
April 25, 2010 at 11:10 am
cool. thanks! I looked at it briefly, will give it more attention. Interesting to think of authors such as Twain and Joyce, whose obstacles to publishing I'm aware of, as self-publishers.
April 25, 2010 at 11:33 am
What program opens it on a Mac? I Have Kindle, iTunes, PDF, but I can't find a way to read it.
April 25, 2010 at 4:46 pm
To read an ePub book on a Mac use the Adobe Digital Editions free reader:
https://www.adobe.com/products/digitaleditions/
Sorry I misunderstood what you were looking for the first time. Best.
https://www.adobe.com/products/digitaleditions/
Sorry I misunderstood what you were looking for the first time. Best.
April 25, 2010 at 5:00 pm
For anyone interested, I've changed my eBook site address to
https://www.books.fglaysher.com
https://www.books.fglaysher.com
May 3, 2010 at 3:05 am
Thanks.Your earlier deliberations ,on reflections seem to me futuristic and carries some grains of truth.I LIKE YOUR ORIGINALITY AND INDIVIDUALITY "INDIVISIBLE",AND ONE.
May 3, 2010 at 7:16 am
Thanks for saying so, Chandra. Whatever you're referring to, I appreciate it. Best.
May 5, 2010 at 6:14 am
“Postmodern American Poets: Debauchees of Dew.” Continental Drifter, 2 (1986). Creative Writing Program, University of Colorado. 44-54. From The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture. 2007.
https://www.fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
April 25, 2010 at 2:21 am
https://www.fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
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The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture, Frederick Glaysher |
East and West meet in a new synthesis of a global vision of humankind, United Nations, epic poetry
April 25, 2010 at 2:21 am
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In short, they did what Americans have too often done when cut off from any respectable ground of value: they became antinomians, transparent eyeballs, devotees of some vast and vague abyss, seeking a liquor that was never brewed.
April 24, 2010 at 7:04 am
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At the same time these poets manifested a concern with the self that obscured, paradoxically, their essential indifference to social stability, which is achievable only through collective participation and cooperation in the continuing struggle for peace and justice.
April 24, 2010 at 4:03 am
individualists tell the stories that humanize the stigmatized, even now. Group think stifles change
April 24, 2010 at 4:31 am
I do agree that there's an interminable interplay between the individual and the group, whatever group, a challenge and revolt of any status quo, which inevitably becomes oppressive for the individual conscience.
In terms of literature, banding together into coteries and groups of like-minded or similarly mediocre poets is a phenomenon long recognized, from various points of view,exemplified in all walks of life. Human thinking and advance seems to need to go through such permutations, stasis and consolidation, or stultification, and so on.
In my view, world culture, not only national cultures,is struggling to find, needs to find a new articulation of what it means to be human, at a more expansive level. Not an easy thinking changing visions, but poets have been doing it for millennia.
In terms of literature, banding together into coteries and groups of like-minded or similarly mediocre poets is a phenomenon long recognized, from various points of view,exemplified in all walks of life. Human thinking and advance seems to need to go through such permutations, stasis and consolidation, or stultification, and so on.
In my view, world culture, not only national cultures,is struggling to find, needs to find a new articulation of what it means to be human, at a more expansive level. Not an easy thinking changing visions, but poets have been doing it for millennia.
April 24, 2010 at 4:54 am
seems to me, again, that you are lamenting the lack of good poets. Theory won't bring more out
April 24, 2010 at 6:10 am
True. Recognizing where things stand is the prerequisite for change.
April 24, 2010 at 6:17 am
is it? I find the poets know, and one tries to theorize in the wake of their poems. Descriptive not prescriptive
April 24, 2010 at 6:21 am
have you read Donald Davie on the diathrambyic in Czezlaw Milosz?
April 24, 2010 at 6:23 am
Donald Davie has never interested me, though I've nearly everything by Milosz in English. I have an essay on him in my The Grove of the Eumenides.
April 24, 2010 at 6:53 am
I think Davie shares your concerns. He's one of my great heroes
April 24, 2010 at 7:05 am
Perhaps I've misjudged him. What would you recommend I look at?
April 24, 2010 at 7:20 am
his book on Milosz? The ones on Pound and also Under Briggflatts
April 24, 2010 at 7:40 am
Oh, yes, actually have a copy of "Czeslaw Milosz and the insufficiency of lyric." Didn't put the two together right away. I respect the book. A lot time has moved on from there, though, along with Milosz's death, of course. All secondary, academic stuff, ultimately... largely confirming what I've been saying, in my view...
April 24, 2010 at 8:36 am
And, while they developed in some cases into masters of the technicalities of new forms, meters, and rhythms to accomplish their effects, they drifted further and further away from any respectable, intellectual and emotional, conceptual content.
April 23, 2010 at 9:02 am
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I absolutely agree but Sir, It must be noted that appreciation of form by some supercedes the beauty of content. How can that perception be changed if it's not an exaggeration on my part. I guess a true poet must strive for balance or at worse choose content (which is factly the true beauty of poetry) over form.
April 23, 2010 at 9:15 am
Far be it from me to deride the aesthetic value of form in and of itself. I was thinking the extremely formalistic, drained of any human content. I grant there's a place in the arts for the individual who relishes form alone, whatever the medium. Every artist has to decide that for him or herself...
Too much emphasis on content and idea degrades into didacticism and moralism, leaving art behind in its own way. Not easy being human!
Too much emphasis on content and idea degrades into didacticism and moralism, leaving art behind in its own way. Not easy being human!
April 23, 2010 at 9:24 am
Frederick -- without disputing your thesis per se, one could remark (from the sidelines) on the narrative nature of the argument itself: that essentially it sketches the rhetorical arc (and follows the archetypal form) of a tragic history, reflecting an outlook which posits in a mythical past (in this particular case, that of pre-postmodern literature) a more virtuous, more ideal state of things, and which correspondingly lodges in the subsequent phase an increasing degeneration (an tragic falling away from erstwhile-established ideals). The pattern of such a narrative is a familiar one: the great, gone golden age had been described alike by Plato and the Puranas. Besides Greek and Hindu mythologies, classical Chinese tradition likewise refers back to a long-lost age of virtue, inevitably bygone, glimmering in memory. (Of course another framing of the same broad archetype is familiar from the Book of Genesis.) Where a particular narrative pattern is embraced, details of evidence can then be adduced to flesh out the picture. If an alternative pattern were favored, other details of evidence could naturally be adduced. The selection of citations (from a vast, unwieldy field) depends on what fits the chosen model (tragic or happy). I can imagine that the current state of our literature might (depending on outlook) allow for either end of the spectrum sketched (in happily pre-postmodern days) by Charles Dickens: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epic of belief, it was the epic of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way . . . "
April 23, 2010 at 11:10 am
erratum: for epic, read epoch (though both words perhaps fairly fit the case)
April 23, 2010 at 11:14 am
Thank you for alluding to a number of traditions I hold dear, demonstrating the universality of the experience, which modern civilization has forgotten to its peril, not to idealize the past unduly. It is common for modernity to relativize history out of existence. That's what modern historicism is about...
Dickens actually comes down quite hard on murderous French theory of creating a perfect world on earth. I regret to report that I've spent 15 minutes in search of my copy of a Tale of Two Cities to no avail, and so cannot at the moment cite Dickens' profound insight precisely... buried around here somewhere, but truth lives on!
When the Chinese invaded Lhasa in their modern arrogance, attempting to wipe out Buddhism as they have to a significant degree elsewhere, etc., etc., which view of history did they use to justify their immorality? Confucius or Marx? (Careful, this is a trick question! :) Which would you prefer to live under? Six feet under? History *is tragic* -- that's why it's worth remembering...
Alas, seriously, civilizations can and do decline, using sophistry to call it something else, PROGRESS. Lest you misunderstand me as someone wanting to go backwards, I hasten to clarify I'm all for going forward... while actually learning from the experience of modernity.
Poetry, artists, and intellectuals have often played an ignominious role in the slaughter of many millions during the hundred years. I highly doubt there's much in postmodern literature that humanity in a hundred years will look back upon favorably, if much of it is passed on at all. Passed over would be best... and most likely, for it's largely turned away from the most serious and compelling issues that face human beings in all ages, asserting nihilism and absurdity as the great truths of all of human history, instead of the aberration such thinking truly represents.
Dickens actually comes down quite hard on murderous French theory of creating a perfect world on earth. I regret to report that I've spent 15 minutes in search of my copy of a Tale of Two Cities to no avail, and so cannot at the moment cite Dickens' profound insight precisely... buried around here somewhere, but truth lives on!
When the Chinese invaded Lhasa in their modern arrogance, attempting to wipe out Buddhism as they have to a significant degree elsewhere, etc., etc., which view of history did they use to justify their immorality? Confucius or Marx? (Careful, this is a trick question! :) Which would you prefer to live under? Six feet under? History *is tragic* -- that's why it's worth remembering...
Alas, seriously, civilizations can and do decline, using sophistry to call it something else, PROGRESS. Lest you misunderstand me as someone wanting to go backwards, I hasten to clarify I'm all for going forward... while actually learning from the experience of modernity.
Poetry, artists, and intellectuals have often played an ignominious role in the slaughter of many millions during the hundred years. I highly doubt there's much in postmodern literature that humanity in a hundred years will look back upon favorably, if much of it is passed on at all. Passed over would be best... and most likely, for it's largely turned away from the most serious and compelling issues that face human beings in all ages, asserting nihilism and absurdity as the great truths of all of human history, instead of the aberration such thinking truly represents.
April 23, 2010 at 12:16 pm
Frederick --- regarding the Dickens text, if you don't mind reading things online [or for that matter, it can be printed], Google Books affords a facsimile edition here:
https://books.google.com/books?id=KNoXAAAAYAAJ&dq=tale+of+two+cities&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=0wzSS93BNYjOsgOLx9HyCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false
I think I'm with you when you say you're for moving forward, rather than seeking a nostalgiac return to the glories (whether real or imagined) of a pre-tragic past. Only, from my perspective, the illuminated future is already in process of arriving, and I feel glimmers of this can be noted (in various forms) in work of serious artists and thinkers everywhere, even if the glimpse is like a partially accluded light. The poets of our time whose work has most affected me in this regard would especially include Aurobindo Ghose (whose magnum opus Savitri merits special attention in this context), and likewise -- for me -- the poetry of W.S. Merwin (as I've somewhat said in these notes already). For me, Merwin is as profound as (for instance) Dante -- but with the difference that I find his work much more relevant to my life and experience than I have been able to find Dante's.
https://books.google.com/books?id=KNoXAAAAYAAJ&dq=tale+of+two+cities&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=0wzSS93BNYjOsgOLx9HyCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false
I think I'm with you when you say you're for moving forward, rather than seeking a nostalgiac return to the glories (whether real or imagined) of a pre-tragic past. Only, from my perspective, the illuminated future is already in process of arriving, and I feel glimmers of this can be noted (in various forms) in work of serious artists and thinkers everywhere, even if the glimpse is like a partially accluded light. The poets of our time whose work has most affected me in this regard would especially include Aurobindo Ghose (whose magnum opus Savitri merits special attention in this context), and likewise -- for me -- the poetry of W.S. Merwin (as I've somewhat said in these notes already). For me, Merwin is as profound as (for instance) Dante -- but with the difference that I find his work much more relevant to my life and experience than I have been able to find Dante's.
April 23, 2010 at 1:21 pm
[ps I don't know what's happening to my mind's lexicon today, but obviously, for "accluded" one can read "occluded"]
April 23, 2010 at 1:25 pm
I'm familiar with Sri Aurobindo. I respect your conscience.
I have a copy of Tale of Two Cities on my Sony Reader, but didn't think of it yesterday. Thanks anyway.
I have a copy of Tale of Two Cities on my Sony Reader, but didn't think of it yesterday. Thanks anyway.
April 24, 2010 at 3:42 am
Perhaps overwhelmed by the ponderous burden of guilt and horror that the modern world has proven so capable of producing, most poets have largely turned away from their society and have written, for themselves and a few epigones, poetry permeated with mystification and couched in language calculated to obfuscate the fatuity of their vision.
April 23, 2010 at 3:54 am
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Is that your personal observation or a quote? Contemporary poetry is almost entirely accessible, chatty and anything but mysterious. To which poets do you refer as being obscure?
Great poetry has always addressed life's inexplicable paradoxes. At least until all those MFA grads churned out acres of texts telling us how much they like sex, and how they have "deep" feelings.
Boring.
Great poetry has always addressed life's inexplicable paradoxes. At least until all those MFA grads churned out acres of texts telling us how much they like sex, and how they have "deep" feelings.
Boring.
April 23, 2010 at 4:10 am
"Boring," agreed... my observation from over forty years of reading poetry and literature. If interested, skim below for the particular poets I am referring to in terms of "mystification," solipsism, vacuous obscurity, etc., Robert Lowell, James Wright, Bly, and so on.
Here's the pity. Who encouraged and accepted without real criticism those MFA students writing such drivel? The learned "scholars," sophists, and hacks on the take from federal and state funding... What's it done to the art? Driven it into the ground.
Here's the pity. Who encouraged and accepted without real criticism those MFA students writing such drivel? The learned "scholars," sophists, and hacks on the take from federal and state funding... What's it done to the art? Driven it into the ground.
April 23, 2010 at 4:20 am
You think Robert Bly is hard to understand? Or Lowell?
I thought you meant A handful of Language poets!
What could possibly be inaccessible in Lowell?
Anyway the poets you mention are dead and gone. Why not move on?
Anyway thanks for posting something substantial!
I thought you meant A handful of Language poets!
What could possibly be inaccessible in Lowell?
Anyway the poets you mention are dead and gone. Why not move on?
Anyway thanks for posting something substantial!
April 23, 2010 at 4:30 am
I discuss Lowell more in terms of the decreasing scope of his writing, into the personal and confessional, etc., than language, you're right. Bly, as below. I have moved on... that's my point. I don't believe the general literary climate has yet done so sufficiently. Thank you for saying so. I appreciate it.
April 23, 2010 at 4:39 am
Poets since 1950 (including many poets not mentioned here) have tended to address an ever more specialized and personal audience, if not an academic or MFA coterie.
April 22, 2010 at 12:42 pm
How many readers did John Donne have? A coterie of lovers and enablers? Who would you cite (post WW2) as having a non-specialized broad appeal? Who worthwhile?
April 22, 2010 at 2:08 pm
Robert Frost did not die until early 1963, but obviously not in the postmodern mode.
And then who? Robert Lowell? A long line of academic poets comes to mind, cut ups and clowns, small potatoes, the unambitious redefined as "creative," odd-ball visionaries speaking to a subculture, imitators of Robert Frost, Walt Whitman, etc., entertainers, illiterates, suicides...technicians, formalists, relativists, secularists, nihilists peddling and undermining modernity's meta-narrative, or infantile fantasies about returning to medieval Christianity, Buddhism, etc., nativists, ethnicity turned into a fetish, but no new vision seriously proffered to the entire culture, instead of the negligible university crowd... purveyors of much of the pernicious poison and confusion.
Make a suggestion. I'd love to be proven wrong.
And then who? Robert Lowell? A long line of academic poets comes to mind, cut ups and clowns, small potatoes, the unambitious redefined as "creative," odd-ball visionaries speaking to a subculture, imitators of Robert Frost, Walt Whitman, etc., entertainers, illiterates, suicides...technicians, formalists, relativists, secularists, nihilists peddling and undermining modernity's meta-narrative, or infantile fantasies about returning to medieval Christianity, Buddhism, etc., nativists, ethnicity turned into a fetish, but no new vision seriously proffered to the entire culture, instead of the negligible university crowd... purveyors of much of the pernicious poison and confusion.
Make a suggestion. I'd love to be proven wrong.
April 22, 2010 at 3:28 pm
It's dangerous to generalise any thing on the basis of preconceived notions or prejudice for such tentencies often lead to solipsism.It's also a sectarian principle to construct a
(un)authenticated hypothesis on piecemill accounts and random samplings.Don't you think "devil can cite the scripture"too.Why to take a few examples of English poetry ,
and jump to such volatile remarks?Think of GERMAN,French,
Indian ,POST COLONIALlanguages and literatures, and you have many academician poets, who not only addressed the masses but were successful poets and revolutionaries. They have been trend setters and visionaries too. I don't give here odd examples because that would be again dangerous thing.I shall forward my blog to you for your kind musings.
(un)authenticated hypothesis on piecemill accounts and random samplings.Don't you think "devil can cite the scripture"too.Why to take a few examples of English poetry ,
and jump to such volatile remarks?Think of GERMAN,French,
Indian ,POST COLONIALlanguages and literatures, and you have many academician poets, who not only addressed the masses but were successful poets and revolutionaries. They have been trend setters and visionaries too. I don't give here odd examples because that would be again dangerous thing.I shall forward my blog to you for your kind musings.
April 22, 2010 at 6:51 pm
"Dangerous"? Dangerous, I would say, to fail to perceive what common traits and tendencies are shared by many poets, writers, and thinkers in any given age. There are always exceptions, a wide, human range of ability, technical and otherwise. Regardless of culture, all cultures have perceived within their own literatures variety and change, over time, of sensibility and temperament, among its writers, as well as the general civilization.
I am addressing primarily American literature, though to the extent that it has influenced the literatures of other countries, significantly applicable to some other national literatures, such as Japan, but especially the United Kingdom. Broadly speaking, during the last sixty years, the Vision of Nihilism has worked its pernicious poison deeper into the Souls of all Nations...
With all respect, Chandra, your arguments are all those of the exhausted paradigm...
I am addressing primarily American literature, though to the extent that it has influenced the literatures of other countries, significantly applicable to some other national literatures, such as Japan, but especially the United Kingdom. Broadly speaking, during the last sixty years, the Vision of Nihilism has worked its pernicious poison deeper into the Souls of all Nations...
With all respect, Chandra, your arguments are all those of the exhausted paradigm...
April 23, 2010 at 3:52 am
Frederick, I appreciate what u say now.Nevertheless ,the sophist in me teases to know as to who decides what is "lost" and "found" paradigm?
April 23, 2010 at 8:38 am
Who ever has, in any culture? The Great Public, writers, readers, people broadly over time, after good and bitter experience of all historical kinds. Much falls by the wayside, with no loss whatsoever; indeed, frees the culture to move forward as the new generations choose...
Many young people have largely moved on from the crazy dreams, nihilism, Marxism, Deconstruction, and other delusions of past intellectual fads, much to the consternation of many in US universities who can't imagine any other "truth." A generation or two can be lost, but serious consciousness, for those capable of it, in my view, learns ultimately from the experience, if that's what it takes to move forward.
Life sloughs off what it doesn't need. Postmodernism is already a dead artefact. Culture has moved well along into a new world, while many remain still largely unaware of the fact. Life as usual...
Many young people have largely moved on from the crazy dreams, nihilism, Marxism, Deconstruction, and other delusions of past intellectual fads, much to the consternation of many in US universities who can't imagine any other "truth." A generation or two can be lost, but serious consciousness, for those capable of it, in my view, learns ultimately from the experience, if that's what it takes to move forward.
Life sloughs off what it doesn't need. Postmodernism is already a dead artefact. Culture has moved well along into a new world, while many remain still largely unaware of the fact. Life as usual...
April 23, 2010 at 9:18 am
And it is precisely this failure that deprives many postmodern poets of any lasting interest. In following their postmodern equivalent of the “ancient New England propensity” for magical transformation, amelioration, and conversion, they trivialize the perdurable antinomies of human nature. Postmodern poets have repeated the romantic experience.
April 22, 2010 at 10:39 am
Now when a quantum leap is required in cognitive and emotional development, art, too, as always, will be at the forefront of such change. It is worth recalling that Yeats once criticized Shelley for his failure to conceive of the world as a continual conflict, for his lack of a Theory of Evil.
April 22, 2010 at 8:15 am
Empson said Shelley had a tin ear, which is to do with not hearing, which is the problem with the younger postmoderns. The older ones were sparring with a sexist expressionist postwar period avoiding the Modernists' full-on interest in revolution
April 22, 2010 at 10:42 am
they saw through the eyes, heard through the ears, of their expressionist rivals, their Other. There is no expressionism now so it falls down
April 22, 2010 at 10:46 am
Some of the younger ones in the USA don't even know who Shelley was... they don't have to read him or any poets to graduate, just attend workshops... as long as the tuition gets paid, often through loans. Yeats knew what happens when there's no Theory of Evil.
April 22, 2010 at 10:51 am
I.e., The young wear rose-colored glasses and con men flourish, more than ever, since few have a healthy sense of danger to protect them. The university, the mortgage business, investors, etc., run wild with other people's money... and lives.
April 22, 2010 at 11:04 am
yes, I depart from you on that. Are you sure you're not equating evil with pet peeve? Yeats impresses me, but not for his ideas. I hang out with lots of young performance poets and they are keen to extend themselves but not by reading. Poets including Shelley didn't write only for the page, maybe this is an issue for which media to bring poetry into, now, to answer a real appetite, a real need. Also, hey, taste. I read widely. I love Wordsworth, find Shelley mostly dull. Have read all Yeats' poems but read lots of other poets of all periods passionately
April 22, 2010 at 11:08 am
more than ever?
April 22, 2010 at 11:09 am
Greed and avarice are nothing new, but there's been historic manifestations of it, on both sides of the pond, during the last few years, I think, with the corruption and collapse of the financial sectors. Everyone blames everyone else; no one mentions greed, *evil*, and sin, where the rotten roots are of it all... "in the foul rag and bone shop of the heart."
April 22, 2010 at 11:15 am
Well, I do believe in sin, but always. There is the 7 years of feast and the 7 of famine, and a lack of repentance means one doesn't store in the feast years? Hope this is an enjoyable debate for you. I enjoy your postings, and this one drew me in. I share your feeling that sin should come in more in study of literature. But I'm not anti-postmodern
April 22, 2010 at 11:23 am
We're agreed on "always." That's saying a lot, in my view, right there! I'm glad you chose to speak up and enjoy hearing from you.
I was south of Guildford last August, in Godalming, and couldn't believe how bad the housing market seemed in one village. That was in the back of my mind, above. Hope the UK is doing better now in that regard, but illustrates the point, as it does here in the US.
Without a sense of sin, or something like it, even in watered-down psychological terms, what's left of much of English and American literature!!?
I admit each poet and writer is entitled to their own sensibility and has to follow it. I'll grant I'm stating my own, which has usually been held heretical by the flock... at least that's my experience.
I was south of Guildford last August, in Godalming, and couldn't believe how bad the housing market seemed in one village. That was in the back of my mind, above. Hope the UK is doing better now in that regard, but illustrates the point, as it does here in the US.
Without a sense of sin, or something like it, even in watered-down psychological terms, what's left of much of English and American literature!!?
I admit each poet and writer is entitled to their own sensibility and has to follow it. I'll grant I'm stating my own, which has usually been held heretical by the flock... at least that's my experience.
April 22, 2010 at 11:46 am
yes, you may well get around more than I do, and meet more people "whom nature never intended to be poets" (C.H. Sisson). So I can imagine I'd experience some more being held heretical than I currently am. I mainly work with people who don't read poets, as I make public art with text, and don't socialize much in poetry or academic circles, with looking after small children. But still, I remain rather Polyanna-ish. The joy that newcomers can experience if I advocate poets to them is wondrous. About property and so on, yes, it's a frightening recession. But it always astounded me that people took on such high mortgages. Though this may not be what you're saying. And it's been horrendous, the debt bubble. But I like a little the sober feeling currently abroad, and people in the UK are looking at poetry again, much more, the sober unlavish spartan art of words
April 22, 2010 at 11:58 am
Interesting. I like the way you phrase, "the sober unlavish spartan art of words."
April 22, 2010 at 12:04 pm
Thank You! One craves engagement, but the non-verbal is also a place for the poet to engage, and academia is tricky: an earlier poet than Shelley wrote "a little learning is a dangerous thing". I remember sitting with an existentialist who was saying existentialism this, existentialism that, and I kept saying "or not..."
April 22, 2010 at 12:09 pm
No respect for theeooorrryyy, eh? Speaking as a descendant of people from Surrey and Hampshire, you are ssoooo British... but, seriously, it's a good trait and national temperament. Not much commonsense left in American universities, I fear... all the pity for the students. I often highly doubt there any real scholars left, just theeeooorrristttsssssss!
April 22, 2010 at 12:29 pm
no no no, I lurve theory, well the books of philosophers. Yes, like you I love scholarship
April 22, 2010 at 12:37 pm
Or they would try to dissuade us from confronting the social complexities and responsibilities of our age by foisting an exhausted literary doctrine on us; a doctrine that claims, as Auden wrote, “Poetry makes nothing happen”; a doctrine canonized variously in the effete criticism of structuralism, deconstruction, reader-response, the new historicism, and so on ad nauseam—
April 22, 2010 at 6:06 am
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...so much of which is characterized by what Andrei Sakharov calls in My Country and the World, the “leftist-liberal faddishness” of the intelligentsia of the West.
April 22, 2010 at 6:06 am
But those poets and critics who are too purblind to see the goal would have us expend our energies on lesser matters, would lead us down irrational paths that assure disaster by lulling us into a false sense of security and by freeing us of the share of guilt and complicity that is ours.
April 22, 2010 at 4:36 am
and those existentialists who would have us believe we have responsibility when we lack even rudimentary coherence...
April 22, 2010 at 4:42 am
Thank you for providing a good example of what I mean...
April 22, 2010 at 5:13 am
There is security in faith in God.
April 22, 2010 at 5:37 am
Julien Benda, The Treason of the Clerks, "I mean all those who speak to the world in a transcendental manner."
April 22, 2010 at 5:59 am
Yes, poetry can confront he social complexities and responsibilities of our age and in my opinion, should.My earlier point was only that we individuals may or may not be responsible in virtue of lack of coherence.
April 22, 2010 at 7:25 am
I would say it is characteristic of modern thinking to believe that "lack of coherence" is the only possibility, an undeniable given none may question with impunity. I reject that notion, as an assumption based on the cliches of modernity.
Transcendence endows human beings with a conscience and responsibility for themselves and their fellow creatures.
In my view, "lack of coherence" constitutes a failure of perception on the part of modernity...
I cite again Julien Benda, "We are staggered to see that they do not know that the moralist is essentially a Utopian, and that the nature of moral action is precisely that it creates its object by affirming it."
Transcendence endows human beings with a conscience and responsibility for themselves and their fellow creatures.
In my view, "lack of coherence" constitutes a failure of perception on the part of modernity...
I cite again Julien Benda, "We are staggered to see that they do not know that the moralist is essentially a Utopian, and that the nature of moral action is precisely that it creates its object by affirming it."
April 22, 2010 at 7:51 am
Consider a thinker such as R. D. Laing, the existential psychiatrist. Existential psychiatry would hold that even an unmedicated schizophrenic, gesticulating meaninglessly, talking to himself as he pushes all his worldly possessions down the street in a shopping cart, is responsible for his actions at all times. In virtue of her or his mental incoherence, she or he has no responsibility.
April 22, 2010 at 7:59 am
Typical of much in psychiatry, R. D. Laing chose an extreme, abnormal example of humanity, as though he were applicable to all people. Many in psychology have moved on from that approach. I leave it to them to fill in the details, for those who care about what Philip Rieff called the theraputic self, a misconception of human nature. How could the "results" be otherwise...
April 22, 2010 at 8:11 am
In the closing pages of Mimesis, Erich Auerbach also perceived the direction in which we are moving: “We can not but see to what an extent—below the surface conflicts—the differences between men’s ways of life and forms of thought have already lessened. The strata of societies and their different ways of life have become inextricably mingled. There are no longer even exotic peoples...."
April 21, 2010 at 8:40 am
"Beneath the conflicts, and also through them, an economic and cultural leveling process is taking place. It is still a long way to a common life of mankind on earth, but the goal begins to be visible." -Erich Auerbach
April 21, 2010 at 8:40 am
Here is a vision that in its sane perception of social realities and possibilities stands in stark contrast to the return-to-the-life-of-nature crowd, to an America reveling in “primal,” “cosmic sexuality,” to the unconscious and anarchic passions that seek always to destroy the civilizing forces of our country. Our duty is still to be as a city upon a hilltop. “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”
April 21, 2010 at 4:36 am
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As a young poet studying with Robert Hayden, I know he perceived these truths and the direction in which we are inevitably heading. He once explicitly indicated so in an interview: “History or events, seem to be pushing us toward internationalism, a world view.”
April 20, 2010 at 11:18 am
On the act of international injustice mimesis makes its stand. And out of the act of international injustice, incontestable universal human values return.
April 20, 2010 at 8:08 am
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These are the fruits of nationalism, our nationalism, all nationalism. For if today poets do not call for international order, we stand tacitly opposed to thousands of years of human history and, all the more egregiously, opposed to hundreds of thousands of years of history that might yet be.
April 20, 2010 at 3:48 am
thus, our unwillingness to comment, act, write about, for, or against the order, the system, the prevailing events, we are in a way conniving with these forces or elements. Is that the imiplication?
April 20, 2010 at 3:51 am
I believe so. Broadly speaking, the tendency has been for poets to turn to their own personal worlds, away from the increasingly dehumanizing objective world. For well over hundred and fifty years, in a sense, the violent cults of extreme nationalism and racialism have repeatedly pitted human beings against one another, with the tensions building until the masses end up paying with their blood.
Arnold Toynbee and Julien Benda are two observers who wrote quite perceptively on this decline of awareness about what peoples have in common, versus nationalistic and racial differences that divide and lead to violence and war.
By increasingly turning throughout modernity to private, isolated worlds, poets have abdicated their responsibility to make sense of the exterior world and come to grips with it.
I'm arguing the arts, not only poetry, need a major reassessment and change of direction. "Without vision the people perish."
Arnold Toynbee and Julien Benda are two observers who wrote quite perceptively on this decline of awareness about what peoples have in common, versus nationalistic and racial differences that divide and lead to violence and war.
By increasingly turning throughout modernity to private, isolated worlds, poets have abdicated their responsibility to make sense of the exterior world and come to grips with it.
I'm arguing the arts, not only poetry, need a major reassessment and change of direction. "Without vision the people perish."
April 20, 2010 at 5:19 am
@Frederick, I agree with you.
@Tony, I don't think this is a lot to ask of poets. Poets, by nature, are observant and having observed and made sense of it, it is not that much to put it on paper. Many artistes (sculptors, painters etc) used to portray the events of the world in their paintings and sculptures. In this way many changed the world. But I cannot, with my limited knowledge, generally speak of the present. When Ken Saro-Wiwa, the human right activist from the Oil Region of Nigeria, was killed by firing squad by the then Sani Abacha government, the poets of Nigeria gathered to bemoan the loss. But the truth is what was done to prevent the execution. Let me add that Ken was also a writer and a man of the arts and he suffered such an abominable fate because he stood against the system.
@Tony, I don't think this is a lot to ask of poets. Poets, by nature, are observant and having observed and made sense of it, it is not that much to put it on paper. Many artistes (sculptors, painters etc) used to portray the events of the world in their paintings and sculptures. In this way many changed the world. But I cannot, with my limited knowledge, generally speak of the present. When Ken Saro-Wiwa, the human right activist from the Oil Region of Nigeria, was killed by firing squad by the then Sani Abacha government, the poets of Nigeria gathered to bemoan the loss. But the truth is what was done to prevent the execution. Let me add that Ken was also a writer and a man of the arts and he suffered such an abominable fate because he stood against the system.
April 20, 2010 at 6:02 am
Documentary poetry? Poetry as document? As poets we are quick to talk about "inherited forms" but not what I'm hearing as "inherited intent" in this posting. Grace Paley said didn't start out to be a feminist writer/poet. She was a mother/wife and wrote about what she saw around her. . . Bruce Weigl would say, and I don't think he invented this, the more specific we write the more universal the poem becomes. . . this from a combat veteran, working class poet.Try "What Saves Us" by him.
April 20, 2010 at 6:31 am
Much is expected of poets. Many don't expect enough of themselves, settle for too little. Ken Saro-Wiwa may be an excellent example. But poets and artists ultimately serve the vision of life that undergirds and evolves, changing every nation and people.
The modern world has largely accepted the nihilistic vision that evolved in the West and is now tragically out of touch with what life has become, undermining a more humane sense of life and purpose from developing. Why should poets and writers hesitate to over turn the ruling ethos at its deepest core?
I'm not suggesting or advocating a crude poetry of "action" on the barricades, gross politicization, "socialist realism," violence, "taking over," or anything like that. All that would be counterproductive. Politicians have their place. The best men and women of *vita activa* merit the respect of poets and peoples, worthy of it. But in the sense I mean they're on the surface of life. They're welcome to it.
Are artists performing their role, or have too many accepted an exhausted bill of goods? Change the thinking and we change the entire tenor of the culture, local and global. Nihilism has long been a stale loaf of bread... Artists and poets need a different consciousness about who and what we are, where we're going as individuals and as nations, as a world.
The modern world has largely accepted the nihilistic vision that evolved in the West and is now tragically out of touch with what life has become, undermining a more humane sense of life and purpose from developing. Why should poets and writers hesitate to over turn the ruling ethos at its deepest core?
I'm not suggesting or advocating a crude poetry of "action" on the barricades, gross politicization, "socialist realism," violence, "taking over," or anything like that. All that would be counterproductive. Politicians have their place. The best men and women of *vita activa* merit the respect of poets and peoples, worthy of it. But in the sense I mean they're on the surface of life. They're welcome to it.
Are artists performing their role, or have too many accepted an exhausted bill of goods? Change the thinking and we change the entire tenor of the culture, local and global. Nihilism has long been a stale loaf of bread... Artists and poets need a different consciousness about who and what we are, where we're going as individuals and as nations, as a world.
April 20, 2010 at 8:04 am
Do so agree with your viewpoint here Frederick. We have to move on from nihilism or we are lost. The thing is not to sink to agit-prop or crude sermonising, which doesn't convince at any rate.
April 20, 2010 at 2:49 pm
Peter, I hope I haven't fallen too much into "agit-prop or crude sermonising," though these Comment sections can perhaps easily lead one into it, off the cuff, so to speak... Thanks for the friendly warning! I'll try to restrain myself a little more... I genuinely appreciate your criticism, which provokes me to think. Admittedly, art is about *suggesting*, *alluding*, more subtle intimation of meaning and feeling.
On the other hand, perhaps, what's prose for, if not the thrashing out of critical views? And clearing undergrowth? The conception of one's audience has always been conceived of as effecting many rhetorical decisions, inevitably making some readers unhappy. I find myself thinking in terms of a world audience, not to sound pretentious, FB being what it is, yet reaching all the diversity one senses is a challenge. Poets' addressing only university readers is part of the problem that I'm trying to move away from. And the essay I'm posting excerpts from resonants maybe less when chopped up into 240 characters at a time...
On the other hand, perhaps, what's prose for, if not the thrashing out of critical views? And clearing undergrowth? The conception of one's audience has always been conceived of as effecting many rhetorical decisions, inevitably making some readers unhappy. I find myself thinking in terms of a world audience, not to sound pretentious, FB being what it is, yet reaching all the diversity one senses is a challenge. Poets' addressing only university readers is part of the problem that I'm trying to move away from. And the essay I'm posting excerpts from resonants maybe less when chopped up into 240 characters at a time...
April 20, 2010 at 3:39 pm
No criticism meant of you at all Frederick. More a warning to myself really. If you see my essay on irony in the Links section of my website at 3QD, you'll find a more reasoned argument of my position:
https://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2005/09/poetry_and_cult.html
https://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2005/09/poetry_and_cult.html
April 20, 2010 at 4:03 pm
la noche oscura del alma
April 20, 2010 at 7:29 pm
@Peter Nicholson Thanks for mentioning your essay, "Poetry and Limitations of the Ironic Mode in the New Millennium." It's on my list to read. I'll get back to you on it.
@Christopher McNeese It's been a long, dark night of the soul. By definition, an individual soul, as well as a culture, moves through a time of trial and test, coming out into the dawn of a new day...
@Christopher McNeese It's been a long, dark night of the soul. By definition, an individual soul, as well as a culture, moves through a time of trial and test, coming out into the dawn of a new day...
April 22, 2010 at 4:35 am
They cleave, as simplistically as Bly often does, humanity into the rich, the executives, the “darkening armies” and scientists versus the innocent, the poor, the poet, the male lovers of nature and all those who are incapable of confronting harsh realities; and they extricate all from the guilt that drips from their and our hands like the blood and gore that tainted the streets of Hiroshima, Cambodia, Vietnam.
April 19, 2010 at 3:45 pm
But what we get in most postmodern poets is sentimental banalizing of human nature.
April 19, 2010 at 9:51 am
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Can't argue with that.
April 19, 2010 at 9:59 am
This is why most of my non-poetry writing friends look at me crazy when I talk about poetry.
I think they would be interested, but get lost in a tangle of words that bore them to death.
What happened to the days when a poet could draw a large audience, and people actually understood what was being communicated?
I think they would be interested, but get lost in a tangle of words that bore them to death.
What happened to the days when a poet could draw a large audience, and people actually understood what was being communicated?
April 19, 2010 at 10:02 am
Thanks, both, for commenting. To me, I'd kindly revise the question to, What happened to the days when a poet *would at least* try?
Too busy studying the last theory from professor so-and-so from France... from Neo-Marxist Uni on the barricades, from what Philip Rieff called the "theraputic culture," etc...
Mimesis? What's that? Is that a po-mo theory?
"I'll drag the bloody guts into the other room."
Too busy studying the last theory from professor so-and-so from France... from Neo-Marxist Uni on the barricades, from what Philip Rieff called the "theraputic culture," etc...
Mimesis? What's that? Is that a po-mo theory?
"I'll drag the bloody guts into the other room."
April 19, 2010 at 10:50 am
Frederick -- from where I sit, an odd thing that keeps on ringing a wrong note for me in your exposition involves (again) the use of the term "postmodern poets" (or pomo poetry) -- which for you seemingly comprises most anything written in the past few decades, or am I mistaken? Far as I'm aware, avantgarde / experimental / postmodern / language (and so-called post-language etc.) poetries (movements with strength in the 1980s et seq.) have been noted for their distinctive, estimable turn away from various forms of sentimentality, favoring exploration of rhetoric dimensions less loosely tied to any fixed notion of a self. What strikes me as a bit odd is that the very tendencies that postmodernism (if one cares to use the term even slightly advisedly) strongly turned away from, are being subsumed under the vast "Postmodern [era]" rubric that you discern as hoisted over the heads of almost any contemporary. If your essay (I presume it to be essentially an essay) seeks to counter postmodernism per se, I do hope sooner or later you might give consideration to poets who are commonly felt to fit that description. I suppose one could do worse than to start with (just for example) Rae Armantrout (winner of the Pulitzer Prize a couple days ago), or John Ashbery (arguably the most influential and prominent of what one might, for sake of this note, dub bonafide postmodernists), or Leslie Scalapino, Ron Silliman, Michael Palmer, or a slew of others. Work of W.C. Williams and Robert Creeley might prove interesting to consider in context of your broadbrush critique. Considering these 2 writers, what you call "sentimentalizing banality," and what some might deem "carefully pondered mundane experience," may have areas of overlap, but I'd hazard they're motivated by a different focus and pulling in different directions. My proverbial 2 cents.
April 19, 2010 at 11:06 am
Memory did not serve. "I'll lug the guts into the next room." Hamlet
April 19, 2010 at 11:07 am
David, I've finished discussing the specific representative poets. Yes, there are endless others, but they don't interest me as much. Perhaps there's an essay in it for you. From my view point, the poets you mention are all indeed postmodern... as I've defined it, earlier and continuing. Thanks for your comments.
April 19, 2010 at 11:49 am
I look forward to when "postmodernism" ends and somebody invents a new "age" so to speak.
April 19, 2010 at 1:01 pm
'favoring exploration of rhetoric dimensions less loosely tied to any fixed notion of a self.' I have just been reading the Borges Selected Essays & way back in 1922 at the age of 23 he wrote a precocious essay on this, 'The Nothingness of Personality.' Just saying. As to the poets you arent interested in, Frederick, I am, as it seems David is, & so to dismiss them as not covering some of the areas you feel important seems a little, well, just dismissive. But this may, certainly in my case does, have to do with what poets & what poetry teaches one the most. I at least come to that point without thinking too much about thematics or whether or not they seem to be catching the end-all & be-all of 'human nature.'
April 19, 2010 at 2:45 pm
@Diane Yoder Postmodernism ended for me 30 years ago. Since then I've written four books that have buried it... I invite you to read them and decide for yourself.
@Douglas Barbour A lot of poets deserve to be dismissed when all they do is repeat the already-written. Literature is not a democracy; it's a meritocracy, sub specie aeternatatis...
The more decadent a literary period becomes, the more extensive the effort required and the carnage to clear the ground. All great civilizations and truly great poets understood that metaphysics was essential to poetry. Only the pathetically small little age of postmodernism has substituted doctrinaire nihilism, cynicism, and triviality for a serious, compelling, commanding vision. Those who fall short of the Tradition always make excuses. Real poets have always sacrificed and striven to be worthy of it.
@Douglas Barbour A lot of poets deserve to be dismissed when all they do is repeat the already-written. Literature is not a democracy; it's a meritocracy, sub specie aeternatatis...
The more decadent a literary period becomes, the more extensive the effort required and the carnage to clear the ground. All great civilizations and truly great poets understood that metaphysics was essential to poetry. Only the pathetically small little age of postmodernism has substituted doctrinaire nihilism, cynicism, and triviality for a serious, compelling, commanding vision. Those who fall short of the Tradition always make excuses. Real poets have always sacrificed and striven to be worthy of it.
April 19, 2010 at 3:44 pm
Post-modernism is frank. It's direct. Even surrealism in post-modernism has more of a realist twist to it. It's rebellious I believe.
April 20, 2010 at 2:53 am
Ishan, It's old hat. It's been done for decades... Isn't anyone else *sick* of it? I believe there are millions of readers who are.
I've written the books that will open up for them a whole new vision of the possibilities of life, not built on the nihilism and banalities of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, et al., and all the other decadents who brought modernity the vast slaughter of millions...
I invite you to read my books and website and consider there's more to the human being than postmodernism has to offer...
I've written the books that will open up for them a whole new vision of the possibilities of life, not built on the nihilism and banalities of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, et al., and all the other decadents who brought modernity the vast slaughter of millions...
I invite you to read my books and website and consider there's more to the human being than postmodernism has to offer...
April 20, 2010 at 3:15 am
That's true. I know what you mean, the old hat and stuff. I was saying what I think about post-modernism that's all.
April 20, 2010 at 3:24 am
Sure, I will read them.
April 20, 2010 at 3:24 am
This is that Shakespearean axis, that Hawthornean blackness that Melville knew and stalked and probed—“Evil is the nature of mankind”—that which “no deeply thinking mind is always and wholly free.”
April 19, 2010 at 7:02 am
All this Shakespeare knew: Out, vile jelly! O damn’d Iago! O inhuman dog! One may smile, and smile, and be a villain. Comfort’s in heaven, and we are on the earth, Where nothing lives but crosses, cares, and grief.
April 19, 2010 at 5:19 am
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Glaysher,true.I agree but can't we think beyond those Shakespearean rags...?
April 19, 2010 at 5:29 am
Ah, Shakespeare! I have to read Othello again this semester although I studied it in depth last semester. Othello is a great work, but I love Macbeth more. I still need to read more of Shakespeare's works, though. What's your favorite Shakespearean work?
April 19, 2010 at 5:34 am
Chandra, rags, shorthands, admittedly. I would argue juxtapositions create the rich tensions of lived complexity. That resonance, here, is on the macro level, perhaps.
Favorite Shakespeare play? Can't choose one. All of them...
Favorite Shakespeare play? Can't choose one. All of them...
April 19, 2010 at 5:40 am
A Midsummer's Night's Dream...our high school is putting on that play this year...definitely my favorite :)
April 19, 2010 at 1:05 pm
“I still see sin, new sin, mixing itself with the best of that I do.” “‘Is there but one spider in all this spacious room?’ then the water stood in Christiana’s eyes, for she was a woman quick of apprehension; and she said, ‘Yes, Lord, there is more here than one. Yea, and spiders whose venom is far more destructive. . . .’” “Human kind can not bear very much reality.”
April 18, 2010 at 9:52 am
To the artist these still only dimly acknowledged realities offer themselves as grist for his mill only if he also takes account of the unprecedented horror we have become: We ourselves are hell. “I look around me, and, lo! on every visage a Black Veil!”
April 18, 2010 at 7:33 am
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I love Hawthorne. I just got done writing a paper for a Hawthorne conference on the Hawthorne's years in Concord between 1842-45 and then at the last minute they declared a teacher's inservice so I couldn't go. I really think that even though Hawthorne is talking about the evil that lives within us all as a part of human nature, I hear people also who are still scared of communism and see communists everywhere. I thought we got over that after McCarthy and after the Soviet Union broke up. Apparently not.
April 18, 2010 at 8:24 am
Hawthorne worked at a very deep level with the antinomies of human nature. I was at the Old Manse a few years ago and you make me wonder what years he lived there, can't recall. Anyway, no simplistic idealism in Hawthorne, his Blithedale Romance, for instance.
Having sat in Beijing traffic next to a man with a hood over his head, between two soldiers, on his way to some prison or gulag, I am less inclined to think there aren't still people who take communism seriously, wherever that's coming from.
Having sat in Beijing traffic next to a man with a hood over his head, between two soldiers, on his way to some prison or gulag, I am less inclined to think there aren't still people who take communism seriously, wherever that's coming from.
April 18, 2010 at 9:21 am
Today no poet can conceive of a higher goal than the recognition and further establishment of what is already an operational fact: the unity of all peoples and nations.
April 18, 2010 at 5:18 am
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Good afternoon, South Africa & Serbia...
April 18, 2010 at 5:53 am
Heppy Sunday, Frederick:)
April 18, 2010 at 5:56 am
And to you too. :) It's AM here in Michigan. I was struck by the global conversation that FB makes possible... in a way, confirming, to my mind, what I posted about, on a human to human level.
April 18, 2010 at 6:00 am
In Belgrade it`s 4 pm.
April 18, 2010 at 6:02 am
in Berlin too. The sun is shining for the first time this spring all day long and I've just returned from a lovely afternoon stroll in our local park, where the people you see and hear speak a myriad of different languages... unified by nature and the love of spring. Pure poetry
April 18, 2010 at 6:17 am
Hello, Michigan! It's 4pm here. This is an interesting quotation, I'm pondering its implications (as a poet).
April 18, 2010 at 6:20 am
@Gunther Bedson, Sounds like a lovely day in Berlin, despite the volcano dust... I used the German-made Sharp World Clock for over a month, set up for 15 time zones around the world, and often check the time for whomever I'm chatting with. It has given me a new sense of how *round* the earth really is! :) There's something about a circle, as a symbol, physical and in terms of time...
April 18, 2010 at 6:26 am
Vasudhaiva kutumbakam ! "The world is, indeed, one [embracing] family!"
The centermost, milleniums-old tenet of Hinduism, and even then, there was some exasperation expressed by the ancient seers with the "indeed." "
The centermost, milleniums-old tenet of Hinduism, and even then, there was some exasperation expressed by the ancient seers with the "indeed." "
April 18, 2010 at 6:27 am
Günther, ich mag Berlin...:)
April 18, 2010 at 6:29 am
Ja - es ist eine besondere Stadt!
April 18, 2010 at 6:34 am
@Stuart Sovatsky Thanks for bringing in California time. Yes, the Vedas are so expressive of the unity of humanity, so obvious is the sense, I think is the meaning, why do we even have to bother with *indeed*?
April 18, 2010 at 6:34 am
Let's see, it's 8:11 pm in New Delhi. Anyone online there, after dinner?
April 18, 2010 at 6:41 am
@Samartha Vashishtha Thanks for the Thumbs Up! Let's see, Google Earth, Ambala, India is about half between New Delhi and Dharamsala...
April 18, 2010 at 6:51 am
Any night owls in Australia or New Zealand, wherever?
April 18, 2010 at 6:52 am
No poet can, you say, conceive of a goal higher than a facet of internationalism that you note to be already established as an operational fact? If there is no goal higher than something already in evidence, why even speak of a goal?
Realization of unity between soul and oversoul might present itself to certain poets as an experiential goal plausibly transcending all questions of nationalism, nonnationalism, or transnationalism. The former would involve direct, immediate experience of the eternal; the latter would seem to involve questions of evanescent, temporary organization of human collectivity and limited identity.
The expression "No poet can conceive of a goal higher" is certainly a rhetorical astonishment. If it lacks what some might esteem the gracenote of the tentative, the delicacy of conjecture, it anyway thunders its dubious assertion in a kind of boldface hyperventilation. The necessity of such absolutism (or the usefulness of this rhetorical trait), when seeking to sketch what ipresumably comprises a perspective, a theory, an idea, or a philosophical proposition, for the moment eludes me, the casual reader.
Realization of unity between soul and oversoul might present itself to certain poets as an experiential goal plausibly transcending all questions of nationalism, nonnationalism, or transnationalism. The former would involve direct, immediate experience of the eternal; the latter would seem to involve questions of evanescent, temporary organization of human collectivity and limited identity.
The expression "No poet can conceive of a goal higher" is certainly a rhetorical astonishment. If it lacks what some might esteem the gracenote of the tentative, the delicacy of conjecture, it anyway thunders its dubious assertion in a kind of boldface hyperventilation. The necessity of such absolutism (or the usefulness of this rhetorical trait), when seeking to sketch what ipresumably comprises a perspective, a theory, an idea, or a philosophical proposition, for the moment eludes me, the casual reader.
April 18, 2010 at 7:02 am
David, we've chatting enough that I hope you won't misunderstand me when I say you're such a bummer at the moment. Try to lighten up and not allow your intellect to get in the way of your heart. :)
April 18, 2010 at 7:06 am
Apologies if my comments seemed negative. I think to grasp the sense of your thesis or feel the flow of your style, it may be necessary to read the whole thing through rather than in piecemeal snippets -- which latter tend to highlight curiosities of (basically 19th century) style while perhaps obscuring what you're trying to say. I'll patiently await the further unfolding of your interesting thought.
April 18, 2010 at 7:09 am
Just off topic... Thanks, as always.
April 18, 2010 at 7:12 am
Even as the forces of lethargy and nationalistic provincialism struggle to prevent it from occurring, destiny impels humankind to rise to a higher level of consciousness and unity.
April 17, 2010 at 4:04 am
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True as life...
April 17, 2010 at 4:20 am
Abraham Abulafia believed that words would propel humanity towards the divine consciousness.
April 17, 2010 at 9:21 am
Far be it from me to disagree with one of great mystics of Kabbalah... But other mystic seers have also said words must be followed by deeds. The two are complimentary, not exclusionary, if deeds are performed with love and service of humanity.
April 17, 2010 at 10:34 am
Easier said than done, my friend. We are ever hampered by human nature *smiling mischievously*
April 17, 2010 at 10:53 am
True, the story of humanity...
April 17, 2010 at 11:33 am
So do I, along with Coleridge, Emerson, and Whitman, *smiling mischievously*"
April 17, 2010 at 11:36 am
I like the premise of your Parliament of Poets. I am reminded of an episode of Star Trek: Voyager in which Kes attains the highest level of consciousness and becomes a being of pure light. The mind is an amazing thing, and I wonder at the power of it, coupled with how we arrange words, the beauty and power words can have...we have not yet realized the full potential of ourselves or our words. Literature is such an empowering and powerful thing.
April 17, 2010 at 11:56 am
I appreciate your saying so. Yes, words can create marvelous worlds of possibility. Alas, the reverse as well,
April 17, 2010 at 1:43 pm
Modernity's preference...
April 17, 2010 at 1:47 pm
From the earliest scattered bands of Neanderthals, the first clans, tribes, and incipient cities, from the first tentative steps toward empire and nationhood, humankind has steadily been progressing toward the highest possible level of social organization attainable on this planet:
April 16, 2010 at 10:15 am
And so have the ants.
April 16, 2010 at 11:17 am
See below.
April 16, 2010 at 11:35 am
...a Trust of sovereign and independent nation-states that recognizes at last that the well-being of each nation-member can be obtained only through mutual allegiance to one supreme international governing federation.
April 16, 2010 at 10:15 am
Because the Greek crisis European Union is doomed to fail; their problem are shared by Spain and Portugal. I like our framework of 50 individual states cooperating when necessary while maintaining self reliance.
April 16, 2010 at 10:47 am
Thanks for saying so. Well, it's not really "mine." As you probably realize, it's every one who has thought seriously about political philosophy since Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. The monolithic Big Brother flying around the world in Black Helicopters is the scare tactic of isolationists and reactionaries who are blind to the global age went have long been living in.
Most of our problems are global, while our answers lag behind. To my mind, poets, writers, and artists must take the initiative to change our thinking and values; thereby, we can and will change the entire civilization, world civilization, protecting and preserving our own national unit.
To phrase it another way, it is long past time to pull our narcissistic heads out of the postmodern sand and set a new course for humanity. Our thinking stands in the way of solving ALL of the global problems that confront us. Who other than poets and writers?
Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the globe.
Most of our problems are global, while our answers lag behind. To my mind, poets, writers, and artists must take the initiative to change our thinking and values; thereby, we can and will change the entire civilization, world civilization, protecting and preserving our own national unit.
To phrase it another way, it is long past time to pull our narcissistic heads out of the postmodern sand and set a new course for humanity. Our thinking stands in the way of solving ALL of the global problems that confront us. Who other than poets and writers?
Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the globe.
April 16, 2010 at 11:35 am
Always good to be reminded of that.
April 16, 2010 at 1:28 pm
We are at the end of a literary period that has forgotten it. Art changes human consciousness and thereby changes the world. We need now a whole new global vision of what it means to be a human being.
The corrupt and decadent ruling ethos of the university has become detrimental to poetry and literature and needs to be swept aside every bit as much as the exhausted vision of postmodernism.
Only poets and writers can do that; the secondary annotators and sophists of the university are not only helplessly lost in pedantry but stand in the way of any truly new and humane vision. Their betrayal of the art must be exposed, as it already is exposed to thinking minds, to the entire culture, in unequivocal terms, so that the requisite change can begin to take place.
The corrupt and decadent ruling ethos of the university has become detrimental to poetry and literature and needs to be swept aside every bit as much as the exhausted vision of postmodernism.
Only poets and writers can do that; the secondary annotators and sophists of the university are not only helplessly lost in pedantry but stand in the way of any truly new and humane vision. Their betrayal of the art must be exposed, as it already is exposed to thinking minds, to the entire culture, in unequivocal terms, so that the requisite change can begin to take place.
April 17, 2010 at 4:03 am
I think the process has already set in.The nation state,ultranationalism,and other chauvinistic ideals have begun to peter out to make room for "hetroglossia" and polyphonic voices.if poets and philosophes won't change it ,the global eonomy would change it ,transcending all racial and religious barriers.Mark my words.
April 17, 2010 at 9:47 am
Chandra, I fully agree. That's what my essay "The Victory of World Governance" is all about. See under Essays >
https://www.fglaysher.com
https://www.fglaysher.com
April 17, 2010 at 10:30 am
Sorry, there are enough people in America who believe in self-reliance and self-determinism to thwart global governance. The collapse of the European Union will be sufficient to highlight the weakness of a global government.
April 17, 2010 at 4:06 pm
You appear to believe that "self-reliance" and "self-determinism" exclude "global governance." That's not the case. None of the major leaders and scholars on developing federalism on an international level have ever thought so, quite the contrary. If interested in the details, read my essay mentioned above.
Predictions on the European Union have been proven wrong in the past. The European Union and its particular problems are on a regional basis, some of which apply, some of which doesn't.
Global governance isn't "global government"...
Predictions on the European Union have been proven wrong in the past. The European Union and its particular problems are on a regional basis, some of which apply, some of which doesn't.
Global governance isn't "global government"...
April 18, 2010 at 4:49 am
In my view, global governance and global government are the same in the sense the same foreign and fiscal policies are executed. Another example of an attempt at global goverance is the Hitler like movement of the U.S. in the middle east. Just as Hitler moved into Poland, Belgium, and Holland The U.S. has assaulted Baghdad, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Pakistan. The result of U.S. agression in Baghdad has resulted in the death of 1.2 million Iraqis. This is a genocide.
Fortunately, we will ultimately fail in our military conquest there. Iran stands as the gatekeeper to freedom in that region. Iran will not be governed by the U.S. or anyone else. Any attempt at global governance must be stopped and the powers at be in America and Europe have a long way to go before realizing this horror that is global governance.
Fortunately, we will ultimately fail in our military conquest there. Iran stands as the gatekeeper to freedom in that region. Iran will not be governed by the U.S. or anyone else. Any attempt at global governance must be stopped and the powers at be in America and Europe have a long way to go before realizing this horror that is global governance.
April 18, 2010 at 8:15 am
It's scary how uninformed some Americans can be about the United Nations. I spoke on over 250 radio shows about the UN in 2000. In addition to my already mentioned essay, I invite you to listen to a few recordings on my website:
Selected Interviews
https://www.fglaysher.com/interviews.html
Selected Interviews
https://www.fglaysher.com/interviews.html
April 18, 2010 at 9:26 am
Frederick, in breif I am for the complete withdrawal from the United Nations and the expelling of the body from the soil of the United States.
April 18, 2010 at 10:23 am
I'm familiar with the opinion. I believe it's in error. Nothing could be worse for the best interests of our own country and the entire world.
April 18, 2010 at 10:39 am
Frederick, sorry self-reliance and self-determinism trumps the interest of the entire world. I will gladly sacrifice the interest of your country for the continued productivity and logevity for mine.
April 18, 2010 at 11:51 am
The tragedy of such thinking is that it fails to perceive that it is sacrificing the best interest of *our* country. Isolationism and jingoism are not answers to the global issues of our time.
April 18, 2010 at 12:04 pm
The tragedy of your thinking is that you believe global governance is the answer and addresses the problems facing the world. The answer to the problems facing the world can only be addressed by each individual country using its own recourses. If a people do not like its government then it is the responsibility of those people to institute a coup.
Concerning the United States of America we have the resources to address our problems and we do not need the rest of the world. The U.S. can produce its own food, textiles, steel, and energy; NAFTA, GAT, and a North American treaty creates more problems then provides solutions.
The third world must stay the third world until the people desire something better. It is time for the U.S. to withdraw its troops from Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea, Germany, and all other countys where our troops are present. Its time for the U.S. to remember its divine destiny and its citizens must create a country free from illegal immigration and dependence upon foreign oil. We as a citizenry must initiate a sound monetary and fiscal policy. We must reassert our dominence as producer. America is the greatest country in the world and with our potential to be all sufficient we do not need the rest of the world.
Concerning the United States of America we have the resources to address our problems and we do not need the rest of the world. The U.S. can produce its own food, textiles, steel, and energy; NAFTA, GAT, and a North American treaty creates more problems then provides solutions.
The third world must stay the third world until the people desire something better. It is time for the U.S. to withdraw its troops from Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea, Germany, and all other countys where our troops are present. Its time for the U.S. to remember its divine destiny and its citizens must create a country free from illegal immigration and dependence upon foreign oil. We as a citizenry must initiate a sound monetary and fiscal policy. We must reassert our dominence as producer. America is the greatest country in the world and with our potential to be all sufficient we do not need the rest of the world.
April 18, 2010 at 12:47 pm
You're entitled to your opinions. The nationalism and isolationism implicit in thinking "we do not need the rest of the world" is out of touch with the entire span of modern history and with reality.
The essay I referred you to is based on the reading of over 200 books on American and world history, the League of Nations and the United Nations, by reputable scholars of all political persuasions. The opinions you express are apparently based on FOX news, other nescient, retrograde sources, and fantasy.
The essay I referred you to is based on the reading of over 200 books on American and world history, the League of Nations and the United Nations, by reputable scholars of all political persuasions. The opinions you express are apparently based on FOX news, other nescient, retrograde sources, and fantasy.
April 18, 2010 at 3:03 pm
A world aesthetic economy would take into account the teleology of human history that is now perceivable. Where once only disorder and confusion could be discerned, a goal can now be seen. And the scientific development over the past one hundred years can at last be seen as merely the prerequisite to the creation of a global infrastructure.
April 16, 2010 at 7:01 am
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To understand what a world aesthetic economy would entail, we must again commit literary heresy and look outside the self at the real world that Jonathan Schell describes in his Fate of the Earth:“National sovereignty lies at the very core of the political issues that the peril of extinction forces upon us. ...the “realists” counsel us ... any alternative as ‘unrealistic’ or ‘utopian.’”
April 16, 2010 at 4:25 am
Frederick -- in these last 2 "sequential installments of your essay" (aka serial screed in a slightly more jaunty vernacular, but we'll let that point of variant phrasing pass), you ha've introduced a novel phrase, "world aesthetic economy," -- a phrase so far undefined. I suppose a reader may either wait for a subsequent installment that might begin to define it, or else seek definition a bit more immediately. Whether "economy" is used in a literal denotative sense, or in some figurative sense, would seem the first question. (Parenthetically, I can't help but notice that the concerns voiced in Schell's Fate of the Earth figure among overt concerns entertained by Merwin in his poem addressed to Po Chu-i -- a poem you were so quick to dismiss; but this is possibly a side issue.)
April 16, 2010 at 4:44 am
I've expressed my opinion on the reprehensible tactic of smearing with such epithets as "serial screed." See my response to Professor Scroggins three or four posts below.
You might want to look up the word "economy." Use a good dictionary, one with sensitivity to cultural and aesthetic weight and etymology, like the OED or the 1913 Webster, instead of what passes for lexicons today.
I respect Merwin's work and your apparent high regard for it. I've candidly explained why I don't think highly of his poetry and much of the art since 1950. Although we may have a basic disagreement over aesthetic principles, I feel no need to smear you in order to refute your ideas, or the small, minor ideas at the core of much of postmodern poetry. I've tried to keep discussion on an intellectual level. I would appreciate it if you would too.
Schell's book marks only one moment in our historical journey, though a noteworthy one, summing up and touching on many continuing concerns. Merwin's and other postmodern responses to those concerns are the wrong ones... as are some of Schell's.
You might want to look up the word "economy." Use a good dictionary, one with sensitivity to cultural and aesthetic weight and etymology, like the OED or the 1913 Webster, instead of what passes for lexicons today.
I respect Merwin's work and your apparent high regard for it. I've candidly explained why I don't think highly of his poetry and much of the art since 1950. Although we may have a basic disagreement over aesthetic principles, I feel no need to smear you in order to refute your ideas, or the small, minor ideas at the core of much of postmodern poetry. I've tried to keep discussion on an intellectual level. I would appreciate it if you would too.
Schell's book marks only one moment in our historical journey, though a noteworthy one, summing up and touching on many continuing concerns. Merwin's and other postmodern responses to those concerns are the wrong ones... as are some of Schell's.
April 16, 2010 at 5:38 am
Although I find your remarks about poetry often interesting, and your meta-narrative intriguing, your posts are taking on a certain screediness in that you constantly shape your historical account into a narrative of decline, and use incredibly loaded terms like 'degeneracy' to describe literature or movements of which you disapprove. Degenerate, bankrupt, decadent, solipsistic--highly value-laden terms which you use, oddly and interchangeably also, with 'postmodernism'--which you persistently demonize for no good intellectual reason that I can discern. And it is not true that you respectfully engage with people with whom you disagree. Your response in this forum has been to accuse those of us who disagree of 'postmodernism,' which given the way you use that term I, for one, find highly disrespectful, dismissive, and polarizing. As interesting and incisive as your comments on poetry often are, and as much as I share your interests in general, it is difficult to impossible to take seriously an account that so wholeheartedly generalizes, isolates and then demonizes, entire bodies of thought. This does not come off as disinterested intellectual inquiry, but an agenda-laden evangelism. Your contempt for your peers--those anyway who do not share your views, is palpable.
April 16, 2010 at 8:44 am
Furthermore, I am deeply frustrated because you have the potential for a lovely community of scholars here. I would love substantive academic exchange on facebook, and I'd have loved to continue discussion with some of the people who have commented on your posts. But you don't seem to want to allow that to happen. You've squelched pretty much any discussion that doesn't fit within the rigid parameters you've laid out. I hang around here mostly to see what others say, and hoping for real discussion. But I must say that I'm also pretty much done with this.
April 16, 2010 at 8:58 am
Thank you for commenting. I respect your opinions, though I do not share them, nor find them persuasive. Neither are they an accurate characterization of my views, but misunderstandings perhaps based on your own intellectual and literary preferences, it seems to me.
My describing the "lamentable degeneracy" of postmodernism is merely agreeing with the analysis of observers like the scholar Jacques Barzun, a man who was an outstanding scholar, worthy of the title, who wrote, "When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent. The term is not a slur; it is a technical label" (See his book FROM DAWN TO DECADENCE, page 11). Dismissing such an analysis as a "screed" does not confront the seriousness of the charge nor answer it. Neither Professor Scroggins, David, nor yourself has done so, it seems to me.
Postmodernism is but a small and insignificant blip on the surface of the vast stretch of cultural history, though it imagines it has discovered the great truths of human existence. To the extent that the university, as the sacred guardian of the tenets of nihilism, has failed to serve the best interests of the culture upon which, in this regard, it has become a parasite, I have criticized it and believe it merits such criticism. I can appreciate there are people who think differently from me, and I have acknowledged their ideas, while respectfully expressing my own, without resorting to ad hominem and derision. One cannot do much more than that without becoming someone else.
Again, I don't feel any contempt for any individual with whom I've discussed any idea here. Indeed, I've bent over backwards emphasizing I respect other people's opinions, though I might not share them, as I've repeatedly said to you. I understand people become very emotionally attached to ideas, especially the fiercely debated intellectual ideas surrounding culture and poetry. It can be painful for some people to hear there are others who don't share their views.
The real issue is the decadent literary and cultural period we are in, the danger it poses to civilization, and how we human beings might create and affirm cultural values worthy of what is noble in humanity.
My describing the "lamentable degeneracy" of postmodernism is merely agreeing with the analysis of observers like the scholar Jacques Barzun, a man who was an outstanding scholar, worthy of the title, who wrote, "When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent. The term is not a slur; it is a technical label" (See his book FROM DAWN TO DECADENCE, page 11). Dismissing such an analysis as a "screed" does not confront the seriousness of the charge nor answer it. Neither Professor Scroggins, David, nor yourself has done so, it seems to me.
Postmodernism is but a small and insignificant blip on the surface of the vast stretch of cultural history, though it imagines it has discovered the great truths of human existence. To the extent that the university, as the sacred guardian of the tenets of nihilism, has failed to serve the best interests of the culture upon which, in this regard, it has become a parasite, I have criticized it and believe it merits such criticism. I can appreciate there are people who think differently from me, and I have acknowledged their ideas, while respectfully expressing my own, without resorting to ad hominem and derision. One cannot do much more than that without becoming someone else.
Again, I don't feel any contempt for any individual with whom I've discussed any idea here. Indeed, I've bent over backwards emphasizing I respect other people's opinions, though I might not share them, as I've repeatedly said to you. I understand people become very emotionally attached to ideas, especially the fiercely debated intellectual ideas surrounding culture and poetry. It can be painful for some people to hear there are others who don't share their views.
The real issue is the decadent literary and cultural period we are in, the danger it poses to civilization, and how we human beings might create and affirm cultural values worthy of what is noble in humanity.
April 16, 2010 at 9:25 am
Thank you for your response. But you have no idea what my 'intellectual and literary preferences are,' and that assumption is an example of what frustrates me. Point of fact, I have an MPhil in Irish Studies, which I used as background for PhD work in medieval Irish poetry--which I studied, incidentally, in the original Old Irish. I also spent a great deal of time, in the course of this work, and the uses to which certain modernist poets put this tradition, reading classical Greek texts, which I also regularly teach. Irish Studies is intensely rigorous, involving as it does history, linguistics, comprehensive familiarity with a body of literature most people don't study, and critical approaches that are definitely outside of that which is customary in English. I did it because it makes me happy, and because there's an incredibly rich tradition of poetic lore and theory--ideas about what it's like to be a poet and what poetry is--I continually find useful. I also find certain contemporary critical and theoretical approaches to be rich and useful, and they also make me happy. For me, these approaches are not the least at odds, but inform each other.
The fact that I find value in early as well as recent works, and the same joyous spark in contemporary as in medieval and ancient poetry, is the source of my impatience with your overall argument, not literary or critical preference.
The fact that I find value in early as well as recent works, and the same joyous spark in contemporary as in medieval and ancient poetry, is the source of my impatience with your overall argument, not literary or critical preference.
April 16, 2010 at 9:46 am
Frederick, regarding subtle meanings of the word "economy," you kindly point me to certain useful dictionaries. I doubt whether any dictionary will serve to inform me of the full meaning intended or suggested by the word when placed in the phrase you here coin, "world aesthetic economy." So, for the word's meaning in that specialized context, I will await your unfolding, sequential elucidation.
Perhaps you may permit me to note regarding another phrase, namely Mark Scroggins' "serial screed," how it may have escaped your notice that if I am not mistaken, the word "screed" as commonly employed at this far end of the 20th & early 21st century, is chiefly (almost excusively) used with a jocular (rather than a vicious) sense and implication; it has so lost the 18th / 19th century vituperative sense, that I would not be very surprised were a statistical study were to reveal the jocular vs. vicious uses of this word, over the past 30 years or so, to exceed a proportion of perhaps 95%. Among contemporary writers, reference to a sequential writing as a serial screed would be at least as likely to connote an amicable as a hostile intention (though admittedly I have not yet scrolled down to find your earlier exchanges with Scroggins to which you allude). Be as all this may, I for one read Mark Scroggins' remark with the predominant contemporary sense and usage in mind. This is a mere lexical note in passing.
Perhaps you may permit me to note regarding another phrase, namely Mark Scroggins' "serial screed," how it may have escaped your notice that if I am not mistaken, the word "screed" as commonly employed at this far end of the 20th & early 21st century, is chiefly (almost excusively) used with a jocular (rather than a vicious) sense and implication; it has so lost the 18th / 19th century vituperative sense, that I would not be very surprised were a statistical study were to reveal the jocular vs. vicious uses of this word, over the past 30 years or so, to exceed a proportion of perhaps 95%. Among contemporary writers, reference to a sequential writing as a serial screed would be at least as likely to connote an amicable as a hostile intention (though admittedly I have not yet scrolled down to find your earlier exchanges with Scroggins to which you allude). Be as all this may, I for one read Mark Scroggins' remark with the predominant contemporary sense and usage in mind. This is a mere lexical note in passing.
April 16, 2010 at 10:23 am
That was my point. And that I respect the integrity of your conscience, though I don't share its evaluation of postmodernism, nor of "contemporary critical and theoretical approaches," since you bring them up.
Academicians often think they own and control literature. But they don't. Nor do poets and writers. The Sacred Muses of the Tradition alone guard over it. And all those who fail to live up to their standards fall short. Given the moribund and corrupt literary period we are at the end of (beyond really), I don't believe anyone will be surprised that people of good conscience can hold different views.
Academicians often think they own and control literature. But they don't. Nor do poets and writers. The Sacred Muses of the Tradition alone guard over it. And all those who fail to live up to their standards fall short. Given the moribund and corrupt literary period we are at the end of (beyond really), I don't believe anyone will be surprised that people of good conscience can hold different views.
April 16, 2010 at 10:34 am
ps: put more briefly, I understood "serial screed" to connote nothing more than "manifesto doled out in a series of installments." Above, I was manifestly a bit of an apologist in favor of W.S. Merwin's poetry, if for no other reason than the value I have found in it.. I am certainly not an apologist for postmodernism per se -- an ism which seems exceedingly multifarious, nebulous, and in many respects hard to pin down. I feel it might prove a bit of a mistake to hoist this rubric overgenerously. At any rate, I do not belong to academia and have not been compelled to fully come to terms with the various dimensions and senses of the postmodern. I'm nonetheless doubtful that it everywhere equates, as you suggest, with nihilism. The postmodern approach (which seems to me much better represented or exemplified by John Ashbery than by W.S. Merwin) seems far to flexible and fluid to permit such an equation; it seems if anything to favor a cloud of meaning (like a cloud of electrons) to atomic simplicities. Like Shannon McRae, I too have delved (though not at all as far as she has) in olden poetries -- in my case, chiefly classical Chinese. In general, I have found it delightful to enjoy the range of possible poetries running from this almost lost antiquity [which translation has never sufficed to plumb] and some estimable efforts of current writers.
April 16, 2010 at 10:46 am
erratum
for "far to flexible" read "far too flexible"
for "far to flexible" read "far too flexible"
April 16, 2010 at 10:47 am
Far be it from me to detract from anyone's enjoyment of any poet or poetry. As a poet, I'm concerned with where the art and culture are today, and where they are going, or not going... All I can do is describe where the lay of the land appears to me and continue in the direction my lights lead. Those who are happy with the status quo are free to choose to stay where they are.
April 16, 2010 at 11:21 am
The status of the river is never quo
the stillness of the cloud is a constant flow
that tale is best retold from start to end
whose gist (alas) is a thing I've yet to know
the stillness of the cloud is a constant flow
that tale is best retold from start to end
whose gist (alas) is a thing I've yet to know
April 16, 2010 at 11:29 am
Those poets who feel the burden of complicity upon their backs will not withdraw into a dreamlike phantasmagoria of the unconscious self;
April 15, 2010 at 9:00 am
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...they will confront the gruesome realities of human nature that have manifested themselves more horrifyingly during the last hundred years than at any time in the past and will halt the long drift from a sober but healthy mimesis to a decadent and solipsistic literature that impresses one only by the appalling spectacle of its own lamentable degeneracy.
April 15, 2010 at 9:00 am
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trying to unpack this one . . . the ones who feel complicit . . . will halt the drift from . . . healthy mimesis to . . . solipsistic literature. is that the gist?
April 15, 2010 at 11:55 am
how long is the drift? who is included among the degenerate?
April 15, 2010 at 11:56 am
better yet, who are the ones who feel complicit?
April 15, 2010 at 11:57 am
I don't use the word "degenerate" to refer to people, but to literature. No ad hominem in that. Discussion and particular poets below.
April 15, 2010 at 12:25 pm
Such are the fruits of the unconscious mind when it goes uncontrolled by rational, civilized restraints. That these poets play only into the hands of the general mindlessness instead of struggling to come to grips with it and to challenge it with a world aesthetic economy is an outrageous abdication of moral and social responsibility.
April 15, 2010 at 5:50 am
I see. And might you not likewise care to blame composers, musicians, dancers, painters, playwrights, filmmakers, architects, and various other artists for seeking to explore the dimensions of and to pursue an inner life -- thereby (as your argument seems to suggest) abdicating responsibility for really bad things meanwhile transpiring within global milieus? Why single out poets for this rhetorical act of blame?
April 15, 2010 at 6:33 am
Consider, Frederick, this recent poem of W.S. Merwin's (appearing in The New Yorker) -- the poet whom your argument uses as evidence of a reprehensible tendency toward mindlessly drawing inward and thereby ignoring the plight of a shared world (if I'm paraphrasing not too inaccurately the gist of your broad gripe against contemporary poets).
https://www.newyorker.com/fiction/poetry/2010/03/08/100308po_poem_merwin
Taking a step back (to the era in which the "Bread" poem was written), we might also recollect Merwin's historic renunciation of the Pulitzer Prize, as an act of protest against US actions in the Vietnam War. Whatever be the straw-man with whom you seek to joust here, I'm not sure if you've chosen the best representative to stand in for him.
https://www.newyorker.com/fiction/poetry/2010/03/08/100308po_poem_merwin
Taking a step back (to the era in which the "Bread" poem was written), we might also recollect Merwin's historic renunciation of the Pulitzer Prize, as an act of protest against US actions in the Vietnam War. Whatever be the straw-man with whom you seek to joust here, I'm not sure if you've chosen the best representative to stand in for him.
April 15, 2010 at 7:09 am
I respect your view. "Blame" is not a word I'd use. Descriptive... Other artists are free to follow their own lights, as are poets. There's an often very narrow world view that dominates much of postmodern poetry and art. Call it the meta-narrative of modernity. For a poet who feels the burden of challenging and setting a truly different course from the reigning meta-myth, no age has ever shown itself accommodating...
The derivative, little postmodern poem you cite from Merwin only confirms what I'm talking about... Thanks for another example. It's the kind of poem I'd expect to be published in The New Yorker and similar magazines.
Postmodernism isn't a straw-man; it's a decadent and bankrupt stage of civilization, a dead literary period. Life has already moved beyond it, but few poets and artists seem able to realize it.
The derivative, little postmodern poem you cite from Merwin only confirms what I'm talking about... Thanks for another example. It's the kind of poem I'd expect to be published in The New Yorker and similar magazines.
Postmodernism isn't a straw-man; it's a decadent and bankrupt stage of civilization, a dead literary period. Life has already moved beyond it, but few poets and artists seem able to realize it.
April 15, 2010 at 8:04 am
Frederick, so far as I'm aware, Merwin has never been much identified with postmodernism per se. I'm not clear on why you make that novel identification here, unless it's simply a convenient pigeon-hole to help expedite your dismissal. I felt the short poem to be arresting when reading it in pages of The New Yorker; it continues to hold my interest on reread. Not too many poets these days bother to ponder and respond to (and consider historical parallels with) Bo Chu-i, so far as I'm aware. Why this atypical act of response merits the "derivative" denigration, I fail to grasp. Still, I'm happy I've provided fodder for your teacup.
April 15, 2010 at 11:06 am
the argument here is so academic. can anyone be more specific please? I'm interested in a critique of postmodern poetry--not that I don't love Merwin--if he does indeed fit the description of decadent, bankrupt, derivative, etc.
Poets and artists (in general, not all) realize life the spirit of the times before anyone! Always! We simply don't accept what they are saying.
Poets and artists (in general, not all) realize life the spirit of the times before anyone! Always! We simply don't accept what they are saying.
April 15, 2010 at 12:14 pm
No tempest in a teapot... I believe it would be a mistake not to see Merwin in postmodern terms. Whether one wants to return to 13th Century Catholicism or a defunct Buddhism amounts to about same... even if one grows bananas, Basho has been there, done that... The mystic East is as spiritually dead as the West, though many in California, the Northwest, and elsewhere haven't yet figured it out.
April 15, 2010 at 12:22 pm
@Billie Maciunas If you want the full context, you have to do the reading. See below.
Nothing could be more hackneyed and commonplace than what passes for poetry today... coming out of the university and MFA programs...
Nothing could be more hackneyed and commonplace than what passes for poetry today... coming out of the university and MFA programs...
April 15, 2010 at 12:29 pm
I see. Since you seem to view most contemporary efforts as unsatisfactory, are there any current poets whose work you might point to as leading in a more vital direction? Or are you perchance the lone wolf in this respect?
April 15, 2010 at 12:30 pm
university and mfa programs are not where you go to find poetry. especially if you want "the full context."
April 15, 2010 at 12:40 pm
Literature is the history of lone wolves... who weary of the coterie or pack, its predictable, stultifying mentality, and set off on a new trail.
"Doubt not, O poet, but persist. Say "It is in me, and shall out."
"Doubt not, O poet, but persist. Say "It is in me, and shall out."
April 15, 2010 at 12:44 pm
yes! I've been hearing wonderful stuff at local poetry slams and spoken word fests. Sometimes breaking into song, and including motion--the whole body. The involvement of the body in poetry has GOT to be a good sign.
April 15, 2010 at 2:40 pm
Frederick, I have not been reading your prose here for terribly long, though in the past month or something I've been perusing it regularly and with interest. I've also glanced at some prose on your website. I have not seen your poetry. Do I grasp you correctly (really this is a leap of inference and conjecture) that in fine, you approve of no contemporary except for yourself? Or is that stating the matter a bit too sharply?
April 15, 2010 at 2:47 pm
David, I appreciate your interest and have enjoyed our conversations. Actually, I do have some excerpted poems on my website, if interested. As a young poet, I found Robert Hayden's interest in history very important. I don't find that among any other poets since him. The obsession with the self has been pronounced for a very long time, among other maladies:
Into the Ruins: Poems
https://www.fglaysher.com/into_the_ruins.html
The Bower of Nil: A Narrative Poem
https://www.fglaysher.com/bower_of_nil.html
Into the Ruins: Poems
https://www.fglaysher.com/into_the_ruins.html
The Bower of Nil: A Narrative Poem
https://www.fglaysher.com/bower_of_nil.html
April 15, 2010 at 3:10 pm
...a sign of the further decline, if not end, of poetry.
April 15, 2010 at 3:32 pm
I think you have your answer there, David: Frederick is indeed the last of the poets. Or rather, he is the last poet he is interested in.
Frederick, it's been fascinating following your serial screed over the past few weeks. I find it remarkably crude in its interpretation of the history of western civilization, and astonishingly ignorant about the very subject which you're ostensibly addressing -- contemporary poetry. I won't give you a list -- I could easily reel off 20 or 30 -- of contemporary poets deeply interested in history, deeply uninterested in your bogeyman of the "self"; it's clear that you're not interested in reading anything you don't already know.
If I want to be preached at, I'll attend a house of worship; if I want to hear a lecture, I'll go to a lecture by someone who knows what they're talking about. I wish you the best, and wish your 2000-person audience patience; but I no longer have any.
Frederick, it's been fascinating following your serial screed over the past few weeks. I find it remarkably crude in its interpretation of the history of western civilization, and astonishingly ignorant about the very subject which you're ostensibly addressing -- contemporary poetry. I won't give you a list -- I could easily reel off 20 or 30 -- of contemporary poets deeply interested in history, deeply uninterested in your bogeyman of the "self"; it's clear that you're not interested in reading anything you don't already know.
If I want to be preached at, I'll attend a house of worship; if I want to hear a lecture, I'll go to a lecture by someone who knows what they're talking about. I wish you the best, and wish your 2000-person audience patience; but I no longer have any.
April 15, 2010 at 7:27 pm
Professor Scroggins, Thank you for sharing your point of view, hostile though it be, like your earlier posts. Unlike you, I'm willing to listen to views I don't share and respond to them in a civil manner, instead of smearing other opinions with vague generalizations like "serial screed" and "astonishingly ignorant." I'm willing to discuss and critique the understanding and interpretation of history and poetry. You clearly aren't, for it's you who seems to think he has the sole truth.
Having studied and taught in American universities for nearly twenty years, I have no delusions about free speech or "scholarly exchange of ideas" amounting to anything among many academics, to say nothing about common courtesy during intellectual debate.
Your outburst of frustration and apparent hurt feelings over meeting someone who doesn't reflect back to you the academic pieties you hold near and dear is sadly characteristic of adolescence, rather than the disinterested search for truth and knowledge that the scholarly tradition used to hold as an ideal for centuries.
I must say too the deriding of my views as "preaching" and "lecturing" amounts to more of the same. "Defriending" me and stamping away in anger is not an intellectual response to my argument that postmodern American poets have abdicated "moral and social responsibility" by sinking ever further into obsession with their small little worlds of self, nor my belief that the entire literary period of postmodernism is moribund and decadent. If anything, your temperamental response confirms it. Looking back at the literary tradition, people seldom wanted to listen to a new voice...
Having studied and taught in American universities for nearly twenty years, I have no delusions about free speech or "scholarly exchange of ideas" amounting to anything among many academics, to say nothing about common courtesy during intellectual debate.
Your outburst of frustration and apparent hurt feelings over meeting someone who doesn't reflect back to you the academic pieties you hold near and dear is sadly characteristic of adolescence, rather than the disinterested search for truth and knowledge that the scholarly tradition used to hold as an ideal for centuries.
I must say too the deriding of my views as "preaching" and "lecturing" amounts to more of the same. "Defriending" me and stamping away in anger is not an intellectual response to my argument that postmodern American poets have abdicated "moral and social responsibility" by sinking ever further into obsession with their small little worlds of self, nor my belief that the entire literary period of postmodernism is moribund and decadent. If anything, your temperamental response confirms it. Looking back at the literary tradition, people seldom wanted to listen to a new voice...
April 16, 2010 at 3:18 am
Frederick, please go to a poetry slam.
April 16, 2010 at 7:23 am
“They held their arms bent forward . . . and their skin—not only on their hands but on their faces and bodies, too—hung down. If there had been only one or two such people . . . perhaps I would not have had such a strong impression. But wherever I walked, I met these people. . . ." Jonathan Schell
April 14, 2010 at 12:53 pm
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What these poets fail to take into account can be found in these excerpts from Genocide and The Fate of the Earth: “The burning had reached a pitch that night. Every chimney was disgorging flames. Smoke burst from the holes and ditches, swirling, swaying and coiling above our heads. Sparks and cinders blinded us. Through the screened fence of the second crematory we could see figures with pitchforks moving...”
April 14, 2010 at 12:52 pm
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The senses and the intellect are older than modern science,and were employed to good effect before the invention of the spectroscope:it is they in their daily operation that make it difficult to leap the gulf which separates the amenities and trivialities of common life from the solemn theatre of poet's imagination.
April 15, 2010 at 8:08 am
@Chandra Shekhar Dubey I'm not sure I entirely understand you. Are you saying something like modern science has led people away from being in touch with their own "senses and intellect" and the "poet's imagination"?
April 15, 2010 at 1:50 pm
@Frederick Glasher.NO, I DON'T MEAN THAT.I was commenting on intellectual,material and theological basis
of human existence as distinct categories.I further added the pragmatic undertone to it to draw a line of demarcation between pure reason and pure imagination.A poet is essentially a child of imagination with all other qualities.Intellect and senses predate modern science ,as a matter of fact ,these factors coupled with innovative skills
fathered modern science.
of human existence as distinct categories.I further added the pragmatic undertone to it to draw a line of demarcation between pure reason and pure imagination.A poet is essentially a child of imagination with all other qualities.Intellect and senses predate modern science ,as a matter of fact ,these factors coupled with innovative skills
fathered modern science.
April 15, 2010 at 10:32 pm
Ah, Scientism... "distinct categories," chopping up the human being into parts, as though "pure reason" and "pure imagination" existed. I'm not a follower of that myth or meta-narrative, nor do I hold that the poet is "a child of imagination," in the sense of Romanticism, or later condescending terms...
April 16, 2010 at 2:38 am
Once this happens they “emerge” to find themselves, true to the self-centeredness of the tradition, “alone” before a field that raises its radiance to the moon. Although the journey has been from light to dark to light, the light of the moon is surrounded by darkness and is merely another example of the convention: the bread of life (an entire field of the raw stuff) is the radiance of the unconscious mind.
April 14, 2010 at 8:01 am
“Each face” keeps dreaming of following the “ragged,” abandoned tunnels “in out of the light,” while the unconscious impulses of humankind persist in knocking at the doors of consciousness, inviting fallen rational man to enter and be redeemed, “be sustained by its dark breath.”
April 14, 2010 at 5:45 am
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Here, though, the bread of life is a slice of the irrational forces that Merwin worships as primitive peoples worship the moon: “Each face in the street is .... / wandering on / searching . . . / have they forgotten the pale caves . . . / have they forgotten the ragged tunnels / they dreamed of following in out of the light . . . . / to find themselves alone / before a wheat field / raising its radiance to the moon”
April 13, 2010 at 9:02 am
W. S. Merwin also uses the same convention of a journey into the unconscious and is well known for the predictability with which it appears in his poetry. Most of his customary techniques can be found in the poem “Bread,” which plays on the old saying about the bread of life.
April 13, 2010 at 6:49 am
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It might be parenthetically noted that Merwin's work has shown (and continues to flesh out) several fairly distinctive phases of evolution. The poem you cite might typify poems he wrote for the better part of a decade (circa mid-1960s to mid-1970s I believe), in a diverse career spanning (so far) half a dozen fruitful decades. Poems in his "second four books" (of which the short poem cited is one) are notable, no doubt. Perhaps the magnum opus of his poems explicitly limning a journey into the unconscious is the lengthy narrative (from his first four books) entitled "East of the Sun and West of the Moon." Merwin's poems of recent decades no longer need rehearse inner-life injunctions (in a manner some might have deemed predictable if not to say hackneyed, 3 or 4 decades ago), perhaps because the underlying meditation process has become so profoundly established, habitual, fecund, and (if one may allow this) natural. Having followed his own injunctions, he need no longer so explicitly highlight them, one might say.
April 14, 2010 at 7:32 am
David, I acknowledge your fair qualifications. And I respect his own conscience, as a man and poet, knowing he's gone somewhat in another direction. For me, this general style in poetry is too ahistorical, as I will explain before long. Best.
April 14, 2010 at 8:10 am
Thanks -- fair enough; looking forward to your further observations and elucidations.
April 14, 2010 at 8:36 am
By the way, I would recommend Merwin's title poem from the 1990s volume The Vixen, for consideration in context of your thesis here. I feel the poem to be wonderful and profound; you may find it typical of the tendency you critique (emerging in later period). An earlier poem that likewise I like tremendously (but which strangely Merwin left out of his own anthologies) appeared in The Second Four Books, the title (I think) was A Prayer for the Eyes (or maybe it's A Hymn....). For me, it is almost a poetic form of Meher Baba's cosmological thesis (in the latter's volume God Speaks) in which the stone form figures significantly (stones have a curious role in the Merwin poem). Yet another fave of mine from the period you critique was the poem "Route With No Number." I would tend to consider such poems to typify a kind of fascinating turn of the line of literary history (a history with antecedents in troubadour poetries and other such mystical traditions) rather than being ahistorical; but the modern expression (in Merwin especially) is indeed novel -- as are our times likewise (arguably), in many crucial and puzzling ways, new and strange.
April 14, 2010 at 8:44 am
ps: if considering such a poem as Merwin's The Vixen, one can hardly avoid considering in tandem Robert Graves' ideas about poetry (given singular expression in that author's daunting book-length essay The White Goddess) -- a complex of ideas which (to a degree) may be said to underpin the tendency you're critically examining here. Too, the parallel significance of Carl Jung's work overall, need not be underestimated. Andre Tarkovsky in the realm of film, and W.S. Merwin in the realm of poetry, could be said (even) to exemplify a Jungian turn in 20th century thought (even if the filmmaker & poet may not have explicitly acknowledged the parallel -- though as for Tarkovsky, there's evidence he tips the hat in Jung's direction in his final film The Sacrifice, which could be described as a cinema essay on Jungian synchronicity, though I here digress). Of course, Gravels argues in favor of a long history (and prehistory) behind what he esteemed a central poetic tradition of spiritual orientation.
April 14, 2010 at 8:57 am
I read The White Goddess long, long ago. Robert Hayden had lent me his copy. We enjoyed talking about Graves.
I'm largely for the diachronic... overemphasis of the synchronic is one of the mistakes of modern literature, one which still threatens us, I fear. The rational/spiritual, either/or is not one I feel. I believe Unity of Being, if you will, requires both.
I'm largely for the diachronic... overemphasis of the synchronic is one of the mistakes of modern literature, one which still threatens us, I fear. The rational/spiritual, either/or is not one I feel. I believe Unity of Being, if you will, requires both.
April 14, 2010 at 9:37 am
...each to protect humanity from the extremes of the other.
April 14, 2010 at 9:38 am
One curious, more recent poem of Merwin's (I think from the collection Travels) consciously seeks to explore an instance of synchronicity -- as I recall, he describes the over-harvesting (threatening extinction I guess) of sandalwood trees in then-Colonial India, in tandem with Keats' composition of his romantic poems. I can't say I recall an exact point, but it seemed to me an enjoyable exercise in imagination vis-a-vis "how the world actually emerges" (I think Merwin's words, more or less, when introducing this poem in a public reading). Just as you seek not to pit the rational against the spiritual, I'm not sure that one need pit the synchronistic against the diachronistic; each (as you say) may help balance excesses of the other. And indeed, both are needed for anything resembling a world-system. :-) How unity of being exists within / beyond / through / behind-the-veil-of multiplicity, is perchance the most fundamental mystery, and certainly a worthy theme for any poetics worth its proverbial salt. Ci liang zhi tong ("these two are one") as Lao Tzu noted in his classical 1st chapter, adding: tong wei zhe xuan, xuan zhi you xuan, zhong miao zhi men ("Their unity we dub 'mystery.' Mystery's deeper mystery is the door of every exquisite wonder." -- my translation).
April 14, 2010 at 10:08 am
oops, that should've been ci liang zhe tong / tong wei zhi xuan [correcting for my slightly wrong pin-yin in 3rd word of each line -- if I now recall it aright]
April 14, 2010 at 10:11 am
ps -- the "these two" of Lao Tzu's verse references respective terms he had earlier established, namely the root (unity) and the branches (multiplicity) of being. It's those two (the nameless, unitive root, and the named, multiplicitous branches) that that great mystic poet asserts to be one, and their oneness to be the fundamental mystery.
April 14, 2010 at 10:17 am
Well, I can't argue with Lao Tzu... and am, from the broader perspective, for resolution of antinomies as much as humanly possible...
April 14, 2010 at 10:19 am
Like Wright’s persona, Hass’s takes action: he strips off the habiliments of rational civilization, kicks aside all social ties and obligations, and joins the fish in the irrational “depths” of the mind.
April 13, 2010 at 4:47 am
The persona seeks here what he earlier in the poem calls the “great white bass,” not quite a stone (Hass does get in “bones”) but still representative of primordial forbears in “muddy bottoms.” And though the poetic diction has changed, the rhetoric remains the same: he advances an irrational, epiphanic experience.
April 12, 2010 at 12:29 pm
But one poet has found a way to out-Bly Bly; at least, that is what Robert Hass seems to be trying to do with his own fishy poem “San Pedro Road.” Hass opens the poem with a description of fishing at the mouth of a creek that empties into a “leaden bay”: “A carcass washes by, white meat, / spidery translucent bones and I think I understand, / finally dumb animal I understand, kick off boots . . . and swim....”
April 12, 2010 at 8:35 am
What we have here is so clearly a stock convention that I would think any self-respecting contemporary poet would be embarrassed to use it, and embarrassed to advance such a trivial conception of evolution as our history. It is the same vague and simplistic abuse and ravaging of the past that leads Bly to commit the banalities of his so-called men’s movement.
April 12, 2010 at 4:43 am
The convention, however, holds: “In the dark we blaze up,” “throw off the white stones,” which are no longer black, due to, it would seem, some type of illuminating experience, and “a man” (anybody, everyone) “goes into a jewel, and sleeps”;
April 11, 2010 at 10:06 am
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...that is, enters or returns to the cave of the mysterious unconscious, where he raises his hands in thankful prayer for the blessing of encountering the irrational “life of nature” that is passing up, absurdly, through “the soles of his feet.”
April 11, 2010 at 10:06 am
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Yet the phoniness of the epiphany barely conceals itself behind the inept exclamation marks.
April 11, 2010 at 5:58 am
Just curious--do you trace this back to Wordsworth's "spots of time?" Do you you include him here?
April 11, 2010 at 7:08 am
I'm writing primarily about postmodern American poetry since 1950. But I think Robert Bly and some others can be seen clearly in the tradition of Romanticism extending from Wordsworth, who is actually dealing with the same problems they are or were.
The first time around Romanticism was genuine and fresh; recooked Romanticism is an act of desperation, and, for some, mocking of the tradition, and in its worst instances, of the self, knowledge, culture, etc... winding down into ever-lower banality. As Henry Adams phrased it, "Nihilism knows no bottom."
The first time around Romanticism was genuine and fresh; recooked Romanticism is an act of desperation, and, for some, mocking of the tradition, and in its worst instances, of the self, knowledge, culture, etc... winding down into ever-lower banality. As Henry Adams phrased it, "Nihilism knows no bottom."
April 11, 2010 at 8:14 am
Inept exclamation marks--e.e. cummings forever!!! My kids at school love him--no silly grammar rules, anything goes, ah, the freedom of postmodernism!
April 11, 2010 at 8:24 am
Yes, anything goes!!!! :) An entire metaphysics implied, or lack of one... Who's to say?
April 11, 2010 at 10:00 am
I don't think of cummings of a post-modernist. More of a mannerist.
April 11, 2010 at 3:24 pm
You're right, e. e. cummings is earlier. Diane's point was cummings didn't use punctuation, not that he was a postmodernist.
April 11, 2010 at 3:53 pm
Ah, understood.
April 11, 2010 at 4:03 pm
Where do you place W.S. Merwin with his lack of punctuation?
April 12, 2010 at 4:55 am
Actually headed toward Merwin...
April 12, 2010 at 5:32 am
As the first unquoted stanza of this poem tells us, the persona is one who “is moving toward his own life,” a solipsistic quester, a primitive swatch of “mammoth fur” that “moves toward the animal”; the last stanza concerns itself primarily with epiphany, with union with the “life of nature.”
April 11, 2010 at 5:01 am
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In a poem that discloses Robert Bly’s affinity with Kinnell and Wright, Bly writes about our “Evolution from the Fish,”: “In the dark we blaze up, drawing pictures / Of spiny fish, we throw off the white stones! /Serpents rise from the ocean floor with spiral motions, / A man goes inside a jewel, and sleeps. Do / Not hold my hands down! Let me raise them! / A fire is passing up through the soles of my feet!”
April 10, 2010 at 11:07 am
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The dichotomy between the body and self, the surrealistic, irrational image of breaking into blossom are almost obscured by the portentousness with which Wright suffuses this poem. Auden’s lines come to mind: “Vague idealistic art / That coddles the uneasy heart.”
April 10, 2010 at 7:20 am
After caressing one of the ponies, the persona says,“Suddenly I realize / That if I stepped out of my body I would break / Into blossom.” The blessing of “The Blessing” comes from a peculiar and intuitive source that “Suddenly,” inexplicably, makes the axis of vision coincident with the axis of things.
April 10, 2010 at 4:49 am
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James Wright’s poem “A Blessing” has much in common with Kinnell’s poem. Wright’s persona too journeys into the “life of the planet,” into nature as embodied by two Indian ponies. The blatant erotic description of these ponies indicates their relation to the same buffalo wallow, the same primitive and unconscious aquifer that Kinnell praises when he invokes “primal,” “cosmic sexuality.”
April 9, 2010 at 7:19 am
All this sets the scene for the epiphany of the final line, but it becomes no more historically defined than Emerson’s moment of satori on the Boston Common or Dickinson’s draught of “liquor never brewed.”
April 9, 2010 at 5:09 am
Kinnell’s voyaging or questing self typically knows no social connection or responsibility. His only interest is his journey. Abruptly, suddenly, “The glade catches fire,” but an insubstantial fire that is reminiscent of alchemical fire imagery and Yeatsian theosophy, and then an apostrophe to the “Spirit of the wood”—primordial, primitive Pan.
April 8, 2010 at 12:55 pm
An early poem by Kinnell (cir. 1954) that uses the convention of a journey in quest of an epiphanic, transformative union with the unconscious is “In the Glade at Dusk.” The persona travels or returns to a glade obediently, as if called: “The glade catches fire, and where / The birds build nests they brood at evening / On burning limbs. Spirit of the wood, dream ./And grass, grass, blossom through my feet in flames.”
April 8, 2010 at 8:41 am
Like the work of the transcendentalists, Kinnell’s is so amorphous I never really know precisely what he is suggesting, though promises of transformation are abundant.
April 8, 2010 at 4:56 am
His work also reveals very little awareness of anything outside the self—little awareness of the benefits that the objective mind has brought about—instead, we are to be “reborn more giving, more alive, more open,” and yes, “more related to natural life.”
April 7, 2010 at 1:02 pm
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It has apparently never occurred to Kinnell that the trouble is not scientia per se but what particular men have chosen to do with systematic knowledge at particular junctures in time.
April 7, 2010 at 6:09 am
According to his essay “Poetry, Personality, and Death,” the rational mind has lost touch with the “life of the planet” and “thwarts our deepest desire, which is to be one with all creation.” Eventually he writes, “We now know that science is the trouble.” To him the conclusion is clear: the rational mind and its offspring scientia must go.
April 7, 2010 at 3:08 am
Both have already gone: witness the popularity of Sarah Palin!
April 7, 2010 at 4:49 pm
Galway Kinnell is one of these poets and one of the heirs and purveyors of the aforementioned redefinition of poetry. Like many contemporary poets, Kinnell simplifies the cause and effect relationship between the conscious, rational mind and the historical evils and failures of Western civilization.
April 6, 2010 at 1:43 pm
Although much of the foregoing discussion is applicable to most postmodern poets on both sides of the Atlantic, a few American poets who gather around what they are fond of calling the “buffalo wallow,” or a variant of it, will be concentrated on here.
April 6, 2010 at 8:17 am
What do they mean by the "buffalo wallow"?
April 7, 2010 at 7:27 am
I've never read a clear gloss by any of the poets who've used or had the metaphor applied to them, but I would say perhaps a type of Jungian Collective Unconscious or related concept. Precise definition would perhaps be too literal-minded.
April 7, 2010 at 12:59 pm
So you're using a term you can't define to identify a group of poets you're going to critique, in public, and you're loosely comparing it to one of the fruitest concepts in philosophical memory to try to clarify it. As someone who's a fan of fruity concepts and even Jung, I have to say, I wouldn't go there if I were you.
April 7, 2010 at 1:26 pm
The quotation marks indicate the phrase "buffalo wallow" belongs to others. I have defined it. My point is something like Laosi's "He who knows does not speak; he who speaks does not know," which is why I tried to indicate "precise definition" runs counter to metaphor and the way some poets use "buffalo wallow."
I respect you find Jung's Collective Unconscious "fruity." I don't. I respect the general drive of Jung, yet I'm not defending him or the "buffalo wallow." I criticize the poets and by implication Jung, in a sense.
I respect you find Jung's Collective Unconscious "fruity." I don't. I respect the general drive of Jung, yet I'm not defending him or the "buffalo wallow." I criticize the poets and by implication Jung, in a sense.
April 7, 2010 at 4:14 pm
The romantics, New Criticism, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, most contemporary poetry and criticism, share, to one degree or another, this redefinition of the art of poetry, as if mimesis were dead and done with.
April 6, 2010 at 5:20 am
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Walter Benjamin's essay "On the Mimetic Faculty" talks about this. He viewed modernity (through its expression by the fascists, of course) as a time in which the mimetic faculty was apparently dead, though he ultimately argues that mimesis never really dies; its form and mode of expression merely change with the historical and cultural contexts of the moment.
April 6, 2010 at 5:27 am
Yes, one of the old warhorses of academicians... a signpost of decline in understanding mimesis. I prefer Erich Auerbach's Mimesis, a healthier view of mimesis, one that poets and writers can honor and use, versus the parasitic academic ones of the nihilistic subversion of mimesis... As a poet I'm interested in the practice of mimesis, not the nihilistic theories that substitute for mimesis... to the extent that postmodern writers have accepted that diminished bill of goods, misunderstanding poetry as only language, they have participated in discrediting and undermined the art.
April 6, 2010 at 5:47 am
I'm sorry, why do you think Benjamin a nihilist? I think out of all the theorists whose ideas are widely discussed today, Benjamin is the LEAST nihilistic. Read his essay on Baudelaire, where he shows that despite the endless social, economic, and ideological pressures exerted on poetry the lyric still finds a way to recuperate meaning. Benjamin did not wish to do render mimesis meaningless, he just wanted to position it within the historical conditions of its process, rather than obliviously exterior. I urge you to go back and re-read some of his work.
April 6, 2010 at 9:23 am
Given his Marxism, the approach of the Frankfurt school, he's not sufficiently in the humanistic tradition represented by someone like Erich Auerbach. Nor is he a practicing poet or writer, having to struggle with the choices a real writer does, but an academic, adding to the confusion of literature, like Paul de Man and others in the Deconstruction pantheon... all based on a false conception of life and history...
April 6, 2010 at 1:42 pm
marxists never dug walter benjamin and even adorno screwed him many a twist trying to align him and in my heart benjamin is more akin the gypsy spirit among academicians. he gave his thought to much more than verbal attentions although his gift for words led him to express himself in that direction. in the long run he is a man of the eye (i mean he didn't write about music--because he knew he couldn't chase it--) but that eye saw many many things cold earth wanderers would have otherwise ignored. adorno i feel didn't help us with music, least of all witj the transition between poetry and music. but benjamin is a healthy resource. any reading of what he says about visual art will lead music to a new path.
April 6, 2010 at 2:36 pm
I agree with Glaysher.With the advent of later schools there was greater thrust on innovation and experimentation rarher than mimetic theory of art and poetry.we must therefore remember to be flexible and eclectic in our choices of critical approaches to a given poetic or any literary work.Our choices are determined by the same discretion that controls what what we exclude , by our concern for for the unique experience and nature of a piece of literature.One cannot turn deaf to polyphonic voices in a given text in post colonial literatures.Reading other comments, all we can do is ,
to draw from many approaches the combination that best fits a literary creation. Perhaps we would not be too far wrong to suggest that there are as many approaches today to literary works as there are literary works.
to draw from many approaches the combination that best fits a literary creation. Perhaps we would not be too far wrong to suggest that there are as many approaches today to literary works as there are literary works.
April 6, 2010 at 9:16 pm
Chandra, Theory or art, I'll chose art any day. Broadly speaking, Deconstruction theory has lost and buried the human under an avalanche of classroom abstractions, relativisms, and political motivations pretending to literary relevance... In my view, the less art has to do with any of that, the better, not only for art, but also for real scholarship.
Jeff, et al., Perhaps there's more in Benjamin than I realized. I'll read his essays on mimesis. I appreciate those here who have drawn him to my attention. I hope to have reason to acknowledge I've judged him unfairly.
Jeff, et al., Perhaps there's more in Benjamin than I realized. I'll read his essays on mimesis. I appreciate those here who have drawn him to my attention. I hope to have reason to acknowledge I've judged him unfairly.
April 7, 2010 at 3:07 am
M. H. Abrams comments on the ultimate result this change had on modern poetry: “The purpose of producing effects upon other men, which for centuries had been the defining character of the art of poetry, now serves precisely the opposite function: it disqualifies a poem by proving it to be rhetoric instead.”
April 5, 2010 at 1:28 pm
Poets themselves abetted this change by turning on conceptual, rational modes of cognition, by denying the ability of poetry to have an impact on other men, and by withdrawing into a protective cork-lined sensibility that they held to be, or that was in effect, beyond logical understanding and beyond social commitments and responsibilities.
April 5, 2010 at 9:34 am
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A majority of artists shun away from society, especially after all the disparity and dirty politics involved in it. Poets and writers of the nihil or anti-social types are born out of opposition to insitutional commitments and duties. Need for creative freedom and solitary existence are felt.
April 5, 2010 at 11:51 pm
Ishan, I respect what you're saying. I agree the individual artist needs the creative freedom that usually can only be found in the inner exploration of solitude. I'm actually writing about a particular interpretation of the literary art and role of the poet as it developed in the US after WWII. So, a very limited portion of the infinite potential of the inner human consciousness and landscape. Meanwhile, life has moved on...
April 6, 2010 at 3:15 am
That's true. I didn't know you were writing on something specific.
Also, about post WW poets, are you writing specifically about European or American poets?
Also, about post WW poets, are you writing specifically about European or American poets?
April 6, 2010 at 4:46 am
Mostly American, though much can be said of English poets and the general tendency of European and Western poets. In so far as other world literatures have been influenced by Western, there are Asian poets who exhibit similar modes of thinking and writing. In Japan, Ryuichi Tamura, the most important post WWII poet exhibits such qualities and trajectory.
I don't know the modern Indian poets enough to speak to them in extensive depth, but find the novelist R. K. Narayan and the poet Dilip Chitre, among others, working with elements of what concerns me about world literature. My writing is pushing towards a more broadly global, human context, versus the narrowly nationalistic, self-obsessed Western and American prison house...
I don't know the modern Indian poets enough to speak to them in extensive depth, but find the novelist R. K. Narayan and the poet Dilip Chitre, among others, working with elements of what concerns me about world literature. My writing is pushing towards a more broadly global, human context, versus the narrowly nationalistic, self-obsessed Western and American prison house...
April 6, 2010 at 5:18 am
Actually, I should add that my essay "India's Kali Yuga" does discuss Chitre, Narayan, and other classic and modern Indian poets and writers, in my book The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture. So I have read Indian literature for many years and hope I have something worthwhile to say about it, in a global context. Best.
https://www.fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
https://www.fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
April 6, 2010 at 5:25 am
That's brilliant. I must add that such an exhaustive research can only bring rich dividends in terms of art criticism for the future.
May I also add that Dilip Chitre, Arun Kolatkar and my family were extremely close, they were my adopted grandfathers.
There's a distinct flair in the style of modern poets, very noticable and differentiable. Post-modernism, if I can use that term here, is very free-flowing and liberal as compared to pre-war writers. I like that, personally I believe the situation globally during the emergence of modernism was politically and economically futile. There's and evident struggle.
May I also add that Dilip Chitre, Arun Kolatkar and my family were extremely close, they were my adopted grandfathers.
There's a distinct flair in the style of modern poets, very noticable and differentiable. Post-modernism, if I can use that term here, is very free-flowing and liberal as compared to pre-war writers. I like that, personally I believe the situation globally during the emergence of modernism was politically and economically futile. There's and evident struggle.
April 6, 2010 at 6:06 am
My, what a surprise! The internet is really incredible in enabling people to communicate in this way.
I try in "India's Kali Yuga" to trace that deep contrast between traditional literature and conceptions of life and the struggles with modernity. To my mind, all human beings, East or West, have been experiencing not "Westernization," but modernization, struggling with all its upheavals, disruptions, and possibilities.
For many decades, all around the world, the battle was one versus the other, in all senses. I believe a higher, human synthesis has been occurring for a long time now, though it has not fully entered general consciousness nor been articulated sufficiently in literary terms.
I try in "India's Kali Yuga" to trace that deep contrast between traditional literature and conceptions of life and the struggles with modernity. To my mind, all human beings, East or West, have been experiencing not "Westernization," but modernization, struggling with all its upheavals, disruptions, and possibilities.
For many decades, all around the world, the battle was one versus the other, in all senses. I believe a higher, human synthesis has been occurring for a long time now, though it has not fully entered general consciousness nor been articulated sufficiently in literary terms.
April 6, 2010 at 6:33 am
Yes indeed it is a very nice way of knowing people! HAHA ! I'd love to send you some of my writings Mr.Glaysher, probably you could read them and give me an HONEST critique on how they are.
What you exclaimed is true. I see the youth of India around sometimes just blindly ape-ing the west under the banner of modernisation, but sometimes I feel being modern is not just about being western but also about being disciplined in your own culture along with it.
I think a good flux of both, East and West, make a very good combination, since both cultures have their pros and drawbacks.
What you exclaimed is true. I see the youth of India around sometimes just blindly ape-ing the west under the banner of modernisation, but sometimes I feel being modern is not just about being western but also about being disciplined in your own culture along with it.
I think a good flux of both, East and West, make a very good combination, since both cultures have their pros and drawbacks.
April 8, 2010 at 12:35 am
I think there's always the struggle you mention for the artist between imitating what's-already-been-done and striving for and articulating a new vision of life, understanding, and aesthetics. Broadly speaking, the Western world has been vigorously asserting its world view for the last few centuries. From many perspectives, that conception of life has long exhibited its shortcomings and failings, possessing profound intellectual and spiritual problems for humanity and artists alike. In terms of India, I have often thought the historian Arnold Toynbee's comments on the exclusivism of many religions and world views versus the universality of the general approach of many in Indian history and culture:
"The Judaic religions have been considerably more exclusive-minded than the Indian religions have. In a chapter of the World's history in which the adherents of the living higher religions seem likely to enter into much more intimate relations with one another than ever before, the spirit of the Indian religions, blowing where it listeth,24 may perhaps help to winnow a traditional Pharisaism out of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish hearts. But the help that God gives is given by Him to those who help themselves; and the spiritual struggle in the more exclusive-minded Judaic half of the World to cure ourselves of our family infirmity seems likely to be the most crucial episode in the next chapter of the history of Mankind." Arnold Joseph Toynbee, An Historian's Approach to Religion, 1953.
https://www.giffordlectures.org/Browse.asp?PubID=TPHATR&Volume=0&Issue=0&ArticleID=19
I do believe we human beings all over the world are struggling to move beyond the old exclusivisms that have and are producing the fananticism and extremely negative things that still plague modernity. I think India still has a unique historical role in helping the world understand "Truth is One, sages call it by many names," of evolving toward a higher synthesis of the traditional and the modern, of what it now means to be human in this global age.
"The Judaic religions have been considerably more exclusive-minded than the Indian religions have. In a chapter of the World's history in which the adherents of the living higher religions seem likely to enter into much more intimate relations with one another than ever before, the spirit of the Indian religions, blowing where it listeth,24 may perhaps help to winnow a traditional Pharisaism out of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish hearts. But the help that God gives is given by Him to those who help themselves; and the spiritual struggle in the more exclusive-minded Judaic half of the World to cure ourselves of our family infirmity seems likely to be the most crucial episode in the next chapter of the history of Mankind." Arnold Joseph Toynbee, An Historian's Approach to Religion, 1953.
https://www.giffordlectures.org/Browse.asp?PubID=TPHATR&Volume=0&Issue=0&ArticleID=19
I do believe we human beings all over the world are struggling to move beyond the old exclusivisms that have and are producing the fananticism and extremely negative things that still plague modernity. I think India still has a unique historical role in helping the world understand "Truth is One, sages call it by many names," of evolving toward a higher synthesis of the traditional and the modern, of what it now means to be human in this global age.
April 8, 2010 at 1:34 am
The reader also had recourse to tradition and verifiable experience. But Alexandrianism returned. Poetry could no longer battle Medusa. It could only cower in the corner and pretend life would magically get better, deride what it did not understand, or loathe the bourgeoisie.
April 5, 2010 at 7:29 am
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Are you really claiming that before ~1950 poetry had some coherent role of "battl[ing] Medusa"? Or that people (poets? readers?) even generally believed that about it? That's hardly sustainable. Plato runs us out of his republic largely because we're socially irresponsible liars, and we've been defending against that charge, among plenty of others, at least since then.
Additionally, without examples of contemporary poems/poets cowering and pretending, full of the derision and loathing in which you accuse them of indulging, this is turning into quite a sally at straw men. . . .
Additionally, without examples of contemporary poems/poets cowering and pretending, full of the derision and loathing in which you accuse them of indulging, this is turning into quite a sally at straw men. . . .
April 5, 2010 at 8:55 am
Thanks for your comments. More coherent than today, though even then less so than when Matthew Arnold had observed the "dialogue of the mind with itself" begins... Far from "hardly sustainable," it is the trajectory of modern poetry, modernity itself. The entire history of Western civilization vindicates Plato and Socrates... not those like the Deconstructionists whom Saul Bellow so rightly called "pip-squeaks." They can't even hold a candle to the blazing glory of Plato.
Ah, our time is so impatient, no wonder many can not sit still enough to read a book... let alone, as had Pascal, in prayer and meditation.
A list and discussion is coming...
Ah, our time is so impatient, no wonder many can not sit still enough to read a book... let alone, as had Pascal, in prayer and meditation.
A list and discussion is coming...
April 5, 2010 at 9:55 am
The result of this shift was to cut poetry off from any claim to authority or truth. Previously, poets had always had the bedrock of mimesis to rely on: the incontrovertible signified that their mimetic signifiers referred to.
April 5, 2010 at 5:07 am
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It is difficult to understand..your language.
April 5, 2010 at 5:48 am
It's clear. But 'bedrock of mimesis' is an amusing near-oxymoron. And the relationship of signifiers to signifieds is slidy at the best of times. Also, in a great deal of traditional poetry (I am thinking medieval Irish poetry, for example), the poetic language and structure refers not to any instance of thing or outside concept, but rather the larger whole of its own traditional poetic structure.
April 5, 2010 at 5:59 am
No oxymoron whatsoever. The received subjectivism of "signifiers" constitutes an ideology I repudiate, as did Mimesis throughout more than 2,000 years of cultural history.
Samples of decadence may indeed be found in many other literary periods, though more pronounced during the last sixty years... My essay "Mimesis" in The Grove of the Eumenides is my fullest discussion of it, especially in regard to the intellectual sophistry and decadence of Deconstruction.
Samples of decadence may indeed be found in many other literary periods, though more pronounced during the last sixty years... My essay "Mimesis" in The Grove of the Eumenides is my fullest discussion of it, especially in regard to the intellectual sophistry and decadence of Deconstruction.
April 5, 2010 at 6:33 am
...though more pronounced during the last sixty years... in the sense I mean.
April 5, 2010 at 6:41 am
I saw the saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
Poetry as lyrical stark reportage truth...that is what happened and continues to happen, whether through the lures of Wall St, or of hyper-intellectual postmodern academic wordspinning, one divine mind, after another descends into madness.
Poetry as lyrical stark reportage truth...that is what happened and continues to happen, whether through the lures of Wall St, or of hyper-intellectual postmodern academic wordspinning, one divine mind, after another descends into madness.
April 5, 2010 at 7:47 am
"Signifier" does not equal "referent." You can argue with Saussure if you like, but it would be rather more convincing if you argued with his actual ideas, rather than a parody thereof.
I'm amused by the galloping conflation of Romantic expressivism & deconstructive "sophistry." Intellectual history has rarely been written with such broad strokes. Do you have any *specific* examples of poets directly beholden to the largely academic phenomenon of post-structuralist thought, or are we to regard it all as symptoms of a generalized cultural malaise?
I'm amused by the galloping conflation of Romantic expressivism & deconstructive "sophistry." Intellectual history has rarely been written with such broad strokes. Do you have any *specific* examples of poets directly beholden to the largely academic phenomenon of post-structuralist thought, or are we to regard it all as symptoms of a generalized cultural malaise?
April 5, 2010 at 7:48 am
Stuart, Thanks for commenting. I agree with and like your phrasing, the "hyper-intellectual postmodern academic wordspinning," which has definitely undermined and dropped the spiritual, however one defines it, whether the Vedas, Sutras, the Bible, or whatever, matters little--not that any are mutually exclusive in my view--transcendence in any form is the academy's avowed enemy. Alas, I believe you're right, the dehumanizing theories and sophistries of the academy have indeed led much of the culture into madness...
Believing"Truth is one, sages called it by many names," I hope by clearly repudiating what has happened to the humanities, our sense of ourselves really, to contribute in the way poets and writers can to a more universal vision of what all the great spiritual paths have in common...
Believing"Truth is one, sages called it by many names," I hope by clearly repudiating what has happened to the humanities, our sense of ourselves really, to contribute in the way poets and writers can to a more universal vision of what all the great spiritual paths have in common...
April 5, 2010 at 9:05 am
Mark, Thank you for commenting. Although I studied Saussure ideas decades ago, as a poet and poet-critic, I'm not interested in his or any of the Deconstruction pantheon of academicians and their decadent theories. I saw him and Derrida for what they were back in the early 1980s when I was a graduate student at the University of Michigan.
They've ruined literature, dragging into the mud, only exacerbated Nietzsche's discrediting and destruction of all value, spreading their noxious gruel into every level of our culture. Only one of their partisans would fail to realize it.
I turn Nietzsche on his head and LAUGH at all of them, as he LAUGHED and SCORNED, in his repulsive vanity, "You higher men, learn to laugh." I laugh at him! What Nietzsche's decadent thinking amounted to in the end was demonstrated quite well, for all people with even a shred of human feeling to witness, in the murderous apologists of WWI and WWII, such as Sorel, Ezra Pound, and Heidegger. I laugh and scorn them all...
I'm not some pedant to be interested in and writing prissy academic "literary history." I'm interested in changing its course, destroying the inhuman pedantry that passes for knowledge in many American universities today and throughout our culture... I stand over them like Zarathustra with his blade... and I've already written the books that earned those words... read them instead of the worthless, secondary slop of the academy... and its goose-steppers...
Patience, the list is coming...
They've ruined literature, dragging into the mud, only exacerbated Nietzsche's discrediting and destruction of all value, spreading their noxious gruel into every level of our culture. Only one of their partisans would fail to realize it.
I turn Nietzsche on his head and LAUGH at all of them, as he LAUGHED and SCORNED, in his repulsive vanity, "You higher men, learn to laugh." I laugh at him! What Nietzsche's decadent thinking amounted to in the end was demonstrated quite well, for all people with even a shred of human feeling to witness, in the murderous apologists of WWI and WWII, such as Sorel, Ezra Pound, and Heidegger. I laugh and scorn them all...
I'm not some pedant to be interested in and writing prissy academic "literary history." I'm interested in changing its course, destroying the inhuman pedantry that passes for knowledge in many American universities today and throughout our culture... I stand over them like Zarathustra with his blade... and I've already written the books that earned those words... read them instead of the worthless, secondary slop of the academy... and its goose-steppers...
Patience, the list is coming...
April 5, 2010 at 9:33 am
"I stand over them like Zarathustra with his blade...," much as Nietzsche, no doubt, felt he was doing.
April 5, 2010 at 10:03 am
Interesting!
April 5, 2010 at 11:06 am
Gosh, I think I'll just slink back to my carrel & lave my wounds with some nihilistic theory-reading. We pedants just can't stand up to the blazing blade of truth, unencumbered by facts or specificities.
April 5, 2010 at 11:17 am
WW II (Nazi misuse of Nietzsche "hammer" or "blade" philosophy) generated a lot of understandable deconstructionist postmodern cynicism (another madness) in great minds (Derrida et al) of that generation. The poet, Ginsberg feels it to the deconstructed vulnerable human ground of a wounded enraged weeping Howl and, yes, became a Hindu Buiddhist finding profundity, not nihilism, in the silence of the abyss and Nietzsche's 3rd stage of childlike creativity....
Mother-Father Fertile Womb is in that silence, giving us more time and beings to awaken the mudra (puberty) beyond the too human immature ego -- the maturing puberty of the soul, Vedic inner soma, melatonin cognitive eroticism of the One Flesh One Vulnerability that outgrows eye for an eye in pineal ajna chakra biochemistry incarnation of spiritual competencies.
The academy drinks from its Hindu-Buddhist monastic (and even tantric) roots and gets high, not on windy sophistry, but on these awakened spiritual hormonal rasas, "matured juices of life" and e-duca (out of darkness) education unfurls -- Soon, let us hope.
Mother-Father Fertile Womb is in that silence, giving us more time and beings to awaken the mudra (puberty) beyond the too human immature ego -- the maturing puberty of the soul, Vedic inner soma, melatonin cognitive eroticism of the One Flesh One Vulnerability that outgrows eye for an eye in pineal ajna chakra biochemistry incarnation of spiritual competencies.
The academy drinks from its Hindu-Buddhist monastic (and even tantric) roots and gets high, not on windy sophistry, but on these awakened spiritual hormonal rasas, "matured juices of life" and e-duca (out of darkness) education unfurls -- Soon, let us hope.
April 5, 2010 at 12:17 pm
So Be It.
April 5, 2010 at 12:20 pm
Come out of your carrels... into fresh air... put aside the Derridean Bible... shake off Nietzsche's pseudo-values, the cliches of a nihilistic meta-narrative, its corrupting despair, cynicism, hubris, and alienation... that risible truth is not Truth, as human beings have experienced It for over 250,000 years.
The meta-narrative of the postmodern breakthrough is a negative, not a positive. The Age of Criticism was not an age of creativity, but an enormous cultural vacuum, sucking in everything, an absence turned into a technique, language, not substance, the rise of the Secondary Man, as Emerson warned, an Alexandrian fad or fetish, lowering everything into banality, the mirror image of the self-obsessed, the don pontificating an abstract theory dragging everything down to his low level of experience, lack of experience.
As far into Ultra Deep Space as we can discern, all revolves... outside our consciousness... beckoning, metaphor of eternity, metaphor of our consciousness, back drop to global humanity. Stop the howling, lift up now the Return of the Eternal Prayer... of the Unity of the human and the Divine, Mother Earth, our home, vision of all seers, sages, and prophets...
The meta-narrative of the postmodern breakthrough is a negative, not a positive. The Age of Criticism was not an age of creativity, but an enormous cultural vacuum, sucking in everything, an absence turned into a technique, language, not substance, the rise of the Secondary Man, as Emerson warned, an Alexandrian fad or fetish, lowering everything into banality, the mirror image of the self-obsessed, the don pontificating an abstract theory dragging everything down to his low level of experience, lack of experience.
As far into Ultra Deep Space as we can discern, all revolves... outside our consciousness... beckoning, metaphor of eternity, metaphor of our consciousness, back drop to global humanity. Stop the howling, lift up now the Return of the Eternal Prayer... of the Unity of the human and the Divine, Mother Earth, our home, vision of all seers, sages, and prophets...
April 5, 2010 at 1:28 pm
This shifted attention from objective phenomenon and the influence poetry had on the audience to the personality of the poet, to his intense ability to express himself genuinely, and to his creative and much-worshiped imagination.
April 4, 2010 at 11:27 am
What came to replace mimesis was the most distinguishing feature of the romantics: their expressive theory of poetry. They believed a poem was the internal made external, the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.”
April 4, 2010 at 9:24 am
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Imagination as the ontological category that united the epistemes of mind and matter. Powerful theory, that.
April 4, 2010 at 9:35 am
"The Imaginative" versus? ...well, one had to begin to dig around for ontology... in every region of the earth, though some have been slow to realize the breadth of the problem, where "world" literature means "Western" literature. Powerful, but local, in its limited way. Fortunately, for the Romantics, they who experienced the same problem, the Westernizing elites, elsewhere chose the same solution... With the postmodernism "breakthrough" and Deconstruction blatantly a mere meta-narrative, for the perceptive (for me since the 1980s), the question becomes... your verb "united."
April 4, 2010 at 10:00 am
yes, very true, hence the theoretical turn of the twentieth century. But then, at least, we gained an entry point, and that too, from an extremely unexpected quarter...a theorization of poeticity. that way, it was at least an analysis of the psycho-dynamics of literature... not that it was new (literary genres had been, since Aristotle, been subject to theorization), but still progressive in its impulses to take into account the diverging interests of post-industrial scientificity and literature as an act of impulses. Hence the choice of Imagination, as a non-rational, yet ideational, faculty to serve as an ontological premise.
April 4, 2010 at 10:11 am
Theory... as defined in various ways for thirty to fifty years? Has that helped literature, East or West? I don't think so... It has ruined poetry and literature in American universities, as elsewhere. Aristotle writes on an entirely humanistic level, unlike Derrida, et al., who have advanced sophistry as... is it criticism? Not worthy of the name. Scientism (carefully selected form) is an analogous development and phenomenon to which the Romantics confusingly chose impulse as an ultimately ineffective solution, one of the history of which demonstrates its failure... Deconstruction's meta-narrative was purported to be a threshold realization and advance, but far from it... a form of undermining irrationalism, unlike Aristotle and mimesis.
April 4, 2010 at 11:18 am
And yet the net must be thrown even wider in order to consider a fundamental shift in poetic sensibility that assured contemporary poets would one day raise their minor voices in antiphony to the self: the loss of mimesis—or the beginnings of its loss in the nineteenth century—a loss which can be perceived in the work of Emerson and his predecessors and contemporaries on both sides of the Atlantic.
April 4, 2010 at 6:37 am
The ambrosia, however, may be phenomenology, blends of arcane disciplines, religions that are largely dead in the lands of their birth, but the rhetoric of salvation remains the same: one sudden draught from the blessed fountain will work a metamorphosis in the very quintessential foundation of existence. New opinions abound. Antinomian romanticism still rules the day.
April 2, 2010 at 10:55 am
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Although, strictly speaking, contemporary poets are not transcendentalists, the form of their thinking is often the same.
April 2, 2010 at 8:39 am
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And, of course, just as often -- or maybe more often? -- nothing like. Can one generalize this way about the hundreds, the thousands of contemporary poets?
April 2, 2010 at 8:40 am
Or rather -- since it's possible to generalize about whatever group one wants in whatever way one pleasese -- is it analytically *useful* to generalize this way?
April 2, 2010 at 8:44 am
Perry Miller identifies accurately the impulse that animated the transcendentalists who left the Puritan fold: “These New Englanders . . . turned aside from the doctrines of sin and predestination, and thereupon sought with renewed fervor for the accents of the Holy Ghost in their own hearts and in woods and mountains.”
April 2, 2010 at 5:24 am
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From my readings of Emerson and Thoreau I do not see that expression "holy ghost". The Transcendental movement spiritualized self-reliance and self-determination; It did not Christainize it. The God of Emerson is different from the Christain concept of God.
April 2, 2010 at 5:36 am
I absolutely love this Miller quote!
April 2, 2010 at 5:53 am
Leonard, Yes, it's a choice passage, from his The New England Mind. It goes to the heart of so much in American literary and cultural history.
Rob. You may be reading Holy Ghost too literally... Miller is writing metaphorically... his whole point is that the culture had moved on from "the ancient New England" form.
Rob. You may be reading Holy Ghost too literally... Miller is writing metaphorically... his whole point is that the culture had moved on from "the ancient New England" form.
April 2, 2010 at 6:38 am
“But now that the restraining hand of theology was withdrawn, there was nothing to prevent them ... from identifying their intuitions with the voice of God, or from fusing God and nature into one substance of the transcendental imagination. Mystics were no longer inhibited by dogma.” Perry Miller
April 2, 2010 at 5:24 am
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“They were free to carry on the ancient New England propensity for reeling and staggering with new opinions. They could give themselves over, unrestrainedly, to becoming transparent eyeballs and debauchees of dew.” Perry Miller
April 2, 2010 at 5:24 am
I love the metaphor of the transparent eye-ball/vision. The "veiled vision" of the Puritans was gone. Transcendentalism took America to a whole new level of knowledge and creation. And even those who denounced it, they were themselves influenced by it in more ways than they cared to imagine.
April 2, 2010 at 5:37 am
Yes, it's true that the influence was pervasive, though not to Hawthorne, who lampooned it, and writers of similar sensibility. Emerson, in Nature": "I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God."
April 2, 2010 at 6:25 am
I love Emerson, his words are personality-altering! I was taught Emerson's "Nature" last year and I was utterly mesmerized! He saw God everywhere; inside himself, in the world around him, he saw clearer than most and I think this is what distinguished him from all other Transcendentalists: the clairvoyance of his vision in practice, and not just in words and preachings.
April 2, 2010 at 6:32 am
Nature is Emerson's first great book. Probably not widely read outside university classrooms, and then scoffed at and deconstructed as language play... an artifact. What's a nihilist to make of it?
April 2, 2010 at 6:45 am
As Emerson washes over you, a nihilist has no other choice but to stand tall, sink your roots deeper or be swept away in the flow. NATURE should be read every four or five years and then permitted to recede and return to its original banks.
April 2, 2010 at 7:15 am
I can hear Emerson saying in the Lyceum, Oh you reposing Nihilist, ensconced, tutoring the young, in the sacred creed of the English department,
"God offers to every mind its choice between truth and
repose. Take which you please,--you can never have both.
Between these, as a pendulum, man oscillates. He in whom
the love of repose predominates will accept the first
creed, the first philosophy, the first political party
he meets,--most likely his father's. He gets rest,
commodity, and reputation; but he shuts the door of
truth. He in whom the love of truth predominates will
keep himself aloof from all moorings, and afloat. He
will abstain from dogmatism, and recognize all the
opposite negations between which, as walls, his being
is swung. He submits to the inconvenience of suspense
and imperfect opinion, but he is a candidate for truth,
as the other is not, and respects the highest law of
his being." --Emerson, "Intellect."
"God offers to every mind its choice between truth and
repose. Take which you please,--you can never have both.
Between these, as a pendulum, man oscillates. He in whom
the love of repose predominates will accept the first
creed, the first philosophy, the first political party
he meets,--most likely his father's. He gets rest,
commodity, and reputation; but he shuts the door of
truth. He in whom the love of truth predominates will
keep himself aloof from all moorings, and afloat. He
will abstain from dogmatism, and recognize all the
opposite negations between which, as walls, his being
is swung. He submits to the inconvenience of suspense
and imperfect opinion, but he is a candidate for truth,
as the other is not, and respects the highest law of
his being." --Emerson, "Intellect."
April 2, 2010 at 8:38 am
Yet even the Alexandrian paradigm fails to offer a perspective capacious enough for comprehending some contemporary American poetry. What must be taken into consideration is that these poets are working within a tradition that can be traced back to our Puritan founders and, a little more recently, to Emerson, Emily Dickinson, as well as other transcendentalists.
April 1, 2010 at 8:52 am
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In short, their lack of attention to what was happening outside themselves deprived their poetry of the most profound and human themes. American poetry since 1950 supplies a striking analogue to the Alexandrians and Neoterics.
April 1, 2010 at 6:27 am
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This ongoing modular essay begins to resemble a Very Short Introduction to Oswald Spengler (or Francis Schaeffer). Hard to say on how many different levels I disagree with that last sentence, but it's also hard to argue without naming names. So who are these radical solipsists, anyway?
April 1, 2010 at 7:34 am
I respect Spengler, though Arnold Toynbee much more. The list is coming...
April 1, 2010 at 7:54 am
Unsurprisingly, given the loss of respectable content, the Alexandrians and their successors the Neoterics were unparalleled technicians, who distinguished themselves by vying with one another in the creation of new meters, forms, rhythms and other baubles, which not until Virgil were put to effective use.
April 1, 2010 at 3:12 am
Instead, poetry became the pastime and the echo of an entirely personal imagination—no longer was it a voice for those who otherwise had no voice—poets were interested only in themselves. The quotidian, the banal, whatever was personal in origin and vacuous or absurd in conception and intent, consumed their time.
March 31, 2010 at 11:59 am
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Poetry was never a voice for those who had no voice.
Folk songs, maybe, but not poetry. Some of the really crappy poetry ever written speaks for the "so-called" dispossessed.
Folk songs, maybe, but not poetry. Some of the really crappy poetry ever written speaks for the "so-called" dispossessed.
March 31, 2010 at 12:26 pm
I couldn't agree with "never." Not in the sense I mean it. Granted, the crudely "poet of the people" genre leaves much to be desired, from an aesthetic viewpoint, but not for *thoossse* people... And I would argue the best poets are speaking for the people, by NOT speaking down to them, e.g., Virgil, Homer, and so on, but expecting them to raise their sights.
March 31, 2010 at 12:34 pm
You're right. Never is a little strong. Neruda did have a large and wide following and still was able to be an original and individualistic voice, A hard trick to pull off!
March 31, 2010 at 12:40 pm
Yes, he's a good example of a poet with a wide readership. Long ago, in a very different style, Browning and Tennyson spoke to an enormous audience, and not merely the educated.
March 31, 2010 at 12:46 pm
Thank you for this. Of course, Shakespeare would be our greatest example of a writer using poetry to address simultaneously the personal and universal.
March 31, 2010 at 1:06 pm
Actually, Browning's not the best example, if memory serves now. His readership was smaller than his wife's... nowhere near Tennyson. I recall now his early books sold very little. Whatever.
Shakespeare's personal life? I think there's been a lot of argument over just what is or is not personal in the plays, though I grant he's addressing issues of the individual, in sundry conflicts and trials, if that's what you're suggesting, from a profoundly universal perspective. No poet could be more of a contrast to the Alexandrians. Shakespeare takes in almost everything...
Shakespeare's personal life? I think there's been a lot of argument over just what is or is not personal in the plays, though I grant he's addressing issues of the individual, in sundry conflicts and trials, if that's what you're suggesting, from a profoundly universal perspective. No poet could be more of a contrast to the Alexandrians. Shakespeare takes in almost everything...
March 31, 2010 at 1:54 pm
Folk songs are poetry--unless I misunderstand and we are making a distinction between "high" poetry and "low poetry. In terms of "poetry of the people," at least in the United States, Walt Whitman, albeit a self professed "poet of the people," Ed Folsom of the University of Iowa and co-editor of the Whitman Archive states that his poetry sought to define what American literature and poetry would be--"promiscuous" in that it would include words from other cultures as it celebrated immigrant culture as foreign words, as well as Native American words entered American English. He didn't sell well in his lifetime, but I wonder if he didn't succeed as a poet of the people --or the poet of democracy--as his poetry is now celebrated and anthologized.
March 31, 2010 at 2:09 pm
Is political geography relevant, what does it reveal or betray? Neruda is hugely read and revered here in SA, as is Walcott. Yet our post-freedom political leaders - Mandela, Mbeki, Zuma - tend to quote Shakespeare, Wordsworth. Yeats, all the obvious guys, without a nod to even the most obvious African/Caribbean/Asian writers
March 31, 2010 at 2:11 pm
Diane, I like folk songs, but wouldn't include them in poetry. "Low" sounds too derisive for me. There are simply things that the best poetry does that other forms and varieties can't touch in the same way.
I admire Whitman's drive toward universality, but his Personalism, as set out in Democratic Vistas, to the extent that he followed his own theory, worked counter to his vision. I respect the impulse, the breadth of his grasp, the logic he followed after Emerson, but, in some ways, neither poetry nor society has recovered from his attempt and example. This can be seen in the fact that Society has dropped significant portions of his vision and replaced them with a myth.
Jayne, Interesting. I can well imagine political leaders would want to steer away from Neruda... a hot potato, I suppose, if you want to get elected or stay in office. I was reading Julien Benda's Treason of the Clerks this morning. I believe Benda's right about "clerks" turning to the political in the modern world, a very deep critique of personalism, and writers like Neruda... It's true universalism that they have betrayed, while so often thinking otherwise. Admittedly, all way beyond the general society, not to mention the academy and many writers, but it's the duty of clerks to transcend the banalities... global now.
I admire Whitman's drive toward universality, but his Personalism, as set out in Democratic Vistas, to the extent that he followed his own theory, worked counter to his vision. I respect the impulse, the breadth of his grasp, the logic he followed after Emerson, but, in some ways, neither poetry nor society has recovered from his attempt and example. This can be seen in the fact that Society has dropped significant portions of his vision and replaced them with a myth.
Jayne, Interesting. I can well imagine political leaders would want to steer away from Neruda... a hot potato, I suppose, if you want to get elected or stay in office. I was reading Julien Benda's Treason of the Clerks this morning. I believe Benda's right about "clerks" turning to the political in the modern world, a very deep critique of personalism, and writers like Neruda... It's true universalism that they have betrayed, while so often thinking otherwise. Admittedly, all way beyond the general society, not to mention the academy and many writers, but it's the duty of clerks to transcend the banalities... global now.
March 31, 2010 at 4:01 pm
I agree with Frederick: folk songs, for their full effect, need music. Poetry doesn't. The only Whitman poem that was popular among the "people" was the truly disgusting "Captain, My Captain." His great work is now studied and appreciated by grad students in universities, not the minimally educated man and woman on the street. Whoever the "people" are, Whitman was never their poet.
March 31, 2010 at 8:26 pm
Jefferson. Thanks for mentioning "Captain, My Captain," Whitman's poem on Lincoln's assassination. Not among his best, but I respect a poet trying to express his and a nation's grief at a moment of tragedy.
Whitman's longing to reach the people drove him forward and kept him writing, in my view. He had those early years as a journalist which had given him the experience of speaking to the masses. He kept hoping he would reach them through poetry, though he never really did, during his life, and after but as a myth, of their own creation, is the irony. Poets don't and can't write the "New Bible," as he himself thought about Leaves of Grass, even when they try...
Still, what American poet other than Whitman demonstrated what a life devoted to striving after a universal vision truly means? I can't think of anyone who gets close... everyone looks small by comparison.
Whitman's longing to reach the people drove him forward and kept him writing, in my view. He had those early years as a journalist which had given him the experience of speaking to the masses. He kept hoping he would reach them through poetry, though he never really did, during his life, and after but as a myth, of their own creation, is the irony. Poets don't and can't write the "New Bible," as he himself thought about Leaves of Grass, even when they try...
Still, what American poet other than Whitman demonstrated what a life devoted to striving after a universal vision truly means? I can't think of anyone who gets close... everyone looks small by comparison.
April 1, 2010 at 3:10 am
folks songs ... need music .. poetry doesn't ... my oh my.
April 1, 2010 at 6:31 am
Yes, poems can be set to music, as with the Greek rhapsodes and the Kithara and lute. But "folk songs," as original brought up here, was equating someone like Woody Guthrie or Bob Dylan with being poets... While in a loose popular sense I can agree, such musicians and singers are not rightly worthy of the title of poet. Confusion of the distinctiveness of the arts is one of the marks of our time, a concomitant of the loss of the understanding of the arts.
April 1, 2010 at 6:47 am
i respond to the mention of music not as something that emits from a box or a pipe which we've fashioned to make beautiful sounds, hence my astonishment. I'm of that breed of poet/writer/reader/teacher who looks for music under an assonant rock, a dissonant street corner ... a cacophony of gunfire that begs for me to make something beautiful out of what is horrid as a means to make that which 'horrid' has erased worth something. and per that discussion of the personal ... yes, so often much of the mundane. but the massacre means something because someone has died, a whole host of someones. an empire falls, and someone is free. i suppose that, also, there is a certain privilege of a subject position other than mine to preach the post-individual poem, as well as the post-race poem, and the post-feminine poem as a resistance to a certain sense of the universe, because it is a resistance to a universe that has not always, and may not still, embrace them, and so they have clawed out alternative paths some other sense of the universal. to reject that approach, as I've said, means that you are of a certain subject-position privileged to not do so .. I am not privileged in that way.
April 1, 2010 at 7:04 am
"Music" is implicit in poetry... I take it as a given and a definition. The issue was folk versus... I don't know what an aesthetics means that resists the universe. Harmony seems to me the image to strive for, though I'm not for murder on street corners or anywhere else in order to achieve it.
Can we agree on "universal"? Are there Deconstructionist abstractions delegating to me "privilege"? I wish I knew what it was... As one of the self-proclaimed unprivileged, perhaps you can enlighten me.
Can we agree on "universal"? Are there Deconstructionist abstractions delegating to me "privilege"? I wish I knew what it was... As one of the self-proclaimed unprivileged, perhaps you can enlighten me.
April 1, 2010 at 7:23 am
i like poetry to be utilitarian. i also see it as a product that does work--ala the commies, only not merely for use as propaganda.
all my european family members just assume i'll write a poem for every birth/christening/marriage, and though i'm not a monkey that cranks out poems, it does make me write.
all my european family members just assume i'll write a poem for every birth/christening/marriage, and though i'm not a monkey that cranks out poems, it does make me write.
April 1, 2010 at 7:46 am
I'm not for "silencing any song," as Robert Frost put it. For me, "utilitarian" is simply a word that confuses the important issues, but I respect anyone following their own Muse, though different from my own.
April 1, 2010 at 7:59 am
By music I meant melody, notes written to be played on an instrument or sung. All poetry has "music" in it, even bad poetry, but it doesn't depend on a tune for its full effect. Song lyrics do.
And though Whitman aspired to be the people's poet, it's not up to the poet to claim that mantle. It's up to the people (whoever the hell they are!) to claim him/her as their own.
AND "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" is a great, great poem, outdoing "Captain, My Captain" in whatever the latter poem attempted to do.
And though Whitman aspired to be the people's poet, it's not up to the poet to claim that mantle. It's up to the people (whoever the hell they are!) to claim him/her as their own.
AND "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" is a great, great poem, outdoing "Captain, My Captain" in whatever the latter poem attempted to do.
April 1, 2010 at 8:19 am
I agree, on all counts.
April 1, 2010 at 8:50 am
The ancient public epic and tragedy disappeared; the expression of the laws, customs, and values of the polis disappeared; the Hellenistic bridge between two worlds was under construction. But the concomitant social upheavals were not reflected in the work of the poets who frequented Alexandria and its colossal library.
March 31, 2010 at 9:19 am
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The Alexandrian poets, especially Callimachus and Apollonius, brought about a revolution in classical poetry. For the first time in Western history poets wrote almost exclusively for a coterie.
March 31, 2010 at 7:10 am
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How accessible should poetryand literature, for that matter, be to the ordinary person? Should it be the preserve of a few intelligentia or should it be open to all considering what this medium of communication can do to the lives of people?
March 31, 2010 at 8:13 am
I think poems should ideally be accessible on many levels - though that does presuppose a certain level of education.
March 31, 2010 at 8:31 am
To my mind, there's always a wide range of what's considered poetry, at any time or in any country, some on a more popular and accessible level, other strains more refined and aware of cultural resonances, and so forth. I'm not in favor of only one type, really. I hope there's always room for every song... though practitioners can have the human habit of fighting over their favorite marbles... I think the individual poet decides the issue for him or herself, their own muse, to some extent.
March 31, 2010 at 8:43 am
Sappho wrote for a coterie, on intimate, personal and simultaneously universal themes, but not exclusively.
March 31, 2010 at 9:05 am
It might be the exclusivity that counts... I don't recall Sappho being associated with a coterie to the same degree as Callimachus and Apollonius. Theirs was seen at the time and thereafter as a restricted world, with markedly different emphases from Homer, for instance.
March 31, 2010 at 9:19 am
Yes, it is the 'not exclusively' part that I quite like...
March 31, 2010 at 9:22 am
I suppose it depends how you define 'coterie.' Sappho's world was restricted only in terms of having been locally identified and serving as a religio-cultural hub, and her 'coterie' went beyond the notion of a small enclave, for in fact it was a college, not just of women, and a vestige of the initiatory shaman/artist/priestly apprenticeship matriculations of temple culture. Her 'students' and admirers formed a 'coterie,' but that's not all she was about, and, apparently, from the fragments that remain to us, not all she identified with. She is (and was, in her time) renowned for the ability to pun in several languages simultaneously, in brief, pithy verses.
March 31, 2010 at 9:37 am
I try to write, as much as I can though I do not possess any mastery of that art nor can I claim that my writings can at any point be compared to the average, but my friends have accused me of infusing my writings with science. I try to explain that my writing is as a result of my diverse learnings from science (physics, chemistry, biology) to economics. As a result the contents some of my writings are less received by some of my poetry club members whilst others praise it for its musicality. As an amateur poet, one trying to carve his craft, should I change to meet their expectations or should I go ahead with my writings?
This is the dilemma I have embroiled myself in for so long a time to such an extent that I have not been writing for sometime now and even when I do I try to make the tone more accessible.
This is the dilemma I have embroiled myself in for so long a time to such an extent that I have not been writing for sometime now and even when I do I try to make the tone more accessible.
April 1, 2010 at 12:10 am
Nana, It sounds like you're struggling with things that only you can resolve for yourself... There are many different paths and kinds of poetry. What's yours, seems to be your question, or how do I do it.
Sometimes it helps to read the work of others who have done what interests you, finding clues and possibilities. There are many poets and writers who have written outstanding work dealing with often largely scientific material. I'm sorry I don't know any names of African writers who have, but google or wiki Loren Eiseley, science and poetry.
Sometimes it helps to read the work of others who have done what interests you, finding clues and possibilities. There are many poets and writers who have written outstanding work dealing with often largely scientific material. I'm sorry I don't know any names of African writers who have, but google or wiki Loren Eiseley, science and poetry.
April 1, 2010 at 2:03 am
Nana, You're also asking yourself a basic question about your audience. How much do I "dummy-down" so they can understand or do I change my approach to my material os that they can. That's part of all writing, though, not just scientific material. Having a sense of your audience and what they can handle, how to present it. Best.
April 1, 2010 at 2:39 am
@FG, thanks for the encouragement. I would work on them.
April 1, 2010 at 3:12 am
Often it might be we writers have to work on ourselves, grow or develop in some way so that we can receive a hearing, be ready for it. Sometimes it might just be the wrong audience.
Walt Whitman talks somewhere about the poet having to explain himself to his readers so that they can understand him. I believe he came to that realization after years of expecting he'd be immediately understood, since what he was doing was so clear and obvious to himself, but in fact it wasn't to anyone else, so new and revolutionary was his style and material for his own time. Emerson was an exception... exhilarating for Whitman, I'm sure, helped to sustain him thereafter, but increasingly, perhaps, a painful memory.
I believe I've experienced something like this with my first book of poems Into the Ruins. Much of what I was consciously trying to do in the book was in opposition to the personal, confessional mode of postmodern poetry. I thought it was so obvious what my thrust was in a different direction that others would understand it, but about fifteen reviews demonstrated to me that not a single reviewer fully understood the subtlety of my allusions and that I was attempting to overturn an entire literary period... and had, in my own practice and terms.
Perhaps Facebook is also a way today for poets to explain themselves to a possible audience... one less biased by the dominant conventions... global now?
Walt Whitman talks somewhere about the poet having to explain himself to his readers so that they can understand him. I believe he came to that realization after years of expecting he'd be immediately understood, since what he was doing was so clear and obvious to himself, but in fact it wasn't to anyone else, so new and revolutionary was his style and material for his own time. Emerson was an exception... exhilarating for Whitman, I'm sure, helped to sustain him thereafter, but increasingly, perhaps, a painful memory.
I believe I've experienced something like this with my first book of poems Into the Ruins. Much of what I was consciously trying to do in the book was in opposition to the personal, confessional mode of postmodern poetry. I thought it was so obvious what my thrust was in a different direction that others would understand it, but about fifteen reviews demonstrated to me that not a single reviewer fully understood the subtlety of my allusions and that I was attempting to overturn an entire literary period... and had, in my own practice and terms.
Perhaps Facebook is also a way today for poets to explain themselves to a possible audience... one less biased by the dominant conventions... global now?
April 1, 2010 at 4:39 am
Yes, I agree and have listened to a few poets who, before reading their poems, presents the background to the poem. It works wonders and it is one I would adopt. Though I have tried switching and modifying I end up with it and I feel satisfied and fulfilled when I express myself in a particular way.
You were spot on when you said poets tend to understand their poems and think that at that same level it should be accessible and assimilated by the audience. I have always thought my poems to be simple and straight forward. For instance in one titled 'Advanced Lobotomy in an Infant Mind' I expected even the title to ring bells in people's minds, to speak more to the audience. I also like being sacarstic as in 'From New York to Chorkor, an Optimal Time Path'. Chorkor is a very poor suburb in Accra, capital of Ghana. This is how I write and I feel satisfied doing it that way.
You were spot on when you said poets tend to understand their poems and think that at that same level it should be accessible and assimilated by the audience. I have always thought my poems to be simple and straight forward. For instance in one titled 'Advanced Lobotomy in an Infant Mind' I expected even the title to ring bells in people's minds, to speak more to the audience. I also like being sacarstic as in 'From New York to Chorkor, an Optimal Time Path'. Chorkor is a very poor suburb in Accra, capital of Ghana. This is how I write and I feel satisfied doing it that way.
April 1, 2010 at 4:54 am
|
Passage to the Americas. |
Borges opened the door, showed me the way, my reading of him, forty years ago, overwhelmed me to my utter amazement.
March 27, 2010 at 4:12 am
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"The American Journey into the Land of Ulro," from The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture.
https://www.fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
March 26, 2010 at 6:01 am
https://www.fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
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The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture, Frederick Glaysher |
East and West meet in a new synthesis of a global vision of humankind, United Nations, epic poetry
March 26, 2010 at 6:01 am
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I have your book and am enjoying it very much!
March 26, 2010 at 5:17 pm
Thanks for saying so. I have your book of poems "Advent" and will get back to you about them. I've been inundated on all fronts and still reading it. Best.
March 27, 2010 at 4:29 am
We stand in need of revelation, and it cannot come from ourselves.
March 25, 2010 at 6:01 am
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We stand in need of revelation, and it can only come from ourselves
March 25, 2010 at 6:09 am
I respect your opinion.
March 25, 2010 at 6:10 am
I FULLY agree with Christopher on this one.
March 25, 2010 at 10:27 am
The modern imagination, the modern soul, when it has thought deeply, has thought bleakly...
W. B. Yeats, The Second Coming:
"Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand....
"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"
W. B. Yeats, The Second Coming:
"Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand....
"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"
March 25, 2010 at 10:44 am
No beast, but 'winged' being, an estate of knowledge instantaneity -- kinetic brilliance, confluence and passion -- born from fire and ice.
March 25, 2010 at 11:04 am
Yeats wrote The Second Coming shortly after WWI... and probably it's fair to say the Irish / English troubles, a matter of perspective, might have made some impact on Yeats... kept him meditating on the antinomies of modernity, what Blake called "fearful symmetry."
Like Emerson, Yeats "created his own," out of Celtic and Irish detritus, myth. Nothing could be more modern... We human beings are a creative bunch.
Like Emerson, Yeats "created his own," out of Celtic and Irish detritus, myth. Nothing could be more modern... We human beings are a creative bunch.
March 25, 2010 at 12:07 pm
I think Yeats saw truly. The Modern hiatus, between the wars, was set to bear a 'fearful symmetry,' reflecting and counter-reflecting, like a hall of dark mirrors, the choking control of cultural mediation. Can't happen now -- case in point, this medium we're trafficking in now. 'They' may know who, what, and where we are via these channels, and exactly what we're up to, but the cat's out of the bag (horse out of the barn door, lid off the cauldron, etc., etc.). Consciousness, itself, has morphed.
March 25, 2010 at 1:27 pm
I do believe there's a lot of truth to what you say, if you'll pardon my using the word, noticing you did :) Yet I must admit I do not feel entirely reassured. I hesitate to say anything can't happen now, with people involved. Case in point, China and Google of late; everything we create can go awry as well and be wrongly used. Fire and ice, antinomies in my sense, are always working on one another. On the deepest level, "we" are "they."
In general, though, I do agree human experience and consciousness have moved, are moving to another level, as with this medium, but our thinking lags woefully behind. Together we human beings are groping for its meaning... already way past postmodernism, insufficiently recognized, but coming increasingly into focus and awareness. Its sine qua non, a new metaphysics... nihilism turned inside out.
In general, though, I do agree human experience and consciousness have moved, are moving to another level, as with this medium, but our thinking lags woefully behind. Together we human beings are groping for its meaning... already way past postmodernism, insufficiently recognized, but coming increasingly into focus and awareness. Its sine qua non, a new metaphysics... nihilism turned inside out.
March 25, 2010 at 1:48 pm
I cede. Of, course. I place my faith in 'the Thirteenth Fairy' effect.
March 25, 2010 at 1:50 pm
I'm not trying to get you to "cede" or capitulate or something. Just sharing my honest thoughts on these things, and am enjoying your views and perspective. I'm afraid I don't have a firm grasp of the Thirteenth fairy (bad one?), though I don't have anything against them. Far from it, one recently helped me fly to the moon... more metaphors.
March 25, 2010 at 2:00 pm
Sorry, it's up to us.
March 25, 2010 at 5:02 pm
How we doing?
March 25, 2010 at 5:12 pm
Hi, Frederick! I would like to read your poems. Are they in Amazon? It'd be nice to have one of your books. Do you write short stories as well?
March 25, 2010 at 5:26 pm
About as well as we always do, some lemmings more contemplative than others, but still on the cliff.
March 25, 2010 at 7:04 pm
Tonatiuh, Thanks for your interest. Yes, my poems are on Amazon and other online booksellers. Just search my name.
I think of myself as a poet and poet-critic, so my prose is literary, cultural criticism, but of course I read a lot of fiction. Lately, I've reading Octavio Paz, Borges, and Neruda. I'm working on an epic poem, the next book of which is set in South America.
I think of myself as a poet and poet-critic, so my prose is literary, cultural criticism, but of course I read a lot of fiction. Lately, I've reading Octavio Paz, Borges, and Neruda. I'm working on an epic poem, the next book of which is set in South America.
March 26, 2010 at 2:31 am
"But still on the cliff." Now we're talking poetry...
March 26, 2010 at 2:33 am
But we cannot return, not that any intelligent person would think it desirable to return, to the world of the Puritans or the Catholicism of the thirteenth century, and all human attempts to restore the Judeo-Christian tradition will indubitably continue to fail. That world is gone forever, and we cannot go backwards.
March 25, 2010 at 2:50 am
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Jacques Barzun noted that there are Puritans in all ages. Some ages have more of a confluence of them than others.
March 26, 2010 at 5:46 am
Where are you referring? Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence? While one needn't be a Christian or of any religious persuasion to be a Puritan, I consider it another term rendered often nebulous in contemporary parlance, one which can short-circuit critical thinking. Barzun presents a nuanced discussion in his chapter "Puritans as Democrats": "England and New England were not turned into places of systematic dullness and hypocrisy" and criticizes "the myth of the Puritan constipated in faith and thought" (262). I'm not defending the Puritans, per se, but informed scholarship and thinking. I think we can paint with too biased of a broad-brush stroke when we use code words like "Puritan" without clear context. Barzun emphasizes the impulse, if you will, to Puritanism as part of the quintessential "nature of human needs and the hopes that call forth ideas and systems."
Here's one of my favorite quotations from Barzun: "When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent. The term is not a slur; it is a technical label" (11). That carries meaning for me in a literary sense as well...
Here's one of my favorite quotations from Barzun: "When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent. The term is not a slur; it is a technical label" (11). That carries meaning for me in a literary sense as well...
March 26, 2010 at 6:42 am
It is as Pascal writes, “We come to know truth not only by reason, but still more so through our hearts.”
March 24, 2010 at 12:21 pm
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Everybody lives with his/her own truth...
March 24, 2010 at 1:01 pm
I respect that opinion. ...sort of all is opinion. I don't the idea is true, though, myself. During the last century or so, the notion has become increasingly pervasive, East and West, and has not done much good for people and cultures anywhere, in my view.
I suppose one could argue "tolerance," at least to the point of not killing over one's opinion versus others', has been an improvement, where and to the extent that it has evolved a little more. I'm not gainsaying that or anything like it, not that kind of respect for other opinions.
I'm thinking more of the really deep-seated relativism that transforms individuals into isolatoes, locked in psychological angst and despair, like Samuel Beckett's characters... the modern prison house, and can undermine a sense of restraining humility and caution, lead to zealotry of secular and religious kinds, with many unpleasant social ramifications.
I'd argue one's individual sense and consciousness of unique existence is not the same thing, individualism in a healthy way or meaning. But I'll admit you could cite the ancient Skeptics against me... and various current brands...
Pascal is suggesting there is a type of relation to transcendence that renders such questions mute. Fire, fire, as he put it. Without anything grandiose intended, that's my experience of it, that's where I am willing to lay down my wager (switching philosophers on you). Some have argued that only then can we human beings form real community... Time to give it a try, in my view, on a more consciously global level...
I suppose one could argue "tolerance," at least to the point of not killing over one's opinion versus others', has been an improvement, where and to the extent that it has evolved a little more. I'm not gainsaying that or anything like it, not that kind of respect for other opinions.
I'm thinking more of the really deep-seated relativism that transforms individuals into isolatoes, locked in psychological angst and despair, like Samuel Beckett's characters... the modern prison house, and can undermine a sense of restraining humility and caution, lead to zealotry of secular and religious kinds, with many unpleasant social ramifications.
I'd argue one's individual sense and consciousness of unique existence is not the same thing, individualism in a healthy way or meaning. But I'll admit you could cite the ancient Skeptics against me... and various current brands...
Pascal is suggesting there is a type of relation to transcendence that renders such questions mute. Fire, fire, as he put it. Without anything grandiose intended, that's my experience of it, that's where I am willing to lay down my wager (switching philosophers on you). Some have argued that only then can we human beings form real community... Time to give it a try, in my view, on a more consciously global level...
March 24, 2010 at 1:29 pm
Interesting discussion, when opinion is intolerant repressive & discriminatory against those like Pascal, against the arts & philosophy [in the broadest sense]. That usually happens because of unequal power-relations, like the classic Prince & Philosopher relations. Tyrants are not only entitled to their opinions[?] but are in a position to act on them.
March 24, 2010 at 4:49 pm
Yes, that's usually it... and tyrants tend to be less accustomed to handling ideas without being offended when they don't hear their own reviews reflected back to them, sort of like China, with Google...
March 24, 2010 at 5:05 pm
It occurs to me this morning, too, that Karl Marx, early, in his dissertation, put aside philosophy, in favor of "action." On the threshold of modernity, the murder of perhaps 100 million people or more, under numerous Marxist dictatorships, avowedly atheistic, believing that's the sole truth of human experience, began with the decision to put away philosophy, and *act.* Action, not ideas and words, was young Karl wanted, thinking thereby he would help the world, but in fact ushered in unspeakable tragedies in many, many cultures. China, for one, is still in the grip of his "truth."
So, to my mind, in this sense, truth is not relative or merely individual, nor are ideas inconsequential. The individual can wreak terrible havoc upon civilization, especially when he or a group of people set out to impose his or their "truth" on the rest of society. The obvious implication is there must be a truth greater than the individual, one that human beings must or ought to seek out and find, to understand, existing outside the individual's own whims, impulses, and conceptions.
Most civilizations have usually described truth in something like what is commonly called religion, a sense of something transcendent, of immense value and meaning, something that binds people together in a positive, healthy, human way that doesn't resort, at its best, to Marxist revolutionary action, coercion, and violence, but rather opening, guiding, and freeing both the individual and community to achieve greater levels of harmony and peace.
So, to my mind, in this sense, truth is not relative or merely individual, nor are ideas inconsequential. The individual can wreak terrible havoc upon civilization, especially when he or a group of people set out to impose his or their "truth" on the rest of society. The obvious implication is there must be a truth greater than the individual, one that human beings must or ought to seek out and find, to understand, existing outside the individual's own whims, impulses, and conceptions.
Most civilizations have usually described truth in something like what is commonly called religion, a sense of something transcendent, of immense value and meaning, something that binds people together in a positive, healthy, human way that doesn't resort, at its best, to Marxist revolutionary action, coercion, and violence, but rather opening, guiding, and freeing both the individual and community to achieve greater levels of harmony and peace.
March 25, 2010 at 2:47 am
Pascal had it going on!
March 25, 2010 at 9:10 am
It does seem something was going on for him, judging from his Pensees. What do we make of his work now, though? A landmark of change, if nothing else? Burnt out Fire... The morality play of Nihilism dawning on humankind, at last...?
March 25, 2010 at 9:18 am
Ashes are the womb of the fiery rebirth.
March 25, 2010 at 9:30 am
Phoenix like...
March 25, 2010 at 10:37 am
Indeed.
March 25, 2010 at 10:55 am
Always the ancient metaphors, renewal, rebirth, recovery, efflorescence... all things born anew. Human beings have these capacities deep within.
March 25, 2010 at 11:53 am
We certainly have the full spectrum of meta-narratives.
March 25, 2010 at 1:09 pm
What would humanity be without them?
March 25, 2010 at 1:18 pm
Bored -- and boring. Disengaged. No longer collectively writing the script. No longer having the kind of creative fun to be found even in nihilism.
March 25, 2010 at 1:30 pm
Ah, Deconstruction's meta-narrative...
March 25, 2010 at 1:32 pm
God guides humankind through revelation and through the ineffable mystic love that binds man to his creator.
March 24, 2010 at 8:40 am
When people turn to their own devices, the inevitable outcome is the degrading of both the public and private domains.
March 24, 2010 at 5:08 am
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Confused. Received forms? Recycled ideas?
March 24, 2010 at 5:10 am
Today, the "received forms" and "recycled ideas" are those of the academy, the common coin of the kingdom... as Saul Bellow phrased it, "the cheap intellectual goods of the waste land outlook."
March 24, 2010 at 5:54 am
Far from demonstrating the primordial fantasy of God’s existence, this tempest, this vast historical process declares, as resoundingly as the histories of the Old Testament, man’s utter dependence on God—the transcendent Essence all the great religions have recognized.
March 23, 2010 at 9:07 am
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Of course, the number of people who believe something is in no way evidence for the existence of that thing. As the evangelical character, Foster Reed, in The God Patent would say: The raw gift of unempirical faith is what God asks of His followers. The atheist, Emmy Nutter, would counter: a hundred years ago no one believed anything resembling quantum electrodynamics yet it is the single most successful theory, measured by predictive accuracy, in the history of mankind. There might be an anti-correlation to what people believe and the capital T truths.
March 23, 2010 at 10:39 am
Of course, the reverse is true, as well. The number of people who don't believe in something is no proof that it doesn't exist... reason for humility all sides. For example, capital T truths, like Scientism...
March 23, 2010 at 10:45 am
The incontrovertible history of our culture and our literature has been the waning of belief in God and in revelation and the substituting of ever-increasing forms of secular understanding based on the isolated, hedonistic, and, often today, as Philip Rieff wrote, the therapeutic self.
March 23, 2010 at 6:15 am
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As opposed to the communal, masochistic, and psychotic behavior of the Middle Ages? A whole lot of stuff comes along with "belief in God and in revelation"--and I'm not sure I would welcome all that in life or lit. I certainly won't be writing hymns to the Virgin or lives of the saints.
March 23, 2010 at 6:41 am
I couldn't agree more... Jefferson Carter brought up related concerns, see my comments four messages below.
March 23, 2010 at 6:56 am
I'm not sure I agree with this overarching narrative of decline, or that people now are really any different than people in any other time. Cultures don't progress or regress, they just change and adapt. There has always been differences in degree and intensity of religious faith and experience, regardless of how more or less theocratic the culture of any given age is. The most cursory glance at Classical literature evinces that much. I certainly don't think that we are currently more given to secular understanding than we were 200 years ago. The persistence of 'debates' about topics such as evolution and the religious intentions of the Founding Fathers seem rather to suggest that Enlightenment thinking--in general far more radically secular a discourse than now current--seems hardly to have taken hold at all in the US.
March 23, 2010 at 7:02 am
You bring up a lot of good points and thank you for doing so.
As I tried to suggest to Jefferson Carter, the terms that discussion of these matters often take are antiquated and stir up the water of the passions, shall we say, than clarifying it. All of which, don't get me wrong, is understandable. "Theocracy" has always been appalling, throughout history, regardless of the religion involved. That's not what I'm arguing for or thinking of.
Czeslaw Milosz phrased it well, on more than one occasion, if memory serves, to the effect that we are in a situation in which decline and progress go hand in hand. So I think you're right, in that regard, to that extent, if I understand your saying that. In my view, (and I'm merely sharing my view, which is all I can do), I believe we can see in the historical record that cultures and civilizations do indeed decline and collapse. How those events are defined and understood constitute most of the greatest works of historiography in various cultures. I agree with Jacques Barzun, Arnold Toynbee, and others, that we are now living in a decadent civilization, one that appears still to stand possibly on the threshold of a Day of Doom.
The relativizing of values, per Nietzsche et al., has not been a great success for modernity. I take that as a given, based on historical experience. Poetry and literature are fully implicated in all of that, as are the universities... yet the ground had to be cleared.
The real question to me is can we revive the humanistic tradition of transcendence, and the spiritual values that belong to it. I believe humankind can... and is well along the path already to doing so, in a sense and forms conducive to the time, but culture has not awakened sufficiently to realize it.
I'm all for Enlightenment values. My conception is not for reversion to a quixotic refuge prior to the Enlightenment, far from it. It is somewhat of a cliche, to my mind, that that is the only alternative or possibility. It may one of the limitations of the stock of liberal arguments, or fears really, that prevents clearer and deeper reflection. I've answered this more fully in my book The Grove of the Eumenides, but anyway won't go in to it all here.
None of the "debates" have anything to do with "religion," in my sense, at all... Another example of outdated terms not being conducive to understanding our new universal, global condition.
As I tried to suggest to Jefferson Carter, the terms that discussion of these matters often take are antiquated and stir up the water of the passions, shall we say, than clarifying it. All of which, don't get me wrong, is understandable. "Theocracy" has always been appalling, throughout history, regardless of the religion involved. That's not what I'm arguing for or thinking of.
Czeslaw Milosz phrased it well, on more than one occasion, if memory serves, to the effect that we are in a situation in which decline and progress go hand in hand. So I think you're right, in that regard, to that extent, if I understand your saying that. In my view, (and I'm merely sharing my view, which is all I can do), I believe we can see in the historical record that cultures and civilizations do indeed decline and collapse. How those events are defined and understood constitute most of the greatest works of historiography in various cultures. I agree with Jacques Barzun, Arnold Toynbee, and others, that we are now living in a decadent civilization, one that appears still to stand possibly on the threshold of a Day of Doom.
The relativizing of values, per Nietzsche et al., has not been a great success for modernity. I take that as a given, based on historical experience. Poetry and literature are fully implicated in all of that, as are the universities... yet the ground had to be cleared.
The real question to me is can we revive the humanistic tradition of transcendence, and the spiritual values that belong to it. I believe humankind can... and is well along the path already to doing so, in a sense and forms conducive to the time, but culture has not awakened sufficiently to realize it.
I'm all for Enlightenment values. My conception is not for reversion to a quixotic refuge prior to the Enlightenment, far from it. It is somewhat of a cliche, to my mind, that that is the only alternative or possibility. It may one of the limitations of the stock of liberal arguments, or fears really, that prevents clearer and deeper reflection. I've answered this more fully in my book The Grove of the Eumenides, but anyway won't go in to it all here.
None of the "debates" have anything to do with "religion," in my sense, at all... Another example of outdated terms not being conducive to understanding our new universal, global condition.
March 23, 2010 at 8:02 am
I appreciate your sharing your view and willingness to read someone else's.
If I understand you correctly, you refer to the "collective unconscious" or something akin to it, Jungian. Yes, but that's been around for many decades, nearly 100 years, as the publication of Jung's Red Book reminds us... nothing against it, merely a highly fragmented path, among many. As one who has studied a fair amount of psychology at different times in life, I don't believe it studies the soul... My book The Bower of Nil touches on that at one point various ways.
Actually, the reason I mentioned Milosz above was to suggest we're in a dual-track situation--decline and progress, simultaneously, a more complex dynamic, than mere decline. Hence, not "entirely unsupportable" or any simplistic conception in that regard. With human beings concerned, I would be last person to suggest one "transformation" and poof, all is bliss. Quite the contrary. Historically, I would argue, there are many examples of the two processes taking place in various cultural sites, one often unknown to the other, at first... now we're into the antinomies of the human soul...
If I understand you correctly, you refer to the "collective unconscious" or something akin to it, Jungian. Yes, but that's been around for many decades, nearly 100 years, as the publication of Jung's Red Book reminds us... nothing against it, merely a highly fragmented path, among many. As one who has studied a fair amount of psychology at different times in life, I don't believe it studies the soul... My book The Bower of Nil touches on that at one point various ways.
Actually, the reason I mentioned Milosz above was to suggest we're in a dual-track situation--decline and progress, simultaneously, a more complex dynamic, than mere decline. Hence, not "entirely unsupportable" or any simplistic conception in that regard. With human beings concerned, I would be last person to suggest one "transformation" and poof, all is bliss. Quite the contrary. Historically, I would argue, there are many examples of the two processes taking place in various cultural sites, one often unknown to the other, at first... now we're into the antinomies of the human soul...
March 23, 2010 at 11:45 am
Regardless of how frivolous, aberrant, and mad some poets have been during the postmodern period, I hold it must be acknowledged that they accurately reflect the decline of Western culture, the decline of the unique value of the human being, for which the less thoughtful, including many literary critics, are partly responsible.
March 22, 2010 at 9:49 am
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Amen.
March 22, 2010 at 12:00 pm
search engine poetry was the last straw
March 22, 2010 at 7:00 pm
LOL, haa, haa... :) Welcome. There's something to the idea that culture can bottom out, and then it's long past time for those who have a sense of what should constitute a human space worthy of the name civilization to begin to work to create a new future...
March 23, 2010 at 3:52 am
aren't the academies meant to preserve the sanctity of literature? I don't know if I am correct.
March 23, 2010 at 4:49 am
Very good question. Thanks for bringing it up.
For more than a 100 years there has been a long tradition, starting perhaps with the Frenchman Julien Benda's book The Treason of the Clerks (1927), that intellectuals have betrayed and abandoned their calling for political and revolutionary Utopias, such as brought about by Lenin and Stalin, Pol Pot, etc.
Heads full of *theory* about human beings, they spurn the human, spurn universal, moral truth, trying to create their secular New Jerusalems... Marxist, fascist, all their vile, violent spawn... Pol Pot is archetypal, studying at the Sorbonne in Paris and returning to Cambodia to destroy his people imagining he's bringing in Marx's Kingdom of Freedom. Humanity has had enough of those, let's hope, though, alas, such projects can take on endless forms and the danger always exists, especially in some parts of the world, even in the West, where the corrupting poison in the humanities continues to eat away at the vital organs.
For over thirties, longer really, European and American intellectuals, in English departments, even the law, and other studies, have betrayed the moral and spiritual profundity of the human being in favor of such crude sophistries as Deconstruction and other nihilistic conceptions of life. Such scholasticism has nearly destroyed the humanities, confusing many artists, the Great Public, and the very foundations of civilization itself...
First, the revaluation of values, as Nietzsche put, devaluation of values, really, and then, lost, disoriented, confused, as Dostoevysky understood, society tilts and wanders into the arms of demagogues, Marxists, extremists of every political type. In the USA, the factionalism of Republicans and Democrats has perhaps reached a very frightful level... which ought to give much more serious pause then it has to date.
Ortega y Gasset's book The Revolt of the Masses is also an important book in this tradition.
It's highly doubtful whether there are really any scholars left worthy of the title, clerks, clerisy in the sense of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in American universities. Most seem to be hacks, pedants, pedagogues, annotators, goose-steppers, time-servers, Theeeoooriissssstts.... debasing and corrupting the Golden Coin of the literary, humanistic Tradition of the Ancient Muses...
For more than a 100 years there has been a long tradition, starting perhaps with the Frenchman Julien Benda's book The Treason of the Clerks (1927), that intellectuals have betrayed and abandoned their calling for political and revolutionary Utopias, such as brought about by Lenin and Stalin, Pol Pot, etc.
Heads full of *theory* about human beings, they spurn the human, spurn universal, moral truth, trying to create their secular New Jerusalems... Marxist, fascist, all their vile, violent spawn... Pol Pot is archetypal, studying at the Sorbonne in Paris and returning to Cambodia to destroy his people imagining he's bringing in Marx's Kingdom of Freedom. Humanity has had enough of those, let's hope, though, alas, such projects can take on endless forms and the danger always exists, especially in some parts of the world, even in the West, where the corrupting poison in the humanities continues to eat away at the vital organs.
For over thirties, longer really, European and American intellectuals, in English departments, even the law, and other studies, have betrayed the moral and spiritual profundity of the human being in favor of such crude sophistries as Deconstruction and other nihilistic conceptions of life. Such scholasticism has nearly destroyed the humanities, confusing many artists, the Great Public, and the very foundations of civilization itself...
First, the revaluation of values, as Nietzsche put, devaluation of values, really, and then, lost, disoriented, confused, as Dostoevysky understood, society tilts and wanders into the arms of demagogues, Marxists, extremists of every political type. In the USA, the factionalism of Republicans and Democrats has perhaps reached a very frightful level... which ought to give much more serious pause then it has to date.
Ortega y Gasset's book The Revolt of the Masses is also an important book in this tradition.
It's highly doubtful whether there are really any scholars left worthy of the title, clerks, clerisy in the sense of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in American universities. Most seem to be hacks, pedants, pedagogues, annotators, goose-steppers, time-servers, Theeeoooriissssstts.... debasing and corrupting the Golden Coin of the literary, humanistic Tradition of the Ancient Muses...
March 23, 2010 at 6:11 am
Puh-leeze! Articulate the qualities of the "Golden Coin of the literary, humanistic Tradition of the Ancient Muses."
March 23, 2010 at 8:00 am
Unfamiliar with them?
March 23, 2010 at 8:04 am
I'm not sure. I thought once they were engraved in the heavens for all to see, but it seems others more intellectual than I see something different. I'm not being snotty here; what do you see as the values that should have been promoted by those traitorous intellectuals?
March 23, 2010 at 8:14 am
Anything worthy of humanity, instead of the ersatz slop they've passed off as "intellectual."
March 23, 2010 at 8:17 am
Are you suggesting belief in God is not slop? My "intellectual" warning buzzers go off when I hear the word God employed in critical discourse.
Imagine the wonderful results when the "literary, humanistic tradition" is approached by such sacred-book thumpers as Mormons or born-again evangelicals. What could be more "theoretical" than the tortured reasoning of fervent Catholic intellectuals?
Imagine the wonderful results when the "literary, humanistic tradition" is approached by such sacred-book thumpers as Mormons or born-again evangelicals. What could be more "theoretical" than the tortured reasoning of fervent Catholic intellectuals?
March 23, 2010 at 8:30 am
You're entitled to your opinion. I to mine. What of the gods of privileged "critical discourse"? What are their works and result? I submit your examples are of the type usually employed, which shed more heat than light, a simplistic, secular argument, commonly made as though everything has been covered by it. Not so.
Modern experience has moved on very far from such examples and caricatures. The irony is that these approaches are regularly resorted to by those who style themselves among the intelligent, all others being the benighted of the earth... very telling, really, of the impoverishment of the modern soul...
Modern experience has moved on very far from such examples and caricatures. The irony is that these approaches are regularly resorted to by those who style themselves among the intelligent, all others being the benighted of the earth... very telling, really, of the impoverishment of the modern soul...
March 23, 2010 at 9:00 am
Well, perhaps your modern experience, not mine or millions of others'. I really am not trying to put you down. It's just when someone moans about the decadence of modern times and culture, I have to wonder-- compared to what? The Church's hold on medieval Europe, for instance? I just don't know when this supposed better age existed or what values it professed. You seem to be implying in all your comments that this age did exist, and I suspect, for you, it has to do with some religious orthodoxy.
March 23, 2010 at 12:06 pm
Of course, one can just as easily reverse those terms, i.e., "mine or millions of others'," so the argument won't persuade either of us. I don't take it as a "put down." I try always to avoid ad hominem, though human, and trust you have done the same. What do Enlightenment values, free speech, religious freedom, etc., mean if left untested and unused? Not much in the typical institution of American "higher" education, with all its crude tyrannies, pieties, and propaganda.
Still, you continue to use the lamentable bogeymen of Christianity for reasons that make no sense to me. I don't really think of myself as Christian, though I broadly respect and would readily defend the rights and values of Christians, and people of other religious traditions. I'm interested in what is universal in human experience.
Still, you continue to use the lamentable bogeymen of Christianity for reasons that make no sense to me. I don't really think of myself as Christian, though I broadly respect and would readily defend the rights and values of Christians, and people of other religious traditions. I'm interested in what is universal in human experience.
March 23, 2010 at 12:54 pm
How long are we to ignore the cause of the “gathering force,” the origin of the “on-coming train”?
March 22, 2010 at 6:50 am
Lowell awakes to what he writes in “Since 1939,” in lines that sum up his work and the entire modern and postmodern periods: “If we see a light at the end of the tunnel, / it’s the light of an on-coming train.” He tells us, in “Night in Maine,” “Fire once gone, / We’re done for.”
March 22, 2010 at 2:36 am
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The kingdom of ennui, nihilism, and solipsism replaces the kingdom of God.
March 21, 2010 at 4:39 pm
Ah well. The cocktails are probably better.
March 21, 2010 at 5:11 pm
Matter of taste... varies.
March 21, 2010 at 5:38 pm
God? Dog.
March 22, 2010 at 7:51 am
Go dog, go! (Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me!)
March 22, 2010 at 8:08 am
I respect your conscience.
March 22, 2010 at 8:24 am
F, do you believe that? I understand, truly, why people believe in a god, but the belief is probably nothing more than a comforting fairy tale. It's when religious people say my fairy tale is truer than your fairy tale and they start killing each other over their fairy tales, that's when I feel my gorge rising.
March 22, 2010 at 8:32 am
I believe I follow your reasoning, and share most of it. I understand many people regard religious belief as a "fairy tale," or something analogous to it, choosing to believe in, or finding more sustenance in, something else. And I too feel violence is always wrong, to which I'd add religious or secular.
I would have to say, though, from my perspective and experience, that the definitions and conception of "god," "belief," and "religious" you seem to use appear understandably based on what may be largely a traditional, Christian, Western sense of those terms.
I argue contemporary experience has moved far beyond those terms, as have other religious traditions, while our thinking has not kept up. Speaking in general, whether East or West, world civilization continues to attempt to grasp its new circumstances in inadequate terminology that no longer illuminates who we human beings are, who we have become...
I would have to say, though, from my perspective and experience, that the definitions and conception of "god," "belief," and "religious" you seem to use appear understandably based on what may be largely a traditional, Christian, Western sense of those terms.
I argue contemporary experience has moved far beyond those terms, as have other religious traditions, while our thinking has not kept up. Speaking in general, whether East or West, world civilization continues to attempt to grasp its new circumstances in inadequate terminology that no longer illuminates who we human beings are, who we have become...
March 22, 2010 at 9:16 am
I agree.
March 22, 2010 at 12:27 pm
Lowell asserts the “blind” brutality of “small war on the heels of small war” as the only constant in history. All joy and sweetness are gone from the planet earth, which orbits like a ghost “forever lost / in our monotonous sublime.”
March 21, 2010 at 11:21 am
For Lowell mere power-politics survive into the present, where there are no longer “weekends for the gods.” War continues as it has for thousands of years with “no advance”: “Only man thinning out his kind / sounds through the Sabbath noon, the blind / swipe of the pruner and his knife / busy about the tree of life . . .”
March 21, 2010 at 5:32 am
All emblems have become “useless things to calm the mad,” such as Lowell himself. Through a long historical process, the impulse of the romantics for “immediate passage” proves to lead ultimately to the asylum, to the point where the individual, as Lowell writes in “Stars,” “only has to care about himself.”
March 20, 2010 at 8:21 am
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an indictment of ALL Romanticism?
March 20, 2010 at 9:10 am
from lowell's perspective, as his personal position, nuff said. but rereading artaud's essays on van gogh, lautreamont and coleridge, i feel there is something more at stake in the relation between art and madness (so-called). it appears more like the begining of what later must be transformed through situationism into more radical types of autonomy. from my point of view, it's where my interest in literature per se reaches it's limits as mode being able to create a truly oppositional culture to capitalism
March 20, 2010 at 10:16 am
Thanks for commenting. Sounds too sweeping? There's a relentless logic, I argue, inherent in modernity, which Lowell is highly aware of and following, traceable even prior to Romanticism. His writing is faithful to it, and he worked it out to the end. I respect him for it. Better that than intellectual dishonesty.
I've often wondered what role it played in his madness, which he ascribed at least once, to "a chemical imbalance in the brain." Metaphorically, it's difficult to resist the tendency to read more than physiology into his troubles, as is done so often with poets and artists, forgetting perhaps too much we're all human and fallible, liable to the same human tribulations as any other walk of life. Still, the quotations are all from Lowell himself... which I think clearly shows he was mulling over all these things in literary and cultural terms too.
I've often wondered what role it played in his madness, which he ascribed at least once, to "a chemical imbalance in the brain." Metaphorically, it's difficult to resist the tendency to read more than physiology into his troubles, as is done so often with poets and artists, forgetting perhaps too much we're all human and fallible, liable to the same human tribulations as any other walk of life. Still, the quotations are all from Lowell himself... which I think clearly shows he was mulling over all these things in literary and cultural terms too.
March 20, 2010 at 10:23 am
"A truly oppositional culture to capitalism." Writing throughout the post-WWII period, Robert Lowell was highly aware of the context, for some poets. The trajectory of his poetry constitutes his answer, I would say, which became a common one for many poets of the time, into the personal, the private, the self, the exterior world having reached such threatening and indecipherable madness in its own way.
Philosophically, the dilemma remains for many poets. I argue Lowell believed that for the poet the situation can be answered only through working it out in life and literature, though he failed.
Romanticism itself was one of the attempts... as was socialist realism... etc. It's obvious that postmodernism exudes the stench of a long-dead body, though I don't believe it's sufficiently recognized...
Philosophically, the dilemma remains for many poets. I argue Lowell believed that for the poet the situation can be answered only through working it out in life and literature, though he failed.
Romanticism itself was one of the attempts... as was socialist realism... etc. It's obvious that postmodernism exudes the stench of a long-dead body, though I don't believe it's sufficiently recognized...
March 20, 2010 at 10:44 am
Postmodernism has been dead in my view since 1980 when I was a student at the University of Michigan. Corpses can last for decades when concerted efforts are made to preserve them beyond their time... Historically speaking, most perceptive human beings begin to notice when they're locked in a stultifying room with a decaying body...
March 20, 2010 at 11:36 am
I think the Romantics had a higher calling; that of believing that poets had the capability to be the poet/priest. I am not convinced that all attempts led to the asylum, however. I did my MA thesis on James Marsh, who introduced Coleridge's "Aids to Reflection" to America and effectively helped kick off American Transcendentalism, who found God in the interior BECAUSE of the exterior--nature. Coleridge himself was not widely appreciated enough for his religious views, which were so tightly interwoven with his poetry. I've had many interesting discussions with David Jasper, who is fascinating on the subject of the Romantics, both English and American.
March 20, 2010 at 4:38 pm
I don't state that "all attempts led to the asylum"... clearly, some attempts have led there or someplace like it... much of modern literary history recounts the story.
March 21, 2010 at 5:31 am
I always kind of laugh when i think of the English poets, and their laudanum, and the American novelists, who are mostly alcoholics. Interesting :)
March 21, 2010 at 1:24 pm
Thanks for commenting. An unusual defensive response, for me, below... hope you don't mind.
Laudanum was widely used in the 19th century, though memory of that has been largely lost. It really was only poets, who wrote about it, leaving a more enduring record of it, claimed it in some cases as a Muse. I don't defend it or alcoholism, or LSD, more recently. Someone once said "Mad, yes, but poets, nonetheless." I think it is fair to apply it to Coleridge, Thomas de Quincey, Lowell, et al., and is worth remembering. Such addictions and problems are widely shared by human beings in all walks of life, yet we expect artists to be different.
Although I'm a teetotaler... most of my adult life... favoring Milton's aesthetic, "He who would sing of the descent of the gods to man must drink water from a wooden bowl," I still prefer forgiveness and compassion...
Robert Lowell was repeatedly institutionalized, but definitely a great poet, nonetheless...
Laudanum was widely used in the 19th century, though memory of that has been largely lost. It really was only poets, who wrote about it, leaving a more enduring record of it, claimed it in some cases as a Muse. I don't defend it or alcoholism, or LSD, more recently. Someone once said "Mad, yes, but poets, nonetheless." I think it is fair to apply it to Coleridge, Thomas de Quincey, Lowell, et al., and is worth remembering. Such addictions and problems are widely shared by human beings in all walks of life, yet we expect artists to be different.
Although I'm a teetotaler... most of my adult life... favoring Milton's aesthetic, "He who would sing of the descent of the gods to man must drink water from a wooden bowl," I still prefer forgiveness and compassion...
Robert Lowell was repeatedly institutionalized, but definitely a great poet, nonetheless...
March 21, 2010 at 3:16 pm
Oh no! I don't consider that defensive in a negative way. I'm glad you expanded on that.
March 21, 2010 at 4:30 pm
“His vanishing / emblems” protrude above the obscuring “fog” like knobs on doors that offer no exit, partly because the relationship to God is misconstrued as one in which man himself should “see Him face to face.”
March 20, 2010 at 3:08 am
The darkening of the Pauline glass goes unperceived by many of the “Faithful at Church” in the “small town” where everything else is, as one might predict, “known.”
March 19, 2010 at 3:26 pm
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In one of Lowell’s most direct meditations on the sweeping aside of the Judeo-Christian tradition, he asks, “When will we see Him face to face? / Each day, He shines through darker glass. /In this small town where everything /is known, I see His vanishing /emblems, His white spire and flag- /pole sticking out above the fog, /like old white china doorknobs, sad, /slight, useless things to calm the mad.”
March 19, 2010 at 9:25 am
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There the persona discovers primitive debris “banished from the Temple,” “damned by Paul’s precept and example,” and “banned in Israel.”
March 19, 2010 at 8:21 am
This route of aspiration is also rejected with an emphatic “No” in favor of “old clothes” and rummaging in the unconscious, pre-Socratic “woodshed for / its dregs and dreck.”
March 19, 2010 at 6:20 am
In what is perhaps an echo of Emily Dickinson’s lines “Better an ignis fatuous / Than no illume at all,” the persona reflects “Better dressed and stacking birch, / or lost with the Faithful at Church,” singing “stiff quatrains” that speak of peace but “preach despair.”
March 19, 2010 at 3:04 am
Yet the persona curtails the association of human aspiration and backs off to wake “before the day’s begun.” “Creatures of the night,” of his archetypal dreams, grind on while the sun of the unconscious mind is bitten back by the dawn of the workaday world, leaving the “fireless mind, running downhill,” with “business as usual in eclipse.”
March 18, 2010 at 10:44 am
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Like Stevens and Hemingway, Lowell, in a poem of 1967, “Waking Early Sunday Morning,” suggests the demise of revealed religion. The poem’s opening stanza recounts a naturalistic dream of a salmon breaking loose from the earth and climbing a ladder or run “to clear the top on the last try / alive enough to spawn and die.”
March 18, 2010 at 5:56 am
Lowell knew, as he remarks in one of two interviews reprinted with his prose, “we’ve gotten into a sort of Alexandrian age.”
March 18, 2010 at 2:58 am
Couldn't agree more!
March 18, 2010 at 5:30 am
In my view, been there ever since... a very long time.
March 18, 2010 at 5:43 am
It's interesting, Frederick; I believe youre right about some aspects, yet, given what I read, & the poets I go to, I dont find that (which is to say that the 'scene' [if that's the right term] is now so large & various thata single vision can only take in, & offer an analytical critique of, parts of it. Yes, Lowell & the others who followed that route may fit that designation but many of the poets whose work I found so liberating dont, at least from my perspective....
March 18, 2010 at 8:36 am
A parable.
Every age and period, every nation, goes through these dynamics, more so at times of immense change.
My father and forefather believed, and I as they... their ways were best... back to the dawn of time, while lived life moves on, discrepancies between the new and the old increase, change, irresistible and relentless continues, and the old ideas and mores no longer hold. People feel it, experience it, disruptions, around the dim edges of consciousness, while the seer in the woods, the cave, the mountaintop, on his knees before the gods, alone perceives, struggling for the words to help his people understand what's blatantly obvious to him, in the struggles and depths of his or her soul.
Missive after missive, poem after poem, message after message goes unheeded until one day, often, a fresh young mind, beyond or out of reach of the abstractions of received dogma, religious or secular, stumbles on the poet's words, and says, yes, this maker has found the words that confirm my experience. I know they are true for I have lived them.
At that moment, a new world begins to dawn... human consciousness reshapes itself, all things are born anew...
I've been studying and writing my books for 40 years. I invite you to consider that I present a fundamentally new global vision of life in my poems and prose, one in harmony with what our lived experience has become...
Every age and period, every nation, goes through these dynamics, more so at times of immense change.
My father and forefather believed, and I as they... their ways were best... back to the dawn of time, while lived life moves on, discrepancies between the new and the old increase, change, irresistible and relentless continues, and the old ideas and mores no longer hold. People feel it, experience it, disruptions, around the dim edges of consciousness, while the seer in the woods, the cave, the mountaintop, on his knees before the gods, alone perceives, struggling for the words to help his people understand what's blatantly obvious to him, in the struggles and depths of his or her soul.
Missive after missive, poem after poem, message after message goes unheeded until one day, often, a fresh young mind, beyond or out of reach of the abstractions of received dogma, religious or secular, stumbles on the poet's words, and says, yes, this maker has found the words that confirm my experience. I know they are true for I have lived them.
At that moment, a new world begins to dawn... human consciousness reshapes itself, all things are born anew...
I've been studying and writing my books for 40 years. I invite you to consider that I present a fundamentally new global vision of life in my poems and prose, one in harmony with what our lived experience has become...
March 18, 2010 at 9:53 am
Thus Spake Zarathustra...
March 18, 2010 at 10:48 am
It's fun to be bold of statement, thats for sure,
instead of leaving that ground to the Ronald Reagens
instead of leaving that ground to the Ronald Reagens
March 18, 2010 at 1:19 pm
A cliche... typical of those who exhibit no more imagination than the "Reagens" (sic), while imitating the exhausted visions of the past... what Saul Bellow so rightly derided as "knee-jerk nihilism."
"Zarathustra has ripened, my hour has come: this is *my* morning, *my* day is breaking; *rise now, rise, thou great noon!*"
"Zarathustra has ripened, my hour has come: this is *my* morning, *my* day is breaking; *rise now, rise, thou great noon!*"
March 18, 2010 at 2:00 pm
I believe, World is what it is and we are what we are. We would have lived in nations unnamed if we aint had a conflict. We live by the might of souls to resist and defend what we feel close to our heart. That is what make us humans. Or we are capable of fighting endless wars nor o victory o defeat but to destruction.. love bind our thoughts and we are together only because of that
So I say Hari Bhagirath.
Thank you for the opportunity
So I say Hari Bhagirath.
Thank you for the opportunity
March 18, 2010 at 2:34 pm
Religion is n right action and god is in deeds than verses
March 18, 2010 at 2:35 pm
And then Zarathustra said, Our genome ripened, crossed the deserts and jungles, poured out of Africa, wave on wave, entered Asia, pressed on into India, the Archipelagos, swung up around into the Asian land mass, into Europe, crossed ice bridges, followed the stars in canoes, fanned out across the Pacific...
Looking sky-ward, he said, We are the human beings of planet Earth. Half animal and half god, we storm among ourselves, thrash about in frenzy and fury in all directions, seeking, seeking, rest but in the arms of Love... raise and intone songs of praise...
Thank you...
Looking sky-ward, he said, We are the human beings of planet Earth. Half animal and half god, we storm among ourselves, thrash about in frenzy and fury in all directions, seeking, seeking, rest but in the arms of Love... raise and intone songs of praise...
Thank you...
March 19, 2010 at 3:02 am
He concedes in 1969 in Notebook that he has become a “poet without direction.” His hero becomes the “nihilist” who “has to live in the world as is.” The quality of his poems continues to decline until, in his last book, Day by Day, one reads them, if at all, largely out of a tepid sense of duty.
March 17, 2010 at 12:28 pm
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ouch. yes, but still ouch.
March 17, 2010 at 12:53 pm
Mmmm, yes, sometimes the truth can hurt. Lowell hasn't been on a pedestal, though, for a long time, though I hope you don't misunderstand me. I have the utmost respect for Robert Lowell's poetry and prose. Lowell's poetry works with American culture and history with a breadth that is almost unmatched by any other poet of his generation.
I've been reading his poetry for over thirty years and still find myself going back to or thinking about his writing. Only a powerful talent can do that to one's readers... yet, in the end, I'd hesitate, as would probably most readers, to call him a major poet of the first magnitude. His ends, though highly ambitious at times, ultimately remain too small, too confined to an increasingly claustrophobic world.
I've been reading his poetry for over thirty years and still find myself going back to or thinking about his writing. Only a powerful talent can do that to one's readers... yet, in the end, I'd hesitate, as would probably most readers, to call him a major poet of the first magnitude. His ends, though highly ambitious at times, ultimately remain too small, too confined to an increasingly claustrophobic world.
March 17, 2010 at 4:11 pm
The novelty of his method has long seduced many into overrating the book. By 1967 Lowell could write in his loose re-creation of Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus, “I have little faith now, but I still look for truth, some crumbling momentary foothold.”
March 17, 2010 at 5:57 am
Like most of the minor poets of the last fifty years, Lowell turned to the self as substitute for religious belief. In Life Studies he ransacked his personal life and family for what thin sustenance he could extract, setting, thereby, an example that Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, and countless others followed to their detriment, and the detriment of the art.
March 17, 2010 at 2:42 am
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Okay, I agree with the last part of this, but there are other things to turn to; religious belief isnt necessary.
March 17, 2010 at 7:12 am
I respect your conscience.
I believe the greatest art, by the example of the majority of the greatest poets of most of human history, is, by definition, religious in outlook and sensibility. Tolstoy stated it very clearly in "What is Art?": “Art is the transmission of feelings flowing from man’s religious perception.”
Much of modern civilization and poetry has lost the true meaning of art.
I believe the greatest art, by the example of the majority of the greatest poets of most of human history, is, by definition, religious in outlook and sensibility. Tolstoy stated it very clearly in "What is Art?": “Art is the transmission of feelings flowing from man’s religious perception.”
Much of modern civilization and poetry has lost the true meaning of art.
March 17, 2010 at 7:39 am
'spiritual', fine. but 'religious' -- not so sure.... Or, to recall a line from Benjamin, “There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism”.
March 17, 2010 at 7:50 am
I respect the distinction between religion, as an institution, and spiritual, as an individual, universal sense or experience of transcendence. I believe part of the coming of age of humanity, since the Enlightenment, has indeed been the move away from, and beyond, organized religion. No nostalgia, on my part.
I don't believe we need hold Tolstoy short over our anachronistic distinctions, though some might want to. I'll never forgive Tolstoy for his support of Kropotkin's anarchism, which only prepared the soil for collapse into violence.
Granted, there's much evil and blame to go around. But I must say that the secular documents and doctrines of Marx, et al., which some in the universities or wherever have followed over the last 100 years or so, are, to my mind, even worse than the Inquisition of yore... I'm not defending either. I think we need to move forward into our contemporary dilemmas... recognizing more the bankruptcy of all the conventional terms and arguments would mark a healthy beginning.
I don't believe we need hold Tolstoy short over our anachronistic distinctions, though some might want to. I'll never forgive Tolstoy for his support of Kropotkin's anarchism, which only prepared the soil for collapse into violence.
Granted, there's much evil and blame to go around. But I must say that the secular documents and doctrines of Marx, et al., which some in the universities or wherever have followed over the last 100 years or so, are, to my mind, even worse than the Inquisition of yore... I'm not defending either. I think we need to move forward into our contemporary dilemmas... recognizing more the bankruptcy of all the conventional terms and arguments would mark a healthy beginning.
March 17, 2010 at 8:18 am
I would question the '...worse that the Inquisition of yore..." part. Of course, I belong to the population at highest risk.
March 17, 2010 at 10:08 am
Thanks for commenting. Difficult to count accurately the horrors and woes of history... 60,000 during the Inquisition according to one famous count, 1.7 million slaughter in Nishapur by the daughter of Genghis Khan stacking the skulls sky high; adjustments for population, which brand of fanaticism, etc., compared to 60 to 100 million slaughtered in the Soviet Union, China, and elsewhere (under counting, but close enough? ((forgive me))). In my view, most reasonable people have concurred there's been a quantitative increase with modernity, if not "qualitative."
Anyway, I'm for any ideas on how to avoid repeating anything anything like such experiences... none too encouraged, myself, at the moment.
I concur with literature's deepest evaluation of life through the ages: The problem with the world is human beings are running it, or think they are...
Anyway, I'm for any ideas on how to avoid repeating anything anything like such experiences... none too encouraged, myself, at the moment.
I concur with literature's deepest evaluation of life through the ages: The problem with the world is human beings are running it, or think they are...
March 17, 2010 at 10:25 am
Frederick, I hope you will not think me an idiot when I disagree with you. I haven't read your pages enough to have a full sense of your literary criticism, but will do so soon.Living with family members who suffer from severe mental illness, I believe that I have some understanding of the cathartic aspect of the poetry of Lowell, Plath, and Sexton. I don't think of this deeply introspective poetry as a choice, as a a deliberate action that lessened the import of these poets. I think that all three in their own ways searched deeply for the elemental truths of human existence and were profoundly spiritual writers. As a grad student many years ago I was steeped in textual criticism, which I still respect, but I've been amazed to discover the hugely personal and autobiographical nature of many of the 'classic' poets of the last 500 years and beyond. Also Lowell, in particular, had a great numberl of startlingly interesting things to say about American society and the twentieth century. I know that mine is a minority opinion but I will happily risk ridicule. There is an interesting essay on a Lowell poem in Paul Muldoon's The End of the Poem.
March 17, 2010 at 3:10 pm
Thank for commenting. No ridicule here, none I intend. Just my candid view... "Introspective poetry" is not what I'd call Plath and Sexton, and some of Lowell, but rather, the more usual "confessional," which I believe is accurate. Speaking in general, the consciousness narrows, becomes restricted, less and less material outside the self is embraced by their Muse, more and more of the woes of the personal, isolated, anguished, solipsistic individual, wracked with pain, loss, anomie, annui...
Theirs is the poetry of what Philip Rieff called the theraputic outlook... a world view that has lost or forgotten, if it ever had it, the meaning and purpose of life, sunken into nihilism and despair, turning ultimately to suicide, ending in madness.
Their poetry represents well what modern culture has become... One should not be surprised that much of subsequent poetry has only continued to decline in terms of language, conception, form, and theme.
More important than losing the meaning of art, we have lost the meaning of life, and have, as Jacques Barzun wisely phrased it, become a decadent civilization.
Also, the overall tenor and impulse of postmodern poetry, speaking broadly again, shouldn't be confused with the work of earlier writers, while there are similarities in the use of personal and autobiographical material, the difference is all in the way it is done, what's included, how, and what's left out, especially the last, in my view...
I appreciate your mentioning Muldoon's piece on Lowell. I'll keep it in mind. Hope this helps. All well intended! Best.
Theirs is the poetry of what Philip Rieff called the theraputic outlook... a world view that has lost or forgotten, if it ever had it, the meaning and purpose of life, sunken into nihilism and despair, turning ultimately to suicide, ending in madness.
Their poetry represents well what modern culture has become... One should not be surprised that much of subsequent poetry has only continued to decline in terms of language, conception, form, and theme.
More important than losing the meaning of art, we have lost the meaning of life, and have, as Jacques Barzun wisely phrased it, become a decadent civilization.
Also, the overall tenor and impulse of postmodern poetry, speaking broadly again, shouldn't be confused with the work of earlier writers, while there are similarities in the use of personal and autobiographical material, the difference is all in the way it is done, what's included, how, and what's left out, especially the last, in my view...
I appreciate your mentioning Muldoon's piece on Lowell. I'll keep it in mind. Hope this helps. All well intended! Best.
March 17, 2010 at 3:50 pm
By 1959 when he publishes Life Studies, his most widely acclaimed book, Lowell’s work has already taken on, to recall the epigraph of his first book, “a likeness which is no longer like its original . . . no longer like itself.” As he writes in the poem “Beyond the Alps,” he has “left the City of God” and has planted his feet on what passed with him for “terra firma.”
March 16, 2010 at 3:42 pm
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In other reviews during the late forties and early fifties, Lowell concentrates on minor poets and critics associated with or influenced by the formalistic New Criticism. His earlier religious affirmation is conspicuously absent.
March 16, 2010 at 11:44 am
Frederick -- I hope your progressive literary / philosophical review might (sooner or later) also take in the work of contemporary poet W.S. Merwin -- in my view one of the most interesting figures and brightest lights in the American literary sphere. Merwin came to mind just now, as he grew up somewhat (I think, initially) in the shadow of Lowell (among others prominent in that generation) -- though Merwin's early work was probably more influenced by the likes of Robert Graves (his onetime employer on Majorca), John Berryman (his college teacher), and poet-friends such as James Wright and Sylvia Plath and her husband Ted Hughes (who were his neighbors in London at the time of Plath's suicide). It occurs to me that Merwin's early work was actually close in some respects to the early work of his contemporary John Ashbery (both I think born in 1927) -- though the twain were thereafter to go in notably dissimilar directions. The elusiveness and sophistication evident in both writers' first couple of volumes (of the 1950s) is interesting to note. Merwin gradually (after several shifts in style & approach) evolved toward a current style that can seem exceedingly readable but remains profound in its concerns and rich in its questions & evocations. Ashbery famously opted for what one might characterize as a poetry-of-masks, rich in ironies & rhetorical surprises. I like both poets and feel their work to be ultimately complimentary. It's too bad that Robert Bly seemingly somehow (however vaguely) exiled himself from the respectable world of letters. At one time, Bly, Wright, Merwin, and Mark Strand were boxed into the "deep image" rubric (at least by then-youngin' Robert Hass, in an essay in the '80s); the coinage was perhaps as meaningful & useful as the "minimalist" rubric that (around the same time) was used to pull together into a school (rightly enough it seems) the music of Phil Glass, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Meredith Monk. Unfortunately I feel Bly's talent with the music of poetry has seemed more limited than his very interesting and (in essays) articulate understanding of poetry. Bly's reservations about Wallace Stevens can use a good grain of salt. Stevens' work remains (for me) more rich and interesting than much that has come before or since.
I've had (but don't have on hand) an interesting book-length essay (from a doctoral thesis I think) examining together the work of Whitman, Stevens, and Merwin -- book entitled "What I Cannot Say."
I've had (but don't have on hand) an interesting book-length essay (from a doctoral thesis I think) examining together the work of Whitman, Stevens, and Merwin -- book entitled "What I Cannot Say."
March 16, 2010 at 3:59 pm
I'm eventually headed toward "postmodern" poets, Bly, Merwin, et al., but I believe we regard their writing differently...
March 17, 2010 at 3:09 am
Frederick -- I admire W.S. Merwin tremendously and I also like and respect Robert Bly. I'm surprised by your placing them in a "postmodern" rubric -- a term doubtless suitable to John Ashbery (and myriad others, particularly the so-called language poets), but not usually much associated with the likes of Merwin & Bly (who, if one must employ such categories, might perhaps now be esteemed Late Modernists? I don't know.). Regardless, I look forward to whatever you unearth.
March 17, 2010 at 6:41 am
After an initial phase of Catholicism, Robert Lowell increasingly awoke tothe modern world. Almost all of Robert Lowell’s Collected Prose, published in 1987, was written after the mid-fifties. The few exceptions, especially a 1943 review of T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets anda 1944 essay on Gerard Manley Hopkins, demonstrate Lowell’s early fervent Catholicism, which undergirds his first book of poems, Land of Unlikeness.
March 16, 2010 at 7:10 am
This nihilism pervades Hemingway’s writing from The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms to The Old Man and the Sea. His ability to give this nihilistic vision contemporary expression partly explains the immense resonance of his work with Americans in all walks of life.
March 15, 2010 at 3:29 pm
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Don't forget those reticent sentences.
March 15, 2010 at 3:57 pm
Not always as short as the newspaper but close enough...
March 15, 2010 at 4:46 pm
The Snows of Kiliminjaro probably
the best novel become movie ever.
It was a subtle and social, personal nihilism
for hemingway, a reluctance to know
rather than an annihilation of knowing.
Still ultimately, he seemed like a showboater.
Gertrude Stein and Robinson Jeffers
are the best American prosistes/novelworkers
both sustainably on the cusp
of poetry and prose
the best novel become movie ever.
It was a subtle and social, personal nihilism
for hemingway, a reluctance to know
rather than an annihilation of knowing.
Still ultimately, he seemed like a showboater.
Gertrude Stein and Robinson Jeffers
are the best American prosistes/novelworkers
both sustainably on the cusp
of poetry and prose
March 15, 2010 at 11:11 pm
John, very interesting. I like the way you phrase it too, "a subtle and social, personal nihilism for Hemingway, a reluctance to know." An excellence statement, I think, of how he seems to have conceived of his own sense of life and writing, and why and how there's such a powerful resonance for many Americans, we happy nihilists who always want to look on the bright side, even when its dark...
A "showboater." Oh, yes, nothing like a macho hunter for some Americans. That myth stands always to hand for those who want to use it. If you mean his nihilism is only a pose, I'd have to disagree. It's the real thing, unlike many of the academic hacks today who have never truly lived through and earned it, but merely mumble the doctrine by rote... Hemingway experienced it, as you say, and understood he had to slip it in gently for his readers...
A "showboater." Oh, yes, nothing like a macho hunter for some Americans. That myth stands always to hand for those who want to use it. If you mean his nihilism is only a pose, I'd have to disagree. It's the real thing, unlike many of the academic hacks today who have never truly lived through and earned it, but merely mumble the doctrine by rote... Hemingway experienced it, as you say, and understood he had to slip it in gently for his readers...
March 16, 2010 at 3:42 am
I suspect he was a repressed homosexual, and this frustration was echoed in his almost desperate posing as a man's man in his life and in his portrayal of women as emasculating bitches or impossible angels in his fiction.
March 16, 2010 at 8:01 am
Whether the masses consciously, rationally understand the philosophical implications of Hemingway’s writing or not, they, as well as intellectuals who do, sense the faithfulness of this hymn to modern experience.
March 15, 2010 at 3:29 pm
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Here Hemingway subverts the Lord’s Prayer into a paean to the lord of our times in order to give the true meaning of the modern meaninglessness of life its clearest, most succinct expression. As Saul Bellow said about this story in his Jefferson lecture, “nihilism acknowledges the victory of the bourgeois outlook.”
March 15, 2010 at 12:19 pm
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Set in a bar in Spain, the story tells of an old man and two waiters lost in the abyss of modernity. The old man is sunk in despair, and neither waiter lives for anything of substance though only the older one realizes it, which he manifests while reflecting on the meaning of life to himself:
March 15, 2010 at 7:57 am
"It was all a nothing and a man was nothing too. It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and order. Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it all was nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada." Hemingway
March 15, 2010 at 7:57 am
Frederick, this calls to mind a passage from an essay (which I read years ago in the American Poetry Review) by Jane Hirshfield. At one point she was quoting from (and commenting on) a passage from the poetry of Czeslaw Milosz -- the sense of the passage involved an observation or assertion of an experience of personal insignificance or smallness in the world (the further extension of which is arguably the nothingness you highlight in Hemingway). Hirshfield made an amazing remark, which has stayed with me. She said something like this. In poetry, as soon as you say "I am not this," it opens up the possibility that you are that. As soon as you say "I am so nothing," it opens up the field of possibility of being everything. This may sometimes prove a very useful key and secret (I would propose) to understanding the paradoxical invigoration conjured by so-called nihilisms (and/or negative assertions) articulated by some of our gifted writers. This is a deep matter.
March 15, 2010 at 9:29 pm
Thank you, David, for bringing that up. Nihilism implies its antinomy? Is that what you're thinking? I would say so... There's an oft-quoted passage from Camus in which he remarks on something like that, that we're all now working for a time beyond nihilism, an idea that has stayed with me for decades.
The connection with Milosz is very interesting, having read almost everything by him in English, I can see that. He was a sensitive and alert to the slightest trace of nihilism, in the air, so to speak, or devaluing of what is human.
Saul Bellow often scathingly lampoons the knee-jerk nihilism of academicians and the "avant-garde" along these lines, it occurs to me. That is, if THEY think there's Nothing to life then indeed there MUST be SOMETHING MORE... because they're just always wrong about everything else! Why do some people place such confidence in them...
It is a "deep matter." I'm assuming here I'm not detecting any note of skepticism in that statement... none for me. You also make me think, though, that the Western or modern way of conceiving of these things is often flawed. My part of the world commonly thinks in antinomies, as do I. Dualisms are in our genes, you see, grounded so often in exclusivism.
I've been wondering occasionally for the past year or so whether there isn't more to something I read in Indian philosophy, suggestive in accepting a range of human character and temperament, as always distinguishing humanity, with non-belief or nihilism being one of the states of mind... I believe the term was "four gunas," but I know that has various references, and may be misremembered now. Can't find it quickly among my books and notes. Perhaps you follow my drift... Dualisms can be so simplistic and seductive. What do you think?
The connection with Milosz is very interesting, having read almost everything by him in English, I can see that. He was a sensitive and alert to the slightest trace of nihilism, in the air, so to speak, or devaluing of what is human.
Saul Bellow often scathingly lampoons the knee-jerk nihilism of academicians and the "avant-garde" along these lines, it occurs to me. That is, if THEY think there's Nothing to life then indeed there MUST be SOMETHING MORE... because they're just always wrong about everything else! Why do some people place such confidence in them...
It is a "deep matter." I'm assuming here I'm not detecting any note of skepticism in that statement... none for me. You also make me think, though, that the Western or modern way of conceiving of these things is often flawed. My part of the world commonly thinks in antinomies, as do I. Dualisms are in our genes, you see, grounded so often in exclusivism.
I've been wondering occasionally for the past year or so whether there isn't more to something I read in Indian philosophy, suggestive in accepting a range of human character and temperament, as always distinguishing humanity, with non-belief or nihilism being one of the states of mind... I believe the term was "four gunas," but I know that has various references, and may be misremembered now. Can't find it quickly among my books and notes. Perhaps you follow my drift... Dualisms can be so simplistic and seductive. What do you think?
March 16, 2010 at 3:28 am
Frederick -- for me, another useful school of thought to invoke and consider in this connection is that of contemporary Jungianism, with its interesting views on and approach to the so-called "dark side" of the psyche. But to turn to your question: you're thinking of the "three gunas" [literally "three strands / strings" -- three fundamental qualities of nature -- understood as elements of matter, where matter is viewed to have extension into finer, more subtle realms of existence than gross, physical matter (though also including the latter); in the non-physical dimensions, all aspects of internal experience -- psychology, temperament, etc. -- are deemed as under sway of the fundamental qualities.] The three gunas [triguna] are basic to what is called the Sankhya philosophy of Hinduism -- which is considered a "dualist" school of thought, distinguishing it from Advaita Vedanta, the most articulate and radically nondualist school of thought. They're complementary -- and both are integrated in formmulations such as the Bhagavad Gita, where the three gunas are spoken of, while the fundamental vision is nondualistic (Vedantic). I think you're right that negativity, nihilism, doubt, and all kinds of mental torpor or benighttedness would be viewed as various manifestations or conditions typical of the tamas guna, as understood in Samkhya. The elements are tamas [darkness / inconscient matter], rajas [passion, fire, ambition], and sattwa [purity & light].
But in terms of literary expression, the simple but profound point that Hirshfield observed, was that when one articulates (in a poem) a position of darkness, it can immediately open up or allow into consciousness an awareness of the possibility of its opposite -- as if the deeper one goes into darkness, the more one implicitly acknowledges light. Her observation reminds also of a wonderful little chapter [Chapter 20] of Lao Tzu's, where his poem goes thus (in one translation):
Other men are clear and bright,
But I alone am dim and weak.
Other men are sharp and clever,
But I alone am dull and stupid.
Oh, I drift like the waves of the sea.
Without direction, like the restless wind.
Everyone else is busy,
But I alone am aimless and depressed.
I am different.
I am nourished by the great mother.
vide: https://www.wussu.com/laotzu/laotzu20.html
Also germane is a passage from Meher Baba, in his work The Everything and The Nothing (1963): I don't have the slim but powerful volume on hand (and don't find its text online), but quoting from memory, the one-page chapter I've in mind concludes approx. like this: "Oh you weak, all-powerful soul, what a plight you are in! Oh you ignorant, all-knowing soul, what a plight you are in! Oh you miserable, all-happy soul, what a plight you are in! What a plight! What a sight! What a delight!"
Here, he invokes the three attributes of sat-chit-ananda (existence/power, knowledge, and bliss) recognized in Yoga and Vedanta philosophy as attributes of the atman [self].
But in terms of literary expression, the simple but profound point that Hirshfield observed, was that when one articulates (in a poem) a position of darkness, it can immediately open up or allow into consciousness an awareness of the possibility of its opposite -- as if the deeper one goes into darkness, the more one implicitly acknowledges light. Her observation reminds also of a wonderful little chapter [Chapter 20] of Lao Tzu's, where his poem goes thus (in one translation):
Other men are clear and bright,
But I alone am dim and weak.
Other men are sharp and clever,
But I alone am dull and stupid.
Oh, I drift like the waves of the sea.
Without direction, like the restless wind.
Everyone else is busy,
But I alone am aimless and depressed.
I am different.
I am nourished by the great mother.
vide: https://www.wussu.com/laotzu/laotzu20.html
Also germane is a passage from Meher Baba, in his work The Everything and The Nothing (1963): I don't have the slim but powerful volume on hand (and don't find its text online), but quoting from memory, the one-page chapter I've in mind concludes approx. like this: "Oh you weak, all-powerful soul, what a plight you are in! Oh you ignorant, all-knowing soul, what a plight you are in! Oh you miserable, all-happy soul, what a plight you are in! What a plight! What a sight! What a delight!"
Here, he invokes the three attributes of sat-chit-ananda (existence/power, knowledge, and bliss) recognized in Yoga and Vedanta philosophy as attributes of the atman [self].
March 16, 2010 at 7:39 am
Ahh, ha, :), well, I enjoy it. Lao Tzu, especially. I know there's the three gunas/strings you refer to, the usual ones, but perhaps there's a different sense, or I'm mis-recalling. I'll have to dig around here sometime, though it's overwhelming at the moment. I'm really thinking of four different eternal human personality types, atheist/non-believer, believer, etc., and the idea that the modern nihilist is sort of the one on the ascendant or currently dominant, shall we say, a way of looking at it. A rarity in human history, really... overall.
I follow what you're saying about Hirshfield's point and think that, yes, there's something to be said for the idea. In my own way of usually thinking of it, I would call it the antinomies... the mind or soul at a specific level. I appreciate your comments.
I follow what you're saying about Hirshfield's point and think that, yes, there's something to be said for the idea. In my own way of usually thinking of it, I would call it the antinomies... the mind or soul at a specific level. I appreciate your comments.
March 16, 2010 at 8:16 am
"Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee." Hemingway
March 15, 2010 at 7:57 am
Ernest Hemingway boasted of his living in the darkness of the earth, a darkness of which he knew nothing else. In his short story “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” published in 1933 in Winner Take Nothing, Hemingway distills, from one of his own potable bottles of booze as it were, the quintessence of modern nihilism.
March 15, 2010 at 5:29 am
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Stevens drives home this point in the closing lines of the poem by describing “casual” or chance “flocks of pigeons,” not doves, that make “Ambiguous undulations as they sink” down to the darkness of the earth, where the woman wallows in the Sunday morning sun.
March 15, 2010 at 3:15 am
Christ, which all nature shouts for the deaf to hear, is nothing but a mere man consigned to an earthy grave. Humankind live “in an old chaos of the sun,” of a wholly physical existence that is “unsponsored” by any god.
March 14, 2010 at 3:54 pm
Humankind find solace in the sensuality of nature as do the “maidens” and the “ring of men” who “chant in orgy.” She eventually hears on the luxuriant water of the day, “A voice that cries, “The tomb in Palestine / Is not the porch of spirits lingering. / It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.”
March 14, 2010 at 11:13 am
A lot going on in this one, but what exactly
I wouldn't necessarily fathom
I wouldn't necessarily fathom
March 15, 2010 at 11:12 pm
The quotations are all from Wallace Stevens' poem "Sunday Morning."
March 16, 2010 at 2:50 pm
When man and the world become the measure of all things, earth is increasingly construed as the only paradise and nothing exists beyond it. “Death,” she says, “is the mother of beauty,” and not the mother of meditation on the spiritual ground of Being.
March 14, 2010 at 8:01 am
By finding comfort in the things of the earth, in its sensual abundance, she suggests the “something else” to which she has turned. Her subjective sensations are equated with divinity in much the way antinomians once took the promptings of their own impulses for the voice of deity.
March 14, 2010 at 5:55 am
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Unlike the Puritans, her “chief End” is not “the thought of heaven” but her own individualistic “moods” and “passions,” “all pleasures and all pains” that are solipsistically “within herself”: “These are the measures destined for her soul.” Wallace Stevens
March 14, 2010 at 5:55 am
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In “Sunday Morning” Stevens discovers “What will suffice” for him throughout the rest of his career—a hedonistic, Sybaritic wallowing in sensation. The persona dreamily lingers in her dressing gown “in a sunny chair”:
March 12, 2010 at 10:55 am
“Shall she not find in comforts of the sun, / In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else / In any balm or beauty of the earth, / Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven? / Divinity must live within herself.” Wallace Stevens
March 12, 2010 at 10:55 am
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One wonders: did Stevens perhaps employ the rather classical iambic pentameter (as here) more at an early phase than later? (I've not considered the arc / development of his form & style.) Seems more English than American per se (taking just the lines you quote).
March 12, 2010 at 11:22 am
I have not read Stevens in some years, but Sunday Morning is from the early 1920s, so one I agree with you the lines retain a tone of Edwardian elevation, as it seems, shall we say. His poetry increasingly became more colloquial, in the American grain, from Ideas of Order onward.
March 12, 2010 at 11:51 am
Whereas Eliot laments the loss that marks the modern world, Wallace Stevens, closer to the sensibility of Henry Adams, defines the change, as many people have, as not a loss but an advance: “If one no longer believes in God (as truth), it is not possible merely to disbelieve; it becomes necessary to believe in something else”:
March 12, 2010 at 7:14 am
Whem we believe it as loss its broader perspectives are related to belief, tradition and moral values and it benifited us by material strength which leads to individulastic attitude which simulteniously marks failure of social structure. Am i right sir?
March 12, 2010 at 9:58 am
Thanks for commenting. If I understand you correctly, I would answer, basically, yes...
Let me use an example from Indian literature you may be familiar with, R. K. Narayan's Vendor of Sweets. Jagan defines the weakening of India's pristine tradition as a loss, dreaming of reverting to the past in many ways, while his son Mali fully lives in the modern world, not only of India but of America or West as well. Mali defines and experiences the change as an advance... Narayan, the narrator, clearly has a much deeper, more nuanced insight into everything involved... and so the book is one of the great works, in my opinion, of world literature, not only Indian literature.
For the American poet Wallace Stevens he's entirely on the side of advance, a simplistic view, and a minor poet who never grapples with the truly profound dilemmas of modern life but writes simplistic moralistic poems that everything is moving forward... all we human beings need to do is reject the old transcendent beliefs, etc.
Let me use an example from Indian literature you may be familiar with, R. K. Narayan's Vendor of Sweets. Jagan defines the weakening of India's pristine tradition as a loss, dreaming of reverting to the past in many ways, while his son Mali fully lives in the modern world, not only of India but of America or West as well. Mali defines and experiences the change as an advance... Narayan, the narrator, clearly has a much deeper, more nuanced insight into everything involved... and so the book is one of the great works, in my opinion, of world literature, not only Indian literature.
For the American poet Wallace Stevens he's entirely on the side of advance, a simplistic view, and a minor poet who never grapples with the truly profound dilemmas of modern life but writes simplistic moralistic poems that everything is moving forward... all we human beings need to do is reject the old transcendent beliefs, etc.
March 12, 2010 at 10:39 am
Just a short further note. Both Jagan and Mali accept and then act on false visions of life, which leads to all their problems... Narayan is clearly dramatizing how that is deleterious for the individual and society... That's the modern problem that still lies at the core of world culture, East and West, in my experience and opinion.
March 12, 2010 at 10:51 am
Thank you for your enlightening comment. I read the novel long before. I take this opportunity to express my sincere thank to you because i learnt many things whenever i login to facebook first thing i do is to visit your profile and have a intellectual feast. Thougu you are unaware i m indebted to you in many respects. Sir, would you mind if i ask you for your unpublished paper for The Criterion, planning to launch debut issue in April 2010. [LINK REMOVED]. Its temporary site. Thanks again.
March 12, 2010 at 11:10 am
Thank you for saying so. I appreciate it. I shall strive to be worthy of your good opinion. Thank you too for inviting me to submit a paper for your fledgling publication. While I've published over a dozen essays and reviews, I've been interested for years only in publishing in book form or on my own websites and blogs. So I must decline, but with gratitude for your kindness.
March 12, 2010 at 12:24 pm
“The poem of the mind in the act of finding / What will suffice,” in the act of consciously creating an ersatz, a “supreme fiction.” Wallace Stevens
March 12, 2010 at 7:14 am
As an old man Eliot repudiated and downplayed this vision, but his overly intellectualized Four Quartets nevertheless fail as poetry, which by definition must contain one’s deepest experience of life in order for the emotions to be engaged as well as the intellect. Far from the Four Quartets standing as a monument to the reality of man’s spiritual nature, they stand as ironic witness to its loss.
March 11, 2010 at 6:07 am
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perhaps overdomestication
March 11, 2010 at 6:15 am
Ahh... that's a bemusing comment. Can you expand on what you mean?
March 11, 2010 at 6:34 am
Culture can reach a certain point where symbols begin to represent other symbols instead of live experience or emotion; we begin to sew fields with dead seeds.
March 11, 2010 at 6:41 am
Mmm... With a little more polish you might work that into a koan... but perhaps I I follow you. With Eliot it seems to fit, a reversion to past symbols, a turning away from lived experience and emotion. He had, though, in his defense, experienced, very early in cultural terms and time, an overwhelming recognition of fields sown "with dead seeds," if you will... The proverbial phrase about having the experience but missing the meaning comes to mind.
Anyway, to my mind, it's understandable that Elliot would seek shelter where he did, solace, human, especially with the historical background of WWI. It's easy for us today to forget that part of the background to the Waste Land.
Anyway, to my mind, it's understandable that Elliot would seek shelter where he did, solace, human, especially with the historical background of WWI. It's easy for us today to forget that part of the background to the Waste Land.
March 11, 2010 at 7:02 am
I don't mean to suggest really any "bad faith" on Elliot's part. He followed his conscience where he felt it led, constrained by his private experience and limitations, as well as cultural.
March 11, 2010 at 7:06 am
Perhaps the end of an era has its poet too.
March 11, 2010 at 7:15 am
Well, yes, every era does. Milton, you know, has often been discussed in that way for other reasons, and so Eliot too.
There are poets and writers who have been quite conscious about ending a long, stagnant, intellectually and spiritually stultifying period, carried it as burden, for many years of toil and hardship, giving voice to a new vision, wrenched out of them as it were. I think of Cervantes who while valuing the two hundred years of chivalry at his back relished putting an end to it, clearing the ground for other understandings of human experience.
There are poets and writers who have been quite conscious about ending a long, stagnant, intellectually and spiritually stultifying period, carried it as burden, for many years of toil and hardship, giving voice to a new vision, wrenched out of them as it were. I think of Cervantes who while valuing the two hundred years of chivalry at his back relished putting an end to it, clearing the ground for other understandings of human experience.
March 11, 2010 at 7:25 am
I like the Four Quartets actually. I think they're pretty. But I also think 'overdomestication' is a perfectly apt description--as much spiritually as poetically. Four Quartets is his post-conversion poetry, evincing, at least on the surface, the orderliness that comes with hope of a clear path to salvation that seems entirely counter to the dangerous, pagan/Arthurian thrashing of The Waste Land. And he'd put most of his personal thrashings behind him behind him then as well, or acted as if he had, and settled down to the poetic equivalent of the surburbs.
But there are still strange gods haunting that rose garden.
But there are still strange gods haunting that rose garden.
March 11, 2010 at 8:04 am
Thanks for commenting, Shannon. You say some interesting things. I agree there are beautiful passages of poetry in the Four Quartets, but think you are right, on the down side.
There's some unpleasant detritus there too, like the line after the oft-cited "Time the destroyer is time the preserver": namely, "Like the river with its cargo of dead Negroes, cows and chicken coops." Where did that come from if not the same place as Eliot's antisemitism? Any poet with a more human feeling for people wouldn't think let alone write a line with such blatant racism. That whole side of Eliot has never appealed to me. Democratic pluralism is a profoundly important principle that someone as intelligent as Eliot has no excuse for undervaluing by dehumanizing people.
In my view, it's really part of the role he crafted for himself, the reverting to England, classicism, royalty, priggishness, and so on. It's false to his American and St. Louis roots, and it damages his understanding of life, as found in his poetry and criticism. Perhaps you're alluding to his suppressed book After Strange Gods, which is full of his dreaming of a backward movement, as he does in The Idea of a Christian Society and Notes toward a Definition of Culture.
The widening and opening of culture demonstrates how wrong he was, though many still dream or hope he was right... I respect immensely the man's intellect and achievement, but his judgment and tastes were too narrow, especially for a poet like myself who would like to think he respects the fullness of American experience, its drive towards universality.
There's some unpleasant detritus there too, like the line after the oft-cited "Time the destroyer is time the preserver": namely, "Like the river with its cargo of dead Negroes, cows and chicken coops." Where did that come from if not the same place as Eliot's antisemitism? Any poet with a more human feeling for people wouldn't think let alone write a line with such blatant racism. That whole side of Eliot has never appealed to me. Democratic pluralism is a profoundly important principle that someone as intelligent as Eliot has no excuse for undervaluing by dehumanizing people.
In my view, it's really part of the role he crafted for himself, the reverting to England, classicism, royalty, priggishness, and so on. It's false to his American and St. Louis roots, and it damages his understanding of life, as found in his poetry and criticism. Perhaps you're alluding to his suppressed book After Strange Gods, which is full of his dreaming of a backward movement, as he does in The Idea of a Christian Society and Notes toward a Definition of Culture.
The widening and opening of culture demonstrates how wrong he was, though many still dream or hope he was right... I respect immensely the man's intellect and achievement, but his judgment and tastes were too narrow, especially for a poet like myself who would like to think he respects the fullness of American experience, its drive towards universality.
March 11, 2010 at 8:33 am
I tend to agree with Roger here, but, yes, some good lines in Four Quartets, it's the general 'line' of it I cant get behind. But then I've always been more interested, if only because of its formal teachings, the Pound-Williams etc line of poetics. But the poems up to Waste Land can still excite, as Perloff pointed out not so long ago. FQ reveals a mind happy to have found a conservative, safe, place to rest....
March 11, 2010 at 11:04 am
..well or maybe thinks that he's happy and conservative and safe, or imagines itself that way. But within the staid conventionality of a lot of his later poetry is still some truly weird imagery. His Christianity is really no more conventional. Rivers still talk, Christ is a tiger, and the lady isn't all clothed in the sun and the moon, she's flanked by two white leopards. The irruptions of the pagan world are definitely still present, he's just gotten better at pretending to ignore them.
March 11, 2010 at 11:32 am
I would think one's deepest experience of life would be "wide and deep," but Eliot's was increasingly narrow, running counter to much that is best in modernity, while loathing modernity, and imagining a quixotic return to the past would save civilization. Given the outlook Eliot labored to create, I don't believe it is one that is in harmony with the best in the experience of many nations during the last fifty years, as it was even when he was alive. Immigration can work for some ex-patriot writers. I don't believe it did for Eliot. Much of his work strived to take culture in the wrong direction, one less open and respectful of cultural and religious variety.
I'd argue too that his experiencing the "death-rattle of Christianity," already pronounced by the time he wrote the Waste Land, demonstrates all the more why and how he declined as a writer, with FQ serving as the headstone...
Culture, fortunately, has rolled on, none too reassuring at times, but better forward, than in reverse... And too, we tend always to think in such monolithic terms, more detritus from the exclusivism of the Christian worldview which limits the perspective of the full range of human intellectual, literary, and spiritual possibility. Finding terms to discuss it always presents a difficulty for some. We're so locked in intellectually and otherwise to those terms. Our global experience is far beyond such narrow confines, and our thinking and our poetry has also been stuck for decades in the postmodern pit... more of the same.
I like how Shannon puts it, "maybe thinks that he's happy and conservative and safe, or imagines itself that way." He solved
the ontological problem for himself for a while, but I don't believe he ever really fooled himself or his best readers... Poignant, really...
I'd argue too that his experiencing the "death-rattle of Christianity," already pronounced by the time he wrote the Waste Land, demonstrates all the more why and how he declined as a writer, with FQ serving as the headstone...
Culture, fortunately, has rolled on, none too reassuring at times, but better forward, than in reverse... And too, we tend always to think in such monolithic terms, more detritus from the exclusivism of the Christian worldview which limits the perspective of the full range of human intellectual, literary, and spiritual possibility. Finding terms to discuss it always presents a difficulty for some. We're so locked in intellectually and otherwise to those terms. Our global experience is far beyond such narrow confines, and our thinking and our poetry has also been stuck for decades in the postmodern pit... more of the same.
I like how Shannon puts it, "maybe thinks that he's happy and conservative and safe, or imagines itself that way." He solved
the ontological problem for himself for a while, but I don't believe he ever really fooled himself or his best readers... Poignant, really...
March 11, 2010 at 12:12 pm
You say: 'Perhaps you're alluding to his suppressed book After Strange Gods, which is full of his dreaming of a backward movement,' & I agree with your assessment but I went & got my copy of it, so I'm trying to remember, did he or someone else try to suppress it (a good idea, but...).
March 11, 2010 at 3:50 pm
As I recall, Eliot himself chose to prevent it from being republished and repudiated it more than once publicly. It has always been my impression, though, that it was more of a tactical gesture. The book discloses too clearly the actual thinking and beliefs that Eliot had come to base his work on...
Among which are:
"What is still more important is unity of religious background."
"any large number of free-thinking Jews undesirable." (20)
"a spirit of excessive tolerance is to be deprecated."
"I believe that a right tradition for us must be also a Christian tradition, and that orthodoxy in general implies Christian orthodoxy" (21)
The subtitle is worth quoting for those unfamiliar with it: "A Primer of Modern Heresy" (1934).
Well, to my mind, out of touch with modern reality, i.e., that it's POSITIVE that American culture has evolved and grown away from such views, especially the exclusivism at the core of all such views. Pluralism is not nihilism. The Enlightenment, much of the entire values we think of as such, constitute an advance for civilization, even while admittedly creating stress in numerous ways. Our vocabulary for discussing and understanding those stresses suffers when predicated only on Christian terms. Our lived experience has moved beyond them. Recognizing these facts seem to be particularly difficult for intellectuals who are often limited to or obsessed with Christian terminology...
Among which are:
"What is still more important is unity of religious background."
"any large number of free-thinking Jews undesirable." (20)
"a spirit of excessive tolerance is to be deprecated."
"I believe that a right tradition for us must be also a Christian tradition, and that orthodoxy in general implies Christian orthodoxy" (21)
The subtitle is worth quoting for those unfamiliar with it: "A Primer of Modern Heresy" (1934).
Well, to my mind, out of touch with modern reality, i.e., that it's POSITIVE that American culture has evolved and grown away from such views, especially the exclusivism at the core of all such views. Pluralism is not nihilism. The Enlightenment, much of the entire values we think of as such, constitute an advance for civilization, even while admittedly creating stress in numerous ways. Our vocabulary for discussing and understanding those stresses suffers when predicated only on Christian terms. Our lived experience has moved beyond them. Recognizing these facts seem to be particularly difficult for intellectuals who are often limited to or obsessed with Christian terminology...
March 11, 2010 at 4:33 pm
I respect your views. I can merely share my own.
I revere Pound's poetry too, but he was right when he admitted he had "botched" the Cantos. He had told Yeats that in the Cantos there would “be no plot, no chronicle of events, no logic of discourse,” and once discussed his method in an interview, if memory serves, with Donald Hall: “I picked out this and that thing that interested me, and then jumbled them into a bag.”
So, the Cantos are great poetry, if poetry is defined as only technical accomplishment and language, but the greatest poets of every age, of every civilization on earth offered their people a VISION of LIFE that was worthy of their time and consideration... Not some helter skelter, rag bag affair that a mind has to be trained in a university classroom or through reader-guides to understand... Pound's pernicious conception of life causes the poem to fail miserably and all the attempts of some poets and intellectuals during the last sixty years to defend and salvage it are unpersuasive and self-serving--confuse and cheapen the art.
While with more coherence, in exquisite language and form, T. S. Eliot in Four Quartets presents the reader with a largely traditional Christian vision of life that is as much out of touch with modern history and experience as the poetry of Ezra Pound, equally leading the culture into delusional and even reactionary byways. I've already said enough about Eliot's view of life, his failure to grow as a poet and critic after the Waste Land, so I won't repeat myself.
I revere Pound's poetry too, but he was right when he admitted he had "botched" the Cantos. He had told Yeats that in the Cantos there would “be no plot, no chronicle of events, no logic of discourse,” and once discussed his method in an interview, if memory serves, with Donald Hall: “I picked out this and that thing that interested me, and then jumbled them into a bag.”
So, the Cantos are great poetry, if poetry is defined as only technical accomplishment and language, but the greatest poets of every age, of every civilization on earth offered their people a VISION of LIFE that was worthy of their time and consideration... Not some helter skelter, rag bag affair that a mind has to be trained in a university classroom or through reader-guides to understand... Pound's pernicious conception of life causes the poem to fail miserably and all the attempts of some poets and intellectuals during the last sixty years to defend and salvage it are unpersuasive and self-serving--confuse and cheapen the art.
While with more coherence, in exquisite language and form, T. S. Eliot in Four Quartets presents the reader with a largely traditional Christian vision of life that is as much out of touch with modern history and experience as the poetry of Ezra Pound, equally leading the culture into delusional and even reactionary byways. I've already said enough about Eliot's view of life, his failure to grow as a poet and critic after the Waste Land, so I won't repeat myself.
March 12, 2010 at 4:05 am
I dont know if we're back to Perloff's wondering which age it was, Stevens's or Pound's, but I admit that I learned more from Pound than from Eliot, & that's one 'test' of poetry (& certainly the test that led so many to read his work even while abhorring so much of the ideology of the poet). Some of what has emerged in these comments is a sense that Eliot's seizure of the past was a retreat, a failure of nerve; Pound's poetry, at least, remained adventurous in a way Eliot's did not, & it can at least be argued that he wanted to bring the past to bear upon the present rather than just retreat into it.
March 12, 2010 at 1:56 pm
Well, that's an interesting way of looking at Pound. For me, and I've read all of his poetry and prose, what I've learnt the most from him, I hope, is what not to do... That of course can be very important and educational...
March 12, 2010 at 2:07 pm
I've always admired Pound's openness to Asian culture, but, as one who has lived for an extended time in Japan, I don't believe it runs deep enough. Yes, he wrote some beautiful work, but extremely idiosyncratic. His sensibility does not appeal to me, aesthetically or otherwise. I respect your appreciation for his writing.
I fully agree with your comments on Eliot's "attempted revival" of English culture, especially his use of Fraser and other sources to "rescue" the pagan past, connect it imaginatively with his day. Alas, "revival" is not that simply. The breadth of his work demonstrates that fact, all the more so now for today.
I'm well aware that culturally many after WWI were trying to return and recover a Christian social and cultural order of some sort. Conservatives here in the USA and England have and continue to look to his writing as the lodestone, if you will, that modern literature and culture must return to, while most of the thoughtfully conscious culture turned away from Eliot long ago, many decades ago. To my mind, and I respect your views, I simply feel and believe his, and such an effort, is working against the inescapable current of history towards a more universal, democratic, global culture, grounded in genuine pluralism, in terms both of the practical political realm and the spiritual, religious, and artistic realms.
Let me put this way, some conservatives continue to mourn the loss; yes, much has been lost, but much has been gained for those with eyes and ears to perceive. Eliot, as well as those like him, is tragic, ultimately, for me, because he failed to understand it's God's will that humanity move forward, not backward...
I fully agree with your comments on Eliot's "attempted revival" of English culture, especially his use of Fraser and other sources to "rescue" the pagan past, connect it imaginatively with his day. Alas, "revival" is not that simply. The breadth of his work demonstrates that fact, all the more so now for today.
I'm well aware that culturally many after WWI were trying to return and recover a Christian social and cultural order of some sort. Conservatives here in the USA and England have and continue to look to his writing as the lodestone, if you will, that modern literature and culture must return to, while most of the thoughtfully conscious culture turned away from Eliot long ago, many decades ago. To my mind, and I respect your views, I simply feel and believe his, and such an effort, is working against the inescapable current of history towards a more universal, democratic, global culture, grounded in genuine pluralism, in terms both of the practical political realm and the spiritual, religious, and artistic realms.
Let me put this way, some conservatives continue to mourn the loss; yes, much has been lost, but much has been gained for those with eyes and ears to perceive. Eliot, as well as those like him, is tragic, ultimately, for me, because he failed to understand it's God's will that humanity move forward, not backward...
March 13, 2010 at 4:03 am
Ah well, chacun à son gout, & all that. But having watched (listened?) to all this, I thought to myself, well, the poet I most admire also learned from Pound & engaged in a long continual discussion (often argument) with him & with the others who had inherited from him & Williams; & so took myself off to reread Olson's 'The Kingfishers,' as a short long poem, & then couldnt help bu read a bunch more of his, including 'To Gerhardt...,' 'Letter for Melville 1951,' 'For Sappho, Back,' 'The Lordly and Isolate Satyrs,' & 'As the Dead Prey Upon Us' & lo. I realized just what a rush reading great poetry can be.
March 13, 2010 at 2:21 pm
Yes, chacun à son gout... and with poetry it's always a matter of taste. I respect the Pound-Williams-Olson tradition, if you will, though it's not to my taste, a little "uncooked," to use that tag. No censorious condemnation intended! I am drawn to other literary lights. I feel, perhaps, a little like Robert Frost, "surely there is something wrong with wanting to silence any song." And that's not my intention.
I so agree that poetry is infinitely preferable to the staking of territory and pedigree in crude prose... Perhaps on that we can agree. I've enjoyed this discussion immensely and want to thank everyone for participating.
I so agree that poetry is infinitely preferable to the staking of territory and pedigree in crude prose... Perhaps on that we can agree. I've enjoyed this discussion immensely and want to thank everyone for participating.
March 14, 2010 at 5:53 am
Eliot obscures this fact by using the Indian Upanishads as a substitute, yet his spectator is ultimately left “in his prison / thinking of the key”: “aethereal rumours” that might “revive” him, though only “for a moment,” before leaving him alone on the shore with the fragments of his ruins, and with the fragments of the modern world.
March 10, 2010 at 4:37 pm
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Eliot substantiates this loss throughout the poem, as in the debased, bestial relations of the lovers in “A Game of Chess” and “The Fire Sermon.” Despite Eliot’s hint of resurrection in the passage on Christ’s appearance to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, which begins with the line “Who is the third who walks always beside you,” the burden of the poem is the horror that he does “not find The Hanged Man.”
March 10, 2010 at 2:01 pm
In place of Civitas Dei looms the “Unreal City,” the residence of modern man devoid of all spirituality. In the section “What the Thunder Said,” Eliot evokes Christ’s agony in the garden of Gethsemane, his crucifixion, and his death in the modern world: “He who was living is now dead” and “We who were living are now dying.”
March 10, 2010 at 10:51 am
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Instead of “the glory of the Lord” that appeared to Ezekiel, Eliot’s “Son of man” knows “only / A heap of broken images” that are desiccated and lifeless, while a “famous clairvoyante” substitutes for the veracity of revealed religion: “I do not find The Hanged Man.”
March 10, 2010 at 7:55 am
Shorn of all tradition, unity, and faith, the isolated spectator of Eliot’s poem wanders through the flow of his consciousness from one discrete incident to another, perceiving past, present, and future in a welter of simultaneous chaos.
March 9, 2010 at 4:06 pm
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Shantih shantih shantih (not to anticipate your argument...)
March 10, 2010 at 4:25 am
Thanks for commenting. Yes, and it is that shantih that is the center of the original poem, through his study of sanskrit and the Upanishads. Eliot chooses to obscure that later. I believe that decision marks a failure for him as an artist and as a man...
One must follow, with integrity, one's conscience, as a writer. He failed to trust and explore its deepest intimations...
One must follow, with integrity, one's conscience, as a writer. He failed to trust and explore its deepest intimations...
March 10, 2010 at 7:54 am
I can see that. I wonder, though, if part of that failure of conscience was due to the personal failures he experienced in his own life (one of which is alluded to in Part 2 of "The Wasteland". He should have stuck to his guns, but he was also a damaged man living in an uncertain time. The deep conservatism expressed in his later poetry seems to display a longing to retreat to a perceived "more certain" age.
Liked your comments about Henry Adams, by the by; he's a fascinating and unique American figure.
Liked your comments about Henry Adams, by the by; he's a fascinating and unique American figure.
March 10, 2010 at 9:30 am
I suppose one could argue his personal problems with his wife Vivienne complicates things for Eliot. If memory serves, that's suggest by both Stephen Spender and Lyndall Gordon in their books. But to my mind, in the end, those things don't excuse a poet from achieving what Eliot did in the Waste Land and then reverting, as you suggest, which is what I believe he did. The whole direction of society since he died shows he was wrong. Retreating into the past always is, aesthetically, and so on, though temporarily reassuring.
Thanks for saying so about Adams. Adams has always fascinated me too. I just reread large sections of Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres this winter. I prefer the Autobiography, it ruminates so directly on American experience. Adams clearly precedes Eliot and his generation. Adams wasn't for going backwards, in anyway, though. He sensed there was something Powerful about modernity, acceleration, scary, but headed forward...
Thanks for saying so about Adams. Adams has always fascinated me too. I just reread large sections of Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres this winter. I prefer the Autobiography, it ruminates so directly on American experience. Adams clearly precedes Eliot and his generation. Adams wasn't for going backwards, in anyway, though. He sensed there was something Powerful about modernity, acceleration, scary, but headed forward...
March 10, 2010 at 10:51 am
It is in the modern prison of the mind that T. S. Eliot confronts the wasteland. As he quotes F. H. Bradley in his notes to The Waste Land, “The whole world for each is peculiar and private to that soul.”
March 9, 2010 at 11:37 am
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By taking the thirteenth century “as the unit from which he might measure motion down to his own time,” he arrives at the perception of twentieth century multiplicity: “Except as reflected in himself, man has no reason for assuming unity in the universe, ... or a prime-motor.” Adams is one of the first writers to demonstrate that, in the modern world unity can be found only in the study of one’s own mind.
March 9, 2010 at 9:05 am
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Good old Descartes.
March 9, 2010 at 9:09 am
Yes, basically, sounds like him, doesn't it? The writers who have done that are legion... and then there are those who throw in the towel, so to speak, shrug their shoulders, the postmodernists...
March 9, 2010 at 10:13 am
Yet even Adam’s method for establishing acceleration and entropy remains bound to an objective standard—the Virgin of Chartres Cathedral, which represents for him the force of the love of God as expressed through unity.
March 9, 2010 at 6:57 am
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He recognizes what Emerson and Whitman fail to perceive: If man becomes his own prophet or god, he is left in a relative universe of illimitable illusion with no objective basis by which to gauge truth. Under such conditions the possibility of any divinity becomes the first belief to be repudiated, which is what Nietzsche learnt from Emerson.
March 9, 2010 at 4:45 am
This nihilism inevitably leads Adams to his dynamic theory of history, to his worship of change, multiplicity, and “the stupendous acceleration after 1800.” Subsequent literature confirms he was one of the first “in an infinite series” to peer into the bottomless depths of the void.
March 8, 2010 at 4:35 pm
Adams, an early modern, becomes a worshiper of the very entropy and chaos he perceives but cannot fathom: “Nihilism has no bottom.” As he observes in his reflections on the ganoid fish,
March 8, 2010 at 12:18 pm
“Every one had probably lived and died in the illusion of Truths which did not amuse him, and which had never changed. Henry Adams was the first in an infinite series to discover and admit to himself that he really did not care whether truth was, or was not, true.” Henry Adams
March 8, 2010 at 12:18 pm
Everywhere Adams sees a weakening of the old moral bonds of the world and an increasing emphasis on material civilization and success. For him the new dynamos of the Paris Exposition of 1900 symbolize the material energy or force of the modern world:
March 8, 2010 at 8:07 am
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“As he grew accustomed to the great gallery of machines, he began to feel the forty-foot dynamos as a moral force, much as the early Christians felt the Cross. . . . Before the end, one began to pray to it.” Henry Adams
March 8, 2010 at 8:06 am
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In 1907 in The Education of Henry Adams, Adams chronicles the further demise of the old New England morality from his great-grandfather, President John Adams, who loathed Emerson, to President Grant and on to the twentieth century: the “disappearance of religion puzzle[s] him most.”
March 8, 2010 at 5:38 am
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She has already moved too far toward the modern era for that to happen. In these closing lines of her career, torn within, she turns to her usual sweet substitute of Emersonian transcendentalism. The pathos of this turn reveals itself in the mind of this brilliant woman through her choice of words: “ignis fatuus.” She understood what she was doing and that for her there was no other choice.
March 7, 2010 at 4:36 pm
"The fire of fate"? (a mere guess -- being fairly Latin challenged)
March 7, 2010 at 7:12 pm
Of very old derivation. "Fool's fire" or foxfire, ignited swamp gas given off by decomposing matter. A common phenomenon taken for the work of magical beings, fairies, etc., in ancient cultures, European, and so on. Perhaps the most revealing metaphor in Dickinson's poetry.
March 8, 2010 at 5:37 am
She achieves in this poem her most poignant expression of this loss, a loss she does not accept placidly in the last stanza. The Puritan side of her soul implies that the renouncing of belief leads to immorality and decadence, small brutish behavior unworthy of human beings. Yet she cannot revert to the “Eclipse” and “antique Volume.”
March 7, 2010 at 12:34 pm
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“Those dying” are people living back “then” under the full sway of the Puritan religion. Given Calvin’s doctrine of election, they knew with certitude where they were going after their earthly life: “to God’s Right Hand.” Already here in 1882 Dickinson has sensed or picked up in her reading, perhaps from a secondary source on Darwin, the loss or amputation of religious belief: “God cannot be found.”
March 7, 2010 at 9:26 am
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The struggle in Dickinson’s soul between Puritanism and the emerging modern worldview finds the clearest, fullest expression in “1551”: "Those—dying then, / Knew where they went— / They went to God’s Right Hand—/ That Hand is amputated now / And God cannot be found— / The abdication of Belief / Makes the Behavior small— / Better an ignis fatuus / Than no illume at all—"
March 7, 2010 at 6:06 am
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Late in her life in about 1882 she could write scathingly in “1545”: “The Bible is an antique Volume— / Written by faded Men.” The volume is not only antiquated but also further debilitated by the exhausted, male chauvinist hands that wrote it. Thick with sarcasm, the poem hammers at the major subjects of the Bible and opposes the captivating poems of Orpheus, metaphorically her own, to Puritanic condemnation.
March 6, 2010 at 8:27 am
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Again interesting Frederick. I miss the sense of "Puritanic condemnation" -- can you clarify what you mean by the phrase here?
March 6, 2010 at 8:55 am
As you realize, many of her poems are opposed to the Puritan fanaticism, past and contemporary for her. She's working that out on a personal and social level. What does it mean, where has culture been, where is it going, ideally. "Faded men," scathing... rightly so. Many today probably have to make an imaginative leap to understand her intensity of feeling...
March 6, 2010 at 9:18 am
Such an aura, though, can be deceptive. As a young woman she could not fit in with the orthodox routine of Mount Holyoke and wrote of her family in 1862 to T. W. Higginson that “They are religious—except me—and address an Eclipse, every morning—whom they call their ‘Father.’”
March 6, 2010 at 6:14 am
What a strangely inventive coinage, "an Eclipse" -- how might one grasp the possible sense of this word? It seems almost absurdist.
March 6, 2010 at 6:59 am
Well -- perhaps an Eclipse is a thing one hears more about than actually sees -- a kind of hearsay rarity. Then, it must be because of the phrase "Our Father who art in Heaven" -- no doubt where an Eclipse is located too . . .
March 6, 2010 at 7:01 am
Indeed, I suppose it is essentially an ironic / humorous challenging of the conventional phrase-formula "Our Father who art in Heaven." It takes it (deadpan) as literal -- oh, in heaven, is he? Like an Eclipse?
March 6, 2010 at 7:03 am
Darwin published in 1859. I believe she's already picked up the reverberations, as I recall, her letters demonstrate it, though a specific passage doesn't come to mind this morning. Emerson had long been denounced by the orthodox as an atheist, etc.
March 6, 2010 at 7:41 am
Emily Dickinson too drank at the Emersonian fountain, stating once, Emerson “is sweetly commended.” She, however, continued under the Puritan worldview in her poems to a much greater extent than either Whitman or Emerson. Many poems evince her fairly orthodox aura of Christian sensibility, as in “1052”: “I never spoke with God / Nor visited in Heaven— / Yet certain am I of the spot.”
March 6, 2010 at 5:03 am
Perhaps one may say this, but her highly personal, idiosyncratic Christianity seems entirely mystical in character: any occurrence in imagination seems to be approached as an event of inward consciousness. This is hardly the approach evident in most dogmatic Christianity; superficial similarities may be more apparent than real. It wouldn't surprise me if the reclusive ED was considerably less well-read, less worldly-wise, and perhaps less generally broad-minded than her unusual contemporaries Emerson & Whitman. But (speaking merely from evidence of the poetry) I'd hazard to suggest her putative orthodoxy seems in fact (on closer inspection) to be subtly but significantly heterodox, because so entirely personal and inward. Dogma is radically reinterpreted in her.
March 6, 2010 at 5:23 am
Oh yes, I do agree, in a sense... Her "liquor never brewed," is significantly Emersonian in derivation, while elsewhere more redolent of the cultural stresses of the move away from "dogmatic Christianity." As you're well understand, Dickinson's poems explore these tensions. I'm really only beginning a discussion of Dickinson. See my next message.
March 6, 2010 at 6:13 am
cool
March 6, 2010 at 6:50 am
In 1871 in Democratic Vistas, his fullest prose treatment of his tenuous “Idealism” and “Personalism,” Whitman announces, in a manner reminiscent of Matthew Arnold, “The priest departs, the divine literatus comes.”
March 5, 2010 at 9:27 am
Whitman launches “all men and women forward” with him “into the Unknown.” The “spear of summer grass” becomes the flag of his expansive, “hopeful green” disposition, his yearning for what he calls elsewhere, “Passage, immediate passage” to confront God himself face to face.
March 5, 2010 at 7:03 am
Like Emerson, drawing from the East and West, Whitman confuses all distinctions, sees them all as merely doing “the work of their days,” and steps forward to “fill out better” in himself the “rough deific sketches” that he himself hopes to bestow on “each man and woman.” Antinomianism achieves its apex.
March 5, 2010 at 3:55 am
His Leaves of Grass was to have been the new bible, his revelation from “nature without check with original energy.” Through him the afflatus would surge and surge, “the current and index” of “All.” He immodestly conceives his task as “Lithographing Kronos, Zeus his son, and Hercules his grandson, / Buying drafts of Osiris, Isis, Belus, Brahma, Buddha,”
March 4, 2010 at 4:21 pm
“ / In my portfolio placing Manito loose, Allah on a leaf, the / crucifix engraved, / With Odin and the hideous-faced Mexitli and every idol and image, / Taking them all for what they are worth and not a cent more, / Admitting they were alive and did the work of their days.... / Accepting the rough deific sketches to fill out better in myself.” Walt Whitman
March 4, 2010 at 4:21 pm
Walt Whitman was one of the first cosmic bards to swallow the glowing coal from Emerson’s lectures and essays. Whitman knew, as he writes in the early lines of “Song of Myself,” that “creeds and schools” were “in abeyance” and sought in the soul, as Emerson had instructed, the remedy.
March 4, 2010 at 11:49 am
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Though Emerson concedes he looks in vain for such a poet who is capable of revealing “the new revelation,” he insists America “dazzles the imagination” and “will not wait long for metres.” The pattern became set for aberrant mystics from Thoreau and Whitman to Hart Crane, Allen Ginsberg, and Robert Bly.
March 4, 2010 at 8:33 am
One wonders: were those observations of Emerson's made prior to (or subsequent to) the appearance of Walt Whitman's work?
March 4, 2010 at 9:40 am
The Poet was 1843; Leaves of Grass 1855. Whitman read Emerson...
March 4, 2010 at 9:53 am
The poet achieves revelation by “resigning himself to the divine aura which breathes through forms,” through nature, and on which he can draw if he but suffers “the ethereal tides to roll and circulate through him.” Drawing on the “true nectar,” he becomes a “liberating god,” as was Swedenborg.
March 4, 2010 at 6:52 am
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Are you still quoting Emerson here? Also, are you saying Swedenborg becomes a 'liberating god?' The language oddly reflects a Dionysian/Orphic sort of strain, but I didn't think the transcendentalists were into that aspect of the classics. Also, there are two distinctly separate strands in what you're quoting: the secular humanism sort of Jeffersonian stuff and this much more mystical stuff. You also quoted James yesterday as criticizing Emerson for attempting to badly connect those two strands together. But does he, in your opinion? And do they connect at all, or contradict?
March 4, 2010 at 7:06 am
Thanks for commenting. Yes, I'm quoting Emerson throughout these passages from his Nature, Divinity School Address, The Poet. "Orphic" is exactly the word Emerson uses in The Poet, if memory serves. Emerson uses the word elsewhere in his Essays as well.
There are those strands, I think, always in poetry and writing, all the antinomies, rational | orphic; classical | romantic; reason | spirit; craft | inspiration. These antinomies, and others like them, run throughout American and other literatures, inescapably part of human consciousness, I would say. Of course, many writers tend to one or the other, arguing fiercely against their antithesis... Emerson | James is a tasty one, don't you think? James: "O you man without a handle!" Human nature is really hysterical sometimes...
Mmm... I wouldn't say contradict. I personally feel uneasy with absolutes, even implied ones. I prefer openness to everything human, at least ideally. I think human nature is really, to use an Emersonian turn of speech, "part and parcel" of all these things. I wouldn't want to live or write without any of them...
There are those strands, I think, always in poetry and writing, all the antinomies, rational | orphic; classical | romantic; reason | spirit; craft | inspiration. These antinomies, and others like them, run throughout American and other literatures, inescapably part of human consciousness, I would say. Of course, many writers tend to one or the other, arguing fiercely against their antithesis... Emerson | James is a tasty one, don't you think? James: "O you man without a handle!" Human nature is really hysterical sometimes...
Mmm... I wouldn't say contradict. I personally feel uneasy with absolutes, even implied ones. I prefer openness to everything human, at least ideally. I think human nature is really, to use an Emersonian turn of speech, "part and parcel" of all these things. I wouldn't want to live or write without any of them...
March 4, 2010 at 7:36 am
Ohh, too, Emerson was very interested in Swedenborg, mentioning him in many places. Swendenborg's work includes visions, etc.
March 4, 2010 at 7:44 am
Yes, I'm familiar. I'm working on some of this myself, though from a different angle. But is Emerson saying here that Swedenborg is himself a god, or that the poet becomes a god by resigning himself (odd choice of language, strangely passive) to the aura of nature &c? as Swedenborg teaches?
March 4, 2010 at 7:46 am
Essays, 2nd Series, The Poet: "Swedenborg, of all men in the recent ages, stands eminently for the translator of nature into thought."
"But the highest minds of the world have never ceased to explore the doublemeaning, or shall I say the quadruple or the centuple or much more manifold meaning, of every sensuous fact; Orpheus, Empedocles, Heraclitus, Plato, Plutarch, Dante, Swedenborg, and the masters of sculpture, picture, and poetry. For we are ... children of the fire, made of it... And this hidden truth, that the fountains whence all this river of Time and its creatures floweth are intrinsically ideal and beautiful, draws us to the consideration of the nature and functions of the Poet, or the man of Beauty; to the means and materials he uses, and to the general aspect of the art in the present time."
You see, the afflatus, to use an Emersonian word. In my view, Emerson is not one to nail it down in any overly precise way... That's what infuriated Henry James!
"But the highest minds of the world have never ceased to explore the doublemeaning, or shall I say the quadruple or the centuple or much more manifold meaning, of every sensuous fact; Orpheus, Empedocles, Heraclitus, Plato, Plutarch, Dante, Swedenborg, and the masters of sculpture, picture, and poetry. For we are ... children of the fire, made of it... And this hidden truth, that the fountains whence all this river of Time and its creatures floweth are intrinsically ideal and beautiful, draws us to the consideration of the nature and functions of the Poet, or the man of Beauty; to the means and materials he uses, and to the general aspect of the art in the present time."
You see, the afflatus, to use an Emersonian word. In my view, Emerson is not one to nail it down in any overly precise way... That's what infuriated Henry James!
March 4, 2010 at 8:19 am
Swedenborg is Emerson's mystic in Representative Men... That says a lot about Emerson, really, and, in fairness, the age.
March 4, 2010 at 8:23 am
Thank you. That is useful. What I'm working on is how the same mysticism informs certain aspects of American modernism, so the genealogy is helpful.
March 4, 2010 at 8:26 am
You make me think of an interesting tidbit you might enjoy or use too. Robert Frost's mother was a member of the Swedenborgian Church and took young Robert with her, of course, in San Francisco or wherever.
Personally, I don't believe there are different kinds of mysticisms, only expressions... culturally based, aesthetically, whatever.
Personally, I don't believe there are different kinds of mysticisms, only expressions... culturally based, aesthetically, whatever.
March 4, 2010 at 8:31 am
Emerson completes his romantic deification of the writer in his essay “The Poet,” which he published in 1844. He avers that what he calls “sacred history” “attests that the birth of a poet is the principal event in chronology”; that is to say, all prophets of God are mere poets and “the religions of the world are the ejaculations of a few imaginative men” who reveal “Logos.”
March 4, 2010 at 3:52 am
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This passage echoes down the halls of American literature and religious thought, resonating like Virgil’s great prophecy in the fourth Eclogue. Despite Emerson’s religious excesses, his choice to leave the church was the right one, since his search for the transcendental in the face of the “gathering force” was the motivation of his life, a search he intuited could only find fulfillment in the fullness of time.
March 3, 2010 at 4:25 pm
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Emerson discloses further his realization of how serious the modern crisis is in the concluding paragraph of “The Divinity School Address”:
March 3, 2010 at 1:28 pm
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“I look for the hour when that supreme Beauty, which ravished the souls of those Eastern men, and chiefly of those Hebrews, and through their lips spoke oracles to all time, shall speak in the West also. . . . I look for the new Teacher, that shall follow so far those shining laws . . . and shall show that the Ought, that Duty, is one thing with Science, with Beauty, and with Joy.” -RW Emerson
March 3, 2010 at 1:28 pm
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Thrown back on his own devices he became the first American writer “to make his own” by blending together every vague God-mysticism he could find.
March 3, 2010 at 11:06 am
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Emerson, the “man without a handle,” as Henry James called him, wanders from the biblical deity to a pantheistic oversoul in one sentence to another, while his essentially prophetic ejaculations fail to convey convincingly the “new revelation,” its promised eradication of evil, or the remedy for the crisis of which he is so deeply aware.
March 3, 2010 at 6:41 am
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He rhetorically asks what can be done and answers that the remedy can be found in the contrast he has repeatedly drawn between the church and the soul: “In the soul then let the redemption be sought.” Like Emerson, the divinity students are to “love God without mediator” and “acquaint men at first hand with Deity.”
March 3, 2010 at 4:19 am
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On this prospect Emerson laments the modern loss of religion and expresses the desperation he feels for the social dislocations the loss has caused:
March 2, 2010 at 1:15 pm
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Here T.S. Eliot would concur.
March 2, 2010 at 3:34 pm
More on him to come...
March 3, 2010 at 4:05 am
I await your take on this aspect of Emerson.
March 3, 2010 at 4:09 am
Social dis location is the main kind no matter what the cause ..which could be any cultural thing, as, for example E-Stuff
March 3, 2010 at 7:52 am
True enough. And I'd argue the reverse. estuff can just as well be a channel for the Spirit... the antinomies of human nature are perennial. It is in choice, how the free will is exercised, that character is constituted and revealed. "Any cultural thing" can be the location...
March 3, 2010 at 8:43 am
Life is a series of choices as it has always been regardless of cultural change.Emerson stresse personal responsibility.
March 3, 2010 at 9:11 am
Yeah, exactly; and self-reliance, unknown, it can seem, today...
March 3, 2010 at 9:37 am
“And what greater calamity can fall upon a nation than the loss of worship? Then all things go to decay. Genius leaves the temple to haunt the senate or the market. Literature becomes frivolous. Science is cold. The eye of youth is not lighted by the hope of other worlds, and age is without honor. Society lives to trifles.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
March 2, 2010 at 1:15 pm
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He exhorts them that “the need was never greater of a new revelation than now” since all can readily detect a “universal decay and now almost death of faith in society.” The cause of this decline, Emerson thinks, is “The soul is not preached.” After remarking on the passing of the Puritan creed, he warns “none arises in its room.”
March 2, 2010 at 7:16 am
Nowhere is his self-election more evident than in his “Divinity School Address” to seniors at Harvard in 1838. He urges upon them the “eternal revelation in the heart,” which Christ, Moses, the prophets, all saints and holy men have experienced and which, he claims, might be theirs. Yet the idea of revelation is so discredited that it appears “as if God were dead.”
March 2, 2010 at 5:48 am
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God and revelation are real, its the religious groupings that have explored this for their selfish gains and have made man start to wonder if their is credence to this beliefs. I believe in a being higher than me and an awakening that can show you something that is beyong human comprehension, if certain quotas of humanity think different, then that is the cost of ignorance and or lack of information.
March 2, 2010 at 6:03 am
Emerson is talking within a literary and cultural tradition, one increasingly open, tolerant, and accepting of others. I can't think of an American writer less likely to castigate another opinion as "ignorant." Inescapably, every generation of Americans must confront Emerson and is judged by its success or failure.
I am one who believes there is much that can still be learned from his writings, and I hope of value for people in other parts of the world.
I am one who believes there is much that can still be learned from his writings, and I hope of value for people in other parts of the world.
March 2, 2010 at 7:13 am
Emerson is one of my favorites.His writings are as applicable today as when they were written. I include his works in my library and close to heart.
March 2, 2010 at 7:42 am
An epiphany or "eternal revelation in the heart" as Emerson sees it is a highly individual and personal matter. Because another does not experience what you experience does not indicate "ignorance and a lack of information" since these matters are of the heart and not of the head. Reading Emerson is similar to sucking a piece of hard candy. Allow him to settle on the tongue; take time. Be prepared to take much time. There's musch satisfaction there.
March 2, 2010 at 11:45 am
Agreed. The Emersonian epiphany is non-exclusive, universal, open equally to every individual. Following German philosophy, his Reason is "of the heart," not the rational, the mystic experience.
Nietzsche, and those who follow him, misuse and abuse Emerson, as does T. S. Eliot from a different direction. He's the first American writer to begin to open to the lived experience of modern universality...
Nietzsche, and those who follow him, misuse and abuse Emerson, as does T. S. Eliot from a different direction. He's the first American writer to begin to open to the lived experience of modern universality...
March 2, 2010 at 1:13 pm
Nietzsche, as popularized by many in the past century, adds little if anything substatial to the discussion. I believe that the power of his thinking lies in other directions entirely.
March 2, 2010 at 3:27 pm
I have been reading Stanley Cavell on Emerson, recently. He would dispute the dismissal of Nietzsche ... in fact he relates the idea of the over-man to Emerson's idea of the philosophy of the day after tomorrow ...
March 2, 2010 at 4:25 pm
I admit that Cavell has a compelling argument as he does on many issues, but I remain unconvinced although I admit I need more time to consider the issue as I do with several others each and every day.
March 2, 2010 at 4:28 pm
The Nietzschean orthodox have sought to coopt Emerson as a forerunner, draining him thereby of what is unique and vital, denigrating him as Nietzsche had the transcendent in Christianity. There are many academic readings of Emerson's "influence" on Nietzsche, as though Emerson were to blame for the misuses and distortions of his work.
March 3, 2010 at 4:18 am
Whereas Edwards had tried to turn back the historical process and the deists had taken a skeptical attitude toward ultimate questions, Emerson stepped forward as “a newborn bard of the Holy Ghost.”
March 1, 2010 at 4:01 pm
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Nature becomes not merely a sign or emblem of the spiritual—spirit and nature become one. Such new pantheistic eyes will lead to the realization that the “bruteness of nature is the absence of spirit.” Such an “advancing spirit” will suffuse the world with beauty “until evil is no more seen.”
March 1, 2010 at 1:48 pm
In Nature in 1836 he excoriates the “unrenewed understanding” for regarding only “things” and opposes to this “animal eye” the spiritual “eye of Reason,” which, when it opens, estimates the true value of the material world by seeing through it to the “instantaneous in-streaming causing power.”
March 1, 2010 at 11:43 am
More than any other American writer of the nineteenth century, Ralph Waldo Emerson tried to reassert intuition in the face of reason, science, industrialization, and “corpse cold” Unitarian religion.
March 1, 2010 at 10:10 am
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For Jefferson, the spectator of the natural beauty of Virginia stands in rapture before the creation of the watchmaker God, not before a world Edward Taylor and Jonathan Edwards found imbued with spiritual import, signs, and emblems. Such implicit Enlightenment repudiation of man’s intuitive capacities could not but contribute to the rationalistic Zeitgeist that eventually gave rise to transcendentalism.
March 1, 2010 at 7:03 am
Don't you find Jonathan Edwards speaking with a broader understanding especially in his last materials as well as looking far beyond anything that Taylor was even remotely aware of anywhere in his writing? Certainly "spirutal import, signs and emblems" abound with both writers, but Edwards was able to go much more deeply beneath the surface. His philosophical underpinnings are far more complicated and worth a discussion.
March 2, 2010 at 3:33 pm
I've only read Edward's usual anthology pieces of today. I've read there are deeper levels to him but find what I do know about him largely unpalatable and hence have not pursued him further. I'm open to education if you think there's something I might find instructive. Largely, I'm not interested in exclusivisms, secular or religious.
In my view, they're retrograde and out of touch with what lived experience has become and the direction culture has long and is clearly moving toward, pluralism, universality... those aren't negatives; those are positives...
In my view, they're retrograde and out of touch with what lived experience has become and the direction culture has long and is clearly moving toward, pluralism, universality... those aren't negatives; those are positives...
March 3, 2010 at 4:36 am
Despite his laudable emphasis on tolerance and freedom of conscience, Jefferson’s sole standard in Notes on the State of Virginia, beyond the utilitarian maintenance of social order, is deistical reason. Such a standard is already far removed from the totality of human experience and marks a further curtailment of the theocentric universe.
March 1, 2010 at 5:48 am
We All Hear Voices. Dear Frederick, As I write this note, just above someone has written about the progress of their therapy and below someone else about sunshine pie; then there are your offerings. I thoroughly enjoyed reading your notes( most of them send me scurrying to the dictionary, that's a good thing). Though I may not always agree I find them a delightful oasis. I apologize for not commenting more regularly. the pretender, sam
March 1, 2010 at 6:17 am
Thank you for providing an example of what I mean...
March 1, 2010 at 6:58 am
Without respect, deep, real, sincere respect, for the religious convictions of others, for the sanctity of the human conscience, for its protection under commonly binding law, America would be reduced to ashes, as devastated as Beirut or Yugoslavia at their worst. We must never doubt for even a single moment that religious freedom is one of the greatest principles and achievements of Western democracy.
February 28, 2010 at 2:53 pm
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Williams’ banishment to Rhode Island by the Puritans is one of the earliest lessons in our history of the viciousness of self-righteous religious intolerance and its deleterious effect on the social order. Jefferson’s wise affirmation of tolerance is the only reasonable solution to the perennial problems of religious bigotry and the freedom of the individual conscience.
February 28, 2010 at 1:45 pm
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Thanks for saying so. Jefferson's solution to the clash of differing opinions seems to me to be the only rational and possible one, really--neutrality of the State, say what you want but try to be decent, tolerant, respectful, and, since we're all human, when all else fails--no violence allowed...
No Heaven on Earth, just the messy world, life as she is lived... and occasionally the higher notes we are capable of, both as individuals and as governments, at our best...
No Heaven on Earth, just the messy world, life as she is lived... and occasionally the higher notes we are capable of, both as individuals and as governments, at our best...
February 28, 2010 at 2:53 pm
Yes, that can definitely be there, secular or whatever, inhumanity is inhumanity... the long experience compelled the entire movement of civilization towards balanced forms of public space and government, conscience, and liberty.
February 28, 2010 at 4:31 pm
David Alpaugh. The New Math of Poetry. The Chronicle Review. February 21, 2010.https://chronicle.com/article/The-New-Math-of-Poetry/64249/
February 28, 2010 at 12:48 pm
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The New Math of Poetry - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education |
It's hard to figure out how much poetry is being published in America. When I suggested to Michael Neff, founder of Web del Sol, that anyone can start an online journal for $100, he pointed out that anyone can start one via a blog for nothing. ...
February 28, 2010 at 12:48 pm
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This is a dumb and superior both. A dirty, rotten clam if there ever was one.
February 28, 2010 at 3:44 pm
I'm not sure I understand you. "Dumb and superior both"?
I don't believe the literary tradition belongs to the university or MFA programs, and at times has been ill served by professionalization in the university. The tradition is above and beyond them both. David Alpaugh has been a rare voice willing to suggest that. I respect him for it.
I don't believe the literary tradition belongs to the university or MFA programs, and at times has been ill served by professionalization in the university. The tradition is above and beyond them both. David Alpaugh has been a rare voice willing to suggest that. I respect him for it.
February 28, 2010 at 4:23 pm
I don't.
February 28, 2010 at 4:23 pm
I respect your conscience.
February 28, 2010 at 4:33 pm
There is no "sacred" or superior keeper of the tradition, whether in or out of academe. Claiming, tacitly or overtly, one possesses the lamp of tradition in contrast to others who are in darkness is both dumb and superior. Alpaugh just murks things up further, rather than clarifying a thing. Poetry is as easy to bash as it is to claim as one's exclusive concubine. I'm for abductions from the literary seraglio.
February 28, 2010 at 4:37 pm
The sacred Muses are the keepers of the literary tradition. I don't believe Alpaugh makes the claim. Quite the reverse, if I read him correctly.
The over 1.5 billion that goes into the MFA programs today has at times served literature as poorly as the English departments, sinking into their sophistry, theory, and pedantry.
Fewer and fewer readers... ever-increasing decline on all cultural fronts... marginalization practically right out of the entire culture... but the keepers of the holy flame are blameless? No one may say the emperor has no clothes?
The over 1.5 billion that goes into the MFA programs today has at times served literature as poorly as the English departments, sinking into their sophistry, theory, and pedantry.
Fewer and fewer readers... ever-increasing decline on all cultural fronts... marginalization practically right out of the entire culture... but the keepers of the holy flame are blameless? No one may say the emperor has no clothes?
February 28, 2010 at 5:11 pm
Sure, one can show the emp to be naked. I'm not defending MFAs or English departments. I just don't like Alpaugh, his superior attitude, or his relentless bashing of things that have at least some honesty and ambition at the core of their enterprises. Is he a poet? Has he raised any money for poetry? Has he sponsored any of the young? Learned from the elders? What are his credentials besides his own crankiness?
Look, I myself lament the erosion of the liberal arts, the absence of any real reading of canonical poetry in the new English major, in the "creative writing" major--how workshops have pushed aside reading courses in Milton, the Renaissance and Romantic lyrics, etc. I find I have to tutor my own graduate students in how to read "Lycidas" as the very language of it is opaque to them, having been spared any encounter with the tradition for the welter of workshops on their transcripts.
But I feel no need to bash poetry, poetry publications, or the "machine" of the MFA.
I'd like schools simply to be schools again, and not workshops.
And I'd like our critics to stop kicking at the gutters of the problem, exhibit more literacy and liberalism than Alpaugh. He's a punk and no Trilling.
Look, I myself lament the erosion of the liberal arts, the absence of any real reading of canonical poetry in the new English major, in the "creative writing" major--how workshops have pushed aside reading courses in Milton, the Renaissance and Romantic lyrics, etc. I find I have to tutor my own graduate students in how to read "Lycidas" as the very language of it is opaque to them, having been spared any encounter with the tradition for the welter of workshops on their transcripts.
But I feel no need to bash poetry, poetry publications, or the "machine" of the MFA.
I'd like schools simply to be schools again, and not workshops.
And I'd like our critics to stop kicking at the gutters of the problem, exhibit more literacy and liberalism than Alpaugh. He's a punk and no Trilling.
February 28, 2010 at 5:22 pm
I do agree with a lot of what you have to say, and I'm not defending Alpaugh across the board. I mourn what's happened to English studies for all the reasons you cite and more... it's the whole culture that's in collapse.
I was always the solitary student who actually did all the reading and more, went off on his own, loafing and inviting his soul, still am, so it's hard to understand how so many settle for so little. It's the shock waves rolling into my study that have increasingly inspired me to come out and try...
Trilling's one of my heroes, whom I once spent a lot of time reading.
I've believed for decades a serious change of direction can only come from outside the prevailing institutions, which is partly why I resigned from university teaching. I became convinced it was futile from the inside, the inner organs are just too rotten to the core. Implicated in the problems too deeply. Partly, too, drama is necessary to stir up the hearts and souls to a sufficient degree to shake things up...
I've been reading your books and will get back to you...
I was always the solitary student who actually did all the reading and more, went off on his own, loafing and inviting his soul, still am, so it's hard to understand how so many settle for so little. It's the shock waves rolling into my study that have increasingly inspired me to come out and try...
Trilling's one of my heroes, whom I once spent a lot of time reading.
I've believed for decades a serious change of direction can only come from outside the prevailing institutions, which is partly why I resigned from university teaching. I became convinced it was futile from the inside, the inner organs are just too rotten to the core. Implicated in the problems too deeply. Partly, too, drama is necessary to stir up the hearts and souls to a sufficient degree to shake things up...
I've been reading your books and will get back to you...
February 28, 2010 at 6:07 pm
A few in my generation pledged, when we were a circle of youngbloods, to do EVERYTHING we could to work change--edit, write criticism, serve on panels, do service, head committees and institutions if we could. We thought we were merely the tip of an iceberg that would roll through academe and the literary institutions of America. Now that we're turning grey, it looks as though we were a mere detachment of a few and the oceanic was that which you describe. But we've not given up and we're "inside," as you decry, still trying to kick against the pricks, who are both in and out of academe themselves.
February 28, 2010 at 6:16 pm
I knew people who thought it could work that way. I believed it too for many years. I don't mean "outside" constitutes a simply solution. The change has to take place at a much deeper psychic level. The entire culture needs reassessment and a profound change of heart and direction... global, really.
March 1, 2010 at 4:13 am
I don't doubt you're right here. We're in a soundbyte age, where snip-snap and the quippiness of the communications marketplace have been subbed in for cultural discourse. I've come to loathe the book tour, for example, and the newspaper interviewer who would like me to "sum up in a sentence" and write his silly copy for him!
I look at it like this, though--we're keepers, bodhisattvas of literature, still meditating and preserving the sutras even though the world be chaos. What else is there to do? I felt deep despair about this some dozen years ago, but my poet friends brought me back from the brink and now I believe more than ever in our enterprise.
Have you seen this?
https://newpagesblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/do-mfa-programs-hurt-poetry.html
I look at it like this, though--we're keepers, bodhisattvas of literature, still meditating and preserving the sutras even though the world be chaos. What else is there to do? I felt deep despair about this some dozen years ago, but my poet friends brought me back from the brink and now I believe more than ever in our enterprise.
Have you seen this?
https://newpagesblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/do-mfa-programs-hurt-poetry.html
March 1, 2010 at 10:39 am
Yes, I watched it yesterday, when you had posted it. I respect Edward Hirsch and the approach, though its defensiveness is palpable.
I do think it is necessary to read everything... the more the better. Yes, I think it's necessary to write for one's self, the "kinsmen of the shelf," but also for what Saul Bellow called the Great Public. That public still exists, global now... It is always waiting, in every age, for the poet who can speak to it. I think academicians, who have often walked away from serving poetry and literature, have made that more difficult, not less.
I do think it is necessary to read everything... the more the better. Yes, I think it's necessary to write for one's self, the "kinsmen of the shelf," but also for what Saul Bellow called the Great Public. That public still exists, global now... It is always waiting, in every age, for the poet who can speak to it. I think academicians, who have often walked away from serving poetry and literature, have made that more difficult, not less.
March 1, 2010 at 11:24 am
I don't disagree academics have made it more difficult. My "heroes" are critics like Trilling, A.C. Bradley, F.O. Matthiessen, Edmund Wilson (never an academic, I know), et al. I studied critical theory at Irvine along with studying poetry and had good classes in analytic criticism from the likes of Said, Jameson, Lentricchia, and Krieger; but the ones I remember and treasure most were those in literature with some of the same!
As a poet, I've still tried to uphold the principles of "common speech" as set forth by Coleridge and Wordsworth in the Preface to the 2nd Edition of "Lyrical Ballads." And I admire our own Emerson's essays too.
Finally, if my friend Edward may have seemed defensive, it may have been due to answering a pressing question. But I don't count this against him nor his answer. When we were young, I was confident he'd be a "senator" for poetry and he has become more than that--a Chief Justice!
I'm sorry you're not as enthused by the clip as I am. He's always counseled "take heart" and "speak for the ages."
As a poet, I've still tried to uphold the principles of "common speech" as set forth by Coleridge and Wordsworth in the Preface to the 2nd Edition of "Lyrical Ballads." And I admire our own Emerson's essays too.
Finally, if my friend Edward may have seemed defensive, it may have been due to answering a pressing question. But I don't count this against him nor his answer. When we were young, I was confident he'd be a "senator" for poetry and he has become more than that--a Chief Justice!
I'm sorry you're not as enthused by the clip as I am. He's always counseled "take heart" and "speak for the ages."
March 1, 2010 at 11:36 am
I respect Edward Hirsch. It's just I've watched and heard the same approach intoned for decades, in various venues. Its impact is always about the same...
March 1, 2010 at 11:42 am
OK--but how would you answer differently? Would you dismantle the MFA network?
I remember Donald Hall once proposing that, for every poetry contest one enters, that entrants MUST buy a book of poems! Something like that.
I did not read my old classmate Luke Menand's book on the "state of liberal arts education," but have you?
What did you think?
Have you read those books like Regis Debray's "The Crisis of the French Intellectual" or Harold Cruse's "The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual"?
I'm WITH you on those early ideas of Bellow's that the writer speak to a grand public--it helped fuel the energy for the fabulous novels of his mid-career--but he was an intransigent neo-con re the emergence of literate work from people of color.
His daughter Rachel is much the same--I've locked horns with her on arts funding before. She rued the day the Ford Foundation began its resolute support of "black theater," particularly the Lafeyette of Ed Bullins, August Wilson's plays, and the directing career of Lloyd Richards, one of my own mentors for a brief period. When she said this, at a foundation panel meeting, I was the only one in a room of some 20 who contradicted her.
I remember Donald Hall once proposing that, for every poetry contest one enters, that entrants MUST buy a book of poems! Something like that.
I did not read my old classmate Luke Menand's book on the "state of liberal arts education," but have you?
What did you think?
Have you read those books like Regis Debray's "The Crisis of the French Intellectual" or Harold Cruse's "The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual"?
I'm WITH you on those early ideas of Bellow's that the writer speak to a grand public--it helped fuel the energy for the fabulous novels of his mid-career--but he was an intransigent neo-con re the emergence of literate work from people of color.
His daughter Rachel is much the same--I've locked horns with her on arts funding before. She rued the day the Ford Foundation began its resolute support of "black theater," particularly the Lafeyette of Ed Bullins, August Wilson's plays, and the directing career of Lloyd Richards, one of my own mentors for a brief period. When she said this, at a foundation panel meeting, I was the only one in a room of some 20 who contradicted her.
March 1, 2010 at 12:16 pm
It occurs to me that I stated my views on basically these same literary and cultural problems last fall, as Edward Hirsch addresses, on one of my blogs, if interested:
The American Scholar – Decline of the English Department
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2009/09/17/american-scholar-decline-of-the-english-department/
The American Scholar – Decline of the English Department
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2009/09/17/american-scholar-decline-of-the-english-department/
March 1, 2010 at 12:41 pm
Gee, I don't think so....
March 1, 2010 at 1:14 pm
Basho had a deeply transcendent vision of life, as did Saigyo, Zeami, and most of the other the great Japanese poets and writers... They weren't playing academic games it. The seriousness of their engagement with life helped to distinguished them from their frivolous contemporaries and others, the hordes of scribblers. Modernity has increasingly imagined "art" is mere aestheticism and technical proficiency, producing ever-smaller, personal visions, receiving from society just about what they deserve... little interest, little attention... not that society doesn't have its own deeply profound problems.
The English department as it has come to be constituted has played a central role in the corruption of modern thought, culture, and life. Its rigid, knee-jerk nihilism presents itself as the exclusive truth of all of human history just as much as the worst forms of fanaticism, whether political or religious. No coin is more common than that found in the current circles of academic and literary thought, all the predictable little magazines and so on...
While David Alpaugh does not go into the deeper regions of the corruption of English and MFA departments, I do respect him for having the fortitude to recognize to a significant degree what the problem is, and that the status quo is, as he phrased it in one of his previous articles, being kept artificially "kept alive on life support," as it were. It's time to face the fact that the patient is brain dead, soul dead, pull the plug, and move on... for the good of literature and culture.
Best.
The English department as it has come to be constituted has played a central role in the corruption of modern thought, culture, and life. Its rigid, knee-jerk nihilism presents itself as the exclusive truth of all of human history just as much as the worst forms of fanaticism, whether political or religious. No coin is more common than that found in the current circles of academic and literary thought, all the predictable little magazines and so on...
While David Alpaugh does not go into the deeper regions of the corruption of English and MFA departments, I do respect him for having the fortitude to recognize to a significant degree what the problem is, and that the status quo is, as he phrased it in one of his previous articles, being kept artificially "kept alive on life support," as it were. It's time to face the fact that the patient is brain dead, soul dead, pull the plug, and move on... for the good of literature and culture.
Best.
March 3, 2010 at 3:48 am
But Frederick, who's the nihilist here? You calling for the dismantling of institutions is nihilism in another form. You cite the great Japanese poets Zeami, Basho, and Saigyo--all believed in the priesthood and one was a priest. Zeami worked in the court of the Shogun--how much closer to institutions can one be?
My point here is that, short of running around like brown shirts, the avenues open to us are academe or freelancing, and both have their dignity and raison d'etre, seems to me. I'll not do without Edmond Wilson, but I won't take away Lionel Trilling's post at Columbia--or its English Department--either. Nor would I want to take away the fine institutions that support intellectual thought. That English departments and the MFA Programs have veered terribly from nobler, more traditional purposes, isn't to be debated. But my choice has been to work within--at least the MFA (we separated from English 20 years ago)--and take what comes. It's fine to separate from academe completely--I respect that choice too--but I myself don't see the efficacy of calling for its elimination. Your strategy can work as well for fascism and tyranny as liberation. Note Chile under Pinochet burned books and murdered intellectuals. Note the Chinese emperer of the 3rd c did the same.
I guess I don't quite believe in universalist or systemic solutions when it comes to intellectual enterprise. Like Ssu-ma Ch'ien, I believe in the incremental and writing for the archives. And, for that mater, I also believe in the Water Margin--a band of freelance brothers plotting, from their hideout in the wild, to rescue civilization.
My point here is that, short of running around like brown shirts, the avenues open to us are academe or freelancing, and both have their dignity and raison d'etre, seems to me. I'll not do without Edmond Wilson, but I won't take away Lionel Trilling's post at Columbia--or its English Department--either. Nor would I want to take away the fine institutions that support intellectual thought. That English departments and the MFA Programs have veered terribly from nobler, more traditional purposes, isn't to be debated. But my choice has been to work within--at least the MFA (we separated from English 20 years ago)--and take what comes. It's fine to separate from academe completely--I respect that choice too--but I myself don't see the efficacy of calling for its elimination. Your strategy can work as well for fascism and tyranny as liberation. Note Chile under Pinochet burned books and murdered intellectuals. Note the Chinese emperer of the 3rd c did the same.
I guess I don't quite believe in universalist or systemic solutions when it comes to intellectual enterprise. Like Ssu-ma Ch'ien, I believe in the incremental and writing for the archives. And, for that mater, I also believe in the Water Margin--a band of freelance brothers plotting, from their hideout in the wild, to rescue civilization.
March 3, 2010 at 10:29 am
I think in the breadth of my writing it's clear that I call for renewal... not destruction, really. ...for depriviledging nihilism, and respecting and allowing space, in all fora, in public dialog, for those who honor transcendence, in all its expressions and traditions. That's not done today in our extremely fragmented, corrupt intellectual and literary culture, ridden with cliches. That fragmentation is a major component of why literary studies continue to drop off the cultural chart.
The brown shirts today are the tenured nihilists of all types, intolerant secularists, and others who imagine only the technical side of poetry and art is all that matters. Great art has always dealt with the Spirit. Take that out of the equation and one is no longer talking about art as the majority of human beings throughout recorded history, indeed, even long, long before recorded history, have always understood it. Censorship, oppression, the strangling of dissent has long been conducted in the halls of academia, as you must well know. Only such tactics have artificially kept the cliches of Nietzsche et al on the throne this long...
There's certainly the time-honored tradition of hermit Asian poets and others, something like it in all cultures. ...dreaming about Peach Blossom Spring. Personally speaking, not the right tradition for our much-threatened time, etc.
Your concerns are all those that are routinely brought for decades, while life itself has moved on... I respect your conscience and your concerns, and your writing as well.
I speak only for the integrity of my own mind...
The brown shirts today are the tenured nihilists of all types, intolerant secularists, and others who imagine only the technical side of poetry and art is all that matters. Great art has always dealt with the Spirit. Take that out of the equation and one is no longer talking about art as the majority of human beings throughout recorded history, indeed, even long, long before recorded history, have always understood it. Censorship, oppression, the strangling of dissent has long been conducted in the halls of academia, as you must well know. Only such tactics have artificially kept the cliches of Nietzsche et al on the throne this long...
There's certainly the time-honored tradition of hermit Asian poets and others, something like it in all cultures. ...dreaming about Peach Blossom Spring. Personally speaking, not the right tradition for our much-threatened time, etc.
Your concerns are all those that are routinely brought for decades, while life itself has moved on... I respect your conscience and your concerns, and your writing as well.
I speak only for the integrity of my own mind...
March 3, 2010 at 11:04 am
Yet, you would deny my view as irrelevant to our time. That is patronizing and censoring too. I've heard much the same from my own former career within English departments--those who claim the higher truth passing judgment on the rest of us. Isn't that the position of the neo-cons and the American deconstructionists both?
If you read "The Water Margin," a novel of the 8th century in China, you would see that intellectual eremeticism is NOT an end unto itself, but the prelude to political, even military acts of liberation. It is in line with Marcuse's notion of thought as the necessary predecessor to revolution in his book "The Aesthetic Dimension." Thought IS praxis, in other words.
If you read "The Water Margin," a novel of the 8th century in China, you would see that intellectual eremeticism is NOT an end unto itself, but the prelude to political, even military acts of liberation. It is in line with Marcuse's notion of thought as the necessary predecessor to revolution in his book "The Aesthetic Dimension." Thought IS praxis, in other words.
March 3, 2010 at 11:23 am
My words are clearly "personally speaking." That's not denying you or anyone else the right to right to follow their own light. That is phrasing that's straining to honor and concede space to the conscience of others.
In terms of the ideas you express, or anyone for that matter, I have the right to express my view, which I candidly did. That's not ad hominem. The privileging of nihilism, as it has long been conducted, often can be, sweeping people aside with derision. I used no such tactics, and have the right to criticize them as much as anything or anyone else. Without giving ground.
I didn't miss the allusion. I've largely spent 35 years in solitude. I'm ready now for the dragon... Beowulf is my allusion.
Marcuse, not one of my heroes...
In terms of the ideas you express, or anyone for that matter, I have the right to express my view, which I candidly did. That's not ad hominem. The privileging of nihilism, as it has long been conducted, often can be, sweeping people aside with derision. I used no such tactics, and have the right to criticize them as much as anything or anyone else. Without giving ground.
I didn't miss the allusion. I've largely spent 35 years in solitude. I'm ready now for the dragon... Beowulf is my allusion.
Marcuse, not one of my heroes...
March 3, 2010 at 11:39 am
OK--I get it. I'm with you on "straining to honor and concede space to the conscience of others."
I won't deny you the right to express your own views! Of course not! Why I engaged them, as I respect you as a serious intellectual and thought our exchanges might be interesting to challenge my own thoughts on these matters.
I'm ready now for the dragon too, but I don't see, smell, or feel its heat yet.
Marcuse IS one of mine, I'm afraid. Where we differ.
And, here, our revels now are ended?
With every good wish....
I won't deny you the right to express your own views! Of course not! Why I engaged them, as I respect you as a serious intellectual and thought our exchanges might be interesting to challenge my own thoughts on these matters.
I'm ready now for the dragon too, but I don't see, smell, or feel its heat yet.
Marcuse IS one of mine, I'm afraid. Where we differ.
And, here, our revels now are ended?
With every good wish....
March 3, 2010 at 11:43 am
Good wishes returned in kind.
I finished reading yesterday your poems The River of Heaven. I enjoyed it. I'll spare you from my turning this into a love fest now, but another time...
I finished reading yesterday your poems The River of Heaven. I enjoyed it. I'll spare you from my turning this into a love fest now, but another time...
March 3, 2010 at 11:52 am
Malama pono. Take good care.
March 3, 2010 at 11:55 am
I doubt any American can read this passage and not feel its justice and sanity. Roger Williams had been one of the earliest settlers upon these shores to begin to realize, as he put it, the necessity of tolerance for “the most paganish, Jewish, Turkish, or Antichristian consciences and worships.”
February 28, 2010 at 10:12 am
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As Thomas Jefferson evinces in his Notes on the State of Virginia in 1784, such tolerance is infinitely preferable to the senseless religious and social strife of the past. After describing the intolerance of the New England Puritans and the early Anglicans of Virginia, Jefferson asserts, “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are seventy gods, or no god.”
February 28, 2010 at 8:05 am
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His confusion of the difference in the station of man and of the prophets reflects the increasing confusion of the human and the divine. Yet given the historical background of religious tumult during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Paine was more than justified in calling for tolerance: “let every man follow, as he has a right to do, the religion and worship he prefers.”
February 28, 2010 at 6:26 am
Rather, man ranks below such a figure as Christ or Moses and is absolutely debarred the access to deity with which they are blessed; hence, the unequivocal dependence on the mediator and on the Word of God, both of which inform man of the laws of his own being and counsel against hubris.
February 28, 2010 at 5:46 am
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Paine, though, denies revelation as mere “hearsay,” “second hand” knowledge that is “limited to the first communication” and is worthless beyond it.
February 28, 2010 at 5:46 am
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His rationalistic skepticism festers in his choice of the word “pretending,” as does both his Quaker upbringing and his arrogance in the clause “as if the way to God was not open to every man alike.” Revelation presupposes that the way to God is indeed not open to every man in the way that it is open to a Manifestation.
February 27, 2010 at 12:56 pm
Unlike the Puritans, he dismisses revelation and intuitive knowledge and applies only the criterion of reason to the three major revealed religions: “Every national church or religion has established itself by pretending some special mission from God... Jews have their Moses; Christians their Jesus Christ, their apostles and saints; and Turks their Mahomet; as if the way to God was not open to every man alike.”
February 27, 2010 at 10:13 am
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InterestinG!
February 27, 2010 at 10:37 am
Mmm, he was from a Quaker family, but headed away from organized religion, inspired by the philosophes and deism, favoring reason, Deism, and the Rights of Man.
February 27, 2010 at 12:48 pm
I'm not happy with this paragraph on Paine. I'm going to have revise, clarify a little... matter of nuance, really.
February 28, 2010 at 3:26 pm
Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason of 1794 fully vents the loathing many deists of the Enlightenment, especially the philosophes, such as Voltaire and Rousseau, had for revealed religion during the eighteenth century. Following the Zeitgeist, Paine states, “It is only by the exercise of reason that man can discover God.”
February 27, 2010 at 7:13 am
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His certitude is that of another world from ours. Barely fifty years after Taylor’s poems were written, in the face of widespread rejection of the harsh, intolerant Puritan order, Jonathan Edwards tried to reaffirm the grace of conversion and the Puritan way of life. Men were beginning to turn from theism to moralism, such as Franklin’s. The “something” noticed by Czeslaw Milosz was “gaining ground.”
February 27, 2010 at 5:49 am
The “venom things,” like the venom of the spider or that of a snake, are the “Damn’d Sins” of man, which debase and limit “Adams race.” Yet the speaker conceives of grace breaking “the Cord” and providing man with “Glorys Gate / And State.” Indebted to the English metaphysical tradition, Taylor proclaims the elected will rapturously sing like a nightingale “For joy.”
February 27, 2010 at 4:38 am
In Taylor’s poem “Upon a Spider Catching a Fly,” grace is opposed to another major Puritan belief, the innate depravity of man. The poem begins with the observation of a spider netting and killing a fly and then proceeds to a meditation on the import of the incident. “Hell’s spider” weaves his web, “To tangle Adams race / In’s stratigems / To their Destructions, spoil’d, made base / By venom things / Damn’d Sins.”
February 26, 2010 at 1:47 pm
Taylor conceives of grace suffusing the attributes of man and transforming them into “Holy robes for glory,” into spiritual “apparel.” This belief, essentially the doctrinal belief in conversion, is presupposed throughout the literature of the Puritans as by Winthrop: “He shall make us a praise and glory.”
February 26, 2010 at 10:20 am
"Then cloath therewith mine Understanding, Will, / Affections, Judgment, Conscience, Memory, / My Words, and Actions, that their shine may fill / My wayes with glory and thee glorify. / Then mine apparel shall display before yee / That I am cloathd in Holy robes for glory." Edward Taylor
February 26, 2010 at 9:11 am
Edward Taylor, the foremost poet of the Puritans, subscribed to this belief regarding man’s chief duty. In a poem of 1685, “Huswifery,” Taylor uses the image of a Christian housewife working on a spinning wheel for the slow evolution of the soul.
February 26, 2010 at 5:30 am
The persona invokes God to make her a “Spinning Wheele compleate” and the “Holy Worde” the raw wool or material from which a garment may be woven to embellish the cloth of her life with “Flowers of Paradise.” This goal is “Man’s chief End”:
February 26, 2010 at 5:30 am
To Winthrop it was clear that the new world was to be “as a city upon a hill,” which could not be hid, manifesting obedience to God, the covenant, and the search after salvation. As the Puritan Shorter Catechism was soon to phrase it in 1647, “Man’s chief End is to Glorify God, and to Enjoy Him for ever.” “I am the way, the truth, and the life” suffuses his thinking and his society.
February 25, 2010 at 4:04 pm
Winthrop exhorts the Puritans that “the eyes of all people are upon us” to remind his brethren that they have a commission from God for the purpose of vindicating religion in the face of the corrupted faiths of Europe and England. He draws his language almost directly from the jeremiads of the Books of the Prophets, who tirelessly castigated the Israelites for backsliding and for serving false gods.
February 25, 2010 at 11:32 am
"We shall find that the God of Israel is among us . . . when He shall make us a praise and glory, that men shall say of succeeding plantations: “The Lord make it like that of New England.” For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us. . . ." John Winthrop, on the deck of the Arbella, 1630
February 25, 2010 at 10:36 am
Isn't he the same John Winthrop who massacred an entire Native/American community?
February 25, 2010 at 1:22 pm
Yep, think it was him...
February 25, 2010 at 2:05 pm
Isn't he the same John Winthrop who condemned Anne Hutchinson to Rhode Island?
February 25, 2010 at 2:06 pm
Right, along with Roger Williams, and etc...
February 25, 2010 at 2:08 pm
Am I getting the effects of drunk belief/faith/religion?
February 26, 2010 at 1:05 am
Through prayer the Puritans believed man experiences a mystic link with God that can become the impetus for service to his fellow human beings and for the leading of a moral life. John Winthrop, the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, manifests many of these beliefs in his lay sermon “A Model of Christian Charity,” which he delivered on the deck of the Arbella somewhere in the Atlantic in 1630.
February 25, 2010 at 8:20 am
The Puritans brought with them on their “errand into the wilderness” an indomitable belief in God and in revelation. They held, as have Jews and Christians throughout history, indeed as have all the revealed religions, that God ... takes an active interest in the affairs of man, intervenes through history, and reveals His will through such figures as Moses and Christ so that man shall never go unguided.
February 25, 2010 at 6:14 am
Writers, perhaps more than any other group of people, have been aware of what Czeslaw Milosz observes in his Land of Ulro: “since the eighteenth century something, call it by whatever name one will, has been gaining ground, gathering force.”
February 25, 2010 at 4:11 am
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All too often American writers have abetted this process, while their work has been merely a symptom of it or a landmark on our journey into the land of Ulro, into the wasteland of modernity.
February 25, 2010 at 4:11 am
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Yet writers are merely reflecting the general malaise that afflicts the prevailing culture, and they are doing so with greater integrity than those who would imagine such fundamental problems do not exist.
February 24, 2010 at 4:21 pm
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dare to imagine is a paradox for the contemporary writing - and it expresses and expresses of a brutal realism - i hate it
February 25, 2010 at 12:12 am
"Brutal realism" is good way of phrasing it. There are so many varieties of realism, the actual practice of each writer is a unique expression in itself. The realism of Samuel Beckett might be more properly defined, for instance, as cynicism, a lack of imagination of the possibilities of human beings, were not that Beckett's realism, serves, in a sense, what Camus said, that we are working now for a time beyond nihilism.
I think many writers around the world are existentially stuck in a position in which one may not, can not, imagine a human space and landscape beyond the stripped-down realism of nihilistic despair. What I am thinking of is T. Ramachandran's writing in Malayalam, in Kerala, pen name Tiyyar, reflects this same world consciousness, in a sense. Writers of most nations have experienced it, modern meaninglessness.
But that's not only where they are as individuals, but their, our, own cultures are--the prevailing sense of life. It's in that sense, that I'm suggesting above that it is out of integrity, respect for the facts, that they're reflecting the general malaise.
I believe, though, that global experience has sufficiently changed since Beckett and others, yet societies and writers have not kept up, or the change has not fully made its way into consciousness...
I think many writers around the world are existentially stuck in a position in which one may not, can not, imagine a human space and landscape beyond the stripped-down realism of nihilistic despair. What I am thinking of is T. Ramachandran's writing in Malayalam, in Kerala, pen name Tiyyar, reflects this same world consciousness, in a sense. Writers of most nations have experienced it, modern meaninglessness.
But that's not only where they are as individuals, but their, our, own cultures are--the prevailing sense of life. It's in that sense, that I'm suggesting above that it is out of integrity, respect for the facts, that they're reflecting the general malaise.
I believe, though, that global experience has sufficiently changed since Beckett and others, yet societies and writers have not kept up, or the change has not fully made its way into consciousness...
February 25, 2010 at 4:06 am
Often they accomplish these reductions by rejecting the history of American social, religious, and literary traditions, the American experiment itself. For them time becomes chaos. I find it difficult to imagine a greater depth of decadence to which literature might sink.
February 24, 2010 at 2:13 pm
Now the reigning ideology is one of relentless nihilism, nominalism, and solipsism. Many writers and critics accept as a foregone conclusion that we cannot know anything about our world, refer to it in any meaningful way with language, or hold any higher standard than unmitigated reveling in the passions of the self.
February 24, 2010 at 9:57 am
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Does it mean that I need to be in my brother to know that he exists or in the stone to know that the stone exists?
February 25, 2010 at 1:26 am
I'm addressing the conception of language and meaning some have on a philosophical level, in and outside the university.
February 25, 2010 at 3:31 am
Whereas rapacious individualism was once mollified and rechanneled by religion into service of the public good, it now often goes unbridled and wreaks havoc in both the public and private domains. This decline has been amply reflected in American literature from the Puritans to the work of the writers of the last forty years.
February 24, 2010 at 7:46 am
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Mr. Glaysher, you reflect my thoughts this morning. Whilst in public transport a thought emerged from nowhere. I wanted to write an article titled "Giga Churches and Kilo faith". I have always wondered the immoral display of wealth by religious personalities who have always maintained that the ultimate aim of man is to seek infinite joy in heaven, paradise, nirvana etc. This public display of opulence has taken root in Ghana where pastors travel in convoys of Hummers, Audi (Q7), BMW, Benz etc and own numerous houses at the richest places in the city (Accra).
February 25, 2010 at 1:23 am
Not quite what I had in mind, but I understand the connection, and, alas, the universality of the phenomenon.
February 25, 2010 at 3:28 am
Yeah! I see...perhaps my overactive mind deceived me here... thanks!
February 25, 2010 at 3:31 am
After much thought and careful surveilance of what passes for literary currency in this our present generation of poets and writers, and for the past 40yrs, I agree with your assessment. Torah, one of the foundations of all western literature clearly asserts one's responsibility; to G-d, the people and then, and only then to one's self - in that order. The Beats, our last literary generation in America, say what we will, were guided by these moral, if not pseudo-religious imperatives
February 25, 2010 at 5:37 am
I'd even go back farther too, say, to about WWII, when a major shift began to be felt from the high modernist writers. The spiraling-down individualism, finding ever new ways to run amok, even at times amusingly giving former radicals reason for pause...
The historical texts of the Bible chronicle this type of process, though not in terms that appeal to the current palate.
The historical texts of the Bible chronicle this type of process, though not in terms that appeal to the current palate.
February 25, 2010 at 7:30 am
I am not sure that individualism is an accurate sign post of this decline - all great art and poetry contains a high degree of...Baudalaire faced in his view and remarks a similar vacuum of literary talent in his generation. Simply put, there are many reasons why but none to proscribe what constitutes a greater or lesser century for literature. If we are blessed with 2-3 great poets per century, it's a lot. And Gorki's writer's union did not succeed in replacing individualism with service to humanity. The WPA project did however foster some very good painters.
More importantly, if I may ask, might you post some of your own poems, to portray by example what you profess in theory? Sincerely...
More importantly, if I may ask, might you post some of your own poems, to portray by example what you profess in theory? Sincerely...
February 25, 2010 at 8:00 am
It's of course more than rabid individualism. Baudelaire's a good signpost of what I mean; I think of his letters...
Anyway, personally, I don't care to post my poems to Facebook. But I have some pages on my website at
https://www.fglaysher.com/into_the_ruins.html
https://www.fglaysher.com/bower_of_nil.html
Anyway, personally, I don't care to post my poems to Facebook. But I have some pages on my website at
https://www.fglaysher.com/into_the_ruins.html
https://www.fglaysher.com/bower_of_nil.html
February 25, 2010 at 9:47 am
I see...seems to me yr poems are as much self-absorbed and individualistic as any I read here on facebook. Take care and all the best - respectfully
February 25, 2010 at 10:22 am
Not to be defensive, you have every right to your own taste and views, I wish only to indicate that the passage above starting this discussion was referring to, and carefully qualified in terms of, "rapacious individualism." We human beings are inescapably individuals; I'm not advocating we become part of a herd, mass man, automatons...
February 25, 2010 at 11:41 am
A tempest has swept aside much of the Judeo-Christian tradition that for so long undergirded life in America as throughout Western civilization. Yet what has taken its place often inspires apprehension for the present and for the foreseeable future.
February 24, 2010 at 6:56 am
Publishing: The Revolutionary Future. Jason Epstein. Espresso Book Machine.
If you're even remotely interested in books and literature, don't miss reading this article by Jason Epstein, someone who truly understands books and what goes into their creation:
"This historic shift will radically transform worldwide book publishing, the cultures it affects and on which it depends."
"The difficult, solitary work of literary creation, however, demands rare individual talent and in fiction is almost never collaborative. Social networking may expose readers to this or that book but violates the solitude required to create artificial worlds with real people in them. Until it is ready to be shown to a trusted friend or editor, a writer's work in progress is intensely private."
February 23, 2010 at 5:01 am
If you're even remotely interested in books and literature, don't miss reading this article by Jason Epstein, someone who truly understands books and what goes into their creation:
"This historic shift will radically transform worldwide book publishing, the cultures it affects and on which it depends."
"The difficult, solitary work of literary creation, however, demands rare individual talent and in fiction is almost never collaborative. Social networking may expose readers to this or that book but violates the solitude required to create artificial worlds with real people in them. Until it is ready to be shown to a trusted friend or editor, a writer's work in progress is intensely private."
| Publishing: The Revolutionary Future - The New York Review of Books |
An article by Jason Epstein from The New York Review of Books, March 11, 2010
February 23, 2010 at 5:01 am
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Read it. I agree.
February 23, 2010 at 7:24 am
I'm puzzled by Epstein's comment that "fiction is almost never collaborative." When was it ever? I can't think of a single book of fiction or poetry, of the first order, in any culture, that was "collaborative." What would it be? Maybe some of the old early epics, Gilgamesh, as he alludes to, very rare. Otherwise, a contradiction in terms...
Despite that caveat, I think it's fair to say Epstein has his finger of the pulse of the Post-Gutenberg revolution more than anyone else, though I think he's undervaluing ebooks.
My own attempts to understand these transformations, as both a writer and publisher, can be found on my website, if interested:
Publishing in the Post-Gutenberg Age
https://www.fglaysher.com/Post_Gutenberg_Publishing.html
Despite that caveat, I think it's fair to say Epstein has his finger of the pulse of the Post-Gutenberg revolution more than anyone else, though I think he's undervaluing ebooks.
My own attempts to understand these transformations, as both a writer and publisher, can be found on my website, if interested:
Publishing in the Post-Gutenberg Age
https://www.fglaysher.com/Post_Gutenberg_Publishing.html
February 23, 2010 at 8:25 am
There are a number of novels -- and this is becoming more frequent -- that are co-authored. And someone like James Patterson is turning this into an industry.
February 23, 2010 at 8:29 am
@ Frederick -
I personally don't know any fiction that is/was a product of collaborative efforts. But, as Kelly mentioned lately there are novels written collaboratively.
However, it's not that difficult to imagine a collaborative work of fiction, especially in this digital age. Here is why - Imagine a part of a novel written say, in Iraq, another in Africa, another part in USA - especially if the characters in the novel originate from those places of the world.
I like to write mine in complete solitude and detachment. I think mostly all the creative ones do that in some way or the other to give the tangible expression of their perceptions.
I personally don't know any fiction that is/was a product of collaborative efforts. But, as Kelly mentioned lately there are novels written collaboratively.
However, it's not that difficult to imagine a collaborative work of fiction, especially in this digital age. Here is why - Imagine a part of a novel written say, in Iraq, another in Africa, another part in USA - especially if the characters in the novel originate from those places of the world.
I like to write mine in complete solitude and detachment. I think mostly all the creative ones do that in some way or the other to give the tangible expression of their perceptions.
February 23, 2010 at 8:53 am
I could never consider someone like James Patterson or Stephen King novelists... That kind of popular thing isn't any where near the "first order" of literary creation, but rather examples of what Epstein rightly calls our "cultural impoverishment," global now...
Other than the early oral myths evolving, and even then an individual master gave them their highest form, I'd still have to say a real piece of fiction cannot be written "collaboratively." It's the psyche of the individual writer, shaping and carving, that renders the Form Beautiful...
Whether the Internet, POD, Espresso Book Machine, ebook, or what-have-you, the highest art is the creation of an individual mind and soul, grappling with his or her soul, the age, and so on, not just the technical apparatus of the day.
Art is not merely "content," as one hears everywhere on the Internet today, but which reveals how little people now understand art and serious intellectual work.
The real purpose of publishing is to serve the highest vision of what it means to be human in its time. It's the burden of that vision that compels artists to struggle to find a way to speak to their fellow human beings, global now... offering them, as a peasant to a king, their work, as a gift, to consider, in hope that it might be found worthy.
The new developments in publishing should help real artists go around the gatekeepers of the past, reaching directly the Great Public, global now...
That's my view of it, though Epstein doesn't really address it, and modernity has largely forgotten the true purpose of art, the handmaiden of the Spirit.
All healthy cultures around the globe have understood and honored their poets and storytellers for their spiritual vision.
Other than the early oral myths evolving, and even then an individual master gave them their highest form, I'd still have to say a real piece of fiction cannot be written "collaboratively." It's the psyche of the individual writer, shaping and carving, that renders the Form Beautiful...
Whether the Internet, POD, Espresso Book Machine, ebook, or what-have-you, the highest art is the creation of an individual mind and soul, grappling with his or her soul, the age, and so on, not just the technical apparatus of the day.
Art is not merely "content," as one hears everywhere on the Internet today, but which reveals how little people now understand art and serious intellectual work.
The real purpose of publishing is to serve the highest vision of what it means to be human in its time. It's the burden of that vision that compels artists to struggle to find a way to speak to their fellow human beings, global now... offering them, as a peasant to a king, their work, as a gift, to consider, in hope that it might be found worthy.
The new developments in publishing should help real artists go around the gatekeepers of the past, reaching directly the Great Public, global now...
That's my view of it, though Epstein doesn't really address it, and modernity has largely forgotten the true purpose of art, the handmaiden of the Spirit.
All healthy cultures around the globe have understood and honored their poets and storytellers for their spiritual vision.
February 23, 2010 at 10:00 am
Well, I cannot comment much on novels because I do not read modern day novels. Let's ask Why ? Isn't that another outcome of our capitalistic society where any idea worthy of high return on investment is sought after ? My experience is it does not matter whether it is substantial or not, as long as it can generate the revenues.
You are talking from a "classic standpoint." Also, from the perspective of an intellectual, academician and spiritualist. What if the writer is not one of those ? The books they write they can be bestseller, but not necessarily a Classic.
"the highest art is the creation of an individual mind and soul, grappling with his or her soul, the age, and so on, not just the technical apparatus of the day" - I agree and appreciate.
Given, these are the challenges, what are the solutions ?
You are talking from a "classic standpoint." Also, from the perspective of an intellectual, academician and spiritualist. What if the writer is not one of those ? The books they write they can be bestseller, but not necessarily a Classic.
"the highest art is the creation of an individual mind and soul, grappling with his or her soul, the age, and so on, not just the technical apparatus of the day" - I agree and appreciate.
Given, these are the challenges, what are the solutions ?
February 23, 2010 at 10:19 am
Epstein empasized more on the technical details - how the industry works these days, not much on the ''substance" of the work, per se.
February 23, 2010 at 10:21 am
Mr. Glaysher I have always loved to read and have read James Patterson, Stephen King, Dean Koontz etc until lately I reverted to African authors. Well, I have also read Gormenghast...
Your statement about not regarding these as novelists piqued my interest and I wonder some of the novelists you would consider as fiction writers and not just merely churning out pop fiction? I need this to broaden my reading horizon and make me a complete person. thank you!
Your statement about not regarding these as novelists piqued my interest and I wonder some of the novelists you would consider as fiction writers and not just merely churning out pop fiction? I need this to broaden my reading horizon and make me a complete person. thank you!
February 24, 2010 at 7:47 am
I've extensively revised my comments on Jason Epstein and anyone interested can now find them at
Publishing in the Post-Gutenberg Age
https://www.fglaysher.com/Post_Gutenberg_Publishing.html
Publishing in the Post-Gutenberg Age
https://www.fglaysher.com/Post_Gutenberg_Publishing.html
February 26, 2010 at 11:48 am
"The Coming Victory of World Governance"
from The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture.
Earthrise Press, 2007. ISBN-13: 9780967042183
A global vision beyond the prevailing postmodern conceptions of life and literature that have become firmly entrenched in contemporary world culture.
https://www.fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
February 22, 2010 at 7:03 am
from The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture.
Earthrise Press, 2007. ISBN-13: 9780967042183
A global vision beyond the prevailing postmodern conceptions of life and literature that have become firmly entrenched in contemporary world culture.
https://www.fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
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The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture, Frederick Glaysher |
East and West meet in a new synthesis of a global vision of humankind, United Nations, epic poetry
February 22, 2010 at 7:03 am
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Then shall dawn that long awaited reconciliation of the tensions that first advanced themselves in the Renaissance and that have plagued civilization ever since. Then shall arise that glorious civilization animating the hopes of all peoples from the earliest days of recorded history.
February 21, 2010 at 4:31 pm
Then shall the world become, as E. B. White once wrote, “A federation of free states, with its national units undisturbed and its peoples elevated to a new and greater sovereignty.” Then shall the nations learn, as Jean Monnet wrote, “to live together under common rules and institutions freely arrived at.”
February 21, 2010 at 12:01 pm
While the possibility of crisis from unexpected quarters continues to loom large, threatening the twenty-first century, while I cannot discern the exact steps, the direction of the international community is irrefutable, and there are clarifying tendencies ...
February 21, 2010 at 10:59 am
...that are struggling to grasp the opportunity of the hour and to establish what Tennyson called “the Federation of the world” on the quintessential values and traditions of civilization.
February 21, 2010 at 10:59 am
Though the hour might again become dark and threatening, with the world teetering on the edge of the Middle-East abyss, though the odor of decay lingers in the air, though many setbacks have been and will surely be experienced,
February 21, 2010 at 7:15 am
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...the means of escape stands almost fully formed at the door and merely awaits complete and unqualified implementation to accomplish what all high-minded human beings throughout history have longed and hoped for.
February 21, 2010 at 7:15 am
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Well expresses a thought / outlook / anticipation that in fact some of us hold stongly, but to which very few have given direct voice. Idealism has been muted.
February 21, 2010 at 7:20 am
Note the passive tense... strangled, murdered, betrayed... by... ourselves, really.
"Idealism" is too cerebral, in my view. Predicated too much from an implied viewpoint of "superior" "realism." Our ways of thinking about such things have become quite confused, giving preference to what often does not merit it, while our experience is very far beyond those categories. The "canned sauerkraut" of the academy, modernity... Between nihilism and faction, we can barely even conceive of or discuss any longer what is the highest and most noble in human nature.
"Idealism" is too cerebral, in my view. Predicated too much from an implied viewpoint of "superior" "realism." Our ways of thinking about such things have become quite confused, giving preference to what often does not merit it, while our experience is very far beyond those categories. The "canned sauerkraut" of the academy, modernity... Between nihilism and faction, we can barely even conceive of or discuss any longer what is the highest and most noble in human nature.
February 21, 2010 at 7:37 am
Frederick, your two quotes set up an interesting point. Like the contradiction of the Cross of Christ which Christians meditate on deeply during the season of Lent, like the gathering around a fireplace of Washington and his troops, in the misery of loss we find the very motivation to renew our committment to truth justice and love.
Faith stirs in souls open to receiving God's grace.
I know this is a different way of thinking then your intellectual bent might be comfortable with, but I think we are saying the same thing.
The athletes in the Winter games provide Olympian sized indications of the truth lying deep within your meditation, in my opinion...... each of them dedicated countless hours to preparation and made incredible sacrifices to realize their dreams and hopes.
Each is a beautiful example of the idealism you speak about. And as the French newspaper once posted in the old Boston City Hall once said, "The kind of idealism their ancestors were known for to our ancestors... hard headed idealism, the kind which made America great!"
Faith stirs in souls open to receiving God's grace.
I know this is a different way of thinking then your intellectual bent might be comfortable with, but I think we are saying the same thing.
The athletes in the Winter games provide Olympian sized indications of the truth lying deep within your meditation, in my opinion...... each of them dedicated countless hours to preparation and made incredible sacrifices to realize their dreams and hopes.
Each is a beautiful example of the idealism you speak about. And as the French newspaper once posted in the old Boston City Hall once said, "The kind of idealism their ancestors were known for to our ancestors... hard headed idealism, the kind which made America great!"
February 21, 2010 at 7:54 am
Mr. Dowd, thanks for commenting. You appear to misjudge my "intellectual bent." We are saying the same thing in various terms, universal terms in my view... All the great religions and wisdom traditions, beyond the antiquated confines of exclusivism, understand the human being at a much deeper level than the nihilism of the current public square, which is enfeebling the individual and culture at precisely the historic moment of the greatest urgency, or so it always seems.
From a spiritual perspective, that's the test that perennially lies before the individual and civilization... more so now than ever, more global now than ever. Nihilism has paradoxically been God's great gift to humanity... The political level is the inverse shadow of the spiritual battle. Given universal human nature, the only thing that is realistic is hope...
From a spiritual perspective, that's the test that perennially lies before the individual and civilization... more so now than ever, more global now than ever. Nihilism has paradoxically been God's great gift to humanity... The political level is the inverse shadow of the spiritual battle. Given universal human nature, the only thing that is realistic is hope...
February 21, 2010 at 8:22 am
Mr. Glaysher, thank you for clarifying. My apology. Your commentary on nihilism strikes me as square in the bullseye as a description of what I perceive as the reductionist thinking being practiced by our modern culture.
In my observation, this practice has its origin in a couple of places:
1) in the perception of exclusivism as people not practicing faith feel they are being squared off by some people supposedly practicing faith. (Authentic faith practice is more akin to the Irish 1000 welcomes in my opinion)
2) the valid perception, in my opinion, that the USA actually abandoned our Christian heritage with Griswold and Roe and the response by the Currans/McBriens and modernity is the implementation of nihilism if I understand the term correctly.
My perception on #2 is based on a truth Scott Hahn has cited, "The penalty for sin is more sin".
Whether rationally or reactively, the Jesuits under Pedro Arrupe SJ as superior general, (he had been at Nagasaki), closed seminaries and schools and simultaneously with the Land O Lakes Conference, t he Fr. Theodore Hesburgh led assault on Catholic education (stripping Philiosophy and Theology requirements of their substance), Jesuit participation and support for Humanae Vitae has just not existed.
The reason I feel your observation on nihilism is square in the bullseye is because my perception is culturally, having lost our sense of hope in the Resurrection of Christ because we've been abandoned to our unredeemed creature behaviors, we don't believe in manifestations of hope other then financially formed and underwritten.
And, I believe our Pope's movement to restore traditional practices of the Mass, the extraordinary form, is happening precisely at the right time.
I am sure I make many leaps in logic but this is my response to your discussion of nihilism and, thank you, for allowing me this participation!
In my observation, this practice has its origin in a couple of places:
1) in the perception of exclusivism as people not practicing faith feel they are being squared off by some people supposedly practicing faith. (Authentic faith practice is more akin to the Irish 1000 welcomes in my opinion)
2) the valid perception, in my opinion, that the USA actually abandoned our Christian heritage with Griswold and Roe and the response by the Currans/McBriens and modernity is the implementation of nihilism if I understand the term correctly.
My perception on #2 is based on a truth Scott Hahn has cited, "The penalty for sin is more sin".
Whether rationally or reactively, the Jesuits under Pedro Arrupe SJ as superior general, (he had been at Nagasaki), closed seminaries and schools and simultaneously with the Land O Lakes Conference, t he Fr. Theodore Hesburgh led assault on Catholic education (stripping Philiosophy and Theology requirements of their substance), Jesuit participation and support for Humanae Vitae has just not existed.
The reason I feel your observation on nihilism is square in the bullseye is because my perception is culturally, having lost our sense of hope in the Resurrection of Christ because we've been abandoned to our unredeemed creature behaviors, we don't believe in manifestations of hope other then financially formed and underwritten.
And, I believe our Pope's movement to restore traditional practices of the Mass, the extraordinary form, is happening precisely at the right time.
I am sure I make many leaps in logic but this is my response to your discussion of nihilism and, thank you, for allowing me this participation!
February 21, 2010 at 8:54 am
Mr. Dowd, thank you for participating and sharing your views.
I respect your belief in the "Resurrection of Christ" and Catholicism and similar comments. From my point of view, you provide a fair summation of one tradition of exclusivism. There are many others, as you know.
Let me express myself in positive terms, perhaps more candid than the allusive ones I first used. I wouldn't define modernity only in negative terms. It's brought many, many benefits. Inclusivism, universality, pluralism, separation of church and state (whatever the "church" may be) are the Will of God, in my view. Although not all cultures have had their Martin Luthers and Enlightenments, I would argue that they've had, fortunately, to varying degrees, the experience, though often fiery and tragic. From that perspective, one might argue nihilism has merely been a Divine Tempest clearing the ground... not for another exclusivism, just the reverse, but universality. I'm not one who feels nostalgia for past Forms.
I believe it's up to the individual to run his or her spiritual life, not an organization, be it whatever, Christian, Muslim, etc. Less given to exclusivism, the Eastern religions have usually proven themselves more open and inclusive, though the winds of modernity have impacted them also.
It appears now even more so that the individual is in control of his or her spiritual destiny and can alone make the proper decisions, negotiate the spiritual path of their own choosing.
I respect your belief in the "Resurrection of Christ" and Catholicism and similar comments. From my point of view, you provide a fair summation of one tradition of exclusivism. There are many others, as you know.
Let me express myself in positive terms, perhaps more candid than the allusive ones I first used. I wouldn't define modernity only in negative terms. It's brought many, many benefits. Inclusivism, universality, pluralism, separation of church and state (whatever the "church" may be) are the Will of God, in my view. Although not all cultures have had their Martin Luthers and Enlightenments, I would argue that they've had, fortunately, to varying degrees, the experience, though often fiery and tragic. From that perspective, one might argue nihilism has merely been a Divine Tempest clearing the ground... not for another exclusivism, just the reverse, but universality. I'm not one who feels nostalgia for past Forms.
I believe it's up to the individual to run his or her spiritual life, not an organization, be it whatever, Christian, Muslim, etc. Less given to exclusivism, the Eastern religions have usually proven themselves more open and inclusive, though the winds of modernity have impacted them also.
It appears now even more so that the individual is in control of his or her spiritual destiny and can alone make the proper decisions, negotiate the spiritual path of their own choosing.
February 21, 2010 at 10:55 am
Mr Glaysher, your summary is helpful in providing some insight into the place where your perspective is formed.
As a Christian and more specifically as a Roman Catholic, I believe in Jesus Christ and have no doubt He is the way, the truth, and the Almighty Son of Our Father in Heaven.
But I am grateful to gain insights from your critical analysis of currents of influence streaming through our times. And glad to participate in this discussion.
I find the discussion of nihilism provides helpful onsight in making sense out of cultural obfuscations which become more prevalent under the influence of the present administration in Washington.
As a Christian and more specifically as a Roman Catholic, I believe in Jesus Christ and have no doubt He is the way, the truth, and the Almighty Son of Our Father in Heaven.
But I am grateful to gain insights from your critical analysis of currents of influence streaming through our times. And glad to participate in this discussion.
I find the discussion of nihilism provides helpful onsight in making sense out of cultural obfuscations which become more prevalent under the influence of the present administration in Washington.
February 21, 2010 at 5:22 pm
I appreciate your forthrightly stating your conscience and beliefs, respect you and them, and glad you were willing to participate and exchange views.
Personally speaking, I wouldn't hold the Obama administration responsible for introducing nihilism into the world. It has a rather long history, arguably preceding Nietzsche, et al...
From another angle, Plato discusses in The Republic how faction is one of the forces that leads to the undermining of democracy, as did Madison and Hamilton in The Federalist Papers. I believe there are many reasons for concern about the current factions and both their roles in the erosion of secular and spiritual, cultural values and stability.
Personally speaking, I wouldn't hold the Obama administration responsible for introducing nihilism into the world. It has a rather long history, arguably preceding Nietzsche, et al...
From another angle, Plato discusses in The Republic how faction is one of the forces that leads to the undermining of democracy, as did Madison and Hamilton in The Federalist Papers. I believe there are many reasons for concern about the current factions and both their roles in the erosion of secular and spiritual, cultural values and stability.
February 21, 2010 at 5:46 pm
I have been getting the same feeling.... and I come from areas which might be considered factions... I think people draw lines in the sand and forget human beings can grow and learn... but there is no shortage of people who would rather be where the USA is in the world and who play king of the mountain for keeps...
Hope we could discuss this more later,Mr Glaysher. I believe Plato has much to teach our age... For example, I think his theory of the cave speaks loudly to our age...
Consider the power of local network news...
I do recall nihilism in the study of Nietzche in my Boston College philosophy course... You are right, the roots of nihilism go very deep but the practice seems virulent in the northeast where the liberal northeast liberal establishment is a locomotive running out of liberal fuel...
Thank you for providing the forum where I could participate!
Hope we could discuss this more later,Mr Glaysher. I believe Plato has much to teach our age... For example, I think his theory of the cave speaks loudly to our age...
Consider the power of local network news...
I do recall nihilism in the study of Nietzche in my Boston College philosophy course... You are right, the roots of nihilism go very deep but the practice seems virulent in the northeast where the liberal northeast liberal establishment is a locomotive running out of liberal fuel...
Thank you for providing the forum where I could participate!
February 21, 2010 at 7:10 pm
Nihilism is really one of the perennial human responses to life. I believe it can be found in most, if not all, the ancient religious texts. There's something of it in Job's wife's advice, "Curse God and die." I've read something of it in the Indian Vedas, elsewhere.
Liberalism, broadly, has been out of fuel for a long time, running on second-hand nihilism, the borrowed goods of the Wasteland Outlook. Nihilism suffuses every level and walk of life in modern culture today. Yet the conservative impulse to reversion to a Day Gone By, evidenced in all cultures around the world, is no more a solution to the spiritual crisis than liberalism.
I respect your conscience. Thank you for participating.
Liberalism, broadly, has been out of fuel for a long time, running on second-hand nihilism, the borrowed goods of the Wasteland Outlook. Nihilism suffuses every level and walk of life in modern culture today. Yet the conservative impulse to reversion to a Day Gone By, evidenced in all cultures around the world, is no more a solution to the spiritual crisis than liberalism.
I respect your conscience. Thank you for participating.
February 22, 2010 at 5:42 am
I am not a student of philosophy and have never been. I am not so much into the -isms of studies though I try as much to learn from the learned ones. My problem is once modernity takes over and we move closer to certain ideals that we are free with don't you think that we may lose certain aspects of life that are dear to us. For instance, in this present age one is easily considered a conservative (a word that is gradually becoming derogatory) when one holds opposing views to an on-rushing thoughts. Let's take dressing as an instant. Where I come from women and men are suppose to cover every part of themselves. Gradually, they are showing more than they are supposed to cover and one cannot speak against it because they deem it their right. Don't you think that if freedom is stretched beyond its limits (this no one knows) it would get to a point where it would be legal and very normal for people to walk naked. then could we call this modernity, or perhaps a retrogression. I have been worried about the extent to which rights are emphasised without responsibility and the ease with which we are parting ways with certain aspects of our lives. Thank you Mr. Glaysher.
February 22, 2010 at 6:04 am
As vast changes in the outlook of the international community continue to manifest themselves, the human race remains on the path toward consummation of its highest hopes and visions.
February 21, 2010 at 6:21 am
The upheavals of our century are increasingly becoming explicit through international crisis and are thereby allowing and necessitating new modes of diplomatic and artistic endeavor.
February 21, 2010 at 4:41 am
It's interesting that while various crises run their courses, simultaneously a massive, sprawling, direct intercommunication among the world's internationally diverse (educated) denizens (via internet technology chiefly) has been suddenly (i.e., in the course of a mere decade or two) been sprung on the world -- implications (and potentially positive consequences) of which have perhaps only barely begun to emerge, a mysterious factor in the world's equation -- like a new, living membrane still in active incubation.
February 21, 2010 at 5:29 am
Thanks for commenting. Yes, I do agree. Despite international crises and threats on many levels, there is a simultaneous process of unprecedented communication among people all over the world through the Internet. Perhaps in India it's limited more to educated people, I don't know. You can speak better to than I can. But in the West it is by no means limited by education. The whole culture has been experiencing for twenty years a massive transformation at every level and broadly. There are of course some people who can't take advantage of the Internet and so on, but it's becoming an ever-smaller percentage, it seems to me.
I do think also that we're really still at the beginning of exponential change, when one thinks in terms of decades, fifty years, whatever, given where the world is now. All that being said, our political institutions and "worldview" are not keeping up with these profound changes in our experience.
I do think also that we're really still at the beginning of exponential change, when one thinks in terms of decades, fifty years, whatever, given where the world is now. All that being said, our political institutions and "worldview" are not keeping up with these profound changes in our experience.
February 21, 2010 at 5:46 am
Frederick -- I was thinking broadly-globally, when using the word "educated" (meaning to suggest here, simply basic literacy -- which remains something of a factor more in the developing than in the developed world, as the argot has it. Incidentally, while I did live in India for 2-3 years, I'm now back in my native US.)
In therms of the American political scene, it's not hard to imagine a fairly direct kind of competition between corporate-sponsored political advertisements (in wake of the recent Supreme Court ruling allowing unlimited spending by corporations on electoral candidates) on one hand, and internet-fueled (free) vox populi (or at least, a species thereof) on the other. An odd comparison & contrast with the situation in China [and perhaps similarly, Iran], where internetted vox-pop forces are in direct, active (even if quiet) conflict with a controlling state.
In therms of the American political scene, it's not hard to imagine a fairly direct kind of competition between corporate-sponsored political advertisements (in wake of the recent Supreme Court ruling allowing unlimited spending by corporations on electoral candidates) on one hand, and internet-fueled (free) vox populi (or at least, a species thereof) on the other. An odd comparison & contrast with the situation in China [and perhaps similarly, Iran], where internetted vox-pop forces are in direct, active (even if quiet) conflict with a controlling state.
February 21, 2010 at 6:00 am
Hard to tell where in the world people are or from sometimes. Supports your point in a way.
Tyranny, as in China and Iran, has a way of crushing the individual, though, no matter what the technological change or transformation. But in each of those countries, and Burma, we've certainly seen the human spirit using the Internet to defend itself, while people around the globe have been able to watch and even participate. Incredible new development in itself.
Underlying all that, to my mind, is the evolving consciousness, expanding. I don't believe that has been sufficiently recognized and explored in literature and poetry, which is what I'm suggesting.
Tyranny, as in China and Iran, has a way of crushing the individual, though, no matter what the technological change or transformation. But in each of those countries, and Burma, we've certainly seen the human spirit using the Internet to defend itself, while people around the globe have been able to watch and even participate. Incredible new development in itself.
Underlying all that, to my mind, is the evolving consciousness, expanding. I don't believe that has been sufficiently recognized and explored in literature and poetry, which is what I'm suggesting.
February 21, 2010 at 6:20 am
Very good point. The idea of world citizenship is germane, and seemingly growing ever more palpable...
Incidentally, are you aware of how "cyber-punk" / sci-fi novelist William Gibson (arguably) fairly anticipated many internet developments & possibilities before they'd became so evident? (even if some of those imaginations haven't or may not work out exactly as he envisioned them). Novels like Idoru I found quite wonderful, partly for their meditation on internet-affected culture per se. It may prove interesting to see how the internet figures in / is comprehended / is imagined & pictured in fiction over the next decade. Mobile phones have made their way into the mainstream of cinema since long back, but I'm not aware of online life emerging quite so ubiquitously in fiction just yet. I mean, how many protagonists spend as much daily time on FB as do many people in one's personal acquaintance?
Incidentally, are you aware of how "cyber-punk" / sci-fi novelist William Gibson (arguably) fairly anticipated many internet developments & possibilities before they'd became so evident? (even if some of those imaginations haven't or may not work out exactly as he envisioned them). Novels like Idoru I found quite wonderful, partly for their meditation on internet-affected culture per se. It may prove interesting to see how the internet figures in / is comprehended / is imagined & pictured in fiction over the next decade. Mobile phones have made their way into the mainstream of cinema since long back, but I'm not aware of online life emerging quite so ubiquitously in fiction just yet. I mean, how many protagonists spend as much daily time on FB as do many people in one's personal acquaintance?
February 21, 2010 at 6:34 am
ps: far as I know, "the great American social network novel" has yet to be inscribed. It's an idea waiting to happen. (Even if simply an amusing literary idea.) But then, it might or might not prove to be American . . .
February 21, 2010 at 6:36 am
All very well, but what about all the really rabid memes also vectoring through the net (a lot in the US are there to kil thought).
February 21, 2010 at 3:41 pm
Good point. We human beings have the capacity to turn anything positive to the worst. The exploitation of women on the net comes to mind, i.e., porn, (some of the sleazy ads FB allows gets close or at least offensive, which we can't turn off). I don't believe any nationality has a monopoly to negativity on or off the Net. In my view, it's more an individual problem, moral, a matter of choice.
February 21, 2010 at 3:52 pm
I always do enjoy these conversation and how would I enjoy it if not through that mystical connection of the internet. In my poems I mix science with religion and mystics and my readers always have to read it twice though to me they are always simple. Frederick, should you get the time please pass by my blogspot address and express your thoughts on some of my poems. The latest is DEVOLUTION which I believe borders on the choice issue you raised and negativity in the society but then it being an individual issue/choice.
https://freduagyeman.blogspot.com/
https://freduagyeman.blogspot.com/
February 22, 2010 at 4:38 am
Fundamental changes in the literary and political realms have always been contingent on the ontological universe. The universality of perspective itself now marks a step toward the resolution of the ontological conflict.
February 20, 2010 at 8:44 am
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Rather, what Heinrich Böll called “a new realism” must renounce the formalistic sophistry of both East and West and seek to discover in the fundamental experience of humankind, not in abstraction, what it means to be alive at this most glorious juncture in human history.
February 18, 2010 at 2:23 pm
Poets and writers must dispose of the canned sauerkraut that has been sustaining us for so long, as no better than the imposed literary manacles of socialist realism.
February 18, 2010 at 12:12 pm
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an interesting thought, yes. or can we called 'canned writings' of the period, for the period?
February 18, 2010 at 10:23 pm
A canned, pre-packaged, common world view shared by many, if not most, serious poets and writers. A long period, sixty years easy, a hundred years, even a hundred and fity in some cases.
It's become a bill of goods, a checklist. Tiresome... A young or new poet better make sure he's got his or her goods in order... or the powers that be won't recognize him. That's what literature has become in the Western world, sometimes elsewhere, an institutionalized checklist.
It's become a bill of goods, a checklist. Tiresome... A young or new poet better make sure he's got his or her goods in order... or the powers that be won't recognize him. That's what literature has become in the Western world, sometimes elsewhere, an institutionalized checklist.
February 19, 2010 at 2:21 am
Disappear? Exactly. It would probably be the best thing to happen to literature in a long time...
February 20, 2010 at 5:04 pm
With all the tragic wisdom of his own intense mental agony engendered by the upheavals of the German Empire and the Third Reich, upheavals also crucial to Stefan Zweig, Mann acknowledges the establishment of the new disposition requires the experience of suffering to become a reality in the city of man.
February 18, 2010 at 8:58 am
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Such a “transformation of the spiritual climate” is all the more urgently needed by the global community given the “demands of the hour.” Far from debasing artists into propagandists, Mann is calling for a fundamental reaffirmation of humane values.
February 18, 2010 at 7:33 am
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“To the genesis and establishment of that disposition poets and artists, imperceptibly working through the depth and breadth of society, can make some contribution. But it is not something that can be taught and created; it must be experienced and suffered.” Thomas Mann
February 18, 2010 at 6:20 am
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This could also serve as a comment on how ineffectual American art is regarding American life. Industrial art--certainly. But the fine arts? And, in particular, literature.... Our poetry is perhaps more irrelevant than ever before. Yet, people die from the lack of it.
February 18, 2010 at 8:26 am
I believe Milosz was right, in The Witness of Poetry, "The poetic act changes with the amount of background reality embraced by the poet’s consciousness." Often what was embraced by postmodern poets became less and less, cutting poetry off from the lived experience of the wider culture, unable to make sense of it.
The experience of the culture has changed dramatically over the last sixty years, while the worldview of the dominant coterie has remained about the same, merely reworking much of the same territory. All the cliches of modernity have become institutionalized in the university... now as guilty of imposing "mind-forged manacles" as any of the tyrants Blake had in mind when he wrote those words... filtering down to every level of society.
Thomas Mann understood civilization was at risk for all of these reasons, as it still is... Doctor Faustus goes deep into that decline: "Germany had become a thick-walled underground torture-chamber, converted into one by a profligate dictatorship vowed to nihilism from its beginnings on" (XLVI).
The experience of the culture has changed dramatically over the last sixty years, while the worldview of the dominant coterie has remained about the same, merely reworking much of the same territory. All the cliches of modernity have become institutionalized in the university... now as guilty of imposing "mind-forged manacles" as any of the tyrants Blake had in mind when he wrote those words... filtering down to every level of society.
Thomas Mann understood civilization was at risk for all of these reasons, as it still is... Doctor Faustus goes deep into that decline: "Germany had become a thick-walled underground torture-chamber, converted into one by a profligate dictatorship vowed to nihilism from its beginnings on" (XLVI).
February 18, 2010 at 12:45 pm
“The main thing is a transformation of the spiritual climate, a new feeling for the difficulty and the nobility of being human, an all-pervasive fundamental disposition shared by everyone, and acknowledged by everyone within himself as the supreme judge.” Thomas Mann
February 18, 2010 at 4:59 am
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"What we really need is a new order, new relationships, the recasting of society to meet the global demands of the hour, certainly little can be done by conference decisions, technical measures, legal institutions." Thomas Mann
February 17, 2010 at 4:20 pm
Mr Glaysher which is your opinion about dystopia and anti - outopia in literature? Are there any difference?
February 18, 2010 at 3:18 am
You seem to have something in mind. Lay it out... I'm open to hearing it.
February 18, 2010 at 4:58 am
i'm very spacific about the question! Reading F.Jameson's "Archaelogies of the Future" i confused about the two literary terms...Could you help me someway? I supose that anti - utopia is more critical than dystopia!
February 18, 2010 at 5:08 am
Fredric Jameson, not my cup of tea. Marxism and dehumanization, part of the problem, unlike Thomas Mann...
February 18, 2010 at 5:14 am
Much can be learned from Thomas Mann who was perhaps seduced by the German Empire but later fled Hitler’s barbarous consummation of the disease. In his 1947 lecture at the Library of Congress, “Nietzsche in the Light of Recent History,” Mann correctly appreciates the implications of modern history for poets and artists, as well as the limits of “legal institutions.”
February 17, 2010 at 1:29 pm
An excellent book on the thought of Thomas Mann has been written by Rob Riemen entitled "Nobility of Spirit" (Yale University Press, 2008).
February 17, 2010 at 1:51 pm
Thanks for mentioning it. I find secondary works always have the limitations of the expositor. Rather read Mann any day. Have you read Doctor Faustus?
February 17, 2010 at 2:12 pm
I read it many years ago. Last year I read Death in Venice on a plane; not a work synoptic of his humanistic vision, but noteworthy nonetheless for its profound humanity.
It is said that when Thomas Mann was introduced to Franklin Roosevelt, he was introduced as the "incarnation of European civilization." It was at a time when the word "European" was still redolent of a great and noble civilizational labor.
It is said that when Thomas Mann was introduced to Franklin Roosevelt, he was introduced as the "incarnation of European civilization." It was at a time when the word "European" was still redolent of a great and noble civilizational labor.
February 17, 2010 at 9:26 pm
Mann wrote Death in Venice in 1912; Doctor Faustus in 1947.
The lecture / essay I'm drawing from mostly was published in 1938, "The Coming Victory of Democracy," criticizing Hitler's Germany and modern civilization. I don't know if it is still in print, but you might find it in a library. The book really should be much better known than it is, especially in the light of the terrorist threat civilization now faces...
The lecture / essay I'm drawing from mostly was published in 1938, "The Coming Victory of Democracy," criticizing Hitler's Germany and modern civilization. I don't know if it is still in print, but you might find it in a library. The book really should be much better known than it is, especially in the light of the terrorist threat civilization now faces...
February 18, 2010 at 2:40 am
Unlike the foremost Russian writers whose dire experience has forced upon them the essential conflicts of human nature, most Western writers malinger in the shadows of the wasteland outlook, regurgitating Baudelaire, Eliot, and Beckett.
February 17, 2010 at 9:57 am
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19th century and early 20th century writings eclipse the Anglo-French counterparts by miles...
February 17, 2010 at 10:38 am
I assume you're referring to Russians? A different style and approach to life, I would say--a different experience of it. I wouldn't want to do without any of them, e.g., Flaubert, et al.
February 17, 2010 at 1:32 pm
Indeed,I was referring to the Russians...but Flaubert...yes...great...Kundera spoke about his remarkable insights...Flaubert felt it among the first that progress and stupidity run together in a technological society..culture...civilization...Madame Bovary...an immortal masterpiece!
February 17, 2010 at 1:37 pm
More than Madame Bovary, I recommend Flaubert's Sentimental Education. You might find it changes your view of him and French 19th Century literature to some extent. He's closer to Dostoyevsky than you may realize.
February 17, 2010 at 1:46 pm
OK...I'll read that...thanx! recommend some poets...I am more into reading poetry...great poets...!!!
February 17, 2010 at 1:48 pm
Dostoyevsky is a great poet...
February 17, 2010 at 2:08 pm
...and Flaubert.
February 17, 2010 at 2:09 pm
In the long battle of history, Pasternak implies, though he remained sympathetic to an esoteric interpretation of the 1917 revolution, that universal man will overcome the vacuous pieties of Marxism.
February 17, 2010 at 8:16 am
In his speech on Puskin Dostoevsky argues “to become a true Russian . . . means only to become the brother of all men, to become, if you will, a universal man.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has also testified to what constitutes the core of a thousand years of Russian experience.
February 17, 2010 at 5:50 am
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The further implementation of the UN Charter will signal the consummation of this epic process, heralded by seers and poets of all ages and nations, and will constitute another step toward the healing of the ontological rupture which shall gradually follow upon the resolution in the political realm of the Greek-like tragedy of the twentieth century, so reminiscent of that recounted by Thucydides.
February 16, 2010 at 4:12 pm
Far from the risible conception of history advanced by Marx, this dynamic process of evolution from rockhard experience toward universal peace and human dignity has its roots in the most noble and trustworthy traditions of Western civilization—despite what is now clearly the spiritual failure of some aspects of capitalism and democratic liberalism.
February 16, 2010 at 2:12 pm
In the secular realm nowhere have such values been affirmed more fully than in the Charter of the United Nations and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
February 16, 2010 at 11:28 am
While the ontological fissure continues to manifest itself in the political and spiritual realms, the unequivocal development of civilization from the first elected assemblies of ancient Greece and Rome; from the British Magna Carta, Habeas Corpus, the Petition of Right of 1628, and the Bill of Rights of 1689;
February 16, 2010 at 8:27 am
...from the American Mayflower Compact, the Massachusetts “Body of Liberties,” the New England Confederation, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address has been toward triumphant affirmation of individual human dignity and of universal authority consecrated to the oneness of humankind.
February 16, 2010 at 8:27 am
A sense of realism requires the recognition that the United Nations itself is not up to the task, often has failed for lack of wisdom, political will, and the ability to act during a crisis, while the United States and other nations have been more interested in using it as a tool of their foreign policy,
February 16, 2010 at 5:48 am
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Right on! Agree Frederick.
February 16, 2010 at 6:22 am
My sentiments exactly the last time we had a treatise here, my sentiments exactly.
February 16, 2010 at 6:43 am
Agreed, United Nations is one of the most undemocratic institution promoted by world's oldest democracy for its own agenda.
February 16, 2010 at 7:42 am
I respect your conscience, though I think differently. Have a better idea?
February 16, 2010 at 7:58 am
is it a stooge? thanks for intellectualism.
February 16, 2010 at 8:07 am
A stooge of the US? Alas, it's a stooge, at times, of all nations, I fear. That's part of the problem.
And every radical and violent cause since its founding has rejected it as such, in one way or another, while wreaking their mayhem. The practical need for an cooperative, international organization has outlived such desperate groups and despots. I don't believe we're living in a world where that need will ever be disappearing.
And every radical and violent cause since its founding has rejected it as such, in one way or another, while wreaking their mayhem. The practical need for an cooperative, international organization has outlived such desperate groups and despots. I don't believe we're living in a world where that need will ever be disappearing.
February 16, 2010 at 8:18 am
Kabir, On further reflection, I would add that more than enough time has gone by to demonstrate that Marx, Stalin, and Che Guevara had the wrong approach to social and cultural change. You're right that the UN is not democratic in the sense that no one votes for its members; rather, they're appointed by their respective countries and have the flaws of the political class of each country, which often don't represent the best interests of the masses. Violence is not the solution, but only exacerbates the problem.
February 16, 2010 at 10:09 am
yess..always. The superpoweres have arm twisted teh UN, often being spineless & has never been able to get on top of most cases of overt agrgesion shown by elite member countries
February 16, 2010 at 8:43 pm
with all those, right, UN still a 'discovery' of democracy!
February 16, 2010 at 8:57 pm
In my view, non-elite countries have often approached the UN in ways similar to the major powers at their worst. I would not want to idealize either. Countries approaching the UN primarily as a tool of self-interest, not common interest, undermines its effectiveness.
February 17, 2010 at 3:24 am
...keeping it undeveloped and unsupported in numerous ways, justifiably at times because of the tendency to impractical radical views and political theories.
February 16, 2010 at 5:48 am
Many observers have testified that the United Nations now has much of the basic machinery in the Charter needed to become a truly representative and democratic system of world governance.
February 15, 2010 at 4:10 pm
Yet, the human frailties of greed, power, mistrust, and territorialism always stand in the way of democratic representation and thinking in the UN. N'est-ce pas?
February 15, 2010 at 4:47 pm
Yes, and at every stage of human development... past and present. The UN was not conceived to be a utopia, but the application of the wisdom and political experience of civilization throughout the millennia to grapple with the passions and vices of human nature, wreaking their chaos ever-more on the global level.
February 15, 2010 at 5:17 pm
Agree with the concept; the application needs a lot of work.
Cheers !!!
Cheers !!!
February 15, 2010 at 5:25 pm
I heartily agree with you on that too... democracy, at all levels, a work in progress. So it only stands to reason that the UN is far from perfect. What's the alternative? I would argue, given human history, respectfully, it's quixotic to just keep our fingers crossed, hoping it all works out, i.e., what the last 100 years have produced twice won't happen again... that the flaw, after making due allowances for vice, isn't structural. Madison and Hamilton understood it was.
February 15, 2010 at 5:48 pm
Timing in many instances of our personal lives as well as geo-political politics has to be right for a concept to take hold, and whiile I think that Wilson, Roosevelt and their contemporaries had the right instincts, the timing was not right for an effective World body -- and still isn't. Unfortunately, it appears that only the threat of a catastrophic event will be the catalyst to cause nations and their leaders to set aside their disagreements in the mutual interest of surviving. Even then, trust will not be there.
February 15, 2010 at 6:31 pm
Yes, timing in always crucial, in this, as everything. Often, though, it seems, many voices said, not now, not now, but someone, some great leader, said NOW and fought for it, long and hard, until the world woke up.
What greater cause can be conceived of today? What greater benefit than "to protect peoples of the world from the scourge of war"? Must humanity always wait until AFTER the catastrophe to act? I readily admit, it seems so when one looks to history, but too often we forget those who prevented mayhem and chaos--it has and can happen--they are just as human and characteristic of history, though our time may tend to neglect the heroic, nobler, self-sacrificing qualities of human nature.
I would argue that often the world owes the most to the unsung hero. Frederick Douglass, Gandhi, and King, said NOW, and worked to make their vision reality. Similarly, peace won't just happen, if the world just sits on its hands waiting for the current crowd to get around to it, someday... the "triggers" always within their fallible reach...
What greater cause can be conceived of today? What greater benefit than "to protect peoples of the world from the scourge of war"? Must humanity always wait until AFTER the catastrophe to act? I readily admit, it seems so when one looks to history, but too often we forget those who prevented mayhem and chaos--it has and can happen--they are just as human and characteristic of history, though our time may tend to neglect the heroic, nobler, self-sacrificing qualities of human nature.
I would argue that often the world owes the most to the unsung hero. Frederick Douglass, Gandhi, and King, said NOW, and worked to make their vision reality. Similarly, peace won't just happen, if the world just sits on its hands waiting for the current crowd to get around to it, someday... the "triggers" always within their fallible reach...
February 15, 2010 at 6:52 pm
While it is tempting to speak of others who had a vision and worked hard to make their vision a reality -- Mao, Hitler, Stalin -- sort of a reverse polarity to Douglass, Ghandi, and King, let me close this enjoyable discourse before bedding down for the night with these four "Lessons of History" from Charles Austin Beard:
... The Wheels of God grind exceedingly slow but exceeding fine.
... Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad with power.
... The Bee fertilizes the flower that it robs.
... When its darkest out, you can see the stars.
Cheers !!!
RDG
... The Wheels of God grind exceedingly slow but exceeding fine.
... Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad with power.
... The Bee fertilizes the flower that it robs.
... When its darkest out, you can see the stars.
Cheers !!!
RDG
February 15, 2010 at 7:21 pm
Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
Absolutely, those antinomies are always with us. That's why civilization, civic and nation-state, have developed so many mechanisms, codes of law, military and police forces. The checks and balances are in the UN Charter and the balancing of powers within the Security Council. And each national unit reserves the right to resort to arms.There are, if you will, all the Five Estates, on the global level.
I'm not one arguing for a utopian change of human nature. The axioms you cite can equally apply to the hubris that blind nationalism inspires, has inspired... reflecting on that thought for a moment, I find them quite apropos.
I would say too, fear is not a reason to balk at a river crossing when there is no other way across. That's an old canard we've wasted over sixty years and millions of lives on. The time to get serious about building the bridge, taking the plunge, is now...
Absolutely, those antinomies are always with us. That's why civilization, civic and nation-state, have developed so many mechanisms, codes of law, military and police forces. The checks and balances are in the UN Charter and the balancing of powers within the Security Council. And each national unit reserves the right to resort to arms.There are, if you will, all the Five Estates, on the global level.
I'm not one arguing for a utopian change of human nature. The axioms you cite can equally apply to the hubris that blind nationalism inspires, has inspired... reflecting on that thought for a moment, I find them quite apropos.
I would say too, fear is not a reason to balk at a river crossing when there is no other way across. That's an old canard we've wasted over sixty years and millions of lives on. The time to get serious about building the bridge, taking the plunge, is now...
February 16, 2010 at 3:40 am
this is an intelligent discourse, and I must say I have learnt a lot from these exchanges. Thank you Mr. Glaysher and Giles.
February 16, 2010 at 7:58 am
Well, Mr. Fredua-Agyeman, thank you for saying so. Not a simple world we live in... no easy solutions in sight, just the hard, human struggle forward, let's hope!
February 16, 2010 at 8:08 am
You can call me Fredua or Nana, whichever you want. I am a student of knowledge and seek it wherever I can find it. In doing so I try to be humble. In humility I learn.
Yes, there is no easy solution in sight, but it is also because we are full of greed and egoistic. Our altruism goes no further than ourselves. Is there no benefit in reciprocal altruism...?
Yes, there is no easy solution in sight, but it is also because we are full of greed and egoistic. Our altruism goes no further than ourselves. Is there no benefit in reciprocal altruism...?
February 16, 2010 at 8:13 am
Out of altruism and human concern, people all over the world have and are helping Haiti. There are many ways. In terms of the UN, it's helped people all over the world in terms of foods, health, water, etc., with almost innumerable on-going projects.
February 16, 2010 at 8:22 am
Roosevelt therefore saw to it that the United Nations was established before the end of the common purpose given the nations by the tempest of total war. Only as the war worsened did the new structure for world organization evolve out of the debris of the League and out of the various conferences and forums of international consultation.
February 15, 2010 at 11:02 am
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The global havoc of World War I resulted in the first great affirmation of world unity, and the global havoc of World War II brought the nations together as never before. Roosevelt himself emphasized that Wilson’s experience at Versailles Peace Conference of 1919, which both he and Churchill had attended, taught the futility of attempting to lay global foundations after the cessation of hostilities.
February 15, 2010 at 8:05 am
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As an historian once remarked, “If one scrutinizes the tragic blood-stained history of humanity one must needs realize that the epoch-making changes have always involved incalculable agony and turmoil, both mental and physical, to weld together formerly antagonistic peoples and nations.”
February 15, 2010 at 5:57 am
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He knew unilateral disarmament was a chimera. But the will and power to enforce peace has often escaped us and can still bring for a third time, even after the momentous changes in Eastern Europe, what the Charter describes as “untold sorrow to mankind.”
February 14, 2010 at 12:30 pm
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The responsibility for succeeding or failing to grant the United Nations the commitment it requires “to protect future generations from the scourge of war” depends on the will of all the statesmen and peoples of the world. Roosevelt understood this fact when in 1944 he stated, “Peace, like war, can succeed only where there is a will to enforce it, and where there is available power to enforce it.”
February 14, 2010 at 9:03 am
Recognizing that fact, Senator Alan Cranston wrote in The Sovereignty Revolution, “The looming task is evident.”
February 14, 2010 at 6:12 am
Despite the tragic betrayals and deceptions Boutros-Ghali documents in his 1999 book UNvanquished, there can be no longer any reason to doubt that the United States and the Russians, indeed all of humankind, must continue to learn to cooperate under the UN Charter andthe Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to learn, as Secretary-General Kofi Annan has emphasized, “The collective interest is the national interest.”
February 13, 2010 at 10:40 am
They requested the new Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to submit a plan to strengthen the United Nations “within the framework and provisions of the Charter.” In July of 1992, Boutros-Ghali offered the member-nations of the Security Council his outstanding recommendations for post Cold War world security in An Agenda for Peace, with a Supplement in 1995 and his Agenda for Democratization in 1996.
February 13, 2010 at 7:57 am
The Soviet regime has been swept aside and through a conscious act of historical memory, the causes and upheavals that led the community of nations to world organization in the first place can lead to a revitalization of the UN. Such memory is exactly what motivated the heads of state at the UN Security Council summit meeting in January of 1992.
February 13, 2010 at 5:55 am
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UN is kind of owned by the US it seems
February 13, 2010 at 6:04 am
Not at all the case, though I understand it can seem that way to many around the world who uninformed of its actual history and scope.
It has been "owned" by people in cultures other than in the West from the very beginning, for example, Carlos Romulo, the Philippine ambassador at the first United Nations Assembly in San Francisco in 1945. He wrote a brilliant early book on the UN that fully recognized the UN was of profound importance to all nations, not just Western, and so on...
You might find the writings of Boutros Boutros-Ghali and Perez de Cuellar revealing in this regard, to name only a few others.
It has been "owned" by people in cultures other than in the West from the very beginning, for example, Carlos Romulo, the Philippine ambassador at the first United Nations Assembly in San Francisco in 1945. He wrote a brilliant early book on the UN that fully recognized the UN was of profound importance to all nations, not just Western, and so on...
You might find the writings of Boutros Boutros-Ghali and Perez de Cuellar revealing in this regard, to name only a few others.
February 13, 2010 at 6:20 am
thanks will read up on that... my perception... right or wrong.. stems from the impotency of UN and how it takes it cues from US govt.
February 13, 2010 at 6:22 am
If it's impotent, and it is at times, even often, it is because the nations of the world choose to keep it that way to suit their own narrow nationalistic purposes. The UN is only as effective as the collective nations are willing to allow it to be, part of its growing pains, I would say.
I agree that at times the UN does look to the US too much and believe it must continue to move beyond that level of development. True consultation requires all voices be heard and consider, for a consensus to result, one that can be sustained for the benefit of all peoples.
I agree that at times the UN does look to the US too much and believe it must continue to move beyond that level of development. True consultation requires all voices be heard and consider, for a consensus to result, one that can be sustained for the benefit of all peoples.
February 13, 2010 at 6:28 am
well you are certainly right about that, it can only be as strong as its components and when they are not willing to look beyond their noses... i wish there were power centers...
February 13, 2010 at 6:32 am
power should float..
February 13, 2010 at 6:32 am
The UN Charter was intended to create an international power center, and has, to the degree the nations are willing to use it. When only one, for a handful, East or West, attempts to use it for only its own narrow, regional purposes, it becomes stymied and ineffective, and danger for the overall body politic increases. That's where we are now, in my view, and have been for a very long time, rocking back and forth, on the foam of history...
February 13, 2010 at 7:00 am
The most obvious manipulation of the UN seems to be the recent actions of the US that have gotten us into the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, I don't think this is the only time that blatant manipulation has happened. Gulf War I is another possibility. Has the world lost its ability to produce diplomats and politicians who can see beyond their own boarders? People who get called "real statesmen"? It feels like it right now.
February 13, 2010 at 9:10 am
Oh, and the manipulation certainly hasn't been one-sided.
February 13, 2010 at 9:12 am
I agree there seems to be a dearth of internationally minded statesmen, though I think highly of Richard Holbrooke and a few others.
Bush W. woefully failed to work through the UN early on, refusing help from Europe or anywhere else, which exacerbated Iraq II into the mess it became.
Often people who allege the USA is manipulating the UN genuinely don't realize the extent to which other countries do so as well, including their own country, regionally, whatever it is. We're at a difficult time for world peace and stability, very shaky, I think. The blame games just go on and on, with seemingly little to no progress being made, teetering on the edge of the next abyss.
Bush W. woefully failed to work through the UN early on, refusing help from Europe or anywhere else, which exacerbated Iraq II into the mess it became.
Often people who allege the USA is manipulating the UN genuinely don't realize the extent to which other countries do so as well, including their own country, regionally, whatever it is. We're at a difficult time for world peace and stability, very shaky, I think. The blame games just go on and on, with seemingly little to no progress being made, teetering on the edge of the next abyss.
February 13, 2010 at 10:29 am
A further thought. I believe all the countries appoint their representatives to the UN, which means they're political lackeys, often, US included. So the best aren't always ending up there, but those who help the regime back home stay in power... and are not always working in the best interests of their own people at times. Indeed, those whose hearts are in the right place are often stymied by the lack of commitment of others. These problems are all reflected too in the Security Council.
February 13, 2010 at 10:38 am
I would be the last one to say/think that the US is the only country to be guilty of manipulation. All one has to do is look at the situation Romeo Dallaire found himself in in Rwanda. Who was manipulating whom is still not completely sorted out if I remember correctly.
February 13, 2010 at 10:41 am
Boutros Boutros-Ghali presents a complicated picture of Rwanda in his book UNvanqished, essentially, I think, suggesting everyone failed to summon the will in time. It goes back to why the UN should have a rapid-reaction force, because by the time the world sufficiently wakes up to the severity of a problem, if ever, or finds the will, it is usually too late for the locals at risk.
Quoting from UNvanquished: "Dallaire...told the ambassadors of Belgium, France, and the US.... the powers that could have acted to prevent the ensuing massacre...had indisputably and immediately been informed by the UN of the severity of the threat" (130). "Dallaire denounced the failure of the Security Council to act and pointed out that 'an early and determined effort to get troops and resources on the ground under the UN's mandate could have avoided all this and already saved so many lives" (139).
Quoting from UNvanquished: "Dallaire...told the ambassadors of Belgium, France, and the US.... the powers that could have acted to prevent the ensuing massacre...had indisputably and immediately been informed by the UN of the severity of the threat" (130). "Dallaire denounced the failure of the Security Council to act and pointed out that 'an early and determined effort to get troops and resources on the ground under the UN's mandate could have avoided all this and already saved so many lives" (139).
February 13, 2010 at 11:21 am
What are the roles of UN Security Council? To make the world insecure?
February 13, 2010 at 11:07 pm
The fervid nationalism of its members has that covered.
February 14, 2010 at 3:59 am
Brian Urquhart, former Under Secretary-General of the UN, significantly observes in his 1987 autobiography that “The Soviet bloc had never shown any real willingness to assist in developing an active and effective international system, and in the Secretariat we had long ago learned not to expect much help or support from the Soviets.”
February 12, 2010 at 11:46 am
Sixty-odd years later in the light of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and in the USSR that belief must be acknowledged as prescient and wise indeed.
February 12, 2010 at 8:24 am
President Roosevelt’s Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius attested that the President thoroughly realized the United Nations would not maintain peace forever but might result in a fairly stable balance of power that would buy time in which the Soviet Union might slowly evolve away from its harsher objectives,
February 12, 2010 at 5:36 am
...reminiscent to my mind of Alexander Hamilton’s observation in The Federalist Papers: “I never expect to see a perfect work from imperfect man.”
February 12, 2010 at 5:36 am
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"Yet no responsible statesman, as Churchill rightly understood, could finally “cast away the solid assurances of national armaments” when it was highly doubtful whether all member-nations shared the fundamentally democratic principles of the UN Charter." - Churchill
February 12, 2010 at 2:35 am
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Churchill’s 1946 counsel to equip the United Nations with the international Force provided for in the Charter went unheeded. It is a great irony of history that Churchill, who had recognized the necessity of an international Force at the end of World War I and after an even more devastating war, lived to witness the means of escape again relegated to the sidelines of history.
February 11, 2010 at 4:15 pm
"They would not be required to act against their own nation, but in other respects they would be directed by the world organisation. This might be started on a modest scale and would grow as confidence grew. I wished to see this done after the first world war, and I devoutly trust it may be done forthwith." - Churchill
February 11, 2010 at 2:30 pm
"These squadrons would be trained and prepared in their own countries, but would move around in rotation from one country to another. They would wear the uniform of their own countries but with different badges." -Churchill
February 11, 2010 at 11:23 am
"The United Nations Organisation must immediately begin to be equipped with an international armed force. In such a matter we can only go step by step, but we must begin now. I propose that each of the Powers and States should be invited to delegate a certain number of air squadrons to the service of the world organisation." -Churchill
February 11, 2010 at 9:37 am
"Anyone can see with his eyes open that our path will be difficult and also long, but if we persevere together as we did in the two world wars—though not, alas, in the interval between them—I cannot doubt that we shall achieve our common purpose in the end." -Churchill
February 11, 2010 at 8:29 am
"We must make sure that its work is fruitful, that it is a reality and not a sham, that it is a force for action, and not merely a frothing of words, that it is a true temple of peace in which the shields of many nations can some day be hung up, and not merely a cockpit in a Tower of Babel." -Churchill
February 11, 2010 at 7:22 am
"Before we cast away the solid assurances of national armaments for self-preservation we must be certain that our temple is built, not upon shifting sands or quagmires, but upon the rock." --Churchill
February 11, 2010 at 7:22 am
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It has been too often forgotten that Churchill in his 1946 “iron curtain” speech did more than lacerate what is now the former Soviet adventurism. He also invoked the sole hope of civilization in the face of all forms of tyranny and chaos by calling for the concerted implementation of Chapter VII of the UN Charter: "A world organisation has already been erected for the prime purpose of preventing war."
February 11, 2010 at 4:21 am
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This very incomplete catalogue of offenses by the Movement of the Left to the family of nations represents a ruthless program of military aggression and brutalization of millions of human beings.
February 10, 2010 at 7:43 am
After World War II the West had to accept the maintenance of a volatile status quo: the postwar abandonment of Poland, Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Albania, Yugoslavia, East Germany, ... the Berlin blockade of 1948, the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, the re-subjugation of numerous Marxist satellites, and the oppression of Afghanistan and Nicaragua.
February 10, 2010 at 6:35 am
Both organizations grew out of the cataclysm of total war that filled insightful statesmen with fear and trembling for the stability of civilization. Both world wars demonstrated that rabid nationalism is a cause of horror and not beneficent progress.
February 9, 2010 at 4:46 pm
The reasons for the founding of the League of Nations and the United Nations have not disappeared but have become all the more compelling and urgent—as the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the chaos of Rwanda, and the disintegration of Yugoslavia have shown. In The End of the Nation-State, Jean-Marie Guéhenno in 1995 wrote, “Legitimacy demands the multilateral framework of the community of nations.”
February 9, 2010 at 1:26 pm
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Dear Fredrick,
It is my pleasure to see you as my friend in facebook.
Where do you stay ? How can I get your ideas in written form. Is it possible for you to ssend some articles?
I will contact you on my work on Indian tribal folklore and multilingual education that I am practising .
with best regards, yours sincerely
Mahendra( mkmfolk@gmail.com)
It is my pleasure to see you as my friend in facebook.
Where do you stay ? How can I get your ideas in written form. Is it possible for you to ssend some articles?
I will contact you on my work on Indian tribal folklore and multilingual education that I am practising .
with best regards, yours sincerely
Mahendra( mkmfolk@gmail.com)
February 9, 2010 at 8:49 pm
Hello, Mahendra. Thank you for your interest. I'm in Michigan USA. Actually, my books can be purchased in India. See the links for online booksellers in India (Asia to Australia, In) at https://www.fglaysher.com/order_books.html
In my essay "India’s Kali Yuga" I discuss India's classic literature compared to modern Indian writers, e.g., Dilip Chitre, T. Ramachandran, R. K. Narayan, and others. https://www.fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
I'm currently writing an epic poem partly set in India. If interested, see, https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/
Please do contact me. I'd like to know more about your interests.
In my essay "India’s Kali Yuga" I discuss India's classic literature compared to modern Indian writers, e.g., Dilip Chitre, T. Ramachandran, R. K. Narayan, and others. https://www.fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
I'm currently writing an epic poem partly set in India. If interested, see, https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/
Please do contact me. I'd like to know more about your interests.
February 10, 2010 at 6:33 am
Thanks for the emails and your work on Kalahandi epics. I look forward to reading it. I have several essays and articles available online on my website and my three blogs. See https://www.fglaysher.com
February 11, 2010 at 4:07 am
Similarly Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar warned in May of 1986 at The University of Michigan against ignoring “the basic lesson driven home so brutally by two world wars: that international co-operation is a functional response to the complex interdependence of the modern world. To treat it as an optional matter is a deadly mistake.”
February 9, 2010 at 4:32 am
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The world cannot now circumvent the fundamental issues which were involved in the formation of the League and UN or prudently move only halfway toward them. As Dag Hammarskjold stressed, the United Nations rose out of bitter experience—experience which can be repeated and which has been insufficiently understood.
February 8, 2010 at 4:06 pm
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Despite the largely successful intervention of the United Nations in Korea, the Suez, the Congo, Cyprus, and, at times, the Middle East, the world community often drifted further from implementation of the UN Charter. Until the Gulf War in 1990 there was, as the Secretary-General of the UN in 1973 remarked, “an ominous drift back to nationalism.”
February 8, 2010 at 12:05 pm
Collapse and decay are in the air, and everything is affected. Most of the sixty-odd years since World War II have witnessed an erosion of real commitment to the principles underlying the United Nations, while the fear of nuclear annihilation has not yet managed to weld the nations together.
February 8, 2010 at 7:26 am
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I strongly agree with you. Sometimes it is sad to see that UN have lowered itself to be a broker in trade than standing for the values it represents. Weapons does not pose a threat to humanity. But the erosion of humanity makes the existence of those weapons a threat. I think Nazis n Stalin made us believe why we should still believe in humanity (in a terrible way) while UN gave us a reason to peacefully forget the terrors of war.
February 8, 2010 at 10:24 am
Thanks for commenting. In my view, it isn't really one entity that's lost commitment to the unifying political values and vision of the UN Charter--the responsibility resides with everyone, individuals, the nation-states, and those who make up the UN. We've all allowed the memory of what led to its creation to begin with to atrophy and fade, losing urgency.
Routinely now, when there's an emergency, the world looks the USA as world cop to set things right or to deal with it at least. We don't look to the Concert of Powers the UN should be; we don't demand that the Will of the People of this Plant be heard; we despair, knowing the USA, like every other nation, uses the UN as an instrument of its own national self-interest.
I'm glad you mention Stalin and the Nazis. I like the way you put it even, they "made us believe why we should still believe in humanity"! Without that chastened belief, there's only the darkest despair, given the human history of all nations, my own included.
The UN won't bring in Utopia, but as a representative, democratic body, support by the will of the nations, it still offers the world the only best hope it has.
Routinely now, when there's an emergency, the world looks the USA as world cop to set things right or to deal with it at least. We don't look to the Concert of Powers the UN should be; we don't demand that the Will of the People of this Plant be heard; we despair, knowing the USA, like every other nation, uses the UN as an instrument of its own national self-interest.
I'm glad you mention Stalin and the Nazis. I like the way you put it even, they "made us believe why we should still believe in humanity"! Without that chastened belief, there's only the darkest despair, given the human history of all nations, my own included.
The UN won't bring in Utopia, but as a representative, democratic body, support by the will of the nations, it still offers the world the only best hope it has.
February 8, 2010 at 11:01 am
Thank you Frederickand Hari for bringing up the topic of UN - particularly, whether it has lived up to its vision or not.
I appreciate what US has done and is doing; but I do not agree that "it offers the world the only best hope it has." UN was founded by the US and its allies and was against the Axis Power - the then, Germany, Japan and Italy. What I think is it was not founded on "democratic principles," - rather it is a pseudo-political instrument to keep the developing and the underdeveloped countries "under close scrutiny." When it was founded, it was not well-represented by the 195 (approx.) countries around the world. It did not allow them to speak their mind - on just and fair terms. In my opinion, UN does not really represent a truly all encompassing international organization. In fact, there is not really any.
You are right in saying, individuals look towards US for initiatives - it's a comparatively new nation (compared to all the old civilizations around the world) - it is still youthful and vigorous to take up missions.
I appreciate what US has done and is doing; but I do not agree that "it offers the world the only best hope it has." UN was founded by the US and its allies and was against the Axis Power - the then, Germany, Japan and Italy. What I think is it was not founded on "democratic principles," - rather it is a pseudo-political instrument to keep the developing and the underdeveloped countries "under close scrutiny." When it was founded, it was not well-represented by the 195 (approx.) countries around the world. It did not allow them to speak their mind - on just and fair terms. In my opinion, UN does not really represent a truly all encompassing international organization. In fact, there is not really any.
You are right in saying, individuals look towards US for initiatives - it's a comparatively new nation (compared to all the old civilizations around the world) - it is still youthful and vigorous to take up missions.
February 8, 2010 at 11:20 am
While going through Ernesto's, 'Our America and theirs' followed by a Nat Geo program-' Meet the natives' made me feel another emotion. May be the WW2 have never ceased. Still feel it in another realm. Economics, cultural imperialism and racism are the new weapons. While nations divide themselves into blocks individuals does prosper. Yet the real problems remain alive in the depths and folds of ideologies.
I found 'Meet the natives' so interesting as it observes the 'civilized' world through the eyes of natives.(even that is fabricated by the 'civilized' for entertainment) Yet it clearly draws the margins of the great divide that really exists. During the show a tribal claims he is the one who found England! How ironic! May be it may seem funny to English now, yet the same statement was repeated by James Cook long back.
The point is this divide and the tools to unite are strategically used to retain the equilibrium, where in the equilibrium itself is the position of certain nations in the food chain of states and nations. UN itself is not purely global in its essence. I wonder how a leader of a tribal origin or a non-aligned nation (unless 'non-aligned' represents another faction) can influence the general outcome of such an organization. However there are human beings who are good by their deeds as long as they exist hope exist. :) ( My arguments may be immature because I've lived just 24 years)
I found 'Meet the natives' so interesting as it observes the 'civilized' world through the eyes of natives.(even that is fabricated by the 'civilized' for entertainment) Yet it clearly draws the margins of the great divide that really exists. During the show a tribal claims he is the one who found England! How ironic! May be it may seem funny to English now, yet the same statement was repeated by James Cook long back.
The point is this divide and the tools to unite are strategically used to retain the equilibrium, where in the equilibrium itself is the position of certain nations in the food chain of states and nations. UN itself is not purely global in its essence. I wonder how a leader of a tribal origin or a non-aligned nation (unless 'non-aligned' represents another faction) can influence the general outcome of such an organization. However there are human beings who are good by their deeds as long as they exist hope exist. :) ( My arguments may be immature because I've lived just 24 years)
February 8, 2010 at 11:26 am
Rajyeshwari, You're quite right about the limitations of the UN, especially in the beginning, and still lots of problems. Yet I would argue idealizing the rising nations or developing world does not help the current situation. Every region on earth has been part of the problem in truly developing the UN as an effective institution for the benefit of all. How do we move forward is now the real question. Can we? Clearly, the world can only go forward together.
I argue it's not healthy for the world to look so often to the USA for the answer. Our politics being what they are, we often lack the will or are hobble by domestic disagreements, while the world suffers.
Hari, Since you brought Stalin, how do we not repeat such violent history? I don't believe anyone anywhere on earth informed about REAL life under Stalin would be willing to go back down that road...
I believe we now live in a time when the view that sees either "natives" and "civilized" seems quaintly out of touch with humanity, simplistic, and only drains off energy. I agree there are people who are good, many millions in every nation and region of the world. How do we wake them up?
I argue it's not healthy for the world to look so often to the USA for the answer. Our politics being what they are, we often lack the will or are hobble by domestic disagreements, while the world suffers.
Hari, Since you brought Stalin, how do we not repeat such violent history? I don't believe anyone anywhere on earth informed about REAL life under Stalin would be willing to go back down that road...
I believe we now live in a time when the view that sees either "natives" and "civilized" seems quaintly out of touch with humanity, simplistic, and only drains off energy. I agree there are people who are good, many millions in every nation and region of the world. How do we wake them up?
February 8, 2010 at 12:04 pm
Speaking of hope, here's a link I've just received from the World Federalist Movement – Institute for Global Policy is pleased to announce the launch of a new website, https://www.BetterPeace.org for its project “Together for a Better Peace.”
February 8, 2010 at 12:08 pm
Oh I used Stalin and Hitlers as subjects that caused definite suffering towards humanity. And their deeds made the world to resist such beings and not to repeat the same mistakes again. Such an understanding that evolved out of suffering is only capable of making people believe in peace than the 'peace' sanctioned by economics and UN. In fact UN itself became a necessity because of the actions of a few.
February 8, 2010 at 12:10 pm
Frederick,
I agree with you that - "it's not heathly for the world to look so often to the USA for the answer." Let's ask ourselves why do we do ?
USA's almighty dollar controls the world economy. USA controls the world by "volunteering" to bring democracies in the other parts of the world (when its own system does not work.) In India (it is sad to experience) people blindly follow American culture (the negative side). Again and again, I asked why ?
The answers are really philosophical. Every nation needs to realize its own greatness, need to appreciate its own uniqueness and authenticity.
Studies showed that Africa has the majority of world's resources, yet it is economically lagging behind. Why ? Can't it demand a fair price for its goods and services produced and delivered?
One of the many solutions, I have been repeatedly voicing, is Education - good quality education that can train and inform the mind, an education system that can develop characters, a system that can challenge the notion of "economic scarcity."
I agree with you that - "it's not heathly for the world to look so often to the USA for the answer." Let's ask ourselves why do we do ?
USA's almighty dollar controls the world economy. USA controls the world by "volunteering" to bring democracies in the other parts of the world (when its own system does not work.) In India (it is sad to experience) people blindly follow American culture (the negative side). Again and again, I asked why ?
The answers are really philosophical. Every nation needs to realize its own greatness, need to appreciate its own uniqueness and authenticity.
Studies showed that Africa has the majority of world's resources, yet it is economically lagging behind. Why ? Can't it demand a fair price for its goods and services produced and delivered?
One of the many solutions, I have been repeatedly voicing, is Education - good quality education that can train and inform the mind, an education system that can develop characters, a system that can challenge the notion of "economic scarcity."
February 8, 2010 at 12:32 pm
I do follow you. I do agree with you too, especially in terms of education and supposed scarcity... All these things have been debated for decades: Westernizing versus modernizing, local culture versus whatever, you know all the dualisms. And I grieve too for Africa... very complicated. How do we break the log jam?
February 8, 2010 at 12:45 pm
Thank you Frederick.
Again giving quality education to masses. May be I should add "classic" education - Tolstoy, Tagore, Milton, Mozart, Bach, Rumi, Gibran and others. They wrote in simple language - the subjective experience of being human and their transformed world. As I say, they lived and they are still living "beyond time and space."
Many often individuals face the dilemma of being realistic/practical or idealistic/theoretical, and how to balance it. It's sad to see that most often than not the realistic ones end up ruling the world and the idealistic ones are being ruled over. As many of the Greek Philosophers, like Aristotle, Plato had said, we need to bring "philosophers" as the leaders, not the lawyers, who seem not to listen to the Voice of Conscience or cannot seem to listen to the Moral Laws.
Again giving quality education to masses. May be I should add "classic" education - Tolstoy, Tagore, Milton, Mozart, Bach, Rumi, Gibran and others. They wrote in simple language - the subjective experience of being human and their transformed world. As I say, they lived and they are still living "beyond time and space."
Many often individuals face the dilemma of being realistic/practical or idealistic/theoretical, and how to balance it. It's sad to see that most often than not the realistic ones end up ruling the world and the idealistic ones are being ruled over. As many of the Greek Philosophers, like Aristotle, Plato had said, we need to bring "philosophers" as the leaders, not the lawyers, who seem not to listen to the Voice of Conscience or cannot seem to listen to the Moral Laws.
February 8, 2010 at 1:07 pm
I can imagine a lawyer saying something like the notion of moral law really isn't a legal one. So, there we are...
As a writer, I do believe Tagore, Tolstoy, and others helped to honor and inspire the vision of a moral life worthy of humanity, and hope in some way to contribute towards that evolution. I do believe many of these problems go back to a lack of will and vision, local and global, seeing one another as human beings, equally fragile and vulnerable, in need of the same sustenance. It's really a change of heart human beings always need, as the great spiritual teachers taught. Our generation is no different, but only thinks it is, imagining it's left all that kind of thing behind, while we seem to spiral further and further out of control. Philosophy in the West has fallen very far below the level of Aristotle and Plato, alas. I'm against the current crowd having any real power...
Often humanity has waited until it's seemingly too late to rally. Let's hope it's coming... and work for it the best we can in our own ways.
As a writer, I do believe Tagore, Tolstoy, and others helped to honor and inspire the vision of a moral life worthy of humanity, and hope in some way to contribute towards that evolution. I do believe many of these problems go back to a lack of will and vision, local and global, seeing one another as human beings, equally fragile and vulnerable, in need of the same sustenance. It's really a change of heart human beings always need, as the great spiritual teachers taught. Our generation is no different, but only thinks it is, imagining it's left all that kind of thing behind, while we seem to spiral further and further out of control. Philosophy in the West has fallen very far below the level of Aristotle and Plato, alas. I'm against the current crowd having any real power...
Often humanity has waited until it's seemingly too late to rally. Let's hope it's coming... and work for it the best we can in our own ways.
February 8, 2010 at 1:45 pm
Thank you for sharing your views. I appreciate it.
The discussion was wonderful. Looking forward to participating on another exploration. So long...
The discussion was wonderful. Looking forward to participating on another exploration. So long...
February 8, 2010 at 1:54 pm
More and more people, fewer and fewer resources. I hope we won't be reduced to a fight for survival and nothing else.
February 9, 2010 at 6:41 am
There is that view, Darwinian and Malthusian. I would argue the problem is one of the conception of what is of value, how to achieve it. As with the food supply right now, there's plenty to feed the indigent, but the will is lacking. Change needs to take place at a much deeper, more profound level than ever before in human history.
February 9, 2010 at 1:32 pm
Postscript: eReading and the Post-Gutenberg Age
February 7, 2010 at 9:33 am
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Of True Religion. John Milton. |
Milton was convinced he had the exclusive truth in Protestantism.
February 7, 2010 at 9:33 am
Sammler shares Herzog’s detestation of the wasteland outlook but concedes, as had many observers of the late Hapsburg monarchy, “it is in the air now that things are falling apart, and I am affected by it.” Through a concerted effort of will, Sammler persists in affirming “human qualities” and thereby the standards of decency and civilization.
February 7, 2010 at 8:23 am
On Sammler’s way home a thief accosts him and exposes his penis to him as a totem of barbarous power. After such experience Sammler dryly remarks, “liberation into individuality has not been a great success” but has often resulted in license and exhibitions of decadence.
February 7, 2010 at 7:12 am
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Noting as had Dostoevsky the inability of liberal ideas to defend themselves, Sammler brings the diagnosis up to date. The undermining of civilization by Marxism is particularly brought home to Sammler during a lecture he gives on his Bloomsbury days when a New Left radical shouts him down as an “Old Man” whose “balls are dry.”
February 6, 2010 at 8:17 am
"Like many people who had seen the world collapse once, Mr. Sammler entertained the possibility it might collapse twice. He did not agree with refugee friends that this doom was inevitable, but liberal beliefs did not seem capable of self-defense, and you could smell decay. You could see the suicidal impulses of civilization pushing strongly." Saul Bellow "
February 6, 2010 at 4:32 am
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"You wondered whether this Western culture could survive universal dissemination. . . . Or whether the worst enemies of civilization might not prove to be its petted intellectuals who .... attacked it in the name of proletarian revolution, in the name of reason, and in the name of irrationality, in the name of visceral depth, in the name of sex, in the name of perfect instantaneous freedom." Saul Bellow
February 6, 2010 at 4:32 am
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Just before World War II his wife and he return to their native Poland, where they are shot and dumped into a mass grave. He alone survives and escapes to the West to live with relatives in New York, where he again detects the continuing collapse of civilization.
February 5, 2010 at 10:06 am
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hmmm..... well... you only live to tell
February 5, 2010 at 10:46 am
Somebody's got to... the world needs at least a few witnesses, sad to say.
February 5, 2010 at 12:01 pm
Thanks for mentioning Jack Adler, https://isurvived.org/Survivors_Folder/Adler_Jack.html
February 5, 2010 at 1:34 pm
Wow! What a powerful soul he is for he helps people believe in the impossible!
February 5, 2010 at 2:52 pm
Yes, civilizations are collapsed in NY and by NY
February 5, 2010 at 9:56 pm
Mmmm, the novelist Saul Bellow means that from fairly elevated historical and literary perspective, one that's equally applicable, in a sense, to any major world city. New York doesn't have a monopoly on urban, social decadence, nor the center of it all. Not Bellow's implication.
February 6, 2010 at 4:28 am
In Mr. Sammler’s Planet in 1969 Bellow again confronts the spirit of modern times, the lawlessness of Raskolnikovs. During the twenties and thirties Artur Sammler, a Jew, knows many Bloomsbury intellectuals and detects the unraveling of the social bonds of the West.
February 5, 2010 at 7:38 am
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“We are,” as Herzog reflects in regard to the Holocaust, “on a more brutal standard now, a new terminal standard, indifferent to persons.” This inhuman indifference is exactly the same spirit of barbarism against which Zhivago attempts to affirm individual life. Herzog confronts this anti-human spirit because he continues to think and care about belief, continues “to believe in God.”
February 5, 2010 at 4:14 am
The aesthetes who went home to listen to Bach and Beethoven after a hard day’s work incinerating human beings at Auschwitz proved the everlasting inadequacy of aestheticism, of what Martin Heidegger in “The Age of the World View” approvingly called “the process by which art comes within the horizon of aesthetics.”
February 4, 2010 at 4:16 pm
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Frederick, I just got home from seeing A Serious Man. The Coen brothers? I believe you would find it interesting.
But surely you've already seen it?
But surely you've already seen it?
February 4, 2010 at 6:15 pm
Judging by the trailer, sounds like the typically cynical, disaffected Woody Allen genre. Is it?
February 5, 2010 at 3:16 am
Interesting, and certainly Adorno might agree -- poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric, after all. But you'll find nowhere in "The Age of the World Picture," or anywhere else in the his corpus, Heidegger's approval of the reduction of art to the purview of aesthetics. This "enframing" of art within aesthetic categories, for Heidegger (arguably similar to Hegel), marks the sign of art's demise, as it moves from coordinating lifeworlds to mere picturing and expression.
February 5, 2010 at 6:05 am
Do you deny his involvement with the Nazis as well?
February 5, 2010 at 7:37 am
Certainly not. He was in every way an indefensible Nazi thug. And I was afraid that you might venture such an extrapolation on my part. (Better, I'm learning, not even to mention the name, H --.) I'd intended, in fact, only to position H-- among his potentially-scary Romanticist roots (also H--s: Hegel, Herder, Holderlin) as regards the distinction between aesthetics and "art." Like Adorno, I find his mystifications sublimely terrifying; and frighteningly, for H-- the becoming-aesthetics of a (mystified) "Kunst" seems to parallel the becoming-cosmopolitan of (a mystified) "das Volk." (I.e., H--'s theory of art IS Nazism.) "Zooming out" a bit, I believe (with Isaiah Berlin), that this mystification process begins in Germany around 1760.
February 5, 2010 at 8:12 am
I agree with Isaiah Berlin on that and many other things as well...
February 5, 2010 at 8:19 am
Yes, I guess history tells the tale best: Isn't it interesting that by 1965, even while Berlin was tracing The Roots of Romanticism with a critical eye, various strains of Continental philosophy were still unself-consciously acting out Romanticism's repercussions: talking about "Appropriation," and "only a god can save us." It appears that the only humane way to talk about art and politics together -- without reducing one to the terms of the other -- is the way Berlin did it: to say that art may be a form of political philosophy, but only insofar as it reveals the irreducible plurality of historical currents. Essentially, I can find no way not to agree with Berlin.
February 5, 2010 at 10:34 am
Quoted for those perhaps unfamiliar with Berlin, from The Crooked Timber of Humanity, "The Apotheosis of the Romantic Will":
"When [romanticism] is justly condemned for the monstrous fallacy that life is, or can be made, a work of art, that the aesthetic model applies to politics, that the political leader is, at his highest, a sublime artist who shapes men according to his creative design, and that this leads to dangerous nonsense in theory and savage brutality in practice, this at least may be set to its credit: that it has permanently shaken the faith in universal, objective truth in matters of conduct, in the possibility of a perfect and harmonious society... (237).
"When [romanticism] is justly condemned for the monstrous fallacy that life is, or can be made, a work of art, that the aesthetic model applies to politics, that the political leader is, at his highest, a sublime artist who shapes men according to his creative design, and that this leads to dangerous nonsense in theory and savage brutality in practice, this at least may be set to its credit: that it has permanently shaken the faith in universal, objective truth in matters of conduct, in the possibility of a perfect and harmonious society... (237).
February 5, 2010 at 11:54 am
Agreeing with and given all that, though infinitely preferable to Heidegger, allowing for plurality, even Berlin is wrong, as is modernity, reducing art to mere rationality (Allan Bloom makes the same mistake). Art is not a form of politics, as is so crudely and commonly held today, even in what are supposedly universities of higher education, which ought to know and teach better but seldom do. The ancients understood what art is. Sophocles, for instance.
February 5, 2010 at 11:54 am
Upon further reflection this morning, I have to cite the tasty sentence that precede's my quotation above from Isaiah Berlin's"Apotheosis of the Romantic Will":
"This is the service rendered by romanticism and in particular the doctrine that forms its heart, namely, that morality is moulded by the will and that ends are created, not discovered." Nietzsche, et al.
"This is the service rendered by romanticism and in particular the doctrine that forms its heart, namely, that morality is moulded by the will and that ends are created, not discovered." Nietzsche, et al.
February 6, 2010 at 7:20 am
The disease has remained constant since Baumgarten— aetheticism—which Mann pointed out was responsible for Nietzsche’s “glorification of barbarism.” By repudiating “A merely aesthetic critique of modern history,” Herzog proclaims, as Mann writes, “to go beyond this age means to step out of an aesthetic era into a moral and social one.”
February 4, 2010 at 12:06 pm
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What began as a legitimate criticism of the bourgeois banality of the nineteenth century has deteriorated into a mechanical mouthing of negation, as in the mimicking of Beckett and Robert Lowell. These reductions have been accomplished by a steady narrowing of “the whole life of mankind” to the alienated subjective consciousness.
February 4, 2010 at 9:37 am
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I respect your view. Mimicking by whom? My point is their style of writing has become cliched.
February 5, 2010 at 3:22 am
"The canned sauerkraut of Spengler’s “Prussian Socialism,” the commonplaces of the Wasteland outlook, the cheap mental stimulants of Alienation, the cant and rant of pipsqueaks about Inauthenticity and Forlornness. I can’t accept this foolish dreariness. The subject istoo great, too deep for such weakness, cowardice—too deep, too great, Shapiro. It torments me to insanity that you should be so misled..." -Saul Bellow
February 4, 2010 at 6:58 am
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"...A merely aesthetic critique of modern history! After the wars and mass killings! You are too intelligent for this. You inherited rich blood. Your father peddled apples." -Saul Bellow
February 4, 2010 at 6:57 am
Bellow’s ability to draw on the accumulated store of tradition allows him to oppose the dominant mode of despair and to affirm the quintessential values that distinguish civilization. With the world wars and mass killings in mind, Herzog chastises his friend Shapiro for his knee-jerk nihilism: “We mustn’t forget how quickly the visions of genius become the canned goods of the intellectuals..."
February 4, 2010 at 4:57 am
I read something in the Guardian about books to read if you are depressed or low, and Herzog was a strong recommendation. It's on my 'to read' list.
February 5, 2010 at 3:17 am
Thanks for commenting. Saul Bellow will cheer you up... Bellow has an incredible sense of humor and uses it with full force to let the hot air out of much of the absurdities of life. In the midst of the collapse of his marriage and personal world, Herzog ridiculously writes letters to great writers and historical figures. High seriousness cast in comic relief... Should be on anybody's list of great books since WWII. Be prepared to think and laugh! Enjoy.
February 5, 2010 at 4:12 am
As much as I admire Augie March and Humbolt's Gift, I've always thought Herzog was Bellow's greatest. Was anybody ever better when it came to writing an English sentence?
February 6, 2010 at 2:06 pm
While I think highly of Herzog, I believe Mr. Sammler's Planet and Dean's December are probably his greatest novels.
I don't believe there's any novelist post-WWII who consistently gets near him. And you're right, his sense and use of language is superlative. From street bravura to flights of philosophical fancy, he's in a league of his own... gifted. Melville's flights come to mind at the moment but he's all in an older style.
I recently wrote a review on Ravelstein, if interested: https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/
I don't believe there's any novelist post-WWII who consistently gets near him. And you're right, his sense and use of language is superlative. From street bravura to flights of philosophical fancy, he's in a league of his own... gifted. Melville's flights come to mind at the moment but he's all in an older style.
I recently wrote a review on Ravelstein, if interested: https://fglaysher.com/Reviews/
February 6, 2010 at 2:28 pm
Thanks for commenting.
February 6, 2010 at 2:30 pm
Despite the feeling that “everything may go now,” Herzog denounces what he calls the wasteland outlook and declares he is “Very tired of the modern form of historicism which sees in this civilization the defeat of the best hopes of Western religion and thought.”
February 3, 2010 at 4:13 pm
Because everything stands threatened, the “metaphysical dimension” returns. Kierkegaard’s question, “the great earthquake” of his life, was whether or not the prosperity of his family was a sign of God’s blessing or curse.
February 3, 2010 at 1:16 pm
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What A DITHER.IiT WAS OBVIOUSLY A CURSE.
February 4, 2010 at 12:03 am
Either/Or.
February 4, 2010 at 3:52 am
Or there is no connection. Either/or choices are a sign of lazy thinking. Search for 6 possible answers - every time.
February 4, 2010 at 10:49 am
"Either/Or" is the title Kierkegaard's first book, 1843.
"Either/or is the word at which the folding doors fly open and ideals appear--O blessed sight! Either/or is the pass which admits to the absolute--God be praised! Yea, Either/or is the key to heaven." "6 possible answers" would probably be about the same to Kierkegaard as "Both--and is the way to hell." Kierkegaard might argue that to include everything is the laziest, modern approach and a failure to distinguish clearly.
"Either/or is the word at which the folding doors fly open and ideals appear--O blessed sight! Either/or is the pass which admits to the absolute--God be praised! Yea, Either/or is the key to heaven." "6 possible answers" would probably be about the same to Kierkegaard as "Both--and is the way to hell." Kierkegaard might argue that to include everything is the laziest, modern approach and a failure to distinguish clearly.
February 4, 2010 at 11:26 am
Either a divorce or a marriage.
February 4, 2010 at 2:16 pm
Can't have both.
February 5, 2010 at 3:23 am
Herzog, “a specialist in spiritual self-awareness,” seeks to comprehend the demise of “the passionate search for absolute truth” and its replacement with the crude materialism of modern times. In a manner reminiscent of Thomas Mann, Herzog perceives that barbarism is making the rupture explicit by revealing the bankruptcy of Western civilization.
February 3, 2010 at 8:28 am
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"Relief from the pursuit of absolutes made life pleasant. Only a small class of fanatical intellectuals, professionals, still chased after these absolutes. But our revolutions, including nuclear terror, return the metaphysical dimension to us. All practical activity has reached this culmination: everything may go now, civilization, history, meaning, nature. Everything!" -Saul Bellow
February 3, 2010 at 6:31 am
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Are you a fan of Slavoj Zizkek and Jean Baudrillard? Your work has this; almost, but, not-so-much Post-Modernist logic to it. Not an insult m8. I kinda like different branches of the philosophical labyrinth...I suppose. Keep it up.
February 3, 2010 at 7:06 am
No. Neither to my taste. Far from an insult, a compliment, in my terms. I've never been interested in the sophistry of Derrida and similar theoreticians. They've mostly served only to corrupt culture and literature. Are part of the problem. Thanks for the encouragement.
February 3, 2010 at 8:27 am
Are we talking about the same planet? Reminds me of Derrida et al. Highly theoretical, abstruse... Not my cup of tea.
February 3, 2010 at 9:09 am
Thanks, Bobbie, I really needed a "thumbs up" today. Bellow had a great sense of humor...
February 3, 2010 at 9:50 am
As a writer, I'm not interested in video but words...
February 3, 2010 at 11:00 am
...serious words, rare as they are.
February 3, 2010 at 1:13 pm
Moses Herzog, an intellectual in the middle of a nervous breakdown, desperately writes such letters as the following one to various historical and fictional persons in an attempt to understand the personal crisis of his divorce and the public decline of “post-Christian America”: “In the seventeenth century the passionate search for absolute truth stopped so that mankind might transform the world.”
February 3, 2010 at 4:55 am
Great book, great capsule....
February 3, 2010 at 1:09 pm
Is that capsule of pain-killer or time capsule? About the same?
February 3, 2010 at 1:12 pm
In Herzog in 1964 Saul Bellow connects the rupture that became evident during the Renaissance with the manifestation in the political realm of a brutal drive toward power and revolution.
February 2, 2010 at 4:16 pm
His personae closely resemble Nietzsche’s decadent anti-hero Zarathustra—minus the “gay wisdom.” Such angst had as much to do with the ontological dislocation as with the new pressure of the fear of its ultimate expression through the atom bomb.
February 2, 2010 at 12:01 pm
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In Endgame in 1957 Beckett goes to the heart of the matter: “The Bastard! He doesn’t exist!” The despair, alienation, and grim fortitude with which his personae greet the loss of all ideals constitutes an attempt at affirmation of the individual in the face of the devolution of everything for which Western civilization had once stood.
February 2, 2010 at 6:59 am
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His play Waiting for Godot in 1952 concurs with and advances the perception of Henri Bergson and the modernist artists that “time has stopped,” engulfing everything in a flood of relativity and synchronicity, in the blather of half a century.
February 2, 2010 at 5:54 am
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No one, not even Sartre in No Exit, gave better expression to the virulent cynicism than Samuel Beckett. Sensing the ontological void at the core of world civilization, Beckett celebrated it with a vengeance, reveling in the nihilism that had become de facto public and private cultus.
February 1, 2010 at 4:38 pm
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Poets and artists throughout the West continued to feel nauseated by the spiritual banality of modern society, which sank to further record depths of crude materialism after the war. Yet most writers actually embraced the general pattern of mass culture by withdrawing into their own solipsistic lives, supported only by the narcissistic anodynes of nihilism.
February 1, 2010 at 1:04 pm
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World War II brought the greatest affirmation of world organization the world had ever known and rendered impossible any full retreat into the traditional isolationism of the United States. With the Marshall plan simultaneously combatting economic ruin and, in effect, communism, the world economy soon took off and entered a long period of unprecedented prosperity.
February 1, 2010 at 8:58 am
But please don't let us have more wars to make the US economy to grow :o)
February 2, 2010 at 3:57 am
I couldn't agree more. President Dwight D. Eisenhower's denouncement of the "military industrial complex" is as much of a fear and component of our current problems as it ever was, now on an ever-more global level, drawing arguably all nations into it. Woodrow Wilson and FDR understood the dilemma in their own ways, even as the European armament manufacturers also contributed to those respective wars in their own ways.
Where does the world go from here? Can the world avoid repeating the experience?
Where does the world go from here? Can the world avoid repeating the experience?
February 2, 2010 at 5:51 am
In little more than a couple of years the world had gone from a hopeful new beginning toward finding “a permanent structure” for peace to ominous alignments that, as Roosevelt told Congress, “have been tried for centuries and have always failed.”
February 1, 2010 at 5:23 am
The shape of the future was set. In March of 1946 Churchill’s speech “The Sinews of Peace” warned the free world of an iron curtain of barbarism descending upon Eastern Europe.
January 31, 2010 at 5:20 pm
In March of the following year President Truman praised the objectives of the United Nations and rightly committed the United States to helping “free people to maintain their free institutions and their national integrity against aggressive movements that seek to impose upon them totalitarian regimes.”
January 31, 2010 at 5:19 pm
With the death of Roosevelt in April of 1945, shortly after his return from Yalta, the responsibility of ending World War II and the future of the United Nations passed to Harry Truman. Even before the United Nations Charter was ratified in June of 1945 ominous signs were apparent throughout Eastern Europe, and, once the Soviet Union began to abuse the veto, in the United Nations as well.
January 31, 2010 at 1:31 pm
Barely had Roosevelt returned from Yalta before the will to unity ofthe major powers began to falter. Stalin soon violated many of the agreements reached there, flagrantly in regard to Poland. Churchill and Roosevelt himself had separately worked out exclusive alliances with Stalin on certain particulars, while Stalin had not even bothered to read before the meeting key documents from Roosevelt on world organization.
January 31, 2010 at 10:22 am
At Yalta he had expressed the tough-minded realization, as he had on other occasions, that world organization would not yet secure peace but might at least last for about fifty years. From that perspective, he reported to Congress that the universal organization was “the beginnings of a permanent structure of peace.”
January 31, 2010 at 8:09 am
Roosevelt did not intend to make that mistake. Roosevelt’s conception was not a luminescent New Jerusalem descending from heaven already perfectly constructed for the habitation of humankind. He recognized from the vicissitudes of the League that the evolution of world federation was a tumultuous process dependent on the will of humanity to work and sacrifice for peace.
January 31, 2010 at 6:22 am
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Isolationist elements in both the United States and Europe notwithstanding, the masses had also perceived to some degree the validity of the same lesson and longed for a cessation of war. Roosevelt’s conception of world organization was more profound than Woodrow Wilson’s ebullient optimism, which had led him to an unyielding position that kept the United States from joining the League of Nations.
January 30, 2010 at 8:25 am
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The havoc of World War I had forced upon farsighted statesmen the only means of escape, and now the lesson had been repeated. Roosevelt’s emphasis on the recurrence of the obligation of preventing war underscores the lesson that he and many statesmen drew from the immense devastation of World War II, from the slaughter of more than fifty million people.
January 30, 2010 at 6:05 am
"For the second time, in the lives of most of us, this generation is face to face with the objective of preventing wars. To meet that objective, the nations of the world will either have a plan or they will not. The groundwork of a plan has now been furnished and has been submitted to humanity for discussion and decision...." F. D. Roosevelt
January 30, 2010 at 4:35 am
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I couldn't agree more. I argue and suggest in my writing that this is the highest vision of life in our time--humanity. Over the decades since WWII, there has been much backsliding on the part of all the nations who signed their names to the UN Charter, but the world's need for a profound change of approach and heart has only continued to grow...
If poets and other artists are, as Ezra Pound wrote, "the antennae of the race," we should be striving harder to serve this vision of a humane, democratic, global order, safeguarding all peoples, through an effective, consultative world body. Instead, we allow the politicians, who all too often have no vision, but the cynical balance of nationalistic power, to set the direction for the global culture and lead the world back, time and time again, to Hell...
In fairness, many artists have caught the vision, or parts of it, but it is insufficiently articulated, formless, too unconscious in conception and definition. For instance, poetry in most Western countries, for decades, has been stuck in the postmodern vein, re-writing the already-written vision of the self and its paltry, stifling obsessions. I would suggest, and do in my books, that there is a much wider, new, changing world out there that poets and writers, all artists and entertainers, need to take account of. In a word, change the Vision, change the culture...
If poets and other artists are, as Ezra Pound wrote, "the antennae of the race," we should be striving harder to serve this vision of a humane, democratic, global order, safeguarding all peoples, through an effective, consultative world body. Instead, we allow the politicians, who all too often have no vision, but the cynical balance of nationalistic power, to set the direction for the global culture and lead the world back, time and time again, to Hell...
In fairness, many artists have caught the vision, or parts of it, but it is insufficiently articulated, formless, too unconscious in conception and definition. For instance, poetry in most Western countries, for decades, has been stuck in the postmodern vein, re-writing the already-written vision of the self and its paltry, stifling obsessions. I would suggest, and do in my books, that there is a much wider, new, changing world out there that poets and writers, all artists and entertainers, need to take account of. In a word, change the Vision, change the culture...
January 30, 2010 at 5:20 am
" The groundwork of a plan has now been furnished and has been submitted to humanity for discussion and decision...."
... and that decision had been taken by GWB the "Whore on Terror" ...
... and that decision had been taken by GWB the "Whore on Terror" ...
January 30, 2010 at 5:24 am
I would argue, look to the future and how to change the software program that's running the global computer... Reboot it... Human beings have that capacity, to change direction, at a very profound level, when experience necessitates, as history demonstrates repeatedly throughout the millennia. In my view, we are at such a moment in global history. We can wait for more convulsions to force us to change, which has been the usual approach of humanity, or we, the human beings of planet Earth, can choose to embrace the needed changes, through consultation, debate, cooperation, instead of bloodshed and horror.
January 30, 2010 at 5:35 am
The United States also insisted on having the veto, a fact impressed upon Carlos Romulo, the Philippine ambassador at the first United Nations Assembly in San Francisco in April to June of that year. After President Roosevelt’s return from Yalta he addressed Congress on the first of March 1945 and presented the results of the long effort toward forming a universal organization.
January 29, 2010 at 9:39 am
The thorniest barrier to world organization proved to be the method of voting in the Security Council. At Yalta in the Crimea in February of 1945 Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin finally agreed that all major powers would have the veto.
January 29, 2010 at 7:07 am
All these and other efforts toward rational world governance and toward recognition that the world had become one unified economy in all spheres of life achieved fruition at Dumbarton Oaks in August to October of 1944. This meeting of British, Chinese, Soviet, and American representatives produced the first draft of recommendations that eventually evolved into the Charter of the United Nations.
January 29, 2010 at 5:25 am
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I really enjoy the random information you out out, it truly causes one to either think, or learn more about what you said. Kudos to you for elevating the thought process!
January 29, 2010 at 7:33 am
Thank you for saying so. I appreciate it. And shall strive to be worthy of such good words.
Far from random, I do hope I have learnt from Aristotle's admonition that the poet must carefully select and choose his material.
Far from random, I do hope I have learnt from Aristotle's admonition that the poet must carefully select and choose his material.
January 29, 2010 at 8:04 am
Throughout World War II other significant steps were taken toward forming world organization such as the United Nations Declaration of January 1942, which was the first use of Roosevelt’s term for the countries leagued against the forces of fascism; the UN conferences on Food and Agriculture and on Relief and Rehabilitation in 1943;
January 28, 2010 at 4:39 pm
...the International Labor Organization and the Bretton Woods conference on the International Monetary Fund in 1944.
January 28, 2010 at 4:38 pm
They further stated that “all of the nations of the world, for realistic, as well as spiritual reasons must come to the abandonment of the use of force.” Indubitably the realistic reasons included the atom bomb, about which Einstein had written Roosevelt as early as mid-1939.
January 28, 2010 at 2:53 pm
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This articulation of collective security was reaffirmed by Roosevelt in August of 1941 in the Atlantic Charter, which both he and Churchill signed and which mentions “the establishment of a wider and permanent system of general security.”
January 28, 2010 at 10:11 am
In his 1941 address on the State of the Union, President Roosevelt announced his Four Freedoms, which outlined his determination to defend the defining qualities of civilization. He also advocated the reduction of armaments, which had been part of the League Covenant, so that, as Roosevelt put it, “no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor.”
January 28, 2010 at 6:27 am
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Emperor Akbar. Fatehpur Sikri. |
Emperor Akbar. Fatehpur Sikri.Emperor Akbar. Fatehpur Sikri.January 26, 2010The Mughal emperor’s Pachisi Courtyard. In front of the Ibadat Khana, House of Worship. Akbar’s court poets Faizi and Urfi receive the Persona. Rabindranath Tagore, Amir Khosrow, Kabir, Bulleh Shah, Lalan, and Sarmad, the...
January 27, 2010 at 6:01 am
In late 1939 the US State Department formed a committee onthe desirable shape of the postwar world, the recommendations of which gradually moved toward some form of world organization. Franklin D. Roosevelt had accompanied the delegation of President Wilson to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and well understood the reasons for the creation of the League, as he made clear in his 1923 “Plan to Preserve World Peace.”
January 26, 2010 at 4:26 pm
Statesmen on both sides of the Atlantic stepped back and allowed barbarism to fill the void. Even before the commencement of concerted hostilities, some observers, instead of dismissing collective security, began to consider ways of strengthening it. Despite all the limitations of the League, it was a step toward rational maintenance of order and liberty for all peoples.
January 26, 2010 at 1:54 pm
With the return of belligerent nationalism and militarism, few perceptive observers during the thirties failed to sense the approach of a day of doom. Unlike prior to World War I, many people now feared for the existence of civilization, while others deluded themselves with such fantasies as the New York World’s Fair of the summer of 1939.
January 26, 2010 at 9:06 am
As Ibn Khaldun observed in 1377, a regime that uses “forced labour” and robs people of their property destroys “all incentive to cultural enterprise” and ruins its own civilization. This correlation of spiritual with material collapse is attested by the official atheism of both Machiavellian regimes.
January 25, 2010 at 4:33 pm
Mann’s indictment concentrates on precisely the radical rupture that fascism posed for Western civilization. Fascism brought to the fore exactly those issues that Dostoevsky had observed in the nineteenth century. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Leszek Kolakowski, and Czeslaw Milosz observed the same ontological rupture at the core of the thought-process of communism.
January 25, 2010 at 1:25 pm
The disjunction was irremediable and has led directly to the collapse of communism.
January 25, 2010 at 1:25 pm
To clarify: is this the communist ideal as a motivating force in the minds of average Europeans, or the communist ideal as the motivating force in the minds of average Chinese, Vietnamese, and Laotians? Just curious.
January 26, 2010 at 5:24 pm
It's the communist "ideal" that murdered more than 60 million people in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, and elsewhere.
January 26, 2010 at 5:31 pm
Naturally. But the same collectivist spirit which inspired people to take part in or tolerate those sorts of actions continues to motivate hundreds of millions in China, Vietnam, and Laos. The government of China is trying, last I heard, to switch focus to a blander nationalism - though I know little about that. I do know, from speaking to Chinese people, that when they wake up in the morning, they are motivated by a flag that is red - in the same way people in America might be motivated by another flag. So I would not call Communism dead in Asia, just yet - and it's an important distinction, being dead/alive, because what motivates the population of the largest country in the world is important. But that is just my bit.
January 26, 2010 at 5:42 pm
Thanks for commenting.
I've traveled and studied all over China, Beijing, X'ian, out to the Uighur region in the northwest to Dunhuang, Southeast in Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and elsewhere. To the extent that the communist "ideal" still exists among the people, versus the cynical tyranny that oppresses them--all the worse for China, and the world.
On the other hand, I am willing to concede that the "ideal" is still alive and well in some American universities. Many who imagine they have superior intellects have so dehumanized their souls that they routinely ignore the horror of the individual human beings whose lives were ruined and destroyed, concealed behind the appalling abstraction of 60 million people.
Dostoyevsky understood these dynamics very well. For further reflections on his work skip down over the last several days...
I've traveled and studied all over China, Beijing, X'ian, out to the Uighur region in the northwest to Dunhuang, Southeast in Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and elsewhere. To the extent that the communist "ideal" still exists among the people, versus the cynical tyranny that oppresses them--all the worse for China, and the world.
On the other hand, I am willing to concede that the "ideal" is still alive and well in some American universities. Many who imagine they have superior intellects have so dehumanized their souls that they routinely ignore the horror of the individual human beings whose lives were ruined and destroyed, concealed behind the appalling abstraction of 60 million people.
Dostoyevsky understood these dynamics very well. For further reflections on his work skip down over the last several days...
January 26, 2010 at 6:02 pm
It's a pity that there are still a lot of folks in China who are reduced to finding a facsimile of meaning in a colossal lie(at the point of a gun, no less), yes. But it won't truly be dead until they can get out of bed in the morning for the sake of something else.
Hah, I know the people you mean. I hadn't thought about them - they are not quite as important to the system of the world economy as the Chinese workforce, is my understanding. And they tend to grow out of it by the time they do enter the workforce(if they do).
But yes, I'll take a look. Anything about Dostoevsky interests me.
Hah, I know the people you mean. I hadn't thought about them - they are not quite as important to the system of the world economy as the Chinese workforce, is my understanding. And they tend to grow out of it by the time they do enter the workforce(if they do).
But yes, I'll take a look. Anything about Dostoevsky interests me.
January 26, 2010 at 6:12 pm
Rather hard to work when one's in a Gulag or dead... better to be dead in head than the heart... That's essentially what Dostoyevsky meant when he wrote 2+2=5.
January 27, 2010 at 1:14 pm
Because Mann recognized in The Coming Victory of Democracy “absolute force” or the will to power as the core of fascism, his denunciations are equally applicable to communism: "Democracy must understand this new thing in all of its thoroughly vicious novelty.... The fascist interpretation of the world and of history is one of absolute force, wholly free of morality and reason and having no relation to them."
January 25, 2010 at 9:00 am
Yahhh its true but the fact is that we have a habbit of taking things for granted. Thats the main reason behind all these.
January 26, 2010 at 7:26 am
Thanks for commenting. Yes, it can seem the world is always falling down, somehow. And history is strewn with the wreckage of civilizations. I've been reading a lot lately of Fatehpur Sikri, which Akbar abandoned suddenly, so it comes to mind, not to mention his entire dynasty... Somehow the human race limps on...
January 26, 2010 at 9:10 am
From February to May of 1938 Thomas Mann traveled across the United States lecturing on the threat of fascism and its radical departure from Western values.
January 25, 2010 at 6:08 am
Revolted by the crude materialism and the aesthetic and moral barbarism of the fascist regimes, Mann excoriates what he identifies as his own German inclination to regard “life and intellect, art and politics as totally separate worlds” and laments the trampling of “the traditional values underlying Western culture.”
January 25, 2010 at 6:08 am
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The collective will of Western civilization to resist the evil of power-hungry nihilists had atrophied and required Hitler’s invasion of Poland in September of 1939 and the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December of 1941 to revive it.
January 24, 2010 at 2:11 pm
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The League of Nations, as Wilson and others had emphasized, was only as strong as member-nations were willing to make it in the interest of “public right.” Far from constituting a failure of the institution and its Covenant, the demise of its efficacy reflected the loss of commitment to defend the fundamental principles of civilization.
January 24, 2010 at 2:10 pm
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Chamberlain’s most cowardly act was surely his pandering to Hitler in September of 1938 at the conference of Munich. The despot who slept with a copy of Machiavelli next to his bed and who invoked Nietzsche and Wagner was given exactly what he wanted in exchange for a few glib promises to leave the remainder of Europe alone.
January 24, 2010 at 11:36 am
Instead of attempting to revivify the League and its federalist principles, many nations after 1936 withdrew further into isolationism and thereby capitulated to the fascists. Nowhere was this more apparent than in Great Britain where Chamberlain shamelessly espoused accommodation and permitted Hitler’s invasion of the Rhineland in 1936, his annexation of Austria in 1938, and his conquest of Czechoslovakia in 1939.
January 24, 2010 at 8:33 am
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With the Japanese seizure of Manchuria in 1931, the German withdrawal and rearmament, and the Italian subjugation of Ethiopia from 1935 to ‘36, there was little doubt that the efficacy of the League was a thing of the past and barbarism the in-coming wave of the future.
January 23, 2010 at 7:45 am
The Great Depression brought an end to international prosperity and initiated a decade-long decline in the effectiveness of the League, whichthe Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 could not prevent, despite its collection of sixty signatories committing on paper their countries, including Germany, Italy, and Japan, to repudiation of the use of force as an instrument of national policy and to peaceful settlement of disputes.
January 23, 2010 at 5:10 am
It had proven useful in settling or defusing minor conflicts and disagreements such as the Aaland Islands, Upper Silesia, and the status of Danzig.
January 23, 2010 at 5:10 am
By the time the Soviet Union joined the League of Nations in 1934, what little influence the world organization had left was already waning. The twenties had been a period of relative success for the League since there were few significant challenges to peace.
January 22, 2010 at 1:26 pm
Such understatement about the revolution and subsequent murder of millions of its own citizens can only grimly undercut the closing passage of the novel that seeks to draw sustenance from the “thaw” in political oppression during the fifties.
January 22, 2010 at 8:56 am
Lara, “the representative of life and existence,” is later arrested on a city street and sent off to the Gulag Archipelago. Their child ends up an uneducated orphan and laundry girl for soldiers in World War II. Thinking of the revolution that has victimized her and so many millions, Gordon remarks, “It has often happened in history that a lofty ideal has degenerated into crude materialism.”
January 22, 2010 at 3:37 am
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What Zhivago calls the “madness” and “absurd nightmare” deprives him of a profession, a livelihood, his family and home, until there is “nothing personal left.” According to his own diagnosis the strain of living a life of “constant systematic duplicity,” in what Osip Mandelstam called the “Wolf-hound century,” catches up with him and results in death by heart attack.
January 21, 2010 at 3:55 pm
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Similarly Gordon defines Christianity as “the mystery of the individual.” In place of Dostoevsky’s God-man or man-god, Pasternak advances something approaching Life-god or Death-god, individual human freedom or mass communal oppression.
January 21, 2010 at 11:06 am
Later Lara’s friend Sima defends “individuality and freedom” when she contends both have evolved out of Christianity and are equated with a life principle that flourishes free of ideology. Along these lines Zhivago refutes a revolutionary by insisting “I think that nothing can be gained by brute force. People must be drawn to good by goodness.”
January 21, 2010 at 7:17 am
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Goodness, kindness has away of drawing people closer to it than any force. When force is applied as a means of communication amongst individuals, it only begets hate and resentment. It is in furtherance of this that people of all walks of life need to make the most of those times that they have to make peace and to live harmoniously.
January 21, 2010 at 9:17 am
Thanks for commenting. Amen. Now how do we get 6 billion other people to agree! Boris Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago is sort of a story about that, not to reduce it to a simplistic morality tale. Of course, it's a tragedy, fully gazing into the face of evil and good, and human possibility...
January 21, 2010 at 11:03 am
It is for good men and women to make the initiative of goodness and to stand in there with the truth for the common good of all mankind. There is no one, no better man than you and me. We can do it, we have to do it to save humanity and ourselves.
January 21, 2010 at 11:39 am
While I have a healthy ego and a sense of responsibility, I hesitate to declare myself good; human, yes. Too many people in history have imagined they alone know the way to the good, leading to dire consequences for humanity, partly what Zhivago is about.
January 21, 2010 at 1:07 pm
True indeed, but being human does not stop us from doing good. I believe one of the pillars of humanity is goodness although Hobbes posits that we're born inherently bad. When we give up and adopt Lombrosios theory that we're criminal or have criminal tendencies until proven otherwise, we shall never achieve any goodness to ourselves and to others.
January 21, 2010 at 10:08 pm
How often in the history of all nations have people imagining they're doing good, done evil. Humility and moderation before the limitations of our own knowledge of right and wrong are virtues humanity ignores only at its peril.
I don't believe human beings are born evil, but with free will allowing us to choose. All too often we human beings become overzealous, thinking we're doing good, and send the weak, the vulnerable, the despised to wrack and ruin.
Zhivago dramatizes exactly such a collapse of civilization in the Soviet Union as a human dynamic all peoples must be on their guard against as a moral duty and necessity for the good of all.
I don't believe human beings are born evil, but with free will allowing us to choose. All too often we human beings become overzealous, thinking we're doing good, and send the weak, the vulnerable, the despised to wrack and ruin.
Zhivago dramatizes exactly such a collapse of civilization in the Soviet Union as a human dynamic all peoples must be on their guard against as a moral duty and necessity for the good of all.
January 22, 2010 at 3:23 am
Sir Frederick Gaysher,
What has being good to do with ANY RELIGION?
What has being good to do with ANY RELIGION?
January 22, 2010 at 9:07 am
Certain percepts ethical concepts are a-priori, Like kant said( & I believe him, (or would like to believe him), thou shat kill iss one of them.
Talking about christanity, (objectively) it is hard to believe that you are born out of sin committed by Adam & Eve.
Every living organism
Original Sin and other rhe on this earth is made ( God knows what by whom) is to procreate and continue it's species.
Talking about christanity, (objectively) it is hard to believe that you are born out of sin committed by Adam & Eve.
Every living organism
Original Sin and other rhe on this earth is made ( God knows what by whom) is to procreate and continue it's species.
January 22, 2010 at 9:16 am
Is any other mamal, or primate born with the 'original sin'?
Why do we forget that we are just another species, called homo-sapiens. We need not refer to Darwin or Lamark in order to confirm that our species shout survive.
" Before ' Hiroshima' Human beings had to face the prospect their death as an Individual, noe they'll wl have to face their death as a species."- Arthur koesther ( in 50's- probably-Ref Janus a summing up)
Talking about Christanity again (objectively) the 'crusades'
have caused more casualities than two world wars summed together.
Why do we forget that we are just another species, called homo-sapiens. We need not refer to Darwin or Lamark in order to confirm that our species shout survive.
" Before ' Hiroshima' Human beings had to face the prospect their death as an Individual, noe they'll wl have to face their death as a species."- Arthur koesther ( in 50's- probably-Ref Janus a summing up)
Talking about Christanity again (objectively) the 'crusades'
have caused more casualities than two world wars summed together.
January 22, 2010 at 9:28 am
I need not summuries the genocides, Turkish, Nikaragua, Vietnam, Al salvador, etc. Noam Chomsy ( Whom we know as a linguists) has written a land mark boob ' manufacturing Concent' Execllent film of more than 1 hr. was made by an American Peter Wintonic & his collegue.
Talking about religion, Albert Eisteins Book ' The world as a see it' is a guide ( or should be ) to humanity.
Einstein talks on 3 issues. World as i see it ( where he takes cognizense of religions, 1. Primitive religions based on fear. 2.Institutionalized religions. 3. cosmic religion.
Talking about religion, Albert Eisteins Book ' The world as a see it' is a guide ( or should be ) to humanity.
Einstein talks on 3 issues. World as i see it ( where he takes cognizense of religions, 1. Primitive religions based on fear. 2.Institutionalized religions. 3. cosmic religion.
January 22, 2010 at 9:39 am
Einsten said " God does not play dice with the world"
Max Plank said " Dont tell Gog what to do?
Sthefe Hwakings said " God does paly dise with thw world, but we do not know Where HE HIDES IT"
Max Plank said " Dont tell Gog what to do?
Sthefe Hwakings said " God does paly dise with thw world, but we do not know Where HE HIDES IT"
January 22, 2010 at 9:43 am
Forgetting sartre, Camus, Kirkegor, etc, I can not figure how God comes into the picture? ( Bertrand russels logic- Ref: Debate between Bertrand Russel & father Copelston: Book ':Why I am not a Christian'
Sir, I hope that I have not offended you by way of your religious sentiments. If so, my oppologies.
Sir, I hope that I have not offended you by way of your religious sentiments. If so, my oppologies.
January 22, 2010 at 9:48 am
Mr. Kukarni, I'm not offended, just confused. I can't find where I mentioned God.
January 22, 2010 at 9:57 am
Sir, Of course you did not mentioned God.But certain ara's friend Sima, whom you quoted in your initial text, did mentioned 'christianity'. Christianity presumes the existence of God i suppose.
If this referance is wrong ( meaning your initial quote of certain Sims, you have all the right to be offended against me for wasting your valuable time.)
If this referance is wrong ( meaning your initial quote of certain Sims, you have all the right to be offended against me for wasting your valuable time.)
January 22, 2010 at 8:55 pm
Against this background of the devastation and aftermath of the October Revolution, Yuri and Lara endure and affirm the sanctity of individual life. Early in the novel Zhivago’s Uncle Nikolai argues that “what has for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but an inward music.”
January 21, 2010 at 4:13 am
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Lara, with whom he falls in love, sums up best their shared revulsion with the new regime: “All customs and traditions, all our way of life, everything to do with home and order, has crumbled into dust in the general upheaval and reorganization of society. The whole human way of life has been destroyed and ruined.”
January 20, 2010 at 4:03 pm
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At one point a young revolutionary he meets on a train reminds him of Dostoevsky’s nihilists and of Peter Verkhovensky’s “frivolity and shallowness.” Everywhere Zhivago observes doctrinaire communism undermining the foundation of society and the well-spring of human affection.
January 20, 2010 at 1:14 pm
In Doctor Zhivago, written by the end of 1955 and only published in Russia in the ‘80s, Boris Pasternak takes account of the Bolshevik Revolution and of its implications from the events of 1905 to the early 1950s. Although Yuri Zhivago was “once filled with enthusiasm for revolution,” the novel recounts his growing disaffecton with communism.
January 20, 2010 at 10:36 am
At exactly the same time that Wilson was affirming these standards Lenin was undermining them in Russia. Though an attempt was made to assist the Whites against the Reds, the effort was actually half-hearted because the Western nations were eager to return to their domestic concerns. Few persons were sufficiently worried about the communist crevasse that was opening at the edge of Europe.
January 20, 2010 at 8:31 am
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Regardless of the postwar triumph of isolationism, the failure of the United States to enter the League of Nations, Woodrow Wilson succeeded in introducing into international affairs the highest federalist standards that had evolved out of Christianity, Roman law, and Greek democracy.
January 20, 2010 at 6:44 am
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Do you think that this principles are the reason why United Nations even now seems to be ailing from control issues, especially with the United States! What are the working parameters within which the body politic that is U.N. Can be effective and inclusive in its policies and admnistrative matters to the inclusion of all those in whom it was formed to serve?
January 20, 2010 at 8:36 am
In my view, the issues are about the same as they were under Woodrow Wilson; definitely the same as since the founding of the UN in 1945, the same "control issues"--the lack of will on the part of the member nations. WWII provided a lot of incentive to move forward from the League of Nations, and then everyone began to use the UN for their own nationalistic ends.
The USA is not the only nation who regards it as a useful tool of national policy. Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and so on, are all guilty as well, on various counts and times.
I address this more in subsequent posts.
The USA is not the only nation who regards it as a useful tool of national policy. Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and so on, are all guilty as well, on various counts and times.
I address this more in subsequent posts.
January 20, 2010 at 10:19 am
He had, as Stefan Zweig writes in The World of Yesterday, a “clear and simple plan.” Wilson’s experience as a historian of American history uniquely qualified him to recognize the imperative of federalism to stem the rising tide of barbarism. Surveying the ruins of the old monarchical world, he was the first statesman of stature to proclaim “There is a way of escape if only men will use it.”
January 20, 2010 at 3:45 am
Like the ancient Greek Cleisthenes who realized Athens had to move forward fromthe chaos and oppression of the tyrants to democracy, Wilson understood it was essential to move forward from the chaos and upheavals of the nation states to democratic federalist principles on the international level. As Secretary-General of the United Nations Dag Hammarskjold in1956 said, “Woodrow Wilson went to the heart of the matter.”
January 19, 2010 at 3:46 pm
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Although such persons as Lord Robert Cecil, Norman Angell, Jan Christian Smuts, and Leon Bourgeois were instrumental in the development of the idea of the application of federalist principles to the community of nations, it was President Woodrow Wilson who fully perceived the necessity of world governance to champion “public right” over the “interests of particular nations.”
January 19, 2010 at 11:44 am
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After August 1914, within Great Britain, the Lord Bryce Group and the League of Nations Society, among others, such as the Fabian Society under Leonard Woolf, worked diligently to further the direction of the Peace Conferences by advocating the abandonment of the old method of secret diplomacy and alliances and by calling for some type of strengthened Concert of Powers, ...
January 19, 2010 at 7:02 am
... while, in the United States, the League to Enforce Peace had its beginning as early as January of 1915, with Taft at its head.
January 19, 2010 at 7:02 am
"Enforce" peace?
January 19, 2010 at 7:12 am
The League to Enforce Peace, forerunner, really, to the League of Nations. The UN Charter, in no way quixotic, provides for a Military Staff Committee, Articles 46 and 47.
January 19, 2010 at 8:06 am
The Peace Conferences at the Hague in 1899 and 1907 had given impetus to the incipient notion that the threat of war and the maintenance of peace were the responsibilities of all nations, as had the many US initiatives and arbitration treaties of John Hay, Elihu Root, President William Howard Taft, and William Jennings Bryan—the last of whom signed thirty Advancement of Peace Treaties prior to the war.
January 18, 2010 at 4:30 pm
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During the Great War people in both Europe and the United States began to realize the extent of the barbarism that modern warfare constitutes.
January 18, 2010 at 4:29 pm
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The very notion of unbridled nationalism was called into question as total war quickly produced more than ten million corpses and more than thirty million maimed soldiers and civilians. Walter Lippmann cut to the quick: “It was such a happy time up until 1914.” Melville’s verse on the outbreak of the Civil War reads like a prophecy of the twentieth century: “Horror the sodden valley fills.”
January 18, 2010 at 7:57 am
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The European countries had been waging cold war for years and when open hostilities eventually came, the shock of the horror of modern warfare was so intense that it swept away, along with most of the surviving monarchies of the time, all vestiges of the nineteenth century belief in progress and the perfectibility of man.
January 18, 2010 at 5:51 am
Although the demise of the Austro-Hungarian Empire had been prophesied for years, most persons were more than a little complacent, which was especially true of the common man. Even Thomas Mann and Franz Kafka were stunned by the outbreak of war and by the rapidity with which countries took sides, though the latter’s writings had already expressed the angst produced by the pervasive ontological gloom.
January 17, 2010 at 4:37 pm
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The prevailing atmosphere was one of prosperity and optimistic abandonment to progress and to the immediacies of life. After all, it had been forty-four years, La Belle Epoque, since the Franco-Prussian War had convulsed Europe and welded together the separate saxon states into the German Empire.
January 17, 2010 at 1:00 pm
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Meanwhile in Europe the imminent threat of socialism had been considerably defused by more enlightened social legislation that increasingly acknowledged the human rights of the masses. The peoples of Europe took for granted the continuity of civilization, and few persons foresaw the outbreak of World War I.
January 17, 2010 at 8:13 am
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Unfortunately, radical tendencies, though widely held under control during the last decades of the nineteenth century, were exacerbated by reactionary policies and by endemic social injustices. As the twentieth century began, the reactionary rigidity at times provoked further unrest and anarchy.
January 17, 2010 at 6:05 am
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Despite enormous opposition, the late nineteenth century witnessed the continual spread of communism in Russia. The failure of the movement known as “going to the people” in the mid-seventies only confirmed the socialists in their use of violence, as in their finally successful assassination of Czar Alexander II in 1881.
January 16, 2010 at 7:00 am
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Frederick, I enjoy your posts, although I don't find it necessary to comment. And thanks for editing Robert Hayden's poems. I was a bit disappointed with Hayden's work as a whole. But who could forget "Those Winter Sundays" and "The Whipping?"
January 16, 2010 at 7:24 am
Those poems have long been Hayden's anthology pieces. Too bad. They only served to obscure the breadth of his vision. What do you find disappointing in his "work as a whole"?
January 16, 2010 at 8:54 am
It' been years since I read the book. I don't remember any specific negative reaction. Maybe I was expecting more poems like those typically anthologized. Anyway, I'm pleased to have the collection. Perhaps I get back to it someday.
January 16, 2010 at 9:00 am
Not to denigrate their poignancy, those poems tend to have a greater personal content that feed the postmodern palate more than Hayden's historically conscious poems. And they're short, safe little pieces that work well in a classroom.
Hayden's full vision challenges and critiques modernity at a very deep level, much deeper than the academy has shown itself capable of understanding or appreciating. More than 25 years after editing his work, I still feel that very deeply and have tried to address it in my own writing.
Hayden's full vision challenges and critiques modernity at a very deep level, much deeper than the academy has shown itself capable of understanding or appreciating. More than 25 years after editing his work, I still feel that very deeply and have tried to address it in my own writing.
January 16, 2010 at 10:00 am
Kirilov chooses to affirm nihilism by what he imagines to be a grand gesture. In a manner very different from Dostoevsky, Tolstoy attempted to respond to this same crisis of the spirit, as in his book The Kingdom of God Is Within You. With the tell-tale cunning of the guilty, Soviet authorities, after their own wading through blood in 1917, never permitted the publication of a separate edition of The Possessed.
January 15, 2010 at 11:08 am
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In “Modernity on Endless Trial,” Leszek Kolakowski articulates exactly what concerns Dostoevsky in The Possessed: “A world that has forgotten God has forgotten the very distinction between good and evil, has made human life meaningless, and has sunk into nihilism.”
January 15, 2010 at 9:41 am
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Human beings are by nature evil according to Locke's treatise Leviathan, it therefore supposes that God and not religion is what can give some semblance of tranquility in a society that is otherwise bad. Societies in their quest to be hip, adopts vices as the parameters of civility and good and throws caution and virtue to the wind. Its proper that mankind finds connection once more with the Most High, so as love and brotherhood to prevail and for our future generations to flourish. The time for this is now and the change we await is us.
January 17, 2010 at 4:45 pm
Thanks for commenting. You probably mean Thomas Hobbes, author of Leviathan; nevertheless, a more sober understanding of human nature than the Marxism both Dostoevsky and Kolakowski were responding to, the modern malaise.
I hesitate to say society is categorically "bad," not that I'm oblivious of its endless flaws. I'm not an anarchist or believe we can live somehow without a social order of some sort, preferably democratic to my tastes. The distinction between God and religion is an important one, recognizing the problematical history of religious organizations, with which I'd agree.
A fine sentence; let me quote it in full: "The time for this is now and the change we await is us."
I hesitate to say society is categorically "bad," not that I'm oblivious of its endless flaws. I'm not an anarchist or believe we can live somehow without a social order of some sort, preferably democratic to my tastes. The distinction between God and religion is an important one, recognizing the problematical history of religious organizations, with which I'd agree.
A fine sentence; let me quote it in full: "The time for this is now and the change we await is us."
January 17, 2010 at 5:43 pm
Kirilov’s decision to kill himself to affirm his unbelief, his refusal to “invent God,” conforms faithfully to the logic of Marx, who had heavily imbibed the philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach. That the mass of communists never imitated Kirilov can be explained only by their unmitigated pursuit of power.
January 15, 2010 at 4:08 am
Later Kirilov advances what to him is the heart of the matter: “If there’s no God, then I’m God.” Far from circumventing the problem, Kirilov connects the ethos of socialism with the determining loss of modern times. What Nietzsche was soon to discover, acknowledging Dostoevsky as his master, Kirilov perceives in his own deviant way: “If He doesn’t exist, then all will is mine.”
January 14, 2010 at 6:50 pm
Kirilov fully embodies the new barbarism by advocating the “total destruction in the name of the ultimate good” of “more than one hundred million heads . . . so that reason may be introduced in Europe.” In this he merely conforms to socialist doctrine and therefore is declared by a fellow anarchist “ahead of everyone.”
January 14, 2010 at 4:54 pm
who's Kirilov?
January 14, 2010 at 4:56 pm
A character in Dostoevsky's THE POSSESSED. (Or DEMONS, depending on the translator.) To me, he's a wonderful example of Chesterton's "madman", who's not lost his reason, but everything except his reason.
January 14, 2010 at 5:00 pm
That's a choice way to describe Kirilov... I like it. Dostoevsky's prototype of the coming Marxist, as well as, I suppose, the extreme modern radical of various stripes. Notice Dostoevsky fell short on the number a little, but was close. Ah, modernity, how do we human beings manage to go on?
January 14, 2010 at 6:43 pm
Attar. The Conference of the Birds. 7 Valleys.
January 14, 2010 at 6:59 am
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Attar. Conference of Birds. 7 Valleys. |
Attar through 7 ValleysAttar. The Conference of the Birds. 7 Valleys.January 14, 2010.Attar and a soaring flock of birds lift the Persona from the plain of Konya into another plane. Through Seven V...
January 14, 2010 at 6:59 am
The Communist Manifesto had prefigured these strategies for revolution, as had Chernyshevski in his 1863 novel What Is to Be Done? With overwhelming prescience, Dostoevsky foresaw the ontological rupture led from the “destruction of God” back to the “gorilla.” That this debasement should proceed in the political as well as the philosophical realm only stood to reason.
January 13, 2010 at 3:52 pm
As one socialist confesses to the police, they were trying "systematically to undermine the foundation of the existing order, to bring about the disintegration of the social structure and the collapse of all moral values, which would cause general demoralization and confusion. Then the broken, decaying society, sick and in full ferment, cynical and godless...could be taken over...."
January 13, 2010 at 10:56 am
The Nazis were doing the same. Attempting to prove the point that the only power was theirs, not belonging to a god or a moral order
January 15, 2010 at 8:25 am
Yes. The narrative isn't as clear, though, I think, with the Nazis. I mean, say, with Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, we have a clear literary record of grappling with the inner and outer demons, their rise to dominance. There's Kafka, but his demons and angst are more broadly modern, Thomas Mann's Dr. Fautus, etc. Or who would you send one to read?
January 15, 2010 at 9:31 am
Tried to post a minute ago and lost it. Sorry if this is coming up twice.
In terms of understanding the Nazi project, I'd suggest Heidegger. Although interesting to note that when H spoke to Der Speigel in '66 and said "...only a god can save us..." I believe he was referring to *another* god i.e. a non-Christian god. He joins Nietzsche then in calling for atonement for the killing of god. And he also acknowledges, in saying so, the Nazi's failure to complete what they set out to complete. Heidegger's yearning 20 years after Hitler's death proves the horrifying futility of the Nazi project.
In terms of understanding the Nazi project, I'd suggest Heidegger. Although interesting to note that when H spoke to Der Speigel in '66 and said "...only a god can save us..." I believe he was referring to *another* god i.e. a non-Christian god. He joins Nietzsche then in calling for atonement for the killing of god. And he also acknowledges, in saying so, the Nazi's failure to complete what they set out to complete. Heidegger's yearning 20 years after Hitler's death proves the horrifying futility of the Nazi project.
January 15, 2010 at 9:51 am
Yeah, I had thought of Heidegger, but he's not a literary person, a philosopher and professor. I'm familiar with that interview. There are writers of angst, Austrian and so on, but Dostoevsky clearly connects with socialism and names it. That's the difference to me, and one reason why his work rings so prescient still. Broadly, the modern problem succeeded; that's the problem.
Similarly, I would say, the same problem underlies why writers in the West have trouble in truly engaging with Islamic terrorism, and other reactionary phenomenon.
Similarly, I would say, the same problem underlies why writers in the West have trouble in truly engaging with Islamic terrorism, and other reactionary phenomenon.
January 15, 2010 at 10:24 am
I agree about D, no question. "All great literature ends in a conversion." That's D to me. The quote is from Deceit Desire and the Novel.
January 15, 2010 at 10:32 am
For Dostoevsky he idealized the Russian past and the Old Believers, imagining that history runs in reverse. That's the problem the reactionary in all traditions are up against. The results are always about the same. We have about 150 years of cultural history that demonstrate the phenomenon.
January 15, 2010 at 11:28 am
Stepan Verkhovensky represents a liberal aesthete who exults over his own early involvement and fellow traveling with the radical cause in the 1840s and ‘50s. The next generation are all nihilists and anarchists who have debased Stepan’s aesthetic and mildly socialist ideas. His son Peter Verkhovensky foments a socialist uprising and arranges the murder of a disaffected socialist.
January 13, 2010 at 7:43 am
In the novel Dostoevsky succinctly formulates the situation as a choice between God-man and man-god. The socialists choose man-god and attempt to idolize Stavrogin, the most uncompromising nihilist of the book. Central to Dostoevsky’s purpose is the chronicling of the progressive corruption of socialist ideas.
January 12, 2010 at 4:16 pm
Actually, it feels a little different when you read the original.
January 12, 2010 at 5:26 pm
How would you describe it?
January 12, 2010 at 5:31 pm
It is very hard to explain. Lets just say that the real text of real literature has some spark in it that goes much beyond any man-made idea...
January 12, 2010 at 5:36 pm
Also, American literature that becomes more and more a product of formulated process of creative writing classes that dissecting creativity, is far removed from original European novel writing, loosing this spark and much more.
January 12, 2010 at 5:39 pm
That's what makes it literature, instead of journalism, etc. Nuance, allusion, suggestion, tension, resonate, much more than literal meaning. Such things make fiction more than the "ideas." Granted. What were you thinking to begin with?
January 12, 2010 at 5:39 pm
I agree with you about the formulaic "creative" writing product and would-be avant-garde, actually as hackneyed as anything ever written. By choice, I've never been part of that crowd... I do believe serious literature can be written in such a way. None of the writers worth reading, American or European, whatever, come out of that kind of thing. Granted.
I'm still curious and interested about your original point. I've never imagined Dostoevsky or any other real writer is merely the sum of his or her ideas...
I'm still curious and interested about your original point. I've never imagined Dostoevsky or any other real writer is merely the sum of his or her ideas...
January 12, 2010 at 6:04 pm
Agree. I stand with you on that. What did I mean about Dostoevsky? I am not sure... I think, the "idea" part is just a very small portion of the book. He was mostly exploring the issue of forgiveness, I think. And faith, and trauma... Are we talking about Crime and P or Idiot?
January 12, 2010 at 8:51 pm
he was telling a story. Good books tell good stories. Theme and message grow out of doing that. In the best books, the reader feels the writer is exploring and discovering, not lecturing.
January 12, 2010 at 11:14 pm
Actually, I was talking about "The Possessed" or "The Devils," depending on translation. A prophecy, if not revelation, in a sense.
Dostoevysky is usually beyond crude lecturing and moralizing, and yet he has his clear intentions, not merely rambling language for a Deconstruction classroom. All this complexity is in his work and personality. A hundred and more years later, though, I feel Dostoevysky was limited by his times and his own vision, as all people and writers invariably are, cannot be otherwise. All the Slavophile and backwards direction in him does not wear well today.
Prescient, brilliant, and universal in a Russia way, but limited by all his bigotries that come out in A Writer's Diary and elsewhere. One of the greatest of artists, nonetheless.
Dostoevysky is usually beyond crude lecturing and moralizing, and yet he has his clear intentions, not merely rambling language for a Deconstruction classroom. All this complexity is in his work and personality. A hundred and more years later, though, I feel Dostoevysky was limited by his times and his own vision, as all people and writers invariably are, cannot be otherwise. All the Slavophile and backwards direction in him does not wear well today.
Prescient, brilliant, and universal in a Russia way, but limited by all his bigotries that come out in A Writer's Diary and elsewhere. One of the greatest of artists, nonetheless.
January 13, 2010 at 8:00 am
Such events as the first attempted assassination of Czar Alexander II in 1866 and the purge by Nechaev of an insufficiently zealous revolutionary indicated the direction in which Russia was moving. The new barbarism was threatening the values upheld by the Slavophiles as well as the values of those persons in favor of Westernization.
January 12, 2010 at 1:04 pm
say "slavophiles" three times fast
January 12, 2010 at 2:34 pm
Fourteen years later Dostoevsky achieved his most complete condemnation of socialism in The Possessed, which was published toward the end of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 to ‘71. The years since Crime and Punishment had made it increasingly clear that socialism was an unprecedented threat to the order of civilization.
January 12, 2010 at 8:19 am
Repulsed by Dostoevsky’s unequivocally religious understanding of his own work and of the events of his time, Western readers frequently reduce him, as they similarly reduce Murasaki Shikibu, author of the Japanese Tale of Genji, to merely an astute psychologist of human motivation—a reduction Dostoevsky himself would have certainly regarded as symptomatic of precisely the malaise against which he wrote.
January 12, 2010 at 6:51 am
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How strikingly relevant is Dostoevsky for today's time and culture.
January 12, 2010 at 7:02 am
How so?
January 12, 2010 at 7:07 am
Apropos of the Wet Snow perhaps, Elaine? But seriously, Dostoevsky (and Gogol) are difficult for Western readers because they don't like the fact that they changed the world. Nowadays, persecution of writers is far more subtle making the Russian writers more relevant than ever.
January 13, 2010 at 2:32 am
Right! Writing is not supposed to change the world. It's only words, words, words!! W. H. Auden, "poetry doesn't make anything happen," the mantra of academicians and classrooms... Dostoevsky was too intelligent and independent ever to fall for such stupidities...
How are writers persecuted today?
How are writers persecuted today?
January 13, 2010 at 8:05 am
Writers are persecuted by the mantra that writing is "not supposed to change the world".
January 13, 2010 at 10:30 am
Agreed. Writing changes consciousness and sensibility, thinking, the heart, if you will, where one finds value, meaning, and purpose, and therefore writing does and can change action, ultimately society itself through evolution and development of the individual--exactly how nihilism took over the social landscape.
January 13, 2010 at 10:52 am
Ultimately through the redeeming Christian love of Sonia, Raskolnikov replaces his socialist theories with the resurrection and reconciliation of a “new life.” Despite the affirmative ending, Dostoevsky directly connects socialism with the loss of religious faith and adumbrates the devastation of the future.
January 12, 2010 at 4:05 am
In an article foreshadowing his crime Raskolnikov argues that extraordinary men have the right to “step over a corpse and wade through blood,” the right to destroy the prevailing order in favor of the future “New Jerusalem,” the Marxist kingdom of freedom. This act of hubris at the core of the novel is explained at one point as a “turn away from God.”
January 11, 2010 at 12:52 pm
The protagonist Raskolnikov, emulating his idol Napolean, oversteps all obstacles in his pursuit of power and murders an old pawnbroker in order to steal her money to finance his socialist schemes. He justifies the murder on the grounds that great benefit will eventually accrue to mankind from killing the “vile noxious insect.”
January 11, 2010 at 9:35 am
Yeah, and look how well it worked out for him. Both of them, actually.
January 11, 2010 at 10:49 am
Ah, yeah, both of them... something about considering human beings "insects" tends to lead to trouble.
January 11, 2010 at 11:30 am
Yep, Dostoevsky's divided St Petersburg with its drunks, gamblers, debt collectors, snobbish civil servants and supercilious royal family is a warning to Britain today. The Raskalnikov's are out there.
January 12, 2010 at 6:01 am
Yes. Alas, Raskolnikov seems an archetype of what we human beings are so often given to, Utopian delusions, quick and easy fixes and social programs for this perennially flawed and violent world. Yet it is human to dream and hope, if we remain human; how otherwise can we lift our vision above ourselves?
January 12, 2010 at 6:49 am
By 1866 Dostoevsky had come to regard socialism as the “new spirit of infidelity” that was further cutting the people off from the sacred traditions of the past by substituting “progress in the name of science and economic truth.”
January 11, 2010 at 7:36 am
In 1848 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto at a time when national revolutions and workers’ uprisings were beginning to occur throughout the European continent. Dostoevsky himself had been a member of the socialist, Fourier circle of Petrashevsky in the late forties and served a prison sentence in Siberia from 1849 to 1854.
January 11, 2010 at 3:51 am
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In Crime and Punishment in 1866 Dostoevsky confronts the severity of the rupture and its implications for the future. From 1840 onward, socialism was increasingly influential throughout much of Europe and even occasionally in America as at Brook Farm, depicted in Hawthorne’s Blithedale Romance.
January 10, 2010 at 4:41 pm
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Regardless of the immense differences in ideology, I believe each tendency evolved as a response to the same crisis. As the old order continued to erode, the movements toward oppression and federation augmented and consolidated. The manifestation of the ontological rupture remains unresolved both in the political and individual, personal realms.
January 10, 2010 at 2:22 pm
Steeped in the cosmopolitan heritage of Roman and European jurisprudence, especially British common law, the American Founders asserted the validity of basic human rights from a universal perspective. Accompanying if not leading to this split in the political realm was the rupture in the metaphysical universe.
January 10, 2010 at 11:40 am
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Unlike the emerging Machiavellian ethos, fledgling democracy drew both on the humanistic Greco-Roman and the Judeo-Christian traditions. Whereas Machiavelli had sought to extend the power of the state, the Founders of the American Union sought to limit it partly by affirming natural law in the interest of civil order and the individual.
January 10, 2010 at 7:12 am
By the time of Machiavelli, the complete detachment of power from transcendent moral authority had taken place and the beginning of modern totalitarian application of power to entire nations had begun.
January 10, 2010 at 6:46 am
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Slowly those qualities that distinguish the Renaissance from the Middle Ages acquired hegemony and transformed European society from one tied to the feudal estate or province to one determined by racial, linguistic, and national origin.
January 10, 2010 at 4:16 am
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So too the universal authority of the feudal church was irrevocably eroded by the rise of nation-states and by its own inability to keep pace with the intellectual and spiritual development of society.
January 9, 2010 at 6:16 am
Another sign of change was the feudal economy of the Middle Ages had been based on the bartering of a rural serfdom, while the Renaissance economy became increasingly based on the exchange of money in an urban society.
January 8, 2010 at 10:58 am
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Today, I suppose it's debit cards...
January 9, 2010 at 6:21 am
and loans from China.
January 9, 2010 at 7:39 am
Thus the Magna Carta in 1215 and the first free European commune in Florence in 1266 marked significant steps toward formation of the nation-states that began to appear around 1500.
January 8, 2010 at 7:46 am
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The Middle Ages witnessed the periodic devastation of vast areas of territory for hundreds of years before the notion arose that social cohesion and order should take precedence over local ambitions, sovereignty, and religious belief.
January 8, 2010 at 5:39 am
notion arose and has yet to take hold
January 8, 2010 at 6:02 am
I grant there's a perspective from which I'd agree. Relative progress has taken place. We must remember that in order to preserve what forward momentum has been obtained, through much suffering and blood, alas. The scope is even wider now, global, in my view...
January 8, 2010 at 7:18 am
Publishing in the Post-Gutenberg Age
https://www.fglaysher.com/Post_Gutenberg_Publishing.html
The democratization and decentralization of the Internet and Post-Gutenberg Age are the greatest challenge to the old model of publishing.
January 7, 2010 at 7:06 am
https://www.fglaysher.com/Post_Gutenberg_Publishing.html
The democratization and decentralization of the Internet and Post-Gutenberg Age are the greatest challenge to the old model of publishing.
| Publishing in the Post-Gutenberg Age |
The democratization and decentralization of the Internet and Post-Gutenberg Age are the greatest challenge to the old model of publishing.
January 7, 2010 at 7:06 am
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Excellent.
January 7, 2010 at 8:24 am
Thanks for saying so. Writers should be much more positive about this enormous transformation. I don’t think most writers have sufficiently begun to realize that the Post-Gutenberg Age we’ve entered offers freedom and independence unlike anything the world has ever known.
January 7, 2010 at 10:05 am
Should say many; not enough anyway.
January 7, 2010 at 2:25 pm
Frederick, may I share this on my FB wall? I wish my father were alive today to read this...
January 7, 2010 at 5:27 pm
Of course... my wall's open to everybody.
January 8, 2010 at 3:20 am
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Rumi. Mevlana. Konya. |
Rumi. Mevlana. Konya.Rumi. Mevlana. Konya.A house in Konya, ancient Iconium, where St. Paul preached the Gospel. Around and around. Ethereal music and chanting. Another world. Around and around a pole in a house, Rumi in another world, longing for the Beloved, the scent of her tresses. And then h...
January 6, 2010 at 5:11 am
“Poetry in the Nuclear Age.” PDF under Essays at https://www.fglaysher.com/
January 5, 2010 at 6:51 am
| Frederick Glaysher, books, poems, essays, reviews, interviews, blogs |
Frederick Glaysher invokes a global vision beyond postmodernism, beyond postmodernity.
January 5, 2010 at 6:51 am
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what was written in 1948, is quite applicable today.. certainly, it 's power of the word.
January 5, 2010 at 8:40 am
Frederick, permission to share with my other friends on FB (?) You are an amazing writer BTW...
January 7, 2010 at 5:28 pm
Sure, whatever you'd like...
January 8, 2010 at 2:23 am
Looking forward to reading "The Parliament of Poets" which maybe could be moved to Venus, never Mars.
January 20, 2010 at 9:34 am
I'll take your good words as impetus to work all the harder on it. Mmm, the moon is the right metaphor...
January 20, 2010 at 10:11 am
Only a quantum leap from the level of the nation to the oneness of the globe, as it has been routinely viewed from the heavens, can prevent “final disaster” from becoming a ghastly reality, here on the threshold of the twenty-first century, in some possibly unpredictable way, outside in the given world.
January 4, 2010 at 4:18 pm
Chernobyl is a mere foretaste of what the world could suffer. Only the principles of a global humanism, channeled through such cooperative institutions as the International Atomic Energy Agency, can protect us from nuclear weapons of mass destruction, as well as chemical and biological weapons.
January 4, 2010 at 12:05 pm
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What are the principles of global humanism?
January 4, 2010 at 2:51 pm
An interesting question. I don't have a list. But I think the golden rule should be number one. It's perhaps the main teaching all the religions and wisdom traditions have held around the world. Basically a change of heart. The closer we all could get to putting that into practice, not lip service, even once in a while, should result in a considerable improvement in our current condition. Given that we're human. After that, the usual temptation is to create all kinds of legalisms, which only head in the wrong direction, in my view.
After more than a century of seemingly ever-increasing nihilism, believing all religions are false, I invoke a return to the Spirit, its humanizing grace, that all religions are true. Enough historicism. Our experience long ago moved into a new age. Hence, I'm not a Utopian. I don't look for a new social form or government program to save us, but a new spirit working through the ones we've got, imperfect as they and we are... A new consciousness, a new understanding of what it means to be human...
After more than a century of seemingly ever-increasing nihilism, believing all religions are false, I invoke a return to the Spirit, its humanizing grace, that all religions are true. Enough historicism. Our experience long ago moved into a new age. Hence, I'm not a Utopian. I don't look for a new social form or government program to save us, but a new spirit working through the ones we've got, imperfect as they and we are... A new consciousness, a new understanding of what it means to be human...
January 4, 2010 at 4:43 pm
I think that Spirit of the golden rule you refer to is magnanimous and important. Where I would disagree is the axiom that all religions are true; I realize there is a desire to affirm all cultures and religions out of admiration for humanity, but to accept them all as true does two things -- it (1) oversimplifies them, and (2) overpopulates your own view.
Here's an example. I do not think Usama bin Laden's religion is true. If a religious pluralist responds that bin Laden's 'interpretation' of Islam is false (whereas Tariq Ramadan's is true), then that pluralist has begun a critical process that does not affirm all religions as true. All it does is affirm one's own assortment of precepts, while imagining all religions to bend around it (forsaking the details, such as the advice in the Qur'an that you should beat your wife if you fear she will desert you).
Here's an example. I do not think Usama bin Laden's religion is true. If a religious pluralist responds that bin Laden's 'interpretation' of Islam is false (whereas Tariq Ramadan's is true), then that pluralist has begun a critical process that does not affirm all religions as true. All it does is affirm one's own assortment of precepts, while imagining all religions to bend around it (forsaking the details, such as the advice in the Qur'an that you should beat your wife if you fear she will desert you).
January 5, 2010 at 1:20 am
I can't argue with the examples you've chosen... In fairness to the religions, we can find such unpalatable individuals and examples in every tradition, humanity being what it is... imperfect, flawed, fallible.
All the great traditions affirmed the Divine Being, the One Who is Perfection. For millennia, each believed they had the exclusive Truth. Many still do. Then the Great Mystery began to mix and pour us together; we began to meet one another more often; then study one another, live together, etc. With Nietzsche leading the charge, et al., modernity believed all religions are false, God dead. Life went on...
There has always been souls who have said all the religions are true, teach the eternal verities, the essential, universal, humanizing principles. Some of them were martyred through the centuries in all traditions.
We can choose to look at the differences or the universals. I believe our time has had more than enough of the former. It's time to follow the Lord of History who has mixed and poured us together.
All the great traditions affirmed the Divine Being, the One Who is Perfection. For millennia, each believed they had the exclusive Truth. Many still do. Then the Great Mystery began to mix and pour us together; we began to meet one another more often; then study one another, live together, etc. With Nietzsche leading the charge, et al., modernity believed all religions are false, God dead. Life went on...
There has always been souls who have said all the religions are true, teach the eternal verities, the essential, universal, humanizing principles. Some of them were martyred through the centuries in all traditions.
We can choose to look at the differences or the universals. I believe our time has had more than enough of the former. It's time to follow the Lord of History who has mixed and poured us together.
January 5, 2010 at 3:46 am
But I'm sure we wouldn't want to highlight certain traditions as 'great;' what justifies greatness? Surely popularity isn't enough.
Furthermore, there is at least one popular religion which denies a singular divine, perfect being: Buddhism, where a central doctrine is 'anatman,' or 'no soul.' This developed in the Mahayana strand as 'sunyata,' or 'emptiness.' There is another Indian tradition, Mimamsa, which acknowledged a multiplicity of gods but explicitly denied a supreme deity over them.
Also, I wouldn't say Nietzsche led the charge (of antireligious modernity in the west); it began earlier with Voltaire, Hobbes, Hume, Marquis de Sade, Feuerbach, Marx et al. Possibly Locke and Kant as well. One could even argue that Erasmus and other Reformation humanists began this process.
I don't know of anyone who was martyred for saying that all religions are true.
At any rate, it seems to me that we cannot even begin to make universal claims without first studying the particulars, otherwise we are very liable to make errors.
Furthermore, there is at least one popular religion which denies a singular divine, perfect being: Buddhism, where a central doctrine is 'anatman,' or 'no soul.' This developed in the Mahayana strand as 'sunyata,' or 'emptiness.' There is another Indian tradition, Mimamsa, which acknowledged a multiplicity of gods but explicitly denied a supreme deity over them.
Also, I wouldn't say Nietzsche led the charge (of antireligious modernity in the west); it began earlier with Voltaire, Hobbes, Hume, Marquis de Sade, Feuerbach, Marx et al. Possibly Locke and Kant as well. One could even argue that Erasmus and other Reformation humanists began this process.
I don't know of anyone who was martyred for saying that all religions are true.
At any rate, it seems to me that we cannot even begin to make universal claims without first studying the particulars, otherwise we are very liable to make errors.
January 5, 2010 at 4:47 am
Which Buddhism... there are many traditions from the past and present.
You're right about the roots of modernity going back into Deism and earlier, so true. We could add many names. Bayle. I was trying to speaking briefly. I cover more of the full story in my book The Grove of the Eumenides. Nietzsche threw it out more into the open, let me put it that way, as symbol.
It's been studied to death... Our great libraries are full of tomes annotating the decline... (so is my personal library, and my ereader). Tiresome. How do we return to the Spirit?
You're right about the roots of modernity going back into Deism and earlier, so true. We could add many names. Bayle. I was trying to speaking briefly. I cover more of the full story in my book The Grove of the Eumenides. Nietzsche threw it out more into the open, let me put it that way, as symbol.
It's been studied to death... Our great libraries are full of tomes annotating the decline... (so is my personal library, and my ereader). Tiresome. How do we return to the Spirit?
January 5, 2010 at 5:20 am
After a quarter of a million years of human evolution, no greater fear troubles the psyche of the diverse peoples of the globe and drives home to us our common humanity, our common frailty, than the still enormous and dangerous national arsenals of nuclear weapons and the proliferation of nuclear materials to rogue states and perhaps terrorists.
January 4, 2010 at 8:59 am
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So it is quite acceptable to think or even dare and say that this evolution sought for so many years and in different eras of human history with much eagerness and strife has only lead to the involuntarily and equally unavoidable final ending: the disappointing self-destruction of human values, goals and principles that were the leading premise behind human life in its essence. We live certainly in the last moments of a great evolution, but instead of trying to thwart this impending disappearance from the face of the earth, we only create daily inter-continental tensions, wars and hatreds which will only quicken this apocalyptic phase of human existence.
January 4, 2010 at 4:53 pm
I agree with you that things often seem as you describe them. But the "final ending" hasn't happened yet. What if all the strife and fear are the impetus the world needs to inspire it to rise above itself, the seeming "self-destruction of human values," to recover meaning and purpose, a new enabling vision of life that helps us avert the worst before it happens?
Though many may not be trying, or know how or what to try, there are people, in and out of governments, who are trying, must try everything, to awaken and save ourselves and our fellow human beings from what would be the worst catastrophe in human history. While we human beings are capable of such evils, we are also capable of sublime self-sacrifice and cooperation for the good of others. Even if the balance is 99.99 percent evil to 1/100 of good--that fraction is what has saved humanity in the past, and can save it again, with hope and ceaseless effort.
Despair and nihilism prepare the soil for the worst; hope and trust in the goodness of the Divine Being, as some of the poets I've quoted suggest, offer the vision humanity needs to summon the will to reorient itself in the midst of this period of "great evolution."
Though many may not be trying, or know how or what to try, there are people, in and out of governments, who are trying, must try everything, to awaken and save ourselves and our fellow human beings from what would be the worst catastrophe in human history. While we human beings are capable of such evils, we are also capable of sublime self-sacrifice and cooperation for the good of others. Even if the balance is 99.99 percent evil to 1/100 of good--that fraction is what has saved humanity in the past, and can save it again, with hope and ceaseless effort.
Despair and nihilism prepare the soil for the worst; hope and trust in the goodness of the Divine Being, as some of the poets I've quoted suggest, offer the vision humanity needs to summon the will to reorient itself in the midst of this period of "great evolution."
January 4, 2010 at 5:44 pm
Our age is one of anarchy, confusion, and receding hope and belief in the sanctity of the individual and of human life in general.
January 4, 2010 at 6:37 am
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So, so true. I fear for my children...
January 4, 2010 at 2:42 pm
We still stand on the edge of the abyss while many continue to split hairs over their risible systems of nominalism, while others wallow in subjective worlds of trivia, while most are becoming less capable of confronting the spiritual crisis of the prevailing international culture that is taking place outside our narcissistic heads.
January 3, 2010 at 10:22 am
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Although the Soviet Union has been swept aside, I believe we must remember that the nuclear age is not over.
January 3, 2010 at 10:22 am
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Whatever one may think of any spiritual vision, whether it emanates from a traditional revealed religion or a cranky, postmodern American Adam or Eve, a humane, transcendent understanding of our basic human oneness proffers a much needed standard from which to evaluate the still immensely destructive stockpile we have built up in defense of national sovereignty.
January 3, 2010 at 8:02 am
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You certainly have an obsession, don't you.
Frankly, it's a bore.
Frankly, it's a bore.
January 3, 2010 at 8:14 pm
I've decided to defriend you since once again your comments are not those of a friend but ladened with hostility. I've responded in the past to your criticisms, though they were also on the edge of insult and ad hominem, instead of a rational exchange of ideas. I respect views can differ and people of goodwill can disagree but reciprocation is clearly lacking.
January 4, 2010 at 3:32 am
I want to add that Facebook is not a forum intended to repeat the hostilities and approach of Fox News and Usenet. Best wishes.
January 4, 2010 at 6:26 am
I enjoy your daily comments sir,if only to confirm that there is another sane rational person in the world. I too have little use for the fabrications of Murdock or the rant of his misinformed and uneducated listeners!
January 4, 2010 at 7:25 am
Thanks for saying so. I appreciate it. The world can indeed seem mad. Let's choose to hope otherwise... and work to prove it.
January 4, 2010 at 8:56 am
Such acknowledgments toughen, at least to a degree, his humane vision of love, testify to his awareness of what is at stake, and indicate somewhat his recognition of the historical upheavals that have culminated in the potential holocaust, whether global or to local isolated cities, that threatens us all.
January 3, 2010 at 5:47 am
Although there is a tenuously nostalgic quality to Eberhart’s avowal of love, although it relies on vaguely romantic good intentions, as is demonstrated by his relegating scientists to the one-dimensional world of “dream-bombing,”
December 24, 2009 at 6:11 am
...he soberly acknowledges the reality of the pressure of the threat by undercutting his vision with the word “fantasy” and by contrasting his desire to “look in the eye of God” with the harsh horror of “radioactive sod.”
December 24, 2009 at 6:11 am
Disdain for a transcendent human vision so thoroughly poisons the atmosphere like fallout that the small idea of love, announced, as Eberhart says, by the ancient fifth-century Greeks, Christ, Muhammad, and Buddha, indeed by all the great religious figures, has been struck down by the cynicism of Freud and the “Satanic Hitlers and Stalins.”
December 23, 2009 at 6:01 am
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are you at all into the Glass symphony aka "Plutonian Ode"
December 27, 2009 at 12:07 am
Sorry I've been away for a while. Thanks for mentioning Philip Glass' Symphony no 6, using Alan Ginsberg's "Plutonian Ode" as the libretto. While I'm familiar with the poem, I've never heard the Symphony, but would like to some day. While I'm not highly versed in the full range of Glass' work, his Koyaanisqatsi, Life out of balance, is one of the great musical works that have had an influenced on my thinking and our time. I believe its vision still resonates, as does Ginsberg's poem.
January 3, 2010 at 5:45 am
YouTube has Koyaanisqatsi for anyone interested:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sps6C9u7ras
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sps6C9u7ras
January 3, 2010 at 6:10 am
It is precisely the materialism and the lack of caring, the lack of love, that Eberhart confronts in “Fantasy of a Small Idea”: “Maybe it is time before atomic holocaust / To fantasize that any small act of love, / Say any goodwill eye-flash to a passer-by / Is just possibly a great gain to humanity...”
December 22, 2009 at 1:09 pm
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I once was focusing my mind on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.....saw it in my mind as in the photos.....a few houses left.....out of one of them comes a girl(she appears as she has woken up to just another day)......she walks 30-40 m from the house and picks up a flower...just with her mind on finding a flower(she sees and looks for nothing else)...she finds one....it is like a miracle....picks it up and holds it up to the sky.....a clear blue sky......no irony.....nothing absurd....just a fact.... an unknowing....innocence.....what was there is not any longer.....just the flower in her hand.....something has been lost and something been found....this one flower and the girl are as big as everything that has been lost.....death is very direct and so is life....in one movement in a moment.....worlds begin.....and end.....forms dissolve.....this longing for beauty....or is it just a thoughtlessness...carelessness....greed.....so in the middle of that.....any small act of love or a longing for beauty is greater than all the rest.....it is the crest of the wave of live.....a gust of fresh air from the heart of a human being...
December 22, 2009 at 2:58 pm
A beautiful dream... affirmation of life... after all that. It is the kind of "small act of love" that Eberhart is writing about, and we hope its power and influence transcends even our ability to grasp its importance and efficacy. And yet I feel our time is too given to hope and not enough to action, real, meaningful action, as a result of such dreams and rational reflection. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are iconographic, portents of what can and might happen should human beings do nothing to prevent and protect all the fragile little ones, the fragile flowers, all around the world, from perishing. Too much is left to chance and hope...
December 23, 2009 at 6:01 am
I agree totally with you Frederick.....this dream of the little girl in Nagasaki was in a part made out of reading a book about Goya and especially his last years.....deaf....alone....in darkest of times in Spain....like the end of times.....man eating man....no hope....but maybe Goya himself still searching for beauty.....for truth....a little light from the spirit of man....I remember from my youth these days of the cold war....we feel safer now.....but.....if the economy of the world gets in a serious trouble.....more than now.....all the elements are still there to fight a war of world dominion....and there is a war going on now....with the other creatures of the planet....and if everyone is gonna have the first world lifestyle....we are for sure gonna experience a collapse.....it´s a gamble....I practice goodwill.....have simple lifestyles....try to do my best to be politically active.....and I believe in life....the essence of it.....in the spirit of man......I agree with you...it has to be put into will.....and so it will (ha ha)....happy christmas to you Frederick.....felicia navidad....
December 23, 2009 at 7:40 am
Goya, takes my breath away... Saturn, gnawing on flesh... aahhh... so apropos. I think you're right that a war is going on right now, with the life of the planet, our vision of life, really, how destructive it is and has become, out of sync with our human experience in this global age. Who was it who said everything has changed but our thinking?
December 23, 2009 at 8:18 am
“...That to love anybody is a triumph of instinct / And if there are enough small acts of love to save us / We might outwit perhaps dream-bombing scientists, / Even take care of our planet without stabbing and killing.” [Richard Eberhart]
December 22, 2009 at 1:09 pm
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Yet Eberhart is probably too hopeful about our needing or receiving “six feet of radioactive sod.” It is unlikely that enough people would survive to bury all the millions of charred and decaying corpses or enough would be able to spend what little energy and resources they might have left to do so.
December 22, 2009 at 8:10 am
He extends this suggestion in the line “Destruction of the best and worst,” which may allude to Matthew Arnold’s “The best are silent now” and to W. B. Yeats’s “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.” According to Eberhart, the threat under which we suffer is but the reflection of a cosmic disequilibrium, a disruption that could lead to a radioactive grave.
December 22, 2009 at 5:24 am
Such nihilism, when not explicitly stated by many postmodern poets, is implied by the lack of respect with which any vision of man’s more noble, humane capacities is treated. Eberhart connects, as Levertov and Hayden do to a degree, this debasement of man into a mere expendable animal with our fear and precarious position “before annihilation.”
December 21, 2009 at 4:40 pm
Eberhart asserts “We are the materialists of the atom bombs,” the children, the offspring of Einstein’s theory of relativity, which has been put to nihilistic purposes Einstein himself never held or intended. What has become the “normative” vision of our age is the meaninglessness of life, the absurdity of existence, the corruption of all human intentions.
December 21, 2009 at 2:07 pm
“We are the materialists of the atom bombs, / ...We think a vision of immateriality / Must have no meaning, none, / In our teeter and balance before annihilation, / The end of us, / When it comes, when it comes, the blast, / Destruction of the best and worst, / We wanted to look in the eye of God, / We got six feet of radioactive sod.” [Richard Eberhart]
December 21, 2009 at 8:11 am
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Richard Eberhart bears witness in “Testimony,” written in 1984, to a similarly high vision of humankind, a “vision of immateriality”:
December 21, 2009 at 8:11 am
Her poem brings to mind Masuji Ibuse’s Black Rain which poignantly acknowledges the tragic complicity of both the Japanese and Americans.
December 21, 2009 at 5:44 am
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You have a bizarre obsession with nuclear weapons. Why not instead lament more insidious forms of mass death, such as malaria, which kills millions not instantly, but in lingering suffering not even imaginable by we in the wealthy west.
Malaria kills so many because of the law of unintended consequences, i.e., the after-effects of the ban on DDT. So if you want to express anguish at a government-induced catastrophe, quit focusing on the relatively benign 80,000 dead at Hiroshima, and concentrate instead on a real tragedy...the death of millions by do-gooders who think not a whit of whom they have destroyed.
Malaria kills so many because of the law of unintended consequences, i.e., the after-effects of the ban on DDT. So if you want to express anguish at a government-induced catastrophe, quit focusing on the relatively benign 80,000 dead at Hiroshima, and concentrate instead on a real tragedy...the death of millions by do-gooders who think not a whit of whom they have destroyed.
December 21, 2009 at 7:07 am
The horror of vaporization is counterpointed with the capacity to save “the human vision” from the degradation to which humankind has debased it. Although Levertov shares some of the shortcomings of postmodern poets, her ability to uphold a human vision distinguishes her work at times from the more decadent solipsists of the period.
December 20, 2009 at 11:36 am
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The shadow “cries out to us to cry out,” digs its nails “into our souls / to wake them,” proclaims “something can yet / be salvaged upon the earth: / try, try to survive, / try to redeem / the human vision from cesspits where human hands / have thrown it, as I was thrown / from life into shadow.” [Denise Levertov]
December 20, 2009 at 7:59 am
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Along with ordinary life the lives at Hiroshima were incinerated, vaporized into the stone by the heat wave, into the conscience of succeeding generations: “the shadow, / the human shadowgraph sinking itself / indelibly upon stone at Hiroshima.”
December 20, 2009 at 6:10 am
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Unlike the resurrected rose of Sitwell’s poem, Levertov holds out no hope of rising from the ashes but simply presents the statistics of devastation, which the speaker took no notice of at the time, having been caught up in the jubilation over the end of the war and the “vague wonder, what next? What will ordinary / life be like, now ordinary life as we know it / is gone?”
December 19, 2009 at 1:19 pm
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As was typical of most people at the time, she did not truly understand the implications of the bombing and “the technology of disaster” in which it would result. Levertov’s speaker remarks on the “quantum leap” of death statistics: “eighty-seven thousand / killed outright by a single bomb, / fifty-one thousand missing or injured.” Somehow in youthful preoccupation, this unprecedented reality, “This we ignored.”
December 19, 2009 at 7:15 am
Denise Levertov takes such a stand, descends into the hell, in her poem “On the 32nd Anniversary of the Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” written in 1977. The speaker recalls having been told as a young twenty year old, “With this / the war is over.”
December 19, 2009 at 5:09 am
Although the shadows of that will “give / us no relieving shade,” what can be willed can be unwilled—we can break through the abstractions of annihilation, feel imaginatively the heat wave “burning all around us,” know its possibility, and stand against what Hayden once called “the technology of disaster,” stand for what is humane and enduring.
December 18, 2009 at 9:44 am
Unfurtunetely "Hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earh goodwill towards men".
December 18, 2009 at 10:02 am
Luke [6.31] "And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise."
December 18, 2009 at 11:33 am
As Jonathan Schell writes in his book The Fate of the Earth, it is “only by descending into this hell in imagination now that we can hope to escape descending into it in reality at some later time.” The issues are as complex as the appalling sophistries of the human will.
December 18, 2009 at 6:09 am
Read that book when it was first published, still relevant
December 18, 2009 at 8:10 am
Yes, in a sense, unfortunately still relevant. Its essential insight, as well as that of Schell's The Abolition, seems to have been forgotten or deemed hopelessly unrealistic: the only way to remove the threat of nuclear weapons is through world governance, basically the lesson of both WWI and II.
December 18, 2009 at 8:35 am
The idea of "world governance" is so noxious, so offensive and so absurd that your advocacy of it makes it impossible to take you seriously.
December 19, 2009 at 5:16 am
You're entitled to your conscience and opinion. I respect that. I believe those who share your thinking are misreading modern history, over the last hundred years or so, and failing to consider seriously where the world goes from here. It can not go backwards; history can only move forwards, in the long run, despite fits of reactionary backsliding and retrograde thinking, and much suffering.
As FDR said to Congress, the balance of power schemes of the past have been tried for centuries and have always failed. They show every sign of failing again, with immensely tragic consequences for the entire world. Woodrow Wilson and FDR, et al., were right. Humanity can choose, if it but summons the will, or it will learn the hard way, but it will ultimately come to a form of democratic world governance, the fundamental principles of federalism applied to the entire planet.
As FDR said to Congress, the balance of power schemes of the past have been tried for centuries and have always failed. They show every sign of failing again, with immensely tragic consequences for the entire world. Woodrow Wilson and FDR, et al., were right. Humanity can choose, if it but summons the will, or it will learn the hard way, but it will ultimately come to a form of democratic world governance, the fundamental principles of federalism applied to the entire planet.
December 19, 2009 at 5:30 am
Frederick, with such diversity in ideologies based on cultures and religion, do you really see this as a possibility?
While the countries that are currently world powers might agree, I doubt the nations growing in strength are going to be willing to go along, and therein lies the danger.
And how can you set up a world government if all the nations don't agree to it?
While the countries that are currently world powers might agree, I doubt the nations growing in strength are going to be willing to go along, and therein lies the danger.
And how can you set up a world government if all the nations don't agree to it?
December 19, 2009 at 6:39 am
Take any national unit of feudal Europe or elsewhere and the arguments are essentially the same. The duchies and so forth of Germany, Italy, Japan--our own colonies--fought and resisted for centuries the evolution toward a higher unity. Arnold Toynbee is especially insightful on this incontrovertible process, direction of global history.
How were the more comprehensive forms of government reached? Through the fiery historical process of human evolution and experience, diplomacy, negotiation, force, and the occasional exceptional leader who saw and led his people in the right direction, despite their kicking and screaming all the way...
In short, there's not simple answers to your questions, though I've tried to suggest a thumbnail response, essentially the response of Dag Hammarskjold. For more extensive, further details check in when you can over the coming weeks and months...
How were the more comprehensive forms of government reached? Through the fiery historical process of human evolution and experience, diplomacy, negotiation, force, and the occasional exceptional leader who saw and led his people in the right direction, despite their kicking and screaming all the way...
In short, there's not simple answers to your questions, though I've tried to suggest a thumbnail response, essentially the response of Dag Hammarskjold. For more extensive, further details check in when you can over the coming weeks and months...
December 19, 2009 at 7:07 am
...or see my book The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture.
https://www.fglaysher.com/order_books.html
https://www.fglaysher.com/order_books.html
December 19, 2009 at 7:10 am
This permits most people to remain oblivious of the danger. It is only by a rational, compassionate exertion of the human will that a quarter of a million years of human evolution on this planet can be assured of at least as many more years of further development.
December 17, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Nearly all missile fields are far from populated areas and access to them is restricted. Since nuclear war has fortunately never been waged, other than the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, few people have any experience of what such a war would be like.
December 17, 2009 at 12:33 pm
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It would be HORRIBLE!
December 17, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Absolutely would be... as would use of even one or more nuclear weapons.
December 17, 2009 at 3:59 pm
NYTimes news from the "real" world. Anyone feel reassured?
Nearing New Arms Pact, U.S. and Russia Look Beyond It
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/18/world/18arms.html?_r=1&hp
Nearing New Arms Pact, U.S. and Russia Look Beyond It
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/18/world/18arms.html?_r=1&hp
December 18, 2009 at 3:34 am
One of the greatest barriers to confronting the nuclear threat is the feeling of impotence a person has before the “invisible” danger of holocaust.
December 17, 2009 at 8:52 am
another kind of invisible thing btw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umiHL1DVSa4 ;)
or read my "notes", it's true, it's here today and now and sometimes i philosophize... most of the time not, tho.
or read my "notes", it's true, it's here today and now and sometimes i philosophize... most of the time not, tho.
December 18, 2009 at 8:14 pm
https://www.facebook.com/PACIFIC231?v=app_2347471856&ref=profile#/notes/francesca-spiegel/why-i-left-yale-tell-the-fda-to-investigate-the-safety-of-shock-treatment/188648880881 just think this awful and it's present present present xx
December 18, 2009 at 8:18 pm
Yes, I can understand to some small degree that it’s awful and present, for personal reasons I won’t go into on Facebook, which perhaps isn’t the best place for it. Despite our despairing times, life is worth living and of value, though it’s human often to struggle for meaning and purpose. Perhaps people in the real world can be more helpful than this virtual one, when we reach out to them...
December 19, 2009 at 6:33 am
i thought facebook actually a great place to network with "psych survivors" and it has encouraged me to be less afraid to speak you are right this topic is a bit of taboo and yet affects so many - well how you present or conceal your own views & experiences is absolutely up to you, if you see these as private, as i don't in my own case and i feel the need to warn people i'm kind of broken record even if i dont want to any more, but dramas like this one don't need to repeat themselves or continue, really not, if people just spoke to each other, so many are potentially at risk i think i'd be neglectful not to tell people what it did to me, anyways in the absence of other abilities i can at least do a decent write-up and even if i reach only a handful of readers thats better than nothing
anyways......meant to ask you what is this succession of statements you publish on here, sentencesof a publication of yours or is you seeking pre-publication feedback or just generally sharing thoughts on nuclei...i admit that i cant keep up but on occasion i "drop in" here as you know and thankyou for puttine these in xx
anyways......meant to ask you what is this succession of statements you publish on here, sentencesof a publication of yours or is you seeking pre-publication feedback or just generally sharing thoughts on nuclei...i admit that i cant keep up but on occasion i "drop in" here as you know and thankyou for puttine these in xx
December 20, 2009 at 5:28 pm
"Poetry in the Nuclear Age," under Essays > pdf https://www.fglaysher.com
December 21, 2009 at 4:07 am
Though not in a time of public crisis, Hayden’s speaker shares with Lowell’s an intense fear of devastation, which is based on his firsthand experience of the undetonated potentiality of the weapons: “I feel as though invisible fuses were / burning all around us burning all / around us.”
December 17, 2009 at 6:29 am
The partial, guarded answers of the guide “appall” him with the implications of annihilation, as they would any sane, informed, rational person.
December 16, 2009 at 4:01 pm
His persistent questioning testifies to the pressure on his consciousness of the distinctive mark of our time, the “totems of our fire-breathing age.” The old mythologies are also extended to the new one by describing the missile fields as a sacred grove, as though the arsenal were at a Greek shrine, such as Delphi or Oedipus’ grove of the Eumenides.
December 16, 2009 at 1:17 pm
“Ignorant outlander, mere civilian, / not sure always of what it is /I see, I walk with you among / these totems of our fire-breathing age, / question and question you, / who are at home in terra guarded like / a sacred phallic grove. / Your partial answers reassure / me less than they appall.” --Robert Hayden
December 16, 2009 at 8:16 am
Unlike Lowell’s passive speaker, Hayden’s persona visits the Redstone Arsenal with a member of the staff from whom he seeks to understand the implications of the “energy and power”:
December 16, 2009 at 8:15 am
Robert Hayden’s “Zeus over Redeye,” written in 1970, recounts a visit to the Redstone Arsenal in Alabama. The poem begins with the speaker establishing a historical perspective by comparing the “new mythologies of power” with the old mythologies of Greek and medieval myth. He also ironically reflects on the rockets “named for Nike” and “for Zeus, Apollo, Hercules— / eponyms of redeyed fury.”
December 16, 2009 at 6:31 am
One of the most common injuries at Hiroshima was lacerations from flying glass, which, because of reduced ability to ward off infection and to produce platelets, often proved fatal.
December 15, 2009 at 3:46 pm
Most “studio windows” would be blasted out as far away as twenty miles. After the heat wave, the greatest threat to people caught in the open would be from flying debris from which almost nothing could “shield” them.
December 15, 2009 at 9:50 am
drool, drool... so it seems...
December 15, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Compared with the placid hopefulness of Rukeyser and Muir, Lowell’s suffering speaker offers a much more accurate mimetic representation of reality, of the stakes involved in the world outside his own mind. It is this poignant dramatization of every human relationship and facet of nature at risk that gives the poem its intensity.
December 15, 2009 at 6:10 am
The “wild spiders” suggest humankind’s ineffectuality and fragility before the immensely destructive force of nuclear weapons. As time runs out the “tock, tock, tock” of “the grandfather clock” marks the passing of lopsided historical time and the urgency of the crisis.
December 14, 2009 at 3:58 pm
The powerlessness of the individual and of the mass of people is emphasized in the next stanza: “A father’s no shield / for his child.”The inability of the father to protect his child discloses the utter powerlessness of the individual to fulfill the most basic duty when faced with the devastation of nuclear war.
December 14, 2009 at 1:38 pm
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Frederick, I don't think this stanza reflects the metaphysical reality of the human soul.
December 14, 2009 at 1:55 pm
In fairness to Robert Lowell, that's not his subject or his approach to it. I haven't suggest it is either.
December 14, 2009 at 2:03 pm
In fairness to human beings, Frederick, the presence and destiny of the soul is something science overlooks. Medicine overlooks this as well. Just raising a complaint from the peanut gallery. The intellectual arguments seem a little pointless when they don't comprehend the effect of man possessing a soul, in my opinion.
Thank you for responding to my post !
Thank you for responding to my post !
December 14, 2009 at 2:07 pm
If you scroll back to about December 4th, you'll find my discussion of Edith Stiwell's poems on the nuclear age. If you missed it or are unfamiliar with her work, you might find her more compatible with your concerns than perhaps Lowell.
Have you read Lowell's entire poem? The way you're approaching him seems very simplistic; I'd say science and medicine as well.
Have you read Lowell's entire poem? The way you're approaching him seems very simplistic; I'd say science and medicine as well.
December 14, 2009 at 4:39 pm
Frederick, thank you for your referral... In scanning your discussion of Sitwell's poetry, I anticipate a good read tomorrow.
I did not read all of Lowell's poem. Good catch... I was reacting to the one line you published to open this thread.
“A father’s no shield / for his child.”
In my mind, I immediately felt a major flaw in this premise.
I did not read all of Lowell's poem. Good catch... I was reacting to the one line you published to open this thread.
“A father’s no shield / for his child.”
In my mind, I immediately felt a major flaw in this premise.
December 14, 2009 at 8:18 pm
Confronted with the objective threat, the individual is reduced to the small powerless figure of a minnow, which is absurdly seeking refuge from the blast wave behind the flimsiest of structures. The terrifying prospect of devastation is projected on and reflected from the moon, “while our end drifts nearer.”
December 14, 2009 at 7:07 am
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The overwhelming pressure of the threat forces itself on the isolated speaker’s consciousness. The public discussion of the possibility of extinction has been too much in terms of abstractions, statistics, probabilities.
December 14, 2009 at 5:10 am
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Author
December 13, 2009 at 1:49 pm
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Hafiz |
Hafiz, whose given name was Shams-ud-din Muhammad (c. 1320-1389), is said to be the most beloved poet of the Persians....
December 13, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Lowell is, therefore, confronting, as uncharacteristic of him as it may be, an objective historical crisis that, as was widely feared, might very well have triggered a nuclear war: “All autumn, the chafe and jar / of nuclear war; / ...Our end drifts nearer, / the moon lifts, / radiant with terror.”
December 13, 2009 at 10:54 am
Robert Lowell’s “Fall 1961” is more responsive than Rukeyser to the actuality of the threat of nuclear war. The historical background of its composition was the Berlin Crisis in late summer and early fall of that year.
December 13, 2009 at 7:27 am
Yet Rukeyser’s hopeful vision of the cycles of the universe melting down all atoms to reconstitute life and of time not hindering anybody is hardly a consoling thought, though an undeniable aspect of “Nature, red in tooth and claw,” raised to the nth degree. She counterpoints this quality of nature with her “central belief” that humankind “are children of God / That their lives come first and are sacred.”
December 11, 2009 at 12:43 pm
The "cycles of the universe" is a notion well explored by Nietzsche in his theory of eternal recurrence; the concept is also fundamental to certain eastern religious traditions, especially Hinduism and its offshoots. It is good poem-stuff precisely because of its great mystery and ambiguity.
Even so, is nature really "red in tooth and claw"? Rousseau thought not (on this go-round, I think he's wrong...it most likely is). Even so, our perception of "nature" si so weak that we best leave it to the poets to to gain any insight into its mysteries.
Even so, is nature really "red in tooth and claw"? Rousseau thought not (on this go-round, I think he's wrong...it most likely is). Even so, our perception of "nature" si so weak that we best leave it to the poets to to gain any insight into its mysteries.
December 11, 2009 at 7:42 pm
Can it be this way?..... that the "cycles of the universe" can be called a "notion" and "ambigous" only if the celestial bodies wudn't be revolving and rotating........in the Hindu understanding we call it the "Sansar chakra"...wherein "Sansar" means the world and "Chakra" literally means a wheel....that we will have to stop believing what we see with our own eyes and also actually live and experience that there's a recurrence of days and nights....that electrons revolve round the nucleus..energy transforms into matter and vice-versa...how did for the first time the concept or the idea of wheel occur to a human?....from what? and Why did it occur?
December 13, 2009 at 5:04 am
We are, as the astronomer Robert Jastrow wrote, from star-stuff and to star-stuff shall we return.
December 11, 2009 at 10:38 am
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That's not very interesting nor is it profound. The more interesting (and far more profound) question is, where did "star stuff" come from in the first place?
December 11, 2009 at 7:32 pm
Its a form of energy...the matter ...the star-stuff...it rose from the desire of the Almighty....may be...that is what is said from times immemorial!!
The hymn of creation in the "RigVeda" is very interesting in this reference.
The hymn of creation in the "RigVeda" is very interesting in this reference.
December 13, 2009 at 4:45 am
It was “The work in ideas of unstability” that led to the use of uranium 235, the least stable isotope. This atomic reaction is the fundamental energy of the stars in which all atoms of matter and life were once forged and in which, one day, millions of years in the future, all atoms will be reforged: “ The universe passes along a way of cycles.”
December 11, 2009 at 6:53 am
No, that's fusion again. Nuclear fusion (H-bombs), not fission (Uranium, Plutonium bombs) is the reaction of "the fundamental energy of the stars."
December 11, 2009 at 7:18 am
You say "again" but I haven't mentioned either fusion or fission up to this point. Neither is in Rukeyser. I'm speaking broadly, in the common tongue. I appreciate your precision and note it as such.
December 11, 2009 at 11:33 am
The atomic reaction of U-235 (fission, splitting one atom into two lighter elements) is not "the fundamental energy of the stars" (fusion, combining two atoms into one heavier element).
More broadly, the problem with the literary gesture is anachronism. You're discussing works (apparently of the 1940s) as if they're using the same terms a contemporary discussion would. I'm (hopefully) a friendly nitpicker, but it puts the very powerful context you're using in danger of dismissal from a less friendly audience.
I think I've mentioned before, in the broad strokes, you're correct. (which is why I keep reading.) We do come from star stuff, and will return to such. However, the point you're collapsing is one that would *strengthen* your argument. The weapons that these writers are talking about are terrible. And the ones we have now (and had only a few years later) are far, far worse. We are in more danger now than 60, 30, or even 10 years ago.
More broadly, the problem with the literary gesture is anachronism. You're discussing works (apparently of the 1940s) as if they're using the same terms a contemporary discussion would. I'm (hopefully) a friendly nitpicker, but it puts the very powerful context you're using in danger of dismissal from a less friendly audience.
I think I've mentioned before, in the broad strokes, you're correct. (which is why I keep reading.) We do come from star stuff, and will return to such. However, the point you're collapsing is one that would *strengthen* your argument. The weapons that these writers are talking about are terrible. And the ones we have now (and had only a few years later) are far, far worse. We are in more danger now than 60, 30, or even 10 years ago.
December 11, 2009 at 12:06 pm
When you put that way, I certainly agree. I note your precision and will work it to a revision. Thank you.
December 11, 2009 at 12:14 pm
“The work in the loss of mass” alludes to Einstein’s equation E=mc2, the conversion of mass into energy. In fission bombs the critical mass required to start a chain reaction that splits the atoms can be as little as a few pounds of uranium 235. In the Hiroshima bomb the amount was merely a few ounces compressed by a triggering explosion to begin the chain reaction, the same reaction that occurs in “fixed stars.”
December 11, 2009 at 4:30 am
Why does the chain reaction in the stars seem gradual, but our here seem so sudden -- or is that a misperception
December 11, 2009 at 4:32 am
You're asking a fairly advanced scientific question for me. It's best that I admit it straight out. I don't pretend to be a nuclear scientist. I'd like to think my reading of selected poems dealing with the nuclear age stays close to the literary and human implications, while providing a discussion grounded in my reading of the general scientific studies of the effects of the weapons.
December 11, 2009 at 4:43 am
If you are talking about super novas they occur within a matter of seconds. Depending on how far from earth those stars are, it could be hundreds of years before we became aware of the event.
December 11, 2009 at 7:03 am
Actually, more than 140 pounds (64kg) of Uranium 235 was used in Little Boy, the Hiroshima bomb. (Of which only 0.7 kg underwent nuclear fission, and of this mass only 0.6 g was transformed into energy.) Fat Man, the Nagasaki Bomb, on the other hand, used less than 14 pounds (6.2kg) of Plutonium.
December 11, 2009 at 7:30 am
The source I used had it at a few ounces compressed by a conventional explosion. You seem to be using Wikipedia. 0.7 kg = 700 grams; 700 grams = 24.60 ounces. Close enough for my purposes to "a few ounces." I make no mention of Nagasaki in the passage above.
December 11, 2009 at 11:25 am
The amount of fissile material that undergoes actual fission is not the same as the "critical mass" required to initiate the reaction. In the Hiroshima bomb, "the critical mass required to start a chain reaction" was not "a few pounds," it was more than a hundred pounds. My point was that you appeared to be referring to the Nagasaki bomb, which produced an explosion using much less material compressed by shaped conventional explosives (Plutonium and not Uranium.) Saying "a lot of energy came from a very little bit of material" (which is true) is not the same as saying "it only took a few pounds of Uranium to make critical mass in the Hiroshima bomb" (which is not).
December 11, 2009 at 11:43 am
I can appreciate that this is very important to you, but it's not to me. The sources I used were reputable. Beyond a broad approach, I'm not writing a scientific paper. It seems to me you're being pedantic, or stuck on tangents, and ignoring what I'm really writing about.
December 11, 2009 at 11:56 am
In her sequence of poems of 1957 “Time Hinder Not Me; His Arms Reach Here and There,” Muriel Rukeyser states, with a more soberly informed tone than Muir, “I realize what was done in the desert, at Alamogordo.” In the following passage Rukeyser focuses on the underlying physics involved in a nuclear explosion: “The work in the loss of mass.”
December 11, 2009 at 2:26 am
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If only a relatively small percentage of megatonnage still available today were detonated, it is quite possible the level of global radiation could reach lethal doses even after the most dangerous period of approximately two weeks. It is doubtful any horses would survive to change lives by offering their “free servitude” to man. In Hiroshima, dead horses were a common sight.
December 10, 2009 at 4:12 pm
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How do you know this?
December 10, 2009 at 8:05 pm
Government manual on the effects of nuclear weapons, circa 1960.
December 11, 2009 at 1:30 am
In the first few weeks following a one megaton explosion, radiation can be expected easily to reach more than 3,000 rads as far as a hundred miles from ground zero and to cover thousands of square miles.
December 10, 2009 at 2:21 pm
For the oxen dragging the ploughs, it would take to kill them about 180 rads; for the horses, about 350 rads; for the colts, probably less, if they survived their birth defects; for the “farmers” themselves, radiation sickness would begin at about 150 rads, fifty percent survival possible at 450 rads, and almost one-hundred-percent fatalities at 600 rads.
December 10, 2009 at 10:15 am
Writing in 1956 Muir can be excused the failure of even the scientific community to realize the lethal dose of gamma radiation for most animals ranges from about 200 to 1,000 rads.
December 10, 2009 at 9:11 am
Muir ends the poem with the coming of horses and the vision of a refuge or “Eden” in the “broken world”: “Since then they have pulled our ploughs and borne our loads, / But that free servitude still can pierce our hearts. / Our life is changed; their coming our beginning.”
December 10, 2009 at 6:59 am
Instead of Muir’s vision of a saving remnant reduced to idyllic medieval farming, I would more realistically expect to find wandering bands of forest dwellers, of hunters and gatherers, though little would remain for which to forage.
December 10, 2009 at 5:02 am
In my view, it's the democratization and decentralization of the Internet and Post-Gutenberg Age that is the greatest challenge of the old model of publishing.
December 9, 2009 at 1:47 pm
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December 9, 2009 at 1:47 pm
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interesting but without democratisation the Monks and sons of the wealthy would be the only ones who knew how to read.
December 9, 2009 at 2:14 pm
While I wasn't making that point, true enough. I should have written "greatest challenge *to* the old model of publishing." It's the opening up of access to knowledge and information, communication broadly, that's taken place. The Gutenberg means of production, if you will, aid the King to maintain a tighter control over what received a hearing.
December 10, 2009 at 7:46 am
See my "Publishing in the Post-Gutenberg Age": https://www.fglaysher.com/Post_Gutenberg_Publishing.html
December 17, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Just to let you know this information, is a late birthday present
February 3, 2010 at 8:31 am
It is unlikely that people who have always relied on a highly interdependent world economy could create within a year a system of supplying the food, shelter, heating, and so on needed for their survival in the midst of a global radioactive dump that would poison almost anything they managed to grow, raise, or produce.
December 9, 2009 at 12:56 pm
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This collapse of the economy would deprive “farmers” of the benefit of hybrid seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, and fuels that support modern agribusiness. Hence Muir’s poem makes recovery sound too easy.
December 9, 2009 at 10:01 am
That's a big point, and exactly right. It wouldn't take that much to set off mass, mass starvation.
December 11, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Civilization would be pushed back far past the level of hundreds of years ago. What economy might survive, if enough people did, would surely be at least initially a medieval agricultural one, since the complex modern economy would never be able to operate with the means of production and distribution devastated.
December 9, 2009 at 7:57 am
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is it a worry.....
December 9, 2009 at 8:18 am
When the world doesn't have bread, what do we expect?
December 9, 2009 at 8:31 am
You mean "devastated" by the excellent floods, as seen in the lalapalooza film, 2012?! Global warming - Climate Change - just burns me up.
December 9, 2009 at 8:45 am
Now we have the bread but no will. Then, we'd have neither...
December 9, 2009 at 9:00 am
Ha Frederick...this picture u just painted kinda scary...God save Humanity from this emerging whatever Armageddon!...but thanx for your Alart!
December 10, 2009 at 3:05 am
The scary thing is that it's not a picture that I've "painted," created. The possibility of it happening exists outside my own head, my own skull. The hardware and software are all in place and have been for decades, controlled by fallible human beings. Are we looking the other way and avoiding unpleasant realities?
It's often said about the Holocaust of the Jews under the Nazis, "Where was God?" Many have observed, "Where was man?" I'm also not in favor of blaming God on this one. The consequences are far beyond imagination.
It's often said about the Holocaust of the Jews under the Nazis, "Where was God?" Many have observed, "Where was man?" I'm also not in favor of blaming God on this one. The consequences are far beyond imagination.
December 10, 2009 at 5:13 am
Frederick, any suggestions for correction...
December 10, 2009 at 5:26 am
"I believe we should remember with respect the general direction of the Acheson-Lilienthal-Baruch Plan following World War II."
December 10, 2009 at 5:36 am
Warships and planes, in the early days, wander past with their dead pilots slumped over the controls, the radios pick up nothing, the nations lie asleep, tractors rust about the fields. The speaker grants what would probably be the plight of most of the world after nuclear war: “We make our oxen drag our rusty ploughs, / Long laid aside. We have gone back / Far past our fathers’ land.”
December 9, 2009 at 5:46 am
Edwin Muir’s “The Horses,” which T. S. Eliot called “that terrifying poem of the ‘atomic age,’” presents a more pastoral restoration.The speaker of the poem recounts that less than a year after nuclear war “the strange horses came” and that by then the few survivors had made their “covenant with silence,” with the devastation of any outside world with which to communicate.
December 8, 2009 at 4:03 pm
Most excellent.
December 8, 2009 at 4:15 pm
Most cryptic... Muir, a change of approach to the subject.
December 8, 2009 at 4:26 pm
“The Wounds of Christ are red” underscores the typology that the shadows on the stone imitate. The light is conceived of as both a divine one and the flash of light that is brighter than the sun. The light is, to Sitwell, in both senses, “the ultimate Fire / Who will burn away the cold in the heart of Man” and restore man’s power of scent.
December 8, 2009 at 9:26 am
Out of the fires of such a ray, out of the vaporization of millions, Sitwell suggests will come a horribly tragic rebirth of a spiritual understanding of man’s nature and a wiser recognition of human limitations: “But high upon the wall / The Rose where the Wounds of Christ are red / Cries to the Light.”
December 8, 2009 at 6:42 am
Although the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima was only 12,000 kilotons, a mere firecracker by the standard of megatonnage, the only trace left of many human beings was the “red shadow” of their outline on the stone benches they were sitting on.
December 8, 2009 at 4:54 am
Sitwell follows this song with these lines: “The song died in the Ray. . . . Where is she now? / Dissolved and gone— / And only her red shadow stains the unremembering stone.”
December 7, 2009 at 4:08 pm
In the last poem “The Canticle of the Rose,” Sitwell draws on the medieval myth of a rose growing out of fire and ash. The rising of the rose on its stem is symbolic of Christ, of the ephemerality of life, and of rebirth. A woman emphasizes the evanescence when she sings, “All things will end— / Like the sound of Time in my veins growing . . . / Yet will the world remain!”
December 7, 2009 at 12:23 pm
Although her conception of redemption and last judgment is a traditionally Christian one, Sitwell’s originality lies in her identifying such imagery with the horror of nuclear war, as in the last line in which Christ “walks again on Seas of Blood, He comes in the terrible Rain.” This “terrible Rain” is the rain of retribution, the local and global fallout of radioactive particles.
December 7, 2009 at 8:37 am
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Edith Sitwell evinces a diachronic, historical conception of the “migration of mankind” from time immemorial “towards the final disaster,” which she believes Hiroshima heralds.
December 7, 2009 at 7:15 am
She explicitly makes this correlation in her Collected Poems: “This poem is about the fission of the world into warring particles, destroying and self-destructive. It is about the gradual migration of mankind...of Cain and Abel, of nation and nation, of the rich and the poor—the spiritual migration of these into the desert of the Cold, towards the final disaster, the first symbol of which fell on Hiroshima.”
December 6, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Sitwell holds that nothing can quench the hell of hate in the heart of man but Christ, whom she uses as a symbol of the “ashes that were men” at Hiroshima, as in the cries of “Each wound, each stripe,” the “clamor of the Bought and Sold, / The agony of Gold,” the “Judas-kiss” that is the last one because of atomic annihilation, which she joins with the “Judgment Day.”
December 6, 2009 at 1:48 pm
“And the fires of your Hell shall not be quenched by the rain / From those torn and parti-colored garments of Christ, those rags / That once were Men.... / He walks again on the Seas of Blood, / He comes in the terrible Rain. [Sitwell]
December 6, 2009 at 10:47 am
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Compared with the frequently sentimental conceptions of postmodern poets, Sitwell’s recognition of limitation in the “heart of Man” manifests, whatever one might think about the doctrine of original sin, a soberly just estimation of the Aristotelian actions of man in the twentieth century:
December 6, 2009 at 10:47 am
Such “primal Hunger,” such greed that sells humankind for gold, Sitwell equates with original sin, with fundamental limitations of human nature.
December 6, 2009 at 7:10 am
Sitwell identifies the cause of the cataclysm with the lust of Dives for gold and material attachments, with the lust of perhaps armament manufacturers and aggressors: To Dives: “You are the shadow of Cain. Your shade is the / primal Hunger.”
December 6, 2009 at 5:45 am
So sublime and yet sadly so true.
December 6, 2009 at 5:47 am
Tragic... Sitwell's poetry deserves to be better known than it is today.
December 6, 2009 at 7:03 am
This “Sun” is both Christ as Son of God and the splitting of the atom that unleashes the “Primal Matter” of the universe, the stellar furnace that once forged the atoms of all life. Such a vast disruption of natural order finds its emblem in the “totem pole of dust,” the mushroom cloud as cross upon which hangs vaporized humankind.
December 5, 2009 at 2:53 pm
In the second poem “The Shadow of Cain,” Sitwell connects “the filth in the heart of Man” with the biblical murder of Abel by Cain, of man by his brother. Like the biblical passage, she uses the particularity of violence to suggest universal disequilibrium: "there came a roar as if the Sun / and Earth had come together— /The Sun descending and the Earth ascending....”
December 5, 2009 at 5:58 am
These maladies would come about, as Sitwell suggests, only if “The eyes that saw, the lips that kissed,” survive the initial radiation, the thermal wave, and the blast wave. It is more likely that most eyes and lips, in an instant, would be “gone,” or “black as thunder,” charred to scar-fried corpses that “grin at the murdered Sun.”
December 4, 2009 at 3:49 pm
The irradiation of bone marrow, to say nothing of the whole body, would lead to the ionization of hematopoiesis, anemia, a higher susceptibility to all infections, and a disruption of the manufacture of platelets, which cause the clotting of blood and thereby prevent bleeding to death from other injuries.
December 4, 2009 at 1:21 pm
The thermal pulse or heat wave would desiccate, if not incinerate, “the stems / Of all that grows on earth” and would drink “the marrow of the bone.” Whatever plants would escape vaporization in a full-scale nuclear war would surely be so thoroughly irradiated with beta and gamma rays that the long-term survival of many forms of vegetation is highly doubtful.
December 4, 2009 at 9:31 am
These lines, written in 1948, remain one of the most haunting contemplations of the horror of the nuclear age. They demonstrate Sitwell’s awareness of the thermal pulse that has a temperature greater than the center of the sun, greater than 10,000,000̊C, and that vaporizes, depending on megatonnage, everything at ground zero and as far away as several miles in only ten to twenty seconds.
December 4, 2009 at 7:42 am
Temperature greater than the *surface* of the sun. The fusion reaction at the center of the sun is hotter than the fission reaction produced in a 1948 nuclear bomb. (And, in theory, is equal to the temperatures produced by a 1950s H-bomb.) Still, as you say, hot enough to vaporize matter.
December 4, 2009 at 8:24 am
My source was a 1960s government manual on nuclear weapons. Hottest hell known to man or beast... after the human heart.
December 4, 2009 at 8:31 am
Yeah, the 1960s manual would refer to the 1950s and later hydrogen fusion weapons. But a 1948 weapon would be a fission weapon. On some level, I'm splitting hairs. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are indelible stains on human history, and it's horrifying that we went on to make weapons that are far, far more powerful.
December 4, 2009 at 8:35 am
Even then, it's striking the government/military hubris displayed in claiming a weapon to be hotter than the center of the sun.
December 4, 2009 at 8:38 am
Vastly more powerful and still sitting on the end of rockets.
December 4, 2009 at 9:28 am
In her “Three Poems of the Atomic Age,” Edith Sitwell was the first poet of stature to perceive and respond to the implications of the nuclear threat. The first poem, “Dirge for the New Sunrise,” evokes, after a brief dream of safety, a vision of the destruction of Hiroshima: “But I saw the little Ant-men as they ran /Carrying the world’s weight of the world’s filth....”
December 4, 2009 at 5:59 am
Gregory Corso's 'Bomb' in The Happy Birthday of Death/New Directions 1960 - also a great poem. Thnx, don't know the Sitwell poem/or date...
December 4, 2009 at 7:20 am
"Uncooked." Not my line, but I respect it in its way.
December 4, 2009 at 7:45 am
During the last fifty years a few poets have managed to preserve the mimetic power of language, and a few, who are firmly in the solipsistic tradition, have managed to break through, at least momentarily and with varying degrees of success, to grapple with the harsh horror of nuclear annihilation.
December 3, 2009 at 4:40 pm
what few poets are these, Fred? what you say is almost offensive. what few poets. mimetic? how quaint. what few poets? await your response
December 4, 2009 at 7:29 am
Patience. Keep listening...
December 4, 2009 at 7:41 am
O.K., patience i will abide, but only so long as it holds my interest. poets serve no master, if that's what you mean by 'solipsistic' tradition...your ideas are beginning to reflect loose ends - take your time, rethink and return
December 4, 2009 at 7:53 am
I understand you have other interests in life than me :) Check in once in a while when you can.
December 4, 2009 at 9:30 am
Now that the Cold War has receded into the past and we stand at the beginning of a new century, literature must reclaim its ancient duty to confront directly the objective world.
December 3, 2009 at 10:24 am
During most of the postmodern period, poets largely conformed to the inclination of the age to withdraw into the self and sought refuge there from the increasing pressure of the external threat by extending the autotelic conception of literature of the modernist poets and critics.
December 3, 2009 at 6:25 am
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Postmodernism distinctly runs against modernism by poking fun at concepts like the self and art, especially art for art's sake. It often launches from the premise that all is a contrivance. It doesn't seek refuge; it becomes "the increasing pressure of the external threat."
December 4, 2009 at 6:19 am
Schoolroom theory cloaking nihilism with shallow play... just at the moment when civilization needs to affirm the meaning and purpose of life...
December 4, 2009 at 6:28 am
...to save itself from destruction.
December 4, 2009 at 10:59 am
This is why nihilism isn't just a classroom game.
December 4, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Why should I keep buying into the same stuff that delivered us here in the first place? And with THIS loaded and skewed language? How is that not loading more water into a sinking ship? Perhaps postmodernism is a mirror shined onto all the *** flung onto the human mind, and truly not just a classroom game. It may be, however, the last bastion of certain voices--all they've got to say that anyone cares to hear, at least from them. The malaise that you feel, could it be for the demise of your ideologies and not for the state of the world? Overall, life expectancy, quality of life, human rights, education, the lessening of violence--contrary to what the media would have you believe, all these are better than they have ever been in history. And there isn't a sole, unifying ideology making that happen. And if the sub-oceanic methane hydrate crystals reach their threshold thanks to our old ideologies, then that's it for thought, talk, and all but a few deep-sea crinoids. To argue that we should be saved is a little silly in the face of what the Permian extinction has to tell us.
December 7, 2009 at 8:45 am
No nostalgia. I'm all for moving forward, not backwards... beyond, through nihilism... I argue our *lived* experience has done just that, while many are stuck in the postmodern sand. Nihilism is the surest route to the Permian extinction. To use different terms, po mo is just a worn-out fad. Its nauseating death-stench fills the air. I respect your conscience.
December 7, 2009 at 9:03 am
I believe we should remember with respect the general direction of the Acheson-Lilienthal-Baruch Plan following World War II. No greater pressure challenges our inveterate provincialism than the proliferation of the nuclear threat, which necessitates a reaffirmation of fundamentally humane values. A global humanism would give us a new critical perspective from which to view our history.
December 2, 2009 at 4:09 pm
How will a new critical perspective and reafirmation of humane values effect the worldwide threat from Ajad and the Taliban??? You think therefore it is? Viewing history doesn't make history - it's a dead end. Your idealism is at once foolish and counterproductive. It verges on mythomania. History is made by people, not ideas. It is a common error of ideologues to tell a story long enough to be believed, not only my themselves but by others who are deceived into thinking likewise. The only percievable view of history is action, otherwise we are doomed to repeated the same lessons of war and death - which is all history has to teach, over and over and over again. The values you purport are acquired through experience, not learned by rhetoric. Respectfully yours
December 2, 2009 at 4:51 pm
The poet W. H. Auden wrote, “poetry makes nothing happen.” I reject that notion, as did the poet Robert Hayden, a student of Auden’s during the1940s and a poet with whom I studied. As Hayden rightly said to me once, “poetry changes consciousness.” To change consciousness is to change behavior, action, and culture. That insight is at the heart of all the great religions, great art, and it is an insight I honor and respect.
I believe our thinking needs to change at a very basic level. Like all the great traditions, the Hebrew prophets taught a much deeper view of history and how to change and influence its direction. Not as quick as a nuclear bomb, but infinitely more preferable... All the bombs on earth cannot produce peace.
I believe our thinking needs to change at a very basic level. Like all the great traditions, the Hebrew prophets taught a much deeper view of history and how to change and influence its direction. Not as quick as a nuclear bomb, but infinitely more preferable... All the bombs on earth cannot produce peace.
December 2, 2009 at 5:18 pm
Then why, despite all the conciousness imparted to mankind by great thinkers, poets and biblical prophets are we now on the verge of an atomic disaster? Peace I pray daily, as I and my family are literally in the eye of the storm here in Israel. Not only in Isreal, but the entire world!
December 2, 2009 at 5:36 pm
You're a good soul Glaysher, I mean no disrespect. Perhaps a voice crying in the wilderness...
December 2, 2009 at 5:51 pm
"Where there is no vision, the people perish."
December 2, 2009 at 6:38 pm
Since the late 1940s our threat to ourselves has steadily mounted to the inconceivably destructive nuclear arsenal of many times the overkill of the entire planet. Even after the implementation of the arms reduction treaties, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, more than enough weapons remain to overkill much of the human species.
December 2, 2009 at 12:13 pm
As modern human beings, we take it for granted that not only are the artifacts of civilization imperiled but also the environment itself and most forms of plant and animal life. For many of the survivors of such a catastrophe, life would barely be worth living.
December 2, 2009 at 9:55 am
For too long nuclear weapons have threatened a quarter of a million years of human development on this planet. No other threat to human well-being has ever posed such possibly dire consequences. Much of what humankind has ever produced can still be blasted away in no more than a few hours.
December 2, 2009 at 6:28 am
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“The Function of Criticism.” PDF under > Essays. https://www.fglaysher.com/
December 1, 2009 at 2:54 pm
fglaysher.com
December 1, 2009 at 10:04 am
| Reviews by Frederick Glaysher |
When Saul Bellow’s novel Ravelstein was published in 2000, I did not rush out and buy a copy but closely followed the many reviews that began to appear. I had read almost all of Bellow’s work up to his ...
December 1, 2009 at 10:04 am
The distortions that have historically evolved between reason and belief, science and religion, society and the individual, need not preclude poets and critics from perceiving the invincible hand of God guiding the affairs of man, through glory and turmoil, into that promised day when swords shall be beaten into plowshares and mankind shall be gathered together.
December 1, 2009 at 6:29 am
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If you are going to continue with this epistemic made of binary oppositions, you ought to conclude that it is both God and Satan that guide the affairs of humans, and that, as a result, there will never be peace on Earth.
December 1, 2009 at 6:38 am
I do address the antinomies, at different levels, in my work elsewhere; most fully in prose in my book The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture. https://www.fglaysher.com/grove_of_the_eumenides.html
December 1, 2009 at 6:56 am
Or you can forget both God and Satan and realize that it is the self that guides us in what we do. Millions of people, millions of individuals, each with their own agenda, each with their own experiences of life.
December 1, 2009 at 6:58 am
Sounds like a paean to the self and relativism. Old hat. Not my interest. As I state in an essay, “Sophocles was interested in life outside his skull.”
December 1, 2009 at 7:30 am
'To kill one man is to kill the entire world' [Talmud] and 'We shall pray for peace until the last clump of earth covers our head'.
December 1, 2009 at 7:57 am
Isaiah 65.17: "For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth."
December 1, 2009 at 8:19 am
Jesus later related this blog to Luke, who labored four or five days before deciding it would not make a productive parable . . .
December 1, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Have a citation for that?
December 1, 2009 at 5:21 pm
Or how about a URL?
December 2, 2009 at 3:36 am
"The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities." Sophocles
December 2, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Creon to Oedipus: "You are ready now to listen to the god."
December 2, 2009 at 1:33 pm
The dominant tradition of our literature and criticism has unabashedly been humanistic and dedicated to the fullest possible development of the individual within his cultural and historical context. Such development has always held supreme the capacities of humankind for transcendence, selflessness, nobility, and love of God, family, country, and kind.
November 30, 2009 at 3:53 pm
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Social conditions have more than sufficiently changed to necessitate a repudiation of the anti-values of modernism and postmodernism, of the cheap intellectual clichés of what Saul Bellow called the wasteland outlook.
November 30, 2009 at 12:50 pm
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Similarly poet-critics who retreat into the self highlight the national isolation or flight from the responsibility that is our birthright from the earliest settlements upon our shores. Criticism must embrace this capacious perspective of global humanism because it is incontrovertibly true, consistent with the history of humankind, and the highest locus of value within the quotidian realm.
November 30, 2009 at 9:32 am
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You are beginning to use the word 'must', symptomatically. The self is not the retreat into self, but the essence of American freedom and human rights. When the State or 'globe' is placed before the individual, it portends the advent of fascism - intellectual and otherwise. This my opinion. The nature of man is diversity - there is no right angle in nature, but rarely and by accident
November 30, 2009 at 9:48 am
Academic criticism that denies the moral, religious, and philosophical traditions of the Western world and passes “beyond man and humanism” to parasitic nihilism manifests the major upheavals of our time and highlights the impasse at which the nay-saying capacity of man has brought us. I know there is a truth to its negation, and it is that negation surrounds us.
November 30, 2009 at 7:07 am
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rational debate does not dictate
the value of what is said depends on who said it
government and academic freedom = the state
the value of what is said depends on who said it
government and academic freedom = the state
November 30, 2009 at 7:13 am
Given our exchange last week on the state of the university, elsewhere, I'd want to emphasize now that I stop short of anti-intellectualism. The advocates of Deconstruction and other academic theories are entitled to their beliefs, which many arrived at through a genuine and logically defensible line of reasoning, which doesn't mean I share or agree with them. Quite the contrary. But I do respect their conscience.
November 30, 2009 at 8:11 am
Same here Fred, i am not anti-intellectual, not by a long shot. The universities have been a haven for a lot of the great thinkers and poets. Being entirely self-educated, i have always had great respect for good learning - sorry really my youth was badly handled if at all, being born to immigrant parents who worked morning till night...wish i could have learned more about many things, science and astronomy, etc.
November 30, 2009 at 8:22 am
Most of the time when I read Fred's posts, I don't know what he is talking about. I don't fault him for it of course. My intellectual capacity needs to expand and soon. I am grateful today that I can understand this conversation. Keep it going and I'll check in later to learn and understand more.
December 1, 2009 at 7:25 am
There are 2 ways to reach there...1 is the intellectual way....i.e. by reasoning and the other is the way of devotion....whatever way suits u...ur nature....it will finally lead to Him... either pure incisive intellenge or pure devotion.
December 1, 2009 at 9:27 am
The three fold path is ...1st the "Gyan Marg"..wherein "Gyan" is Knowledge or intellegence or reason or "awareness" to put it correctly & "marg" means the path...the 2nd is the "Karma Marg" wherein "karma" means the rightful action..to act or work with dedication and devotion without expecting any fruits..to work selflessly with devotion towards the almighty...and lastly it is the "Bhakti Marg"..wherein the term "Bhakti" means true, pure devotion towards God....any of these three paths that u need to choose for yourselves according to your essential true nature will ultimately lead to the almighty....the last resort for all the woes of Humanity.
December 1, 2009 at 6:43 pm
And not even the retreat from and betrayal of the universal values of the United Nations, as was done by some member nations during the term of Boutros Boutros-Ghali, so devastatingly chronicled in his book UNvanquished, can in the long run stop this epic movement from reaching fruition.
November 25, 2009 at 12:39 pm
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UN seems to have turned propaganda/photo op machine - to the bank. As the great Willy Sutton once said when asked why he robbed banks; 'That's where the money is'
November 26, 2009 at 12:14 am
Such UN initiatives as those in Kuwait, El Salvador, Cambodia, Mozambique, Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, East Timor, despite the at times impure motives of some of the participants, show we have already entered a new and welcomed stage in human history.
November 25, 2009 at 10:07 am
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No variation on the balance of power schemes of the past, the delusions of unilateral action, or a multipolar world will ever inaugurate the vision of the UN Charter, the instrument of the will of the Member States.
November 25, 2009 at 7:51 am
I am against global governance. 'One law for the ox and the lion, is oppression' [W.Blake] Makes too easy for the multi-national monopolists, and other preditors
November 26, 2009 at 12:21 am
The major powers must unequivocally recognize the global evolution of the international community toward unity, perceived by such champions of humankind as Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Dag Hammarskjold, and break through to a new path for the United Nations, one that fulfills the promise of its Charter to bring in the secure establishment of peace.
November 25, 2009 at 5:10 am
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I like your sentiment, Fred, but it will never happen. The UN is every bit as feckless and ineffective as the Democratic Party. And I say that as a Democrat!
November 25, 2009 at 6:51 am
Thanks for commenting. It's more than sentiment. I agree with your negative evaluation of the UN and also extend it to most of those in current government.
Your point was made by many about the League of Nations and the UN itself. In the long run, historical experience has a way of over-riding the nay-sayers. I believe we are still in the midst of that modern tragedy.
Your point was made by many about the League of Nations and the UN itself. In the long run, historical experience has a way of over-riding the nay-sayers. I believe we are still in the midst of that modern tragedy.
November 25, 2009 at 7:11 am
Wyndham Lewis once wrote, “A World Government appears to me the only imaginable solution for the chaos reigning at present throughout the world.” Only within such a universal framework of value can society, literature, and criticism again find their bearings.
November 24, 2009 at 4:01 pm
In the post Cold War world, history has not ended. Many inveterate problems will continue and endure, but, for the first time, they will receive the redress of the will of all the peoples of the planet.
November 24, 2009 at 10:44 am
To imagine that we can remain indefinitely on the brink of annihilation without our choosing to follow the inevitable path of history through this putative impasse is the delusion of those who deny the direction of the vast horrors that mark the twentieth century and the portent of 9/11. Such a haven is possible, practical, and not a utopian vision.
November 24, 2009 at 8:08 am
Far from actually circumventing this requirement with the post Cold War arms reduction treaties, which leave plenty of weapons for overkill, we must recognize that world governance need not be any grotesque polity,
November 24, 2009 at 5:17 am
...as some members of the original American colonies had feared would become of the new world, but rather, if we but have the will, it can become the lasting haven of ourselves and the entire world, knit together by the highest ideals of the republican tradition.
November 24, 2009 at 5:17 am
In The Abolition Jonathan Schell perceptively identifies the impasse at which the world still stands. “The requirement for world government as the inevitable price for nuclear disarmament is at the heart of the impasse....”
November 23, 2009 at 2:24 pm
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Cliche.
November 23, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Barbs do not constitute a rational refutation.
November 23, 2009 at 7:10 pm
So do you think that price should be paid (see Schell above)? Earlier you wrote that you were not advancing "borderless solutions", which lead me to believe I'd misunderstood your prior use of "world federation". Now you mention "world government", so clarification might be useful to ongoing discussion.
November 24, 2009 at 11:26 am
Thanks for asking. Versus the alternative, yes.
I'm not advocating any quixotic solution, in my view :). All the borders stay where they are, unless the people concerned choose to move, i.e., peacefully, through negotiation, would be ideal. But as we all know the ideal seldom takes place in this world. Obviously, the UN, World Court, and governments would have to work out numerous endemic problems here and there.
The monolithic, oppressive conception of UN helicopters coming over the horizon is obscures the real issues. There is plenty of balance, in every political sense, already in the UN Charter and other international agreements, preserving and respecting national integrity.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali's Plan of the early 1990s, Brian Urquhart's work, the UN-USA and other proposals and documents, have long demonstrated the world has studied it to death. The time for action is now, before it is too late.
I'm not advocating any quixotic solution, in my view :). All the borders stay where they are, unless the people concerned choose to move, i.e., peacefully, through negotiation, would be ideal. But as we all know the ideal seldom takes place in this world. Obviously, the UN, World Court, and governments would have to work out numerous endemic problems here and there.
The monolithic, oppressive conception of UN helicopters coming over the horizon is obscures the real issues. There is plenty of balance, in every political sense, already in the UN Charter and other international agreements, preserving and respecting national integrity.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali's Plan of the early 1990s, Brian Urquhart's work, the UN-USA and other proposals and documents, have long demonstrated the world has studied it to death. The time for action is now, before it is too late.
November 24, 2009 at 11:49 am
Thank you. I'm now clear on your meaning. And it seems I didn't misunderstand in the first place.
November 24, 2009 at 12:01 pm
I don't claim any originality. Far from it, my thinking regarding some form of cooperative international governance is informed by my having read at various times in my life over a couple of hundred books on the League of Nations and the UN.
As a poet and literary critic, I have tried to give literary expression and interpretation, if you will, to that body of work and the human experience that inspired it. From Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and many others, there is very profound reflection on applying the principles of federalism, commonwealth, if you will, to the global body politic. Hope this all helps.
As a poet and literary critic, I have tried to give literary expression and interpretation, if you will, to that body of work and the human experience that inspired it. From Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and many others, there is very profound reflection on applying the principles of federalism, commonwealth, if you will, to the global body politic. Hope this all helps.
November 24, 2009 at 12:58 pm
|
Saul Bellow. Ravelstein. Allan Bloom. |
American English departments have proven themselves unworthy stewards of what is noble in human nature, in the great public.
November 23, 2009 at 7:34 am
To do nothing constitutes a repudiation of the manifest destiny of America to become as “a city upon a hill” cooperating with and beckoning to all humankind the global path to political peace and stability.
November 23, 2009 at 6:04 am
The major barrier is our persistent failure to conceive of world governance as anything other than a form of fascism, socialism, or communism. In practical terms, the new world order can be established only on the principles of federalism.
November 23, 2009 at 4:26 am
Not only has it become possible for a world federation to evolve to protect humankind from its innate passions but it has also become inevitable. All roads lead to unity, even the devastating path of universal nuclear conflagration.
November 22, 2009 at 4:52 pm
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All roads lead to unity,even the devastating path ..Great thought..time to think for us..
November 23, 2009 at 1:25 am
And act. Long past, even. Many, East and West, have understood the urgent need of action. Carlos Romulo, the Philippine ambassador at the first United Nations Assembly in San Francisco in 1945, long ago wrote a brilliant book that fully realized how serious of a challenge the world faces, as we still do. Time to act...
November 23, 2009 at 3:26 am
"Protect humanity from its innate passions"?
You must be mad.
You must be mad.
November 23, 2009 at 4:14 am
From a religious point of view, as mad as the prophets, Isaiah, Jesus, Buddha, Confucius, Lao Tzu, etc. From a secular one, the writers of the Federalist Papers, the signers of the US Declaration, they who created the first codes of law and dreamed of social order, slowly developed and evolved professional police forces, and so on.
They who are mistaken today are the people who close their eyes to modern history and imagine the unbridled passions of human beings, of the political leaders as well as the peoples, can go on decade after decade without global catastrophe taking place either through intention or error... who imagine the balance of power schemes of the past can work in the modern world, when they tragically demonstrated their futility in two world wars...
They who are mistaken today are the people who close their eyes to modern history and imagine the unbridled passions of human beings, of the political leaders as well as the peoples, can go on decade after decade without global catastrophe taking place either through intention or error... who imagine the balance of power schemes of the past can work in the modern world, when they tragically demonstrated their futility in two world wars...
November 23, 2009 at 4:45 am
The framers at least attempted to create safeguards against self perpetuating tyranny. I'm inclined to think that human society is guided more by biology than any specific philosophy of leadership.
November 23, 2009 at 5:49 am
You're not comparing yourself to Jesus, are you?
November 23, 2009 at 6:59 am
Come up with something serious other than heckling and I'll answer it.
November 23, 2009 at 7:19 am
A "world federation" is far from "inevitable". Exactly the opposite, in my estimate. It's extraordinarily *unlikely*, short of tyrannical imposition. But since it's also just about the worst thing that could happen to the world, I find myself not terribly worried about how hard it would be to attain. Protection from human passion? Indeed, they call them borders. The last thing you do in containing a wildfire is take down the fire fences.
I assume you want feedback to these statements you post from time to time, yes? Well there's mine.
I assume you want feedback to these statements you post from time to time, yes? Well there's mine.
November 23, 2009 at 7:47 am
Thank you for your feedback. I respect your opinion. Many people express similar views. I believe they're uninformed by serious study and reflection on modern history and the reasons why the League of Nations and the United Nations were created.
All the borders of Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia failed at least twice during the 20th Century.
I do not believe that "tyrannical imposition" of a world order can ever be accomplished. It can only be through democratic consultation, cooperation, agreement, and the sheer compulsion of the force of world experience, the response of the nations to it.
The worst thing that could happen to the world is the use of the hardware that is already in place and capable of destroying a billion human beings, all around the fragile globe.
All the borders of Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia failed at least twice during the 20th Century.
I do not believe that "tyrannical imposition" of a world order can ever be accomplished. It can only be through democratic consultation, cooperation, agreement, and the sheer compulsion of the force of world experience, the response of the nations to it.
The worst thing that could happen to the world is the use of the hardware that is already in place and capable of destroying a billion human beings, all around the fragile globe.
November 23, 2009 at 7:57 am
Back into the dim reaches of time human beings have also demonstrated they have the capacity for cooperation, care, concern for one another, the ability to sacrifice for the young and old, and so on. Modern cynicism is a disabling cocktail. The examples you cite, "Race, gender, age, and/or religious beliefs," are largely the result of our thinking, and our thinking can be changed. Art, literature, and religion are all about the human ability to evolve and change.
Not a Utopia, but the deeply human struggle to create a world more worthy of what is best in the human being.
Not a Utopia, but the deeply human struggle to create a world more worthy of what is best in the human being.
November 23, 2009 at 8:06 am
My reading of human desire (a term I prefer to "passion") is that it is a memetic phenomenon, after Girard. As such it is contagious and rivalrous. Hence my skepticism about "borderless" solutions.
November 23, 2009 at 8:08 am
There are many millions of people around the globe who are aware of the need for greater international cooperation and change in both our thinking and behavior right now.
Together humankind is already struggling to figure out how to survive under the onslaught of all our problems, growing as a consequence of having to face these perils.
As a poet and writer, I hope that through my work I might reach readers and help them understand, in the unique way that only poetry and literature can, the compelling issues involved and some of the possibilities that exist--fresh perspective, versus the dregs of modern nihilism which is surely only leading us further down the path to destruction.
Together humankind is already struggling to figure out how to survive under the onslaught of all our problems, growing as a consequence of having to face these perils.
As a poet and writer, I hope that through my work I might reach readers and help them understand, in the unique way that only poetry and literature can, the compelling issues involved and some of the possibilities that exist--fresh perspective, versus the dregs of modern nihilism which is surely only leading us further down the path to destruction.
November 23, 2009 at 8:14 am
I'm familiar with Girard's work. I've never suggested in any of my writing "borderless solutions" going forward. National borders exist and aren't going away nor should they. Healthy patriotism and national pride are positives; it's bigotry and extreme nationalism that were the bane of the 20th century.
November 23, 2009 at 8:18 am
I've misunderstood what you mean by "world federation", in that case.
November 23, 2009 at 8:26 am
Unity doesn't mean uniformity. I was just in London and Hampshire in July and England is as good example as any country. There's regional variety, culture, and flavor, rich with the all historical nuance that only a country's own citizens really can understand and appreciate. And then there's the more share national culture. Having lived for an extended period in Japan and traveled all over China and the USA, it's must the same. Internationally, an effectively cooperating federal order would not mean effacing the vitality of the constituents. This is already the lived reality all over the earth as intermingling has progressed. This is what I mean when I say our thinking has not caught up with our "lived experience," which is way out ahead. Historically, in all societies, that's always the way it is. We need to *choose* to catch up before *history* forces us to...
November 23, 2009 at 8:57 am
With human beings, yes, there's always chaos. That we can rely on. Hence the need for police. Not Utopia, a roughly human approximation of greater peace and stability. Right now, we're waiting for the next 9/11. It's thick in the air. Dire straits...
That is, the next invasion of Poland, Pearl Harbor, v-bombs on London, etc. That's not good enough with WMD. We need to change our thinking and action, or events of history will force us to. Then, we'll all whine, Why didn't we try, do something earlier, etc.
That is, the next invasion of Poland, Pearl Harbor, v-bombs on London, etc. That's not good enough with WMD. We need to change our thinking and action, or events of history will force us to. Then, we'll all whine, Why didn't we try, do something earlier, etc.
November 23, 2009 at 9:29 am
The reality of man is his thought, and it alone stands in the way of a peaceful world.
November 22, 2009 at 6:50 am
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the attention drawn to the plight of millions of the world’s children through numerous proclamations, as well as many other humanitarian and scientific efforts to promote the well-being of humankind, confronted with the peril of global warming, have all served to forge, despite politicization, a wider consciousness among the peoples of the world.
November 21, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Similarly, the many conventions, treaties, and declarations of the United Nations, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Declaration on Friendly Relations, the Declaration on Decolonization, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the various pronouncements on discrimination based on race, religion, or sex,
November 21, 2009 at 12:31 pm
the Organization of American States, the Organization of African Unity, and the South Pacific Forum have all forged unprecedented relationships at a wider level than the nation-state.
November 21, 2009 at 10:31 am
Such cooperative bodies and organizations as the European Community, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, the Central American Common Market, the Carribean Community and Common Market, the Association of South East Asian Nations, the League of Arab States,
November 21, 2009 at 10:30 am
The barriers to understanding are diminishing often under the onslaught of dire international upheavals or incidents of terrorism that are compelling the proponents of provincialism to work together to find new means of cooperation.
November 21, 2009 at 6:58 am
I think we understand but our accepting of matters is difficult. We feel so helpless "as our so called leaders speak...we are spirits in the material wrld" the Police
November 21, 2009 at 8:55 am
From another view, if you will, antinomies are an indication of dissatisfaction and the preliminary requirement for search and, what postmodernism no longer believes in, discovery. A good analogous example.
November 21, 2009 at 10:29 am
Yet xenophobia is grounded in a provincial interpretation of other cultures that fails to appreciate both the beautiful diversity of human customs and the essential oneness of human nature, which “the prejudices of a country” leave untouched. Although numerous historical times exist around the globe and will continue to exist, their ultimate harmonization is readily conceivable and is taking place despite resistance.
November 21, 2009 at 3:55 am
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The difficulties that so often arise in the meeting of Western and Eastern peoples with one another, and with others of the globe, still hamper the thinking of many ordinary people, as well as those who conduct the international relations of their respective countries.
November 20, 2009 at 4:57 pm
The forces that still work against such a vision becoming an actuality are immense and not languishing in passivity. Provincialism and bigotry embue each individual nation let alone the relations among sovereign states. More than vestiges of xenophobia linger.
November 20, 2009 at 3:28 pm
I have long felt that for the first time in history the human being now stands on the threshold of becoming what only the rare individual, such as Socrates, dreamed of—a world citizen.
November 20, 2009 at 1:17 pm
I felt like a world citizen the moment I got a passport....
November 20, 2009 at 2:38 pm
According to Sanatana Hindu Dharma....wherein the word 'Sanatana' means eternal and the word Dharma cud be translated as religion but infact its more potent than wat the word "religion" may convey...so "Sanatana Hindu Dharma" isttually a way of life..the art of living rather than just a mere religion....so according to this Sanatana Hindu Dharma we Hindus have been actually living our lives from eons with a feeling of "Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam" wherein the word 'Vasudha' means the entire earth.. & 'Kutumbakam' means family...so "Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam" means its all actually one family...entire earth is one family.
November 20, 2009 at 10:49 pm
Thank you for commenting. I share your view of Sanatana Dharma, sometimes translated as “Eternal Law.” You’re right that it’s much broader than what people in the West often think of as “religion,” though there is the broader notion too in many ways that you’re suggesting with Sanatana Dharma. It’s the universality of the Divine and the human family that interests me in my writing as a poet and why I strive for a global perspective.
Over thirty years ago when I was an undergraduate student, I was fortunate to have had two Indian roommates, one a Hindu and one a Christian. They often joked with one another and helped me to understand a little the complexity of Indian religious, human, sensibility.
Many years of study and teaching of Asian literature and religion have also deepened my awareness of the extent to which the lived experience of modern people has moved beyond the traditional exclusivism of the Western religions. Globally, I believe we are all on the journey toward understanding what truly resides at the heart of all the great religions. As the Bhagavad Gita puts it so well, “Truth is One, sages call it by many names”—the insight and challenge of all the great mystics, East and West.
In the fragmented West as well as East, the modern nihilism of Nietzsche, Freud, Marx, and others, blinds many, especially in intellectual circles, from perceiving how life has moved on.
Over thirty years ago when I was an undergraduate student, I was fortunate to have had two Indian roommates, one a Hindu and one a Christian. They often joked with one another and helped me to understand a little the complexity of Indian religious, human, sensibility.
Many years of study and teaching of Asian literature and religion have also deepened my awareness of the extent to which the lived experience of modern people has moved beyond the traditional exclusivism of the Western religions. Globally, I believe we are all on the journey toward understanding what truly resides at the heart of all the great religions. As the Bhagavad Gita puts it so well, “Truth is One, sages call it by many names”—the insight and challenge of all the great mystics, East and West.
In the fragmented West as well as East, the modern nihilism of Nietzsche, Freud, Marx, and others, blinds many, especially in intellectual circles, from perceiving how life has moved on.
November 21, 2009 at 5:45 am
I have been very sincerely reading all your postings ...its very ineresting ...I precisely catch the feel of the words you express...have always been thinking about all this from many years now and so have a feeling that the only one solution to all the problems of humanity of our times and that where we wish to reach as humanity lies only in one thing i.e to change the way of life...the way we live our daily life....i.e how to manage to not to live a fragmented life wherein even the intellectual fails to perceive the "right thing" and misses to live a wholesome life whereas the one with not that level of intellegence but with a "balanced view" ...that which Buddha has called "Samyak Drishti" ..the balanced view of life...there's a system of living our daily life in such a way wherein lies the secret of living a wholesome life....the answer to all the woes of humanity lies here.
November 21, 2009 at 8:52 am
Thank you for your interest and attention. I appreciate it. Buddha’s Five Noble truths are exactly the kind of comprehensive vision I mean. The modern West and East, intellectuals and people in various walks of life, have lost the “sacred vision” of the great teachers of the past. A well-known story. The modern literature of Asia, as much as Europe, reflects that loss and the consequent dehumanization of the soul. My essay “India’s Kali Yuga,” in The Grove of the Eumenides, discusses that journey.
The urgent question before all peoples is how to move forward from here. Many around the world believe the solution is to move backwards to an idealized stage of civilization, which tends to produce much violence, since it’s divorced from reality and often seeks to impose a Utopian religious order or organization on others.
In our Global Age, I believe we can only move forward, affirming what is universal in our pluralistic experience and traditions, and which is largely the work of the individual soul who alone knows how to negotiate the journey back to the One.
The urgent question before all peoples is how to move forward from here. Many around the world believe the solution is to move backwards to an idealized stage of civilization, which tends to produce much violence, since it’s divorced from reality and often seeks to impose a Utopian religious order or organization on others.
In our Global Age, I believe we can only move forward, affirming what is universal in our pluralistic experience and traditions, and which is largely the work of the individual soul who alone knows how to negotiate the journey back to the One.
November 21, 2009 at 10:19 am
At this point I thoroughly grasp it all totally in all its entirety...the poet..the poem...your zest..your endeavour..its a commendable job....thanks so much...thank you for connecting with me ...in sanskrit we say "Vidhya" i.e. in literal terms means Knowledge but actually its awareness...that of Buddha...liberates human from all bondages...in sanskrit it goes this way.."Sa Vidhya Ya Vimuktyaye" meaning knowledge...awareness liberates..in our times its science that will liberate human..other wise how cud facebook be possible to connect people like us from faraway lands...thanks so much...i enjoy ur postings and ur endevour..thanks.
November 22, 2009 at 3:26 am
Exactly. “Education is that which liberates.” Spiritual education or awareness, not, if you will, only material, worldly. In the modern world, East and West, have lost to a significant extent such transcendent definitions of knowledge, especially in officially atheistic, Marxist states. Capitalist countries have tended toward skepticism, nihilism, at best neutrality, leaving such epistemology to the individual to grapple with, though which I believe is the proper locus. Lived experience has moved on causing ever-increasing dissatisfaction with both the compromises of modernity and the attempts to revert to past Forms.
I agree fully with your thinking about science and the Internet. It’s astounding that we can communicate around the globe, instantly, when our time zones sync the right way! You answered me once, I think it was, in about three minutes! I make a careful distinction between science and scientism. The modern disjunction comes out of the wars of religion in the West and the following cultural developments, the Royal Society in England and so on, much of which has been superceded by our experience. That is, we know scientism cannot save us, but only science guided by our moral and spiritual choices, informed by the humanistic, spiritual Love taught by all the great spiritual Teachers, not the false prophets of modernity. Love of others, sacrifice of self in service to the good of others. That is the Path that leads to salvation, nirvana, Brahman, the deepest fulfillment of Being, as it always has.
In the West and elsewhere, many intellectuals often think they’re global, but are often myopic, limited to the Western, ruling secular and radical mentality, unable to conceive of a greater stage of human civilization, congruent with and building on the past but moving forward.
See my further notes on India at A Journey through India
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2009/01/06/a-journey-through-india/
A Walk around the Galleries of Angkor Wat
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2009/01/20/a-walk-around-the-galleries-of-angkor-wat/
I agree fully with your thinking about science and the Internet. It’s astounding that we can communicate around the globe, instantly, when our time zones sync the right way! You answered me once, I think it was, in about three minutes! I make a careful distinction between science and scientism. The modern disjunction comes out of the wars of religion in the West and the following cultural developments, the Royal Society in England and so on, much of which has been superceded by our experience. That is, we know scientism cannot save us, but only science guided by our moral and spiritual choices, informed by the humanistic, spiritual Love taught by all the great spiritual Teachers, not the false prophets of modernity. Love of others, sacrifice of self in service to the good of others. That is the Path that leads to salvation, nirvana, Brahman, the deepest fulfillment of Being, as it always has.
In the West and elsewhere, many intellectuals often think they’re global, but are often myopic, limited to the Western, ruling secular and radical mentality, unable to conceive of a greater stage of human civilization, congruent with and building on the past but moving forward.
See my further notes on India at A Journey through India
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2009/01/06/a-journey-through-india/
A Walk around the Galleries of Angkor Wat
https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2009/01/20/a-walk-around-the-galleries-of-angkor-wat/
November 22, 2009 at 6:47 am
Thanks....
November 22, 2009 at 7:24 am
In 1967 in Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? Dr. King understands the connection between the nonviolent struggle of the African-American and what he calls the community of the “world house” in the context of the United Nations.
November 20, 2009 at 12:42 pm
With the rise of the civil rights movement and such persons as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., America at last began to move, however reluctantly, toward the fulfillment of the true meaning of its Constitution and to prepare itself, however unwittingly, for its continuing role of offering the basic principles of federalism and human rights to the entire globe.
November 20, 2009 at 7:38 am
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Yeah, bro', but who is the America to offer human rights to the entire globe? We can't even manage to care for our own less fortunate without rancorous, ideologically partisan and fractious political debate. Nothing is more telling of America's human rights record, or least the global perception of it, than being kicked off the UN Human Rights Commission a few years ago. As for the civil rights movement in America--well, let me just say that, yeah, one brother slipped through the cracks and he's getting a minute to reside in the Big House and play Big Boss, but that's a long, long, long way from full enfranchisement...
November 20, 2009 at 12:07 pm
Similarly women were also employed in record numbers and in jobs that were formerly reserved for men. The door opened to human equality and opportunity for millions of minorities and further swept aside a system of oppression that had roots reaching back into slavery. It is no coincidence that shortly after World War II institutional racism in America suffered some of its most lasting defeats.
November 20, 2009 at 4:47 am
This global process has not failed to make an impact on national cultures. In the United States World War II led to the weakening of the chains of bondage for many African-Americans who previously had been denied access to many sectors of the economy. With the entry of America into the war, many industries employed blacks in record numbers.
November 20, 2009 at 4:03 am
That was when America was beginning to live up to its lofty ideals. Economic inclusion for African Americans and women energized those populations, which then began to sue for--and win--greater participation in the society. Sadly, since those halcyon days of protest and movements and marches and filibuster on the streets, America has devolved into the dictatorship of the corporatocracy. That tiny oligarchy wielding the the full might of the inverted economic pyramid are the only enfranchised Americans left...
November 20, 2009 at 12:15 pm
This process is still forging and consolidating the “ideas and ideals,” the values, the principles of world federalism upon which globally minded people will ultimately establish lasting and universal peace.
November 19, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Everywhere the peoples of the old order have assimilated or are assimilating the evolving new world culture that forms itself on the scientific and cultural achievements of Western civilization. Far from this being a negative development, this process has allowed, for the first time in history, one substantially unified, though not uniform, world human culture to begin to emerge.
November 19, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Throughout South America, Africa, South East Asia, and the archipelagoes, new nations have arisen to play out their destiny on the global stage. The masses have further been brought together by the development of computer technologies and media that have culminated in the electronic global village, now nowhere more evident than in the vast potential of the Internet.
November 19, 2009 at 9:13 am
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As most of the major combatants of World War II turned to the interests of their own nations and most critics and poets were content to withdraw further into the self, one motley collection of people after another began their struggle for nationhood and claimed their independence. Despite exceptions and failures, much of the formation of unstable areas of the globe into sovereign states has been completed.
November 19, 2009 at 8:07 am
After World War II the United Nations, which rose out of the ashes of the hope of war-weary peoples for a lasting peace, was also hamstrung throughout the Cold War by the mutual suspicions and intrigues of its members.
November 19, 2009 at 6:01 am
i really wish we were not a part of this organization we supply all funding for the most part of the world who oppose the usa and all we stand for , say that to one of the dictators and you would be hanged or worse
November 19, 2009 at 7:17 am
It took the so-called “war to end all wars” to lead to the first constructive step toward world federal governance: The League of Nations. Yet its aims were subverted by the virulent nationalistic passions that hamstrung its Covenant and the Treaty of Versailles.
November 19, 2009 at 5:29 am
Modern history has been preparing for this “revolution” in our social structure by sloughing off allegiances to narrow commitments, by replacing them with a growing consciousness of the interdependence of all peoples, and by forging new modes of cooperation among formerly antagonistic peoples. Such revolution is not taking place, as Milosz observes, “without high cost.”
November 18, 2009 at 4:02 pm
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The upheaval in creeds, traditions, and dogmas is but the preliminary to the welding together of the world. Arnold Toynbee perceives in his Surviving the Future, as throughout his work, the inevitable goal toward which modernity has been hurtling and understands the fundamental prerequisite for such a “revolution” is one in our “basic ideas and ideals.”
November 18, 2009 at 10:17 am
The touchstone of pain testifies to the inexorable process of events that has been tearing down the old world order of isolated, often monarchical peoples and nations, and slowly, steadily, despite all temporary setbacks, establishing the bonds of a new world order. Matthew Arnold’s castigating of English provincialism and nationalism proves prescient beyond anything of which he could have ever conceived.
November 18, 2009 at 6:59 am
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Criticism must take into account the major tendencies of modernity, the incessant “turn away from the origin,” the long historical process that led through ever-deepening seas of blood.
November 18, 2009 at 4:05 am
The touchstone of pain testifies to the inexorable process of events that has been tearing down the old world order of isolated, often monarchical peoples and nations, and slowly, steadily, despite all temporary setbacks, establishing the bonds of a new world order.
November 17, 2009 at 4:58 pm
Criticism must take into account the major tendencies of modernity, the incessant “turn away from the origin,” the long historical process that led through ever-deepening seas of blood.
Modernity has shown us that sex and syncretism have made the world a smaller, more inter-related community than anyone cares to admit; history and science have taught us—or should have taught us, anyway—is that human evolution is the story of a single family, and that these notions of blood origins and purity are not only biologically irrelevant but evocative of the myths of tribal superiorities. These primitive conventions are both wrong and, clearly, from a historical perspective, dangerous…
November 17, 2009 at 3:07 pm
Modernity has shown us that sex and syncretism have made the world a smaller, more inter-related community than anyone cares to admit; history and science have taught us—or should have taught us, anyway—is that human evolution is the story of a single family, and that these notions of blood origins and purity are not only biologically irrelevant but evocative of the myths of tribal superiorities. These primitive conventions are both wrong and, clearly, from a historical perspective, dangerous…
November 18, 2009 at 5:34 am
I'm not sure what you mean about sex but as far as syncretism goes I believe the word is redolent of exclusivism, whether in a religious or secular sense. That is, the idea that there is only one religious truth, Christianity, historically, an idea I believe is false. Labeling the commonalities and universals found in different traditions becomes thereby a method to discredit and assert one's own tradition, typical of all the exclusivistic Western religions. In terms of the secular mentality, academic or whatever, it works the same way...
As Saul Bellow put it, our "being mixed and poured together," in the modern world, is a positive and has and is revealing ever-increasingly how, as you say, we are "a single family," which I whole-heartedly agree with and believe must be part of the highest vision to which an artist can aspire to today, in our time. It is the fact that much of the world has not moved beyond the tribal lines that has repeatedly resulted in the "ever-deepening seas of blood."
The PBS special last night, if anyone else saw it, made and suggested a related point. All human beings have virtually identical DNA and when the earliest human beings moved out of Africa there weren't any imaginary boundaries to stop them. Passports are a relatively new invention.
As Saul Bellow put it, our "being mixed and poured together," in the modern world, is a positive and has and is revealing ever-increasingly how, as you say, we are "a single family," which I whole-heartedly agree with and believe must be part of the highest vision to which an artist can aspire to today, in our time. It is the fact that much of the world has not moved beyond the tribal lines that has repeatedly resulted in the "ever-deepening seas of blood."
The PBS special last night, if anyone else saw it, made and suggested a related point. All human beings have virtually identical DNA and when the earliest human beings moved out of Africa there weren't any imaginary boundaries to stop them. Passports are a relatively new invention.
November 18, 2009 at 5:52 am
They revel so much in every form of “self-assertion” that they neglect the totality of human experience. Hence they spend their time on trivialities and the effete assumptions of nihilism. But “the remnants found in ruins” call out to us and lead us back to our senses. If science has proven anything, it is that life could “just as well not exist.” As Pablo Neruda wrote, “Yo vengo a habler por vuestra boca muerta.”
November 17, 2009 at 9:38 am
hi man i hope my responses dont seem too sarcastic or aggressive they are not supposed to but sometimes for the sake of brevity one exaggerates a point. thanks so much for putting all this up here i enjoy reading (and commenting) if you dont want my comments up there just tell me to delete them and post no more! but...amazing we have really similar thoughts on things often XD
November 17, 2009 at 8:33 am
I certainly don't mind. You're serious and thinking... I appreciate it.
November 17, 2009 at 9:23 am
As Milosz suggests in the following excerpt from The Witness of Poetry, it is in the reality of physical pain and in the “fragility of those things we call civilization or culture” that the poet must again reclaim his social function....The solipsism of postmodern poetry and criticism results from the paucity of “background reality” confronted by its practitioners.
November 17, 2009 at 6:59 am
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Good reminder
November 17, 2009 at 7:09 am
I cannot speak for others in how or why they write poetry, nor can I definitively state how or why people interpret the words they read.
The words I write are based on my education and accrued knowledge, and upon my emotions and my reactions to the events I live and witness. As such they are limited.
Nonetheless, I share my poetry and my prose in an effort to make people think and feel.
The words I write are based on my education and accrued knowledge, and upon my emotions and my reactions to the events I live and witness. As such they are limited.
Nonetheless, I share my poetry and my prose in an effort to make people think and feel.
November 17, 2009 at 7:28 am
Sounds like the prevailing relativism and reader-response theory. I've never understood why some writers are content to ignore life outside the self. Goethe in his conversations once mentioned that it was only when the writer moves outside the self that he is capable of becoming universal. Something like that is my view.
November 18, 2009 at 4:45 am
Here's the famous passage I was thinking of for anyone interested, available online:
"All eras in a state of decline and dissolution are subjective; on the other hand, all progressive eras have an objective tendency. Our present time is retrograde, for it is subjective: we see this not merely in poetry, but also in painting, and much besides. Every healthy effort, on the contrary, is directed from the inward to the outward world, as you will see in all great eras, which have been really in a state of progression, and all of an objective nature." CONVERSATIONS OF GOETHE, JOHANN PETER ECKERMANN https://www.hxa.name/books/ecog/Eckermann-ConversationsOfGoethe.html
"All eras in a state of decline and dissolution are subjective; on the other hand, all progressive eras have an objective tendency. Our present time is retrograde, for it is subjective: we see this not merely in poetry, but also in painting, and much besides. Every healthy effort, on the contrary, is directed from the inward to the outward world, as you will see in all great eras, which have been really in a state of progression, and all of an objective nature." CONVERSATIONS OF GOETHE, JOHANN PETER ECKERMANN https://www.hxa.name/books/ecog/Eckermann-ConversationsOfGoethe.html
November 18, 2009 at 5:32 am
Connects, I'd say with my comments this morning on Euripides and Beckett...
November 18, 2009 at 5:33 am
The struggle between oppression and federalism has been one of the most important characteristics of the last hundred years and only by recognizing this struggle and throwing off the autotelic, alienated singing robes of the decadents can literature again probe what it means to be a human being at this juncture of time and space.
November 17, 2009 at 4:59 am
In literature it's what's known as an allusion. Any idea to whom?
November 17, 2009 at 11:36 am
John Milton.
November 17, 2009 at 12:57 pm
The full phrase, mine, is the "alienated singing robes of the decadents." Milton evokes the image of his wrapping his singing robes about him in his prose...
November 18, 2009 at 4:50 am
autotelic...
November 18, 2009 at 5:00 am
But social conditions have changed so radically since the symbolists sanctified the doctrines of alienation and since the modernists and postmodernists began to extend them that they now reveal themselves for the tawdry clichés that they are. The blood of millions has washed them away.
November 16, 2009 at 3:41 pm
present epoch sensitivity isnt in the remotest similar to what it would have been as contemporary with symbolists which is why so much is misunderstood and frankly nobody can do much to remedy what times they are a child of. "we" sure are blunt to much today and in need of having our own neighbours tragedies analysed for us before we even notice. the slippage of common assumption across cultures and centuries is underrated and the perceived continuity in genealogy of symbolism, dadaism, counterrationalism, right into postmodernism, that can only provide a partial illumination...there is more to poetry, always is, if its good, and most poetry is good by this or that standard. there is so much of it nobody needs to bother deciphering that which does not even appeal .. (this vaguely related to your point upstairs i jst throwing in some rudimentary thoughts) tx for this update
November 16, 2009 at 9:33 pm
I'm admittedly speaking broadly, addressing relativism, underlying the slippage and perceived continuity. Real standards weed out most of the poetry of every age, and time if they fail.
November 17, 2009 at 3:37 am
Czeslaw Milosz identifies precisely the standard that criticism & poetry must acknowledge if they are to recover their equilibrium & to merit again the respect of the human family: “The twentieth century has given us a most simple touchstone for reality: physical pain.” I take it as a sign of our times that criticism often fails to be intelligent enough to conceive of itself & poetry as involved in any way with life.
November 16, 2009 at 9:48 am
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well reader-friendliness is important and deleuze-style arrogant use of jargon and other devices of intellectual exclusion, pompous words, that's all to be handled with care... if a poet has a connection to the zeitgeist the he does and will know how to address his audience, humility of fashioning one's work according to popular taste and really, honestly, writing FOR the audience, may require an initial downgrading of writerly master-show, but ultimately that is only modesty and a key to popularity... you know of course it all depends just what you want your poetry to do and who you wish to reach when!
November 16, 2009 at 9:54 pm
Derrida et al... The conception of "downgrading" for the audience comes from poete-maudit thinking type of coterie, in my view. I'll concede the rhetorical choices are different, but, I would argue, superior to alienation and the usual collection of effete values thought preferable in some circles--not in the circle of the greatest poets. Humanity... the only worthwhile audience, real writers want to reach, not academicians who whine about anti-intellectualism whenever someone critiques, say, their nihilistic ideas.
November 17, 2009 at 3:51 am
Well, I am not a poet but I do think we are failing our youth by "lowering" English standards because the average youth of today does not have a grasp of proper English grammer/writing/punctuation that I grew up learning and respecting. I like reading something that provokes me to learn new words; however, if every other word is a big or new word, that is a bit much for me. Publications now have eliminated commas and some other punctuation where we used to place them. I think, personally, if we don't expect excellence from our youth, they won't achieve it.
November 17, 2009 at 7:47 am
"English grammer" hehe... hmm well there is so much out there, i think it a mistake to expect everyone to come along on high standards of education, there will always be smart kids and people interested in adequate expression and etymology. i am not sure how much i want my own poetry to be a language experiment, versus content-focused. I think that in the process of attempting to say unusual things one has to browse what language can do to help anyway. whether language is or is not subservient to content is obviously quite difficult to disentangle since without language there could be no poetry, at the same time, you'd like your poems to be more than a pile of complicated roots... and you may, by the way, make use of simplicity because of its BEAUTY more than any worries of how well understood those words will be... you know, dictionaries are not difficult to open or use, but saying the exact thing that one means, that might involve other things besides vocabulary, and sometimes overly precise words, even though they are 100% adequate to the content, are ridiculous in tone... ah well it NEVER ENDS DOES IT!!!!
November 17, 2009 at 8:11 am
Against such a background those who prattle about the non-referentiality of language and passing beyond humanism must be seen as one of the grossest distortions of the human spirit ever to happen along. Far from sinking further into an academic withdrawal from such realities, I believe, as a writer, I must recognize the overwhelming pressure of the reality of our time and reconnect art with life.
November 16, 2009 at 7:01 am
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i LOVE this.
November 16, 2009 at 9:47 pm
Thanks for saying so. Had a lot of Deconstruction shoved down your throat, have you...?
November 17, 2009 at 3:54 am
deconstruction? hehe yeah i was at YALE UNI home of smartasses
November 17, 2009 at 8:12 am
Too bad. But perhaps you have a chance of surviving it and making something of your intellect after all...
November 17, 2009 at 9:08 am
my "intellect". aint u sweet. survive YES thanks for talking with me. if you want to know. i have left connecticut to preserve myself precisely, i was in for involuntary antipsychotic depo injections and my friend there didnt get quite so lucky, serious brain damage disability and memory loss after ECT in that yale psych hospital, of course against her will, you know THAT strikes me as gross abuse of technology this girl is never going to be valid for work again or anything and unfortunately the procedure hasnt made her happy in any way... well who would be happy just coz they lost their memory! i've been on their medicines there and i know what they are, instruments of repression they produce prolonged lethargy- no thanks- huge treacherous systematic and awfully taboo crime. there. poor maggie she will never be with us again. but... not dead either! it is really hard!!!
November 17, 2009 at 10:07 am
It is this difference that has led to the frequent distrust of technology and to the fear of a nuclear or biological catastrophe that we might still fail to avert, given the threat of terrorism. Only the most naive would imagine that man is incapable, through either omission or commission, of such enormity.
November 16, 2009 at 3:51 am
Those who would contend there have always been nasty manifestations of man’s capacity for brutality would do well to consider that the quantitative increase in the deaths of so many individuals constitutes an undeniably qualitative difference.
November 15, 2009 at 3:57 pm
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Exactly.
November 15, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Seems only rational, doesn't? One would think...
November 15, 2009 at 4:02 pm
One could also contend that increased populations and density make it easier to kill a greater quantity of people at one time. I don't doubt Caesar would have killed more Gauls or Genghis Khan would have killed more Persians if the population density of said Gauls or Persians had been higher. Populations a thousand years ago simply couldn't support the mass brutality capable today, even with similar technology.
November 15, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Alas, all too true. Civilian populations have increasingly been targeted by aggressors in war and terrorists. No restraint.
November 15, 2009 at 4:45 pm
Personally, I don't believe in the devil as having an address. Rather, John Milton got it right in Paradise Lost. "I myself am hell." Extreme modern individualism has led to exponential growth, if you will. Now, any individual terrorist, if he can get his hands on the right weapon, can destroy millions. He doesn't even need a government to do it.
November 15, 2009 at 5:07 pm
The original statement is importantly true,
an importantly true argument.
The followup 'mass death and destruction'
discussion is so 80s punk rock.
What 'life direction' do you conceive
emerging from the original argument?
Pure pacifism or something more complicated?
an importantly true argument.
The followup 'mass death and destruction'
discussion is so 80s punk rock.
What 'life direction' do you conceive
emerging from the original argument?
Pure pacifism or something more complicated?
November 15, 2009 at 5:31 pm
Thanks for commenting. I don't claim to know the future more than the next person. The past I've read extensively and it is not encouraging, except that human beings never completely succeeded in extinguishing humankind, though many tried. History is replete with incidents in which people rallied, reassessed, changed direction, evolved despite the dominance of the recalcitrant, though after much suffering. Vision was always central to such changes. I suppose, as a poet, that's where I hope might be of some use.
November 15, 2009 at 5:57 pm
"The Past Sure is Tense" ~ Van Vliet
November 15, 2009 at 6:56 pm
every six seconds a child dies of starvation ...
November 16, 2009 at 6:32 am
And our ideologies justify our not feeding them...
November 16, 2009 at 6:35 am
from which follows what...
November 16, 2009 at 9:47 pm
Change our thinking and thereby action. The Buddhist Dammapada, Christian, and the text of other religions all have this basic insight: Man is his thought. A very profound epistemology, arguably the most profound. Once we've done that, as we're doing that, which we are right now, evolving, I would argue, truly develop cooperative global governance into a properly functioning democratic system. We've fumbling along as a world for nearly a hundred years in the right direction. We need to get serious about it. Many of the crises we face are driving us in that direction. Instead of clinging to our nationalistic totems, we need to affirm humanity.
November 17, 2009 at 4:08 am
Excluding the long drawn out Napoleonic wars, these statistics should be contemplated in the light of the single most destructive war in the previous history of the world—the American Civil War, which, in comparison, resulted in the death of only approximately a half million people. Without the efficiency of science, the vast slaughter of modernity could never have been accomplished.
November 15, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Nor would the healing of countless ill.
November 15, 2009 at 2:30 pm
I certainly agree with you on that and countless other benefits.
November 15, 2009 at 3:21 pm
gzgzgzgz what is better, to die or to survive forever mutilated and traumatised.... look at Primo Levi, he survived Auschwitz but not life with that memory and had to commoit suicide THEN.
not sure what this remark does here but i am just commenting on all of tehse thanks so much for posting what is this from?
not sure what this remark does here but i am just commenting on all of tehse thanks so much for posting what is this from?
November 16, 2009 at 9:46 pm
Primo Levi *chose* to kill himself. Millions rose from the horror, lived on, affirmed the value of life. "The Function of Criticism" PDF under > Essays - https://www.fglaysher.com
November 17, 2009 at 4:11 am
maybe they did... i think life is not the same before and after that kind of experience, though, like, it is NOTHING like the same. this topic is... huge in euripidean scholarship maybe, do you know this essay "the crisis of sense in euripides" by karl reinhardt, it is wonderful from the 1960s afaik discussing this type of issue to read euripides
November 17, 2009 at 8:15 am
I agree, we can't really imagine the actual weight of such experience, but conceptualize about it. I've always prefer Sophocles, the title of one of my books is The Grove of the Eumenides... but I'll look it up. Maybe I've missed something worthwhile there. Thanks for mentioning it.
November 17, 2009 at 9:13 am
Mmm, I'm assuming you mean Karl Reinhardt's "The Intellectual Crisis in Euripides"? I thought the name seemed familiar. Found it. I had read it years ago when I wrote an essay titled "Sophocles and the Plague of Modernity," published in a little magazine circa 1985. It's in my Grove of the Eumenides.
I compared Beckett and modern literature to Euripides and noted that "Sophocles focussed on the world outside his skull," among other distinguishing quailities.
Reinhardt's view of Euripides is fascinating. Not surprised to gather it's still one of the great academic warhorses...
I compared Beckett and modern literature to Euripides and noted that "Sophocles focussed on the world outside his skull," among other distinguishing quailities.
Reinhardt's view of Euripides is fascinating. Not surprised to gather it's still one of the great academic warhorses...
November 18, 2009 at 5:17 am
Added to this vast panorama of suffering are the sixty-six million or more of its own people that the former Soviet Union murdered for ideological reasons and the many millions who died either during the rise of communism in China or during its many subsequent upheavals.
November 15, 2009 at 10:39 am
The rise of strict ideologues in our own nation should alarm every thoughtful decent American. Many of our citizens are being led by demogouges on a path that ultimately will destroy both order and freedom. There is no virtue in their extremism. It can only lead to their own self destruction and the death of the republic.
November 15, 2009 at 11:01 am
I would say, as Christopher Lasch wrote in The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy, “Both left- and right-wing ideologies, in any case, are now so rigid that new ideas make little impression on their adherents.” That to me is as true of our own nation as other countries. Modernity has stripped the landscape bare, but, whether secular or religious, Jew, Christian, Muslim, or Hindu, the delusion of many is return, recovery, restoration--i.e., a retrograde movement, not one fully embracing and learning from our history and moving forward, not backwards. It's that impulse that is driving the fanaticism of all dispensations.
November 15, 2009 at 12:12 pm
must agree with Bill on the following: there is no virtue in extremism. When ideas take precedence over people, the human soul is banished from itself and survives only in darkness and violence.
November 15, 2009 at 9:54 pm
That's my point...
November 16, 2009 at 6:38 am
And the Dalai Lama's: " My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness." ...Such a very small world; it's lovely to agree.
November 16, 2009 at 7:03 pm
"of its own people"...hmmm...like, civil war in C20 guise? well hardly anyone would say they were that state's owned people, if they were murdered by it. the ones owned were probably the ones successfully brainwashed ??
November 16, 2009 at 9:43 pm
They were all looking down the barrel of a gun, as the saying goes... 20th century China is mostly one upheaval after another, with millions dying with each convulsion.
November 17, 2009 at 4:15 am
you meet pple from a former soviet block country, i think you will find them to be far less machine-like. it may also be a distortion to think that in the west things are somehow miraculously different. at least i suspect so. of course history shows west was kinder yeah. and won the cold war, but that is the point, historiography is sometimes biased towards winning parties. i find it quite hard to swallow in some parts of the world. hehe just recently had a cab driver complaining how he used to be a criminologist & officer up to -ouch- 1990 and suddenly he is a delinquent... and now a cab driver... he knew so many things about the city, so much he told me about local history and stats, which is why i even asked him where from all this knowledge...well because he was made invalid by the system supersession. most people now just want to survive. like, old women in latvia whose husbands have died and they never worked a job, now are swamping the streets begging coz the new goverment doesnt have any patience for former "apparat-chicks" nor do they get pensions or anything state-funded...all they get is charity...and unlike a 30-year old beggar they can't really earn their own living. hope you would give if you walked by!!! fancy this https://www.facebook.com/#/photo.php?pid=33880309&id=317453&fbid=571258306614
November 17, 2009 at 8:31 am
Yeah, terribly sad. Alas, it's getting that way here in Michigan... But your point is well taken. East and West have gone through the modern morass in their own ways, but the results are about the same, in some regards. Czeslaw Milosz and Saul Bellow are very insightful on that. Bellow's Dean's December is the book to read if you've missed it. Just been working on a brief review essay on his Ravelstein, this morning, so he comes to mind.
November 17, 2009 at 9:19 am
Such instruments of brutality brought the twentieth century approximately ten million dead human beings in World War I, fifty-five million dead in World War II, and twenty or more million slaughtered in the various regional and national conflicts since 1950.
November 15, 2009 at 8:22 am
The naive optimism that the nineteenth century had for science and for progress was more than undercut by the harsh horrors of the twentieth century, perpetrated with the Krupp machine gun, mustard gas, the aerial bombardment of civilian populations, the Nazi death camps (run with scientific efficiency), the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the napalming of children.
November 15, 2009 at 6:18 am
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sweeping generalisations here ;) but yes sure-- dont you think that positivism and disaster exist side by side all along and arent limited to two centuries in the West, tho? i think you can see it happening right now in hospitals just the same. psychiatric hospitals i mean
November 16, 2009 at 9:39 pm
I would argue Positivism as a philosophical movement helped to produce the stripping down of culture, antecedent to the total wars of modernity.
November 17, 2009 at 4:18 am
you may be right... positivism is still alive and kickin of course and i personally find it detestable but well just not in the majority! hahaha
November 17, 2009 at 8:35 am
Often it's been the minority that's right, and the long run proves it.
November 17, 2009 at 9:29 am
This is neither to gainsay the immense benefits of science nor to advocate Ludditism. It is to affirm the unity of human nature and the dire consequences of denying and dehumanizing the spiritual capacities of man.
November 14, 2009 at 11:46 am
haha yeah... humanism good old humanism ROCKS! i was interviewd once for a study place in classics at cambridge and had to answer the question what would i say if i were told the classics department is being closed down so that a hospital can be built instead. i said something to the effect of "if nobody thinks about the beauty of goodness and fine values any more then soon thereafter nobody will be making charitable hospital plans either". something like it. i was rather proud of this but i didnt get into camridge just then! x
November 16, 2009 at 9:37 pm
Humanism not as an ersatz... Perhaps your mistake was taking seriously the nihilistic premises of university lecture halls. Remember, all is play. Secretly, the grader didn't want to lose his job...
November 17, 2009 at 4:26 am
lolz well i got no clue. what you say there about university is so disgustingly true..i'm glad i didnt go to cambridge and glad i just recently dropped out of yale there is something very strange about doing school for schools sake i mean... well i dont know humanism is just not very fashionable and it does have many problems but i cant help being quite in agreement with a lot of things that come from that general period/those writers
November 17, 2009 at 8:39 am
I mean humanism broadly, not as a school, a manner of speaking.
November 17, 2009 at 9:20 am
Similarly, when science retreats into an autotelic complacency that disregards the possible effects of its discoveries on human beings, such as nuclear weapons or military research, it becomes a caricature of its highest potential.
November 14, 2009 at 8:55 am
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RAbelais Gargantua 1523 "science without conscience is only ruin of the soul". of the SOUL, you hear this?
November 16, 2009 at 9:34 pm
Got a page number or Chapter reference for that? I'd like to look it up. My copy is John M. Cohen's translation.
November 17, 2009 at 4:29 am
Choice quotation. Something I could use...
November 17, 2009 at 4:32 am
ahh.. will tell you the general book/chapter to browse mayb you can find... err you must know that i have just moved to england leaving everything behind in a huge rush, have hardly any books around me...that rabelais i had in new haven CT, i love yes i often look into! all this just means i need to GO to a library to check that for you. maybe internet can help you if you search french "science sans conscience n'est que ruine de l'âme" i dont have an english edition anyway
November 17, 2009 at 8:44 am
Thanks, I'll look it up.
November 17, 2009 at 9:02 am
I've searched French and English ascii editions but can't turn it up. Are you citing a quotation from a book? Perhaps it's from something else he wrote. I not getting a hit even on the single word science, which would have had the broader meaning of any systematic study than our use today, but still, maybe all the more, of interest. If you ever stumble on the exact source, I'd appreciate your sending it my way.
November 18, 2009 at 7:31 am
aha... it is in a letter i am pretty sure in the gargangtua or pantagruel but let me look it up for you yes, it may be that its in an entirely unrelated work! i love it a lot it is one of my favourite quotes and i should really be able to draw it from underwater for you. just i am book-less right now. as for the sinneskrise in euripides, another vague reference i gave you, yeah... that is exactly what i meant, and i find that article imressive to say the least!
November 18, 2009 at 7:37 am
We've going through our own long crisis, global now, and the Greeks give us the perspective to see it, if we're willing and capable.
November 18, 2009 at 7:51 am
yes i agree and wd add a lot of other things of course i chose to study classics for all of my degrees one HAS to overcome the feelings from civilization-gap between them and "us" and so on but of course i went and continue to go for these because it teaches me a lot of things for myself, it teaches me to read and write, those books are so incredibly mega, they yield so much insight and the beautiful things i different insight to each reader in varying contexts i am quite... selfish that way i know classics is my thing so i do it. but then, no matter WHAT one is reading, as long as you get your mind working people may come to similar conclusions since ultimately, scholarship is more about the scholar than about the author!... imho. xx
November 18, 2009 at 8:13 am
i <3 aeschylus
November 18, 2009 at 8:14 am
Yes, that's the definition of scholarship... I saw an incredibly powerful production of The Trojan Women last year at the Stratford Festival in Canada. I was astonished to see again a 2500 year old play speak so eloquently about the human heart. I must confess I do not know Aeschylus as much as I'd like. Sophocles has always been my strongest interest, after Plato, among the Greeks, and drawn me back many times to read and reread him. @ Colonus especially.
November 18, 2009 at 8:40 am
interesting, how come?
November 18, 2009 at 8:53 am
I'm kind of struggling how to respond. I don't want to put into "less good words," as Robert Frost phrased it once, or something like that. There are metaphors that we can brood on so long their resonance doesn't belong in prose. I don't want you think I'm repaying our friendship poorly by saying this, but it's really in my book The Grove of the Eumenides. Some things can only be suggested and alluded to, in myth and poetry. To drag them down to expository prose and spell them out would sound too prosaic. And then no longer convey what one wishes to convey. The power of the myth would all be gone. Suffice it to say, it's a very important play to me. I choke even to type that...
November 18, 2009 at 10:13 am
oh I can understand this, hence, one is a scholar... some people on occasion do have a punchline to summarise their love for (say) demosthenes but it is not compulsory... well I love aeschylus for feeling I get from reading more than anything one might reasonably pin down with words, strange, isnt it, that words can do what they cannot do... haha well anyways the Rabelais quote is from Pantagruel VIII and the french would be found here: https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Pantagruel/Chapitre_8
thanks again x
thanks again x
November 18, 2009 at 10:28 pm
Ahh, found it with your help. Gargantua, De Utopie. Perfect. Makes Polonius look restrained. "Knowledge without conscience is but the ruin of the soul." Of course the whole sentence modifies that a little. Dante's "lost the good of the intellect" comes to mind.Thank you.
November 19, 2009 at 4:08 am
Such situations that demand choice reveal the potentialities of human beings. For it is only in the act of volition, often performed under stress, that people attain their noblest deeds or manifest their illimitable capacity for horror and tragedy. Art that turns from the realm of commitment is rightly viewed as mere diversion or fluff.
November 14, 2009 at 5:37 am
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On such questions science is neutral and proffers no intrinsic knowledge on humanity’s goals or ends. The choice resides in the human realm of men, in their qualitative judgments, not in their quantitative ones. Only religion and art concern themselves with questions of value that arise from the predicament of man in a “situation” for which he is “not responsible.”
November 13, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Another aspect of this redefinition of knowledge is the failure to appreciate that science is amoral or stands beyond good and evil. The discoveries of science merely present us with what is possible and not with an evaluation of how to use the new discovery or a judgment of what to do with it.
November 13, 2009 at 10:32 am
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I agree with the idea put forward above and I humbly add that the limitations of science, be it positive or ontological, when it comes to matters related essentially to mataphysical aspects of human existence only proves that even science in itself was stricted by extra unworldly boundaries that it will never go beyond. There is a power all the time which makes it affordable or rather feasible for any being who seeks any knowledge beyond his realm of existence without permitting this being to transgress the allowed dimensions or limits of this human quest for knowledge which is at the end impuissant in nature.By this kind of previous and quasi-predetermined delimitation of man's quest for or seek of knowledge, the supreme power itself in a way or another proves that there is this constant kind of authority transgression fearthat characterizes even the unseen power which some people defines as the creator or god.
November 13, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Thank you for commenting. If I understand you, I should say it's really scientism I'm addressing and its self-serving redefinition of knowledge to exclude the transcendent. I would go so far to say that today one of the major religions is scientism. Since poetry and the other arts grow from the same experiences as religion, they too have been shunted aside by scientism. Note, I am not opposed to science, but the worship of it as though it were a god, an ism, scientism.
November 13, 2009 at 2:16 pm
very true very true x
November 17, 2009 at 8:45 am
Ever read anything by Arnold Toynbee? You might find interesting, in terms of science and modern culture, his Gifford Lecture (Google it). An Historian's Approach to Religion. 1952-53.
November 17, 2009 at 9:07 am
The postmodern abandonment of the search for a coherent understanding of life accepts the specious redefinition that relegates art and the transcendent realm of value to the nether world of the indifference of those who are content or eager to “pass beyond man” to what is less than human.
November 13, 2009 at 6:30 am
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For man is that being who seeks order, whether in science or art, by focusing his intuition and reason on the particular and moving to the universal.
November 12, 2009 at 4:47 pm
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By recognizing the fundamental agreement of all the sciences and humanities in their common creative urge to understand the principles of life and the universe, Sidney’s era united human endeavor into an intelligible whole that gave meaning and purpose to the individual and to the community.
November 12, 2009 at 12:13 pm
The narrow definition of knowledge is fallacious and now intolerantly denies half of what it means to be a human being since man is more than natural processes that are reducible to impersonal forces of determinism.
November 12, 2009 at 9:48 am
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Albert Einstein defined the mysterious as precisely the unifying realm of true art, science, and religion. The modern constriction of knowledge and meaning to science is actually indicative of the loss of the spiritual understanding of the mystery of being. Similarly the deterioration of literature indicates the same loss on the part of the artist as well as on the part of the mass of men.
November 12, 2009 at 6:43 am
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Yeah...i do feel the same
November 12, 2009 at 7:10 am
Sidney’s affirmation of the traditional understanding of the unity of all knowledge highlights the triviality of the common misconception of the relation between science and the humanities today. There need be no fundamental disagreement since all knowledge serves to “lift up the mind” to the mystery which men have traditionally called God and to the enjoying of the individual’s “own divine essence.”
November 11, 2009 at 4:08 pm
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Since there may have been some confusion, permit me to emphasize non-exclusivism, universality: Such a contemporary articulation of the understanding of the worshiping soul is just as true of all the great religions, whether Hinduism, Buddhism, or Islam, and can only highlight the tragedy of the pervasive loss of our era.
November 11, 2009 at 6:30 am
Such a contemporary articulation of the understanding of the worshiping soul is just as true of all the great religions, whether Hinduism, Buddhism, or Islam, and can only highlight the tragedy of the pervasive loss of our era.
November 10, 2009 at 4:22 pm
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The individual actively enters into commitment in an act of hope in a given situation “for which one is not responsible” and for which the “universal intent of personal knowledge” seeks to fulfill an obligation and calling, that is, a commitment. Such conscious commitment is “how a Christian is placed when worshipping God.”
November 10, 2009 at 12:53 pm
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In his Personal Knowledge Michael Polanyi delineates his “ontology of commitment” and his concept of the “personal,” which is neither subjective nor objective. As Polanyi says elsewhere, “the personal submits to requirements acknowledged by itself as independent of itself” and thereby is not subjective. Yet it is not wholly objective either since it constitutes what an individual conceives “to be true.”
November 10, 2009 at 9:41 am
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<head spin>
November 10, 2009 at 10:21 am
The objectivity of science has its limit since science requires the assuming of beliefs, theories, absolutes, unknowns, for experimentation to proceed, to say nothing of its faith that order inheres in nature and can be discovered and understood, while errors in analysis can be eradicated.
November 10, 2009 at 7:19 am
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I don't agree with this at all. Science requires no assumption of belief or theory. Science starts with none of those things, and then tests and tests until something proves repeatable. I don't need to believe in gravity. But if I drop a ball a million times and it hits the ground every time, I can safely predict what will happen the next time I drop it, and from there I can create new tests to show why it happens. Science stems from seeking answers, not from assuming those answers have already been provided. Of course, if everyone who wanted to study gravity had to start with dropping a ball instead of basing their experiments on generally accepted laws, we'd never learn anything new. There is no faith that nature is inherently ordered, but repeatable tests have suggested that may be the case. It's not like a few guys wrote a book about science two thousand years ago and scientists ever since have simply agreed with their untested and unproven assumptions.
November 10, 2009 at 7:34 am
Doesn't a scientist have to have belief? Belief is what propels him/her to analyze what is felt/thought?
November 10, 2009 at 7:48 am
@Kevin--Here's the problem with your supposition--the rock that falls to the ground on Earth will float in space; therefore, scientific principles are largely governed by distinct environmental influences. Two different principles can indeed be true at once. Scientists, in the pursuit of expanding knowledge, have to have faith that their premises will be proven true--that is why they bother to test and analyze at all. And let's not forget men like Galileo and Copernicus, cats who stood tall in the face of brutal persecution--and who paid dearly-- because they believed in the right-ness of their discoveries. How ironic that an agnostic like me can argue in favor of faith, proof again, that differing and disparate principles can exist simultaneously...
November 10, 2009 at 9:45 am
The main distinguishing factor of science is not its perfect objectivity but its fundamental honesty.
November 10, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Under the modern redefinition of science as only the natural and empirical sciences, many fail to realize that religious belief is based as much on conscious knowledge as is science. As T. S. Kuhn, Leon R. Kass, and others have shown, all science inescapably contains a subjective element.
November 10, 2009 at 4:47 am
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That's what I like about science (in addition to the empirical facts)--it is the imagination that enables discovery. By comparison, that is also what I admire about religion, the mythic qualities of it that appeal to the imagination.
November 10, 2009 at 5:12 am
Influenced by the general background, many modernist and postmodernists have become so alienated from any religious conception of life that they uncritically adopt an attitude akin to Wallace Stevens’ “indifference to questions of belief” or to Jacques Derrida’s grandiose pass “beyond man and humanism.”
November 9, 2009 at 3:50 pm
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I can only ask the reader to recall the appallingly barbarous acts of the many avowedly atheistic regimes to discern the perspicacity of Paul Johnson’s observation that “the history of modern times” is largely the history of how the vacuum of the loss of belief has been filled.
November 9, 2009 at 9:34 am
Progress in all worthwhile endeavor came to an abrupt halt with the abandonment of the intellect and the spiritual,and indeed, reason itself. The replacing value systems were an existential meaningless existence or a belief in nihlistic supermans.Anything and everything could me justified. We have seen the resuting horror.
November 9, 2009 at 10:15 am
I beg to differ, sir. The long and bloody march of religion has left more bodies, more decimated cultures and more psychological dissonance in its wake than any other cause in human history...
November 9, 2009 at 10:24 am
With a belief in God or without one, the human is a bloody fearsome symbol-using beast. As Kenneth Burke put it: “Man is the symbol-using animal, inventor of the negative, separated from his natural condition by instruments of his own making, goaded by the spirit of hierarchy, and rotten with perfection.” Every act of barbarism is believed by the barbarian to be an act of righteousness.
November 9, 2009 at 4:46 pm
@Bud: I agree--and I don't see where religion has ever been able to mitigate that arrogance.
November 10, 2009 at 10:13 am
Whether in painting, literature, criticism, philosophy, architecture, or any other art since the Renaissance, the discrediting of the religious conception of life, whether in the East or in the West, has been progressing relentlessly and has had undeniably dire repercussions.
November 9, 2009 at 6:43 am
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The chief intellectual tendency of the modern age is the loss of belief in God—the transcendent One beyond the understanding of all religions.
November 9, 2009 at 4:21 am
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I read an article in this link. https://www.unifiedequation.info/
I think it has some valuable points.
I think it has some valuable points.
November 9, 2009 at 5:18 am
Today there seems to be a disconnect between spirituality and religion in the church. A country club atmosphere seems to have replaced reverance.
November 9, 2009 at 6:08 am
Organization replaces the Shema, the Golden Rule, and prayer and communion with the Divine Being. In my view, it’s the same human pattern in all the great religious traditions. I’ve recently read Tolstoy’s scathing denunciations of the Orthodox Church along these lines, in his “A Reply to the Synod’s Edict of Excommunication,” 1901.
November 9, 2009 at 6:25 am
I know of no time in history when God has proven understandable. Transcendent means beyond understanding, as does "God" if you really think about it. One might know all about a vine-like member of the orchid family with a monopodial climbing habit, but that's a far cry from tasting vanilla. If one is already experiencing God then why seek to understand or believe? Perhaps this sort of view is the single greatest gift the East has given the West.
November 9, 2009 at 9:23 am
I agree with the first part.
November 9, 2009 at 9:29 am
Had religionists lived up to the sublime ideals and lofty tenets of their professed faiths, the cynicism that infects modern society would have nothing to anchor itself to. Sadly, religion, for the most part, has failed to move mankind toward putting love into action...
November 9, 2009 at 12:49 pm
@ Jennifer-You'll get no argument from me on that point.
November 9, 2009 at 5:03 pm
A clarification seems in order. Universality is not exclusivism; exclusivism is not universality.
November 10, 2009 at 4:45 am
A healthy culture always reveres man’s capacity for nobility, and so does a healthy literary period. Literature is the reflection of man’s consciousness. Without virtue man is indeed a bedbug. Postmodernism has performed the mimetic duty of art by bringing us the news that mass society intuits but often continues to ignore: what we have lost.
November 8, 2009 at 3:33 pm
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What we have lost is of immeasureable value. Mass society reduces the human spirit to the lowest common denominator and fails or even dares to acknowledge greatness. It even goes so far as to criticize that which it has no comprehension of.
November 8, 2009 at 8:55 pm
These values and traditions are fundamentally spiritual in nature, transcend the individual and any particular era, connect the isolated consciousness with the community and with the past, and move the heart to sacrifice for higher ideals, as Achilles for honor and Aeneas for pietas.
November 8, 2009 at 10:01 am
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I agree very strongly agree with you Frederick. The essence of all men,all life,and all nature is and has always been spiritual. We experience the nihlistic and materialistic society all around us. This has left many of those around us with an empty feeling of isolation and alienation. If Western civilization should reconnect itself with eternal truths it could avoid it's ultimate demise and devolution to a status of irrelevance. Two nineteenth century " isms " have lead not only Western man,but a great deal of the rest of the world astray by their emphasis on materialism and avoidance of mankinds spiituality and the existence of eternal truths or even natural law. Capitalism and Marxism was an abandonment of the Age of Reason,the Enlightenment, and the Renaissance. Perhaps latter historians will be documenting another Dark Age.
November 8, 2009 at 1:03 pm
To varying degrees such observers of literature and modern society as Max Weber, José Ortega y Gasset, Pitirim Sorokin ... Daniel Bell, Christopher Lasch, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Robert Bellah, Philip Rieff, Jacques Barzun, Allan Bloom, Alvin Kernan, and John M. Ellis have been especially sensitive to this truth, as were the best observers of civilization in the past, Ibn Khaldun and Giambattista Vico.
November 8, 2009 at 7:11 am
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The values that make us most human are not the alienation and nihilism of the poète maudit, the detestation of the bourgeoisie, technology, and the pragmatic; nor are they any of the other clichés of modernism such as disdain for the family and democracy. Far from such fragmented conceptions, I hold the values that have been revered for millennia are the most humane to which an artist can aspire.
November 8, 2009 at 5:40 am
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I like this a great deal Frederick! To express the creative human spirit in negative terms is a completely unsuportive contradiction.Beauty is not in the soul of the beholder.Beauty is beauty. The nihilist has an ugly and unclean soul. I cringe at it's negative vibrations.
November 8, 2009 at 5:54 am
I would disassociate myself from stating anyone has “an ugly and unclean soul.” I can judge ideas, but I can not judge someone’s soul. I understand the historical and intellectual arguments for nihilism, which are logical and make sense within their own parameters, since the Enlightenment. In my view, lived experience has moved on, not just in the Western world, but around the globe. I suggest not exclusivism, but universality, distinguishes our time.
November 8, 2009 at 7:06 am
Perhaps its middlin' semantics but I would argue that 'one human makes values' rather than 'values make one human' That is to say that true virtue is an intentional act of will rather than some amorphous ideal we aspire to. Maybe I'm just rambling.
November 8, 2009 at 4:05 pm
Ooops. Comma not THAT: Since Auden wrote in 1941, poetry and criticism have increasingly become “photostatic” copies of the “accidental details” of the self, bereft of any unifying vision of significance.
November 7, 2009 at 11:42 am
More often than not during the postmodern period we have had inflicted on us the “artist’s individual dementia”—as in the work of Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, and Anne Sexton. Such a distortion of the literary endeavor is an accident of history, an acceptance of a certain narrow conception of the function of the poet or critic.
November 7, 2009 at 11:29 am
Since Auden wrote in 1941 that poetry and criticism have increasingly become “photostatic” copies of the “accidental details” of the self, bereft of any unifying vision of significance. I read everywhere chatty criticism, mildly vicious gossip, rambling interviews, anything but a unified perspective cognizant of the spiritual history of humankind as manifested in all the great religions of the peoples of the world.
November 7, 2009 at 7:38 am
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Sidney and Johnson unequivocally affirmed the locus of value in the transcendent, while the last two hundred years have witnessed the steady discrediting of any such locus. In “Mimesis and Allegory” W. H. Auden fully recognizes the relation between mimesis and the transcendent.
November 7, 2009 at 3:47 am
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Literature must confront the eternal state of man wrapped in all his virtues and vices. Instead, it has become all too often content to remain a symptom of the crisis of modernity, the general malaise. Critical perspective depends not only on the diachronic sense of history but also on values that can be found only outside literature.
November 6, 2009 at 4:21 pm
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deep thinking
November 6, 2009 at 4:34 pm
|
Tolstoy. Yasnaya Polyana. |
Swirling Tunnel of TimeTolstoy. Yasnaya Polyana.Wainamoinen, along with Sigurd, Beowulf, and the Valkyries, lift me from the Isle of green to a grove of green, turning toward early fall, as through a swirling tunnel of time, to a birch bench. Tolstoy guides me further along the path, discusses h...
November 6, 2009 at 9:48 am
Since the time Arnold began to fence off criticism from life, criticism has increasingly corrupted poets and widened the gap between them and the human community. Critics and poets themselves, as much as science, are to blame for the utter trivialization of the literary endeavor.
November 6, 2009 at 7:25 am
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Everything imaginable has been tried to reduce literature from its moral, religious, and philosophical reality into the image of some small expositor. In 1961 Eliot, almost for the first time and perhaps out of revulsion with the abominations to which he had helped give birth, states unambiguously the relation of criticism to life in “To Criticize the Critic.”
November 5, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Frederick..I think I subscribe to your thoughts on this...but what cud be your take on the generative idea of "Critics are bundle of biases?
November 6, 2009 at 2:32 am
Explanation has now been proffered in terms of not only the origin of a work, linguistics, biography, and psychology of every contemptible brand, but also sundry Marxist persuasions, radical interdisciplinary and “cultural” studies, structuralism, deconstruction, anti-intellectual reader-response, the “new” historicism, gender, and extreme forms of multiculturalism.
November 5, 2009 at 1:19 pm
Not so sure I agree with you here. It seems you are linking many divergant streams of thought together and stating a colossal overgenerealization. Do I detect a smidgen of classical western civilization's ethnocentrism and cross cultural bias? We have always lived in a multicultural nation and for that matter a multi-cultural world since the age of exploration.The conquest and subjugation of the world by Western European nation-states should not negate other cultures' contributions to the artistic, intellectual, scientific, and spiritual progress of mankind.
The "sundry Marxist persuasions" phrase seems out of place in your overall argument unless it's only use is to illicit a negative response in the reader.Western society has been indoctrinated bythe elite power stucture against Marxism from it's beginnings and in the United States reached the form of outright hysteria. Marx was certainly misguided in most areas, but some of his economics have been proven to be true and phrophetic. Marx should be studied from an intellectual perspective and not an emotional "anti-intellectual reader-response". Pervasively both Marxism and Capitalism are solutions to the human dillema discussed in the nineteenth century. Both value materialism as an end unto itself. This is a rather poor substitute over the creative spirit of the poet, the artist, the writer, or the philosopher. There is not a spark of genius in Karl Marx or Adam Smith. Ideology is a philosophical dead end.
I do wholeheartedly agree with you on the destructiveness of nilistic thinking. Optimism with only occasional constructive criticism is by far more conducive to rational thought and opinion. Nilisim is contagious. At the present time it has reached epidemic stage. I'm afraid we are witnessing the end of civil discourse and debate. I enjoy reading your posts sir and look forward to them.
The "sundry Marxist persuasions" phrase seems out of place in your overall argument unless it's only use is to illicit a negative response in the reader.Western society has been indoctrinated bythe elite power stucture against Marxism from it's beginnings and in the United States reached the form of outright hysteria. Marx was certainly misguided in most areas, but some of his economics have been proven to be true and phrophetic. Marx should be studied from an intellectual perspective and not an emotional "anti-intellectual reader-response". Pervasively both Marxism and Capitalism are solutions to the human dillema discussed in the nineteenth century. Both value materialism as an end unto itself. This is a rather poor substitute over the creative spirit of the poet, the artist, the writer, or the philosopher. There is not a spark of genius in Karl Marx or Adam Smith. Ideology is a philosophical dead end.
I do wholeheartedly agree with you on the destructiveness of nilistic thinking. Optimism with only occasional constructive criticism is by far more conducive to rational thought and opinion. Nilisim is contagious. At the present time it has reached epidemic stage. I'm afraid we are witnessing the end of civil discourse and debate. I enjoy reading your posts sir and look forward to them.
November 5, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Mr. Butcher, Thank you for your thoughtful response. *Extreme* multiculturalism is my qualification. I fully agree with and share your view that we've always been a multicultural society, just slow in recognizing it as a positive energy and affirming it. In context, I'm really talking about literary criticism and the use of theories exterior to literary and humanistic values to create politicized and radical interpretations, often Marxist.
Marx just isn't one of heroes. Violence and coercion, Marxist style, are beyond the pale. I do, though, agree with your criticism that capitalism is also a materialistic doctrine. I would argue showing once again its flaws and not sufficiently recognized at the moment. We're unwisely trying to "fix" the capitalist system instead of searching for a new paradigm that addresses our problems closer to the root.
To my mind, "optimism" is merely a form of nihilism in the modern world. Czeslaw Milosz was fond of pointing that out in a number of his books, as have others. It's the American form of nihilism. Cheery, but an abyss underneath. That's our problem at the core. Thanks again for your interest.
Marx just isn't one of heroes. Violence and coercion, Marxist style, are beyond the pale. I do, though, agree with your criticism that capitalism is also a materialistic doctrine. I would argue showing once again its flaws and not sufficiently recognized at the moment. We're unwisely trying to "fix" the capitalist system instead of searching for a new paradigm that addresses our problems closer to the root.
To my mind, "optimism" is merely a form of nihilism in the modern world. Czeslaw Milosz was fond of pointing that out in a number of his books, as have others. It's the American form of nihilism. Cheery, but an abyss underneath. That's our problem at the core. Thanks again for your interest.
November 5, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Later on in life Eliot often articulated more fully that the reasons for the decline of criticism were moral and philosophical. He suggests in “The Frontiers of Criticism” how very different Johnson is from the “lemon-squeezers.” What could be more perceptive than Eliot’s observation that criticism has “lost its aims” and mistakes “explanation for understanding”?
November 5, 2009 at 10:14 am
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fred i read the grapes of wrath again not long ago, was wondering what you thought about the similarities of the plight of the poor of today?
November 5, 2009 at 11:30 am
Eliot, for all his nostalgia, at least still believed in the “possibility of arriving at something outside ourselves which may provisionally be called truth.” The adverb reflects both a sense of the endangered tradition and humility—a virtue few deconstructionists have, given their grandiose schemes of negation.
November 5, 2009 at 6:17 am
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Instead of confronting the major cultural tendencies of our time, most academic criticism is a virulent symptom of the nihilism advocated by Derrida, his followers, and much of our society.
November 4, 2009 at 5:21 pm
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Agree!
November 4, 2009 at 5:23 pm
Today I find it exhilarating to stumble onto an occasional piece of criticism that is about “something other than itself” or the extraction of tenure from the system of accreditation that is built squarely on the attenuated assumptions of modernity.
November 4, 2009 at 5:15 pm
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Criticism also adopted autotelicism and has now come to be about nothing “other than itself” in a manner apparently mimicked by academic critics who delude themselves into believing there is no difference between creative work and criticism.
November 4, 2009 at 4:12 pm
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Indeed!
November 4, 2009 at 4:15 pm
They do delude themselves.
November 4, 2009 at 4:18 pm
Someone with the gift should write a comedy or two about it... Anyone know of one? Bellow's novels have a few characters I can think of.
November 4, 2009 at 4:19 pm
(As an side, here's one) Pierre Thaxter who objects, in Humboldt’s Gift, “For God’s sake, we can’t come out with all this stuff about the soul.” Citrine observes, “Why not? People talk about the psyche, why not the soul?” Thaxter, submerged in all the dreck of modernism, all the “head stuff,” retorts, “Psyche is scientific,” adding “You have to accustom people gradually to these terms of yours.”
November 4, 2009 at 4:30 pm
The autotelic definition of art was increasingly applied by Eliot’s epigones to the intrinsic nature of poetry, as if it had nothing to do with life whatsoever and as if to do so was to commit some reprehensible deed worthy of only the concerted censure of every practitioner of “pretentious critical journalism.”
November 4, 2009 at 11:28 am
While I enjoy reading your postings, I am wondering to what they relate? Are they a part of a criticism you are writing, a book on Eliot, or random musings? Can you provide a context? Cheers !!!
November 4, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Essay.
November 4, 2009 at 4:13 pm
ah.
November 4, 2009 at 6:45 pm
This is what I call a very straightforward and honest thoughts on Eliot's objective musing...good job Frederick...thanx
November 5, 2009 at 1:43 am
New Criticism produced so much useless criticism because it failed to understand adequately the following statement by Eliot: “I have assumed as axiomatic that a creation, a work of art, is autotelic; and that criticism, by definition, is about something other than itself.”
November 4, 2009 at 9:13 am
fred i agree with this statement ! seems like a critic is an armchair quarterback! who never played the game
November 4, 2009 at 9:30 am
The firm values with which Sidney and Johnson elucidated works of art and corrected the vitiated taste of their countrymen are nowhere to be found, other than in a few vague flourishes. As laudable as much of Eliot’s procedure may be, his own obnubilation runs throughout his early criticism if not most of his work.
November 4, 2009 at 6:05 am
Eliot of course waves in the direction of the church and classicism, impugns romanticism or the “Inner Voice,” lambasts “Whiggery,” and makes a few pertinent suggestions regarding the “chief tools of the critic”—comparison and analysis—but none of this confronts the ontological dislocation at its root. It is the tinkering of one disconcerted and baffled by the general tendency.
November 4, 2009 at 2:45 am
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well thought out statement! was wondering how long you worked on it?
November 4, 2009 at 3:51 am
Many cliches circle around Eliot... "Pretentious and useless": Most of the academy by definition, I would say.
November 4, 2009 at 6:05 am
Eliot has always been a fave (pardon the academic lang) but ALWAYS read aloud, always. Like Shakespeare. Otherwise, who cares?
November 4, 2009 at 9:11 am
Eliot defines criticism as “the elucidation of works of art and the correction of taste.” How one might determine the constituents of taste or the values by which correction might be made is left as amorphous as many of the pronouncements of Arnold.
November 3, 2009 at 3:33 pm
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do you never respond to your friends? is this a venue for your writing alone Frederick? and how do you find your fb 'friends?" please answer
November 3, 2009 at 1:11 pm
i see you dont' respond.
November 3, 2009 at 6:57 pm
Like Arnold, Eliot grasps that “the accumulated wisdom of time” is endangered in the modern world, but his mythical method merely capitulates to the general direction by discrediting what he seeks to preserve.
November 3, 2009 at 12:42 pm
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Following a pseudo-scientific program for poetry and criticism, Eliot dehumanizes the mind of the poet into a “receptacle” that performs a “fusion” for “combination” of inert feelings, ideas, images, and other bric-a-brac plugging up his brain. This leaves the poet with nothing to do but express his “medium” cut off from his own personality and the collective, diachronic history of humankind.
November 3, 2009 at 10:19 am
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The “historical sense,” what Lionel Trilling calls the “sense of the past,” must fundamentally take into account the irreconcilable and aberrant, the anomalies in the mind of Europe, in one’s own country, and in the rest of the world. Hence Eliot’s attempt to salvage the function of criticism leads him to concoct a tradition that in one signification never existed & in another was widely recognized to be in decline.
November 3, 2009 at 6:14 am
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For poetry is not an “organic whole.” There are diverse and incongruous currents. It is the utter incompatibility of Homer and Pound, of Sophocles and Beckett, of Dante and Eliot himself, that merits contemplation.
November 3, 2009 at 2:30 am
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...currents that flow on, or are diverted, blocked or break their boundaries. flow of consciousness or thoughtfully considered; spirit generated or mindfully structured...
November 3, 2009 at 11:35 am
T. S. Eliot’s vaunted tradition serves as an ersatz as much as Arnold’s culture. His sense of a “simultaneous order” of “existing monuments” fails to acknowledge that “the changes of the human mind,” the distinct and major intellectual tendencies of each age, are more important for the poet-critic than any synchronic and poorly defined order might be.
November 2, 2009 at 6:31 pm
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In place of a unified conception of life, fragmentation and alienation now rule the day.
November 2, 2009 at 3:54 pm
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What is the unified conception of life that you accept?
November 2, 2009 at 4:05 pm
Fragmentation and alienation, the hallmarks of a secular society. We ran too quickly to secularism.
November 3, 2009 at 1:59 am
While Rome burns, we are content to fiddle around with arcane philosophical rhetoric...
November 3, 2009 at 8:57 pm
But for postmodern poets and critics both science and conduct are often held in contempt: Science for creating the industrial, technological civilization that they imagine is responsible for tainting, as Galway Kinnell puts it, “the life of the planet,” and conduct or “virtuous action” for serving as a stratagem of repressive regimes and religions.
November 2, 2009 at 1:42 pm
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For Sidney, all science is unified by its end of lifting “up the mind” to “virtuous actions.”
November 2, 2009 at 1:42 pm
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Today, what could possibly be more evident than the failure of letters to replace religion and to relate, as Arnold writes in “Literature and Science,” “knowledge to our sense of conduct”?
November 2, 2009 at 10:56 am
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What could be more evident than the failure of religion to create and nurture an equitable environment in which the disenfranchised can rise from the depths of their decrepitude and despair?
November 2, 2009 at 11:50 am
Not very many religions favor knowledge over belief.
November 2, 2009 at 11:54 am
"Belief gets in the way of learning." -Rob't A. Heinlein
November 2, 2009 at 12:12 pm
Exactly.
November 2, 2009 at 12:14 pm
|
London. Englands Green. |
Englands Green & Pleasant LandLondon. Englands Green.Browning’s poem Christmas Eve especially opened the door for me, finally walked through, after decades of thinking about it. Browning and Tennyson before Westminster Abbey. A cordial reception and then a dressing down. The Federation of the...
November 2, 2009 at 10:10 am
Yet he accurately perceives the turmoil of modern times, and, though he sought to replace religion with culture, salvaged, for a while, the humanistic, intellectual, social, and moral values that Western civilization had held in unity for centuries.
November 2, 2009 at 6:34 am
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Western civilization may have held those values, but history shows us they've rarely been put into practice...
November 2, 2009 at 12:34 pm
In Culture and Anarchy Arnold writes of the malaise, “Everywhere we see the beginning of confusion. . . .” Still in the midst of the upheaval, he lacks the “clue to some sound order and authority.”
November 2, 2009 at 3:16 am
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His Preface to his poems of 1853 evinces his awareness of the complexity of modern times, of the subjective sickliness of modern literature, of the malady that is still with us.
November 1, 2009 at 11:09 am
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Woosh! Thanks for the contact... reading your posts is like sitting in the reference section of the local library and delving into the spritual/philosophy/poetry section (if there is such a locale in the Dewey Decimal system) You've definitely raised the bar for social site discussion. It's refreshing. Thanks.
November 1, 2009 at 7:04 am
Arnold could never have dallied with an autotelic conception of literature and criticism. His praise of the “high seriousness” of Homer, Sophocles, Virgil, and other classical poets presupposes poetry and criticism deal with concerns of the most universal importance.
November 1, 2009 at 5:30 am
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High seriousness is almost no-where to be found in the world. Not being able to imagine it, neither can we live it. Goodness is naivete; abstract values are empty words that fill advertising copy. We are sophisticated in the manner of a country child turned prostitute.
November 1, 2009 at 5:10 pm
Hello Sir.. itz such a big pleasure for me to add u as my friend!! :) Have a nice day!! :)
October 31, 2009 at 8:55 pm
Thanks for the add to Facebook. I see you are a writer. I have seen your site and have read a bit. It's very well done.
I am still trying to develop my writing... as you know it takes time and effort. Anyway, good luck with the new poem ~ and thanks again for the add to FB.
I am still trying to develop my writing... as you know it takes time and effort. Anyway, good luck with the new poem ~ and thanks again for the add to FB.
October 31, 2009 at 8:54 pm
Further, he affirms, “the elements with which the creative power works are ideas.” To such critics as the early T. S. Eliot, “ideas” are held in derision, are merely the matter that the “medium” has to express, the piece of meat one throws the dog to keep him content.
October 31, 2009 at 3:00 pm
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Good heavens. Are all your posts so heady? :-) Makes a change from the usual, "Bob is eating more Halloween candy" posts.
November 1, 2009 at 3:18 am
Arnold vigorously asserts the utter inferiority of criticism to creative work and believes the poet must know life and the world in a sense still much closer to Sidney and Johnson than to the postmodernists.
October 31, 2009 at 10:04 am
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Living such that our past lights our future ... ??
October 31, 2009 at 6:01 pm
Without an external standard to determine both “the best that is known and thought” and “perfection,” he can only rely, as Carlyle, Emerson, and Thoreau had, on the lingering values of Christianity, even as the latter two intensified the romantic turn to the East for sustenance.
October 31, 2009 at 5:42 am
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Similarly he maintains criticism must be “independent of the practical spirit and its aims.” This attempt to circumvent commitment leads him to a capitulation to the new tendencies by calling for a “growth toward perfection” that no longer is defined in any but the most nebulous and emotional terms.
October 31, 2009 at 3:27 am
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Hence he calls for criticism to stand off from politics and religion, the “burning matters,” in hope of gaining a perspective that can ride the “turbid ebb and flow” of the tumultuous tide.
October 30, 2009 at 7:14 am
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He recognizes that all around him the old world is dissolving. His recognition of this background explains his oft-repeated definition of criticism as “a disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate the best that is thought and known in the world” since impartiality is always commendable but especially when the old certainties are “shown to be questionable.”
October 30, 2009 at 2:15 am
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Eh?
October 30, 2009 at 1:38 pm
His mention here of science appearing incomplete “without poetry” is actually nothing more than wishful thinking and a desperate stratagem to curtail the loss of the definition of science as the systematic knowledge of any discipline, which reduced its meaning to merely the natural sciences.
October 29, 2009 at 5:31 pm
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Now THIS I like!
October 30, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Conversely, Arnold stands in the full flood of the sweeping aside of the old order and declares poetry will replace religion and the philosophy of his day, the latter of which was still asking fundamental questions about human nature.
October 29, 2009 at 3:12 pm
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He's right, in my opinion. Images revealing a more vast view of our 'selves', the melding of them into one, and more of an Answer about human nature.
agree?
agree?
October 29, 2009 at 3:55 pm
I believe spirituality is the poetic impulse. All creative activity is spiritually guided from the heart and functions of the right brain.Spirituality is not nessasarily religious dogma.
October 29, 2009 at 5:39 pm
Right Bill. But I would say the same about the creative writing impulse in which left and right brain work together, the design with the sign so to speak, bridged by the corpus callosum (some say is the seat of our psychic abilities). When I'm writing--even journalism and non-fiction--it's the only time I feel fully integrated. Although I'm a terribly lapsed Buddhist nun (!) and neither practice nor believe/disbelieve in any other faith/spiritual path, writing is my spiritual practice. Interestingly, Roshi Shinzan Miyomae gave me this as my practice when he 'ordained' me.
October 30, 2009 at 1:51 pm
I believe (some, not all poetry) is an expression of one's individual philosophy.
November 4, 2009 at 6:34 am
Sidney and Johnson never conceived of poetry fulfilling such a role. Rather, with all humility, they both unabashedly held literature to be a handmaiden of religion.
October 29, 2009 at 8:03 am
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Against the nineteenth century background of the discrediting of religion, Arnold turns to poetry for solace and intellectual sustenance, “to interpret life for us.”
October 29, 2009 at 2:47 am
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In 1880 in “The Study of Poetry,” Arnold states quite clearly his awareness of the intellectual tendencies of the modern period and the concomitant changes in the function of criticism and poetry.
October 29, 2009 at 2:12 am
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The moral and religious function of criticism is no longer affirmed. His work stands a great distance from the certitude of Sidney and Johnson.
October 28, 2009 at 2:54 pm
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In the middle to late nineteenth century Matthew Arnold registers the anomalous changes in the community of men throughout his criticism and poetry.
October 28, 2009 at 12:52 pm
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and that is the reason he is called the " "third great Victorian poet" " , along with Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson and Robert Browning............
October 28, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Such a conception of literature maintains the poet and critic have a commonality of experience with the community of men in the real world.
October 28, 2009 at 8:55 am
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You are of the Superior mind * A pleasure to read about you, Sir.
October 28, 2009 at 7:16 am
