Simone de Beauvoir: The Ethics of Ambiguity

If de Beauvoir's goal in writing this was to demonstrate that it is possible to live with purpose and virtue in a world torn by the dichotomy of subject and object, of individual and collective, then surely she succeeded.  If it was her goal to clarify what the criteria of such a life are, what ethical standards could find application in such a world, the her success is less clear.

This is not surprising.  She herself asserts that "Ethics does not furnish recipes any more than do science and art" (134).  A set of rules and principles that could lead one to an ethical life would need to be infinitely complex, to account for the endless variety of situations and humans that exist.  To delineate the what of ethics is an endless and impossible task.  The why, however, turns out to be far more attainable, and it is this that she aims to bring to the surface.  

What one does cannot be said to be ethical or unethical.  Why one does it, however, is much more vulnerable to judgement.  The product is neutral, but the process is not.  The closest de Beauvoir comes to putting this clearly is when she says, ". . . what distinguishes the tyrant from the man of good will is that the first rests in the certainty of his aims, whereas the second keeps asking himself, 'Am I really working for the liberation of men?'" (133)

I'm tempted to propose that this book be given the subtitle "The ambiguity of ethics".  It is not so much about how to be ethical in an ambiguous, paradoxical world.  It is rather about how to address the ambiguity--and subjectivity--of what such an ethics needs to be.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Love in the Time of Cholera

The appeal of Marquez has always, for me, been his characters.  Every character in his books not only has a fully realized inner life, but also a magical reality that could serve as the subject of its own novel.  In Cholera, for example, not only are the three central characters vibrant and heightened to the point where their humanity is recognizable, but not taken for granted; even those with barely a sentence of mention, down to the pets, are so real in their magicality that one's skepticism is never triggered.  We know people in our real lives who similarly skirt the margins of what seems possible, and it is no surprise at all to find them in a novel.

What makes this world magically real, as opposed to simply real, is not the nature of its denizens, but rather the quantity of them.  It is no surprise to meet characters who bend credibility; it is a surprise that each and every one of them do.  This trait could be seen as a forebear of modern day heightened realities such as one sees in 30 Rock, Kimmy Schmidt, or Always Sunny in Philadelphia.  We are used to knowing such magical/heightened people; we simply aren't used to being surrounded by them.

I especially enjoy these worlds, the magical and heightened realities of literature, because their distorted reflection of experienced reality is the other side of my personal looking glass.  Reading and being immersed in the world of Cholera gives me an idea what it must be like for an outsider to experience the world of my friends and me.  Each and every one of us is vaguely magical, of the sort that it is not uncommon to meet on occasion, but overwhelming to meet all at once.  

P'u Sung-Ling: Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio

 As entertaining and informative as this book was, with especially effective editing and translation by H.A. Giles, I don't know that I have much insight to offer into it.  The natural approach is to hold it alongside folk tales from other cultures, especially those compiled by Italo Calvino, and see what the overlay reveals.

Doing so, it immediately becomes clear just how universal the human approach to the supernatural is.  Among the themes and plots that recur with startling frequency in both volumes:

The young man of poor means but natural talent and good intention, who is treated unjustly but ultimately receives his due with a little help from the other world.

The girl who is treated badly by a mother figure to whom she has no blood ties, but endures out of an abundance of filial piety, and ultimately receives her due with a little help from the other world.

The lover who is not what they seem, but is all the more devoted and loving for it (although one interesting divergence is how often these figures were male in Calvino's stories, and how often female in P'u's).

In fact, dressed in different clothes, any story from the one set would be right at home in the other.  The virtues rewarded are the same: fidelity, industry, honesty, patience; as are the vices: greed, bad faith, impiety. I'm sure a better and more comprehensive comparison than I am equipped to perform exists, and draws conclusions from its findings.  As for me, I am in the mood to take a significantly less temporal approach, and go out into the woods to find a fox spirit or fairy of my own to ask.

American Grafitti

 What I experienced watching this movie can best be described as nostalgia for nostalgia.  As I sang along with the soundtrack, smirked at the cultural references and period-specific design choices, it was as though I was returning to my youth.  Except it wasn't my youth.  It was my father's youth.  It was his youth that formed the basis of my own youth, as though  he were reliving it vicariously through me, attempting a redo at whatever he felt went wrong.

And of course that's not too far off from what George Lucas was trying to do with the film.  Even though the film has the tone of a period piece, a scarce decade separates the setting from the filming.  Lucas does not seem to have been trying to recapture 1962; he was trying to remember it.  Lucas was reliving that period through me as the viewer, much as my father did throughout my youth. 

Which makes it nearly comical that Ron Howard went on from this sincere, if edited, version of the past to an altogether more disingenuous one in Happy Days--which one might also call nostalgia for nostalgia.  The people who watched that show were not entirely those who lived through its setting.  Many of them were, like me, those who had only heard the legends and claimed them as part of our own identity.

Raymond Buckland: Complete Book of Witchcraft

 When I say that this book confirmed me in my belief that Wicca is a bona fide religion, I do not mean that as a compliment.  This book served its purpose of giving me some insight into the gears and knobs that make it work for some people, but throughout I found the very same pedantry and dilution that makes other religions so unpalatable to me personally.  

To be fair, this was exactly Buckland's stated purpose in writing this book.  He is an advocate for mainstream acceptance of Wicca, and goes out of his way to draw attention to the harmlessness and relative banality of the practice.  In doing so, however, he reveals that Wicca is well on its way to falling into the trap that has befallen every religion before it, that which William James so insightfully identifies as the transition away from authentic religious experience into systematized bureaucracy.

Mercifully, there is one trap into which it has not yet fallen, although based on Buckland's descriptions and warnings, it is not far off.  The most deadly trap of religion, the litmus test by which I gauge whether a given thinker, community, or doctrine is worth considering, is to think that one is right.  The divine is not a puzzle that has been solved, and to think otherwise is delusion and laziness.  At the point of Buckland's writing, at least, Wicca was still able to claim "and it harm none, do what thou wilt."

Kate Grenville: The Secret River

 At a certain level, the question of literature ceases to be one of quality.  Once a book has survived hundreds of years of scrutiny with its reputation intact, made it onto "greatest books" lists, or, as in this case, been shortlisted for the Man Booker, it's a pretty safe bet that it will be good.  It will be well-written, even engaging and enjoyable.  

At that point, I don't ask myself whether the book will be good.  I ask myself, "Do I want to hear what this person has to say?  Do I want to hear this story?"  In this case, the answer should have been "No."  

It was a good book!  Beautiful, engaging, riveting at points, with a nice--if predictable--flow.  If you want to hear a white colonizer talk about how hard it is to be a white colonizer, then this is by all means the book for you.  If you, on the other hand, don't feel inclined to hear about how unfortunate it is that all those indigenous people had to be slaughtered, perhaps this one is best avoided.

This might even serve as a framework for answering the increasingly relevant question of how to separate the artist from their work in other areas.  Is R. Kelly's music good?  Is Louis C.K.'s comedy good?  Are Woody Allen's movie's good?  Of course they are.  Well, some of them.  It's not a question of whether the work in question is good.  It's a question of whether I want to give that person my time, attention, and space in my brain.

Al-Ma'idah

 The further I get into this project, the less interested I am in parsing the Islamic surface of the text, and the more interested I am in untangling the Sufi depths.  The former so far has come across as a generic, though not unenjoyable, religious text.  The latter, however, specifically the mysteries of HU, Rabb, and ب , always seize my fascination when they arise.

1: The parallel between the restrictions of Ihram and those of Lent are irresistible.  It is natural to find the links between all these Abrahamic religions, but one wonders if the link goes back even further to Zoroaster.

2-5: Even more parallels between the three "peoples of the book", with the addition of an injunction against resentment against people of hostile faiths one notable point of departure.

6: So-called "dry ablution" is another interesting feature, and I don't know of anything similar in other religions.

7: It never hurts to recall the overarching theme of Islam: submission.  

8: Already reemphasizing the point in v2 (and in An-Nisa) against resentment and the cloudy thinking of antagonism.

9-10: These verses seem to play against each other, and it takes a bit of theology to reconcile them.  On the one hand, those who practice their own religion faithfully are forgiven, whatever it may be.  In the same breath, those who disbelieve the specific signs of this book are bound for Hell.  As is usual in such cases, only Hulusi's Sufi perspective can make sense of it:  it is not the disbelief in this particular Rasul that destines them for hell; it is a denial of reality, and specifically the reality of indivisibility.

11: A very straightforward verse that Hulusi confounds with his explication.  He posits that the Name Wakil is being referenced in the penultimate phrase, but there neither seems to be justification for this vowel shift, nor explanation of such a Name in his extensive preface on names.

12-13: Several potential inroads into this section: who are the "we" that appointed the tribes of Israel? What is the "share of the realities" that they have forgotten (Sahih version assumes it is the share that related to The Prophet)? What effect does this hardening of hearts have?  Is a member of such a "hardened" group forever locked out by blood?

14: To believe that the intersectional disputes between Christians are preordained by Allah brings a similar series of difficult questions.  The Allah of the Quran seems scarcely less petty than that of the Bible.

15-16: There is an emphasis on نو in Hulusi's rendition that seems unjustified.  Light is light, and does not seem to need explication.  The hint is of some sufi metaphysical meaning, but what could be deeper than the literal in this case?

17: A deft blow to the ridiculous Christian notion of Christ's divinity.  

18: Will the Quran keep to this, though, and refrain from claiming privileged status, or fall prey to ego as the Jews and Christians before did?

19: It is certainly tempting to think that a Divine messenger is thus destined to appear at intervals.  We are certainly due for a new one.

20-26: A surprisingly straightforward section, almost exactly as it is described in the Pentateuch.  Who, I wonder, are the two from among them who are said to have spoken up, though.

27-31: The alternate version of this story is fascinating. The addition of the crow is especially flavorful. Surely Abel threatening Cain with hellfire is anachronistic, however.

32-34: This would be a keystone verse in any text--were it not for the loopholes that modern day Muslims take to be the law itself.

35-37: Evidently the idea of eternal damnation was thoroughly trenchant by this time.  One wonders whether it became so in Islam as a result of Greek (and ultimately Egyptian) influence, or from further East.  In Christianity, at least, the corruption seems to begin with Tertullian in the 3rd century, and be thoroughly entrenched by the time of Augustine in the 5th.

38-39: Allah is all-forgiving--unless his followers get to the offenders first as in 34.

40: An interesting parallel with the LunHeng of Wang Chong, which I am reading concurrently.  Don't bother questioning your fate.  Heaven is capricious and petty, and does what it will.

41: At least the fifth time this troubling phenomenon has been highlighted.  Who are those whose hearts Allah does not wish to purify?  What are the criteria?  When is it determined?  The same problems exist with similar verses in the Bible, but the latter text does not emphasize it nearly so often.  

42-43: One wonders why indeed Jews or Christians would come seeking Islamic justice.  

44: The logic does not follow here, and I feel like I am missing a subtlety of the Arabic equivalent for "so".  The second clause simply does not follow from the first.

45-47: It makes a bit more sense now.  The effect seems to be, "Look: Jews and Christians have these same directions, and then twisted them.  If you just go by what Allah has revealed, no matter which version, you'll be fine.  But if you are worried about man's version of the same . . . well good luck with that."

48-49: And therefore, "If you stick to what Allah has revealed, it will become clear that which is common in all three."

50: ". . . you got a better idea, wiseguy?"

51-56: No doubt it would be tempting to side with the temporarily upper-handed, especially if the beliefs are fundamentally the same.  Very clever of The Prophet to nip that in the bud here.

57-60: And it is tempting to mock rituals which we find unfamiliar or extreme.  I sure received my share of it growing up.  If one is committed to the course, though, this is the only response.

61-63: Which is to say, "The proof is in the pudding," or, "By their works you will know them."

64: I can't be certain from context, but the Jews in this verse seem to be saying that their wealth is proof of their blessing.  Oh, what a pernicious doctrine, and how widespread among Christians today.

65: The reward here is an interesting one: the Gardens of Bliss are by no means a literal paradise, but easily seen as a state of enlightenment.  Hulusi, naturally, takes advantage of this interpretation.

66: But there is danger here of readers falling into the same trap as in 64.  If one follows the given Word, whether Torah, Gospel, or Quran, blessings will come.  If, therefore, one is not so blessed, surely they are sinners.

67: This one is an enigma.  Why should the Prophet need protection from the people?  Of what should he be afraid?   

68-69: I sure do like this ecumenical sentiment,and I sure do see little of it in modern Islam.

70-71: This tracks very well with the stories in the Torah.

72-73: And a valid critique of Christianity.  It is astonishing the nonsense that modern Christians allw themselves to believe, and evidently it was no different in the 6th century.

74: A well-placed reminder that this is not malice, but ridicule.

75: A new critique of the doctrine of Christ's divinity: "Then why did he eat, dummies?"

76: Nothing to see here on the surface, but a hint from Hulusi at a deeper meaning of هُوَ

77: This book is beginning to sound like it's intended for other "people of the book" as much as it is for the people of Islam.

78: David is an interesting choice here.  Of all the Hebrew prophets, he would not have not been in my top ten choices for an example of condemnation.  I wonder what the Prophet is referring to here.

79-80: Lets of disagreement between the three translations here.  I prefer Hulusi's version, especially in that it makes the eternal punishment one of ego, rather than of hellfire.

81-84: This is manifestly no longer true.  Perhaps in the 7th century there were men among the Christians who matched this description: sincere, humble, and ascetic.  I cannot think of an example in the last century, however.

85-86: This afterlife, while vague, certainly is appealing.

87-88: Almost exactly the sentiment of Peter in Acts 10.

89: I like that the breaking of an oath is not a sin against the recipient of the oath, but against reality itself, and the penalty corresponds.

90-92: Well I'm guilty of all of these on a weekly if not daily basis.  I do not sense that it causes the animosity that is predicted here.  I can see the point, though.  Maybe if I did them with others instead of alone in my hovel the result would be as described.

93: In two of the translations, this is a perfectly natural  extension of the preceding exhortations.  For Hulusi, naturally, there is a deeper progression: from devotion to understanding to enlightenment to protection.

94-96: An interesting and seemingly disjunct prohibition.  Why is hunting specifically prohibited during Ihram and not other activities?

97: The connection between these sacred practices and a reminder of Allah's omniscience is not intuitive.

98-99: Unless it is to be revealed through the punishment for violations.

100-102: A reasonable enough edict.  Don't keep asking why; you may not like the answer, not because Allah doesn't care to be questioned, but because you may not like the answers and they aren't useful to you anyway.

103-104: No doubt a necessary injunction at the time, but mostly a historical footnote today.

105: This verse resonates on several levels.  You are not your results. Worry about your dang self, and it will turn out alright, and you will be given understanding to boot.

106-108: A very practical regulation, with parallels in the Torah and the Gospel.  The emphasis on material goods and wealth is what sets the Quran apart from the others.

109: Another lovely connection to 105.  We are not called to task for the results of our actions, but for the actions themselves--even the prophets.

110-120: The longest coherent narrative I have yet encountered in the Quran, and wonderful in proportion to its fluidity.  Not only is the idea of Christ being called to account on the Judgement Day a marvelous concept, but his answer as well.  The inclusion of the account of Christ bringing a bird to life from clay here also gives weight to so-called apocryphal accounts like the Gospel of Thomas.  

Perhaps most wonderful, though, is the eponymous "table", the مائِدَةً that is revealed to the believers.  With no mention of a literal feast, it can only be taken as the glorious feast of revelation that is available to those who sincerely search for it.  I hope to be among them.

이상화기념사업회: 상화, 대구를 넘어 세계로

 2년전 빠지던 이상화의 시를 요새 방치되어있지만 다시 보게 되었다.  이상화의 시를 물론 역사 맥락 업시 볼 수 없는 시다.  과동대지진, ㄱ당 사건,  등과 같은 것을 더 깊이 알게 되서 그 시절의 시도 더 잘 이해하는 것 같다.  더군아 이 책은 지리학 맥락도 제공해서 옆으로 놓았던 번역 활동에 영감이 생겼다.  특히 지리학 개념 없이 이해할 수 없는 "대구행진곡"을 20째 번역으로 손을 댔다:

The Daegu March

 

Biseul Mountain to the front, Palgong Mountain to the rear

The waters of Geumhho River flowing through the center

So many spent tears and long sighs piling up,

Night after night and day after day, thus do you cry?

 

At the site of Dalgu Hill, more than half collapsed,

Or Dosu Park, overgrown with forest shadows,

Even though throngs of people come and go

Like an old tree on the Bangcheon levee, how many are there?

 

Wide Daegu Province, no matter how good you are,

As we whose laughter and dreams have been stolen,

Our bodies without even threads,

Wandering to the front or the back, our hearts are heavy.

 

As beautiful as a star, it is surely here

Swollen with kind and cute liquor

On this one breathless night, sleep not

Drink till the moon sets and the sun rises.

 

David Sedaris: Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls

Before this book, I found it a little difficult to put a finger on the exact source of Sedaris' charm.  Unforgiving sarcasm is always appealing, as long as one is not the target, and there is a certain twist in his figurative language that always surprises and unnerves.  These alone could not explain his unrivaled success, however, or his appeal to me in particular.  Plenty of writers have a similar talent with words, after all, without catching the mind quite like Sedaris does.

What must be relegated to a je ne sais quois in his other collections, however, finds another voice in this one.  In addition to the usual poignant and vibrant retellings of simple episodes in his life, where he teases out meaning and humor from the tiniest of details, as usual, there are two additional items.  Firstly, included here are a few dramatic monologues, ostensibly for forensic performance, that take great pains to be as far from Sedaris' own character as possible.  The wide variety in ages, genders, and beliefs scarcely bothers to conceal the common thread: these are the worst possible people you could imagine existing.  Each of the monologues begins innocently enough, but ramps up quickly to such heights of misanthropy that caricature is not a strong enough word. Giving free rein to his imagination, and freed from the bounds of the personal essay, Sedaris reveals what he has been after all along--not just in the book, but in all the previous ones.

The characters in the monologues are comically horrid, but we are only allowed to realize the depths of their sociopathy because these are monologues, and we have access to their deepest, most sinister thoughts.  Furthermore, each of them is oblivious to their portrayal, and convinced that they are the hero of whatever episode they are recounting.  If we were encountering them on the street, or, say, in a story where they were only bit players, they might seem almost human.  In fact, with such third-person armor, each of them could easily have found a home in one of Sedaris' other stories.  

This is the world that Sedaris has created, one where everyone is horrible--but managing for the most part to conceal it from each other and from the reader.  The author's father, notably, receives the closest attention in the essay sections, and very nearly reaches the depravity of the monologue characters.  If he were given his own monologue, all doubt of his detestability would be removed.  

It is also noteworthy that the author himself comes across as less varnished in this volume.  Perhaps at this age, Sedaris has simply grown comfortable with his depravity, and is less interested in assuming a persona.  In a way, the book is itself a monologue of sociopathy, nestled within with are smaller monologues that highlight his point: we are all terrible, you and me included. 

Shakespeare: Poems

In linguistics, there is a useful tool called "minimal pairs".  To really understand what a letter, a sound, a word means, one must find two elements that differ by only that one variable.  To extricate the fundamental difference between T and D, for example, one needs a set of words like "cat" and "cad".  To understand the difference between "watch" and "see", one needs a sentence such as "I ___ the television" and observe how the different words change the meaning in that slot, or even better "____ your back in case someone is following you", where one word is possible, and the other not.

In the thriving industry of Shakespearean analysis, I feel that this tool is underused.  No few number of people devote their lives to parsing the sonnets, and trying to discern what his intention was in writing them.  Such inquiry can never bear any fruit;  it can result at most in speculation, in the absence of a minimal pair with which to compare those works.  The question, "What was Shakepeare's relation to the Earl of Southampton?", which is never far from the sonnets, cannot be answered by them definitively.  As in a court of law, intent is notoriously difficult to establish.

Shakespeare's other poems, however, are another matter.  We are not left to the texts themselves to understand them. We have minimal pairs.  We can look at the other accounts from which Shakespeare borrowed these stories, and see what he changed.  It is those points, the elements that are added to or deleted from the source material, that can unlock something that the texts in and of themselves can never answer.  In "The Rape of Lucrece", for example, the vast sections devoted to the thoughts of the rapist Tarquin stand out in contrast to any other account of the story--and especially to Ovid's account, likely Shakespeare's point of reference.  Nearly half of the poem seems dedicated to the inner conflict within this otherwise universally reviled figure.  Shakespeare gives Tarquin and Lucrece equal weight, turning a story of one noble woman into a dichotomy between a helpless beauty, and the savage whose irresistible passion destroyed them both. 

This overlay is especially fruitful in the case of "Venus and Adonis", insofar as Shakespeare's changes are even more drastic.  In the original account, Adonis and Aphrodite (Shakespeare's substitution of the Roman Venus is also revealing) were actual lovers for a long time before his death, and he even chose to stay with her for a third of the year.  Shakespeare flips this entirely on its head.  Not only does Adonis resist the lusty goddess at first, but he dies almost immediately after relenting.  The original myth of love and grief is transformed into a cautionary tale against the dangers of passion.  The roles are reversed, the man in this case a helpless beauty and the woman possessed by lust.  Even the names reveal the focus: savage Rome and beautiful Greece, lust and beauty--the parallel with Lucrece and Tarquin is clear.  

Which brings us to "The Phoenix and the Turtle".  Here we have not only minimal pairs, but a wealth of data.  Shakespeare is explicitly reacting to Robert Chester's "Love's Martyr", and the comparisons between the two would be sufficient for any linguist.  In addition, however, we have six other texts, among them the greatest writers of the time, each reacting to the same poem.  Not only can we infer from what aspects of the text Shakespeare focused on--or especially those he altered--but also from how his reaction differed from those of his peers.  Wouldn't it be lovely if someone would give me a patronage to read and parse them all.  Perhaps someday. 

One liberty taken by Shakespeare, however, is vivid even without the time to overlay the seven texts and scrutinize them in detail.  In Chester's poem, the eponymous birds voluntarily sacrifice themselves to create something even better from the ashes.  Shakespeare is having none of that.  "Leaving no posterity," the birds' death is unequivocal tragedy (59).  Nothing good comes from the meeting of power and beauty.  Not for Lucrece, not for Adonis, and not for the Turtle.  All are destroyed in the process, and  what remains is only to lament.

Alain de Botton: On Love

 I am skeptical by nature, and have grown especially skeptical, through experience, of anyone who seems to think quite a bit of themself.  If one thinks enough of themself to establish a global organization dedicated to spreading their own "wisdom" . . . well, I formed an opinion of this author well before reading any of his books.

And I was not altogether wrong in my assessment, it seems.  The omphaloskeptic pondering on the subject of love that filled this book was so laughable that one wonders if it was intended as a parody of philosophy.  The author, speaking ostensibly as the main character, agonizes over the topic, and especially over the specific question, "How could she suddenly just not love me?"  His obliviousness is tragicomic.  "How could she have ever loved you in the first place," I instead wondered.  "I have never met you and I can't stand you."  

I did find myself in the pages of this book, however--just not in the way that was likely intended.  I saw myself in the character of Chloe, who found herself in a relationship that was fine, but eventually grew tired of it, having never really reached the point of "love".  I saw myself in the main character as well, devoted supplicant whose worship goes cruelly unreturned. But mostly, I saw myself in the author: the overwrought analytic who can't see what is painfully obvious. 

Nathanael: The Art of Seeing and The Essentials of Magick

 Reading these two books is a manifestation of my growing interest in Something More.  My spiritual journey has been long and convoluted, beginning with my formative years in a bronze age Hebrew war god cult.  After walking through the one-way door out of my parents' religion, the first natural question was "Is there anything out there?  Gods, ghosts, aliens, whatever?  Or is this all there is?"  My answer to myself was "I'm not sure, but if there isn't, then whats the point of living?  So let's assume there is and try to find it."

So it began, a series of questions, years spent finding answers that were at best provisional, a flowchart of yesses and noes that eventually led to the current question: "How can I meaningfully interact with the something that is bigger than me?"  

I wouldn't say these books answered the question.  The sort of things that the author is trying to describe are pretty clearly unteachable through a book.  Nonetheless, I have taken a few things from him and added them to the spiritual casserole that is my belief system.  None of the things in this book are likely to be key ingredients, but seasoning is just as important as meat and veg.

John LeCarre: A Delicate Truth

There is an entire section of my bookshelf filled with orphaned books, volumes that somebody just dropped in my lap when they were moving or clearing out.  Loath to let anything remain unread, I accept them and pick at them when I have time.  Usually they are of the breezy beach read variety, and I was fully expecting this to match that description, well written and entertaining, but not particularly significant.  For 90% of the book, I was confirmed in my assessment.

As I drew near the end, however, I began to get nervous.  How on earth would the author extract his hero and the obligatory love interest from the mess into which he had written them?  There were only 30 pages left in which to do it.  Then 20.  Then the book was finished, the characters were explicitly not saved, and I found myself staring into the void, when I had not intended to.  If I had wanted to be reminded that we are fundamentally alone in a brutal world, there are plenty of other books on my shelf to serve that purpose.  Schopenhauer is always happy to oblige on that point.  

And yet there I was, ambushed by what I thought would just be a light diversion.  It is never far from my mind that "Si che non basta l'esser uomo dabbene e virtuoso," as per Cellini.  "It is not enough in this world to be a man of talent and virtue."  Before facing this truth, I usually raise my shields, but I ran into it completely defenseless here.  As LeCarre's characters found out, being good at your job and doing the right thing, more often than not, bring ruin and little else.

An-Nisa II

 95: A brief dip into the Arabic gives a little insight into the familiar words Jihad and Mujahideen here.  The root of each seems to be "strive" rather than "fight", 

96: And those who so strive, risking life and property, are rewarded with "ranks", which is a fascinating overlap with Dante's struggle over the hierarchy of virtue.

97-99: Another seemingly ignored verse.  "But we were oppressed!" is not among the accepted excuses.  Why live where you are oppressed?  Is the world not vast enough for you?

100-103: No doubt a necessary allowance at the time.  What about today, now that the believers have themselves become the oppressors, as it ever is with religion?

104: The cycle returns, like the line inscribed by a point on a rotating wheel, to a position of power.

105-106: This seemingly disconnected point may well simply be the signal of a shift in rhetoric.  Very often at this point, there is the sense that an answer is being offered to an unasked question, one that is so obvious as to not need included.

107-111: And this is the point into which we are being led, by only the most tenuous of connections to the previous topic.

112: An excellent point, one that I can't think of a parallel for in other religious texts.

113: Hulusi's (and by extension the Sufi) obsession with orthomancy, arises again here, though هُ remains ignored by the now 3 other versions I am referencing.  It seems to have some linguistic veracity, however.  The diving Name is indeed given as اللَّهُ in places, and elsewhere (as here) as اللَّهِ.  It remains to be seen whether this is a simple morphemic variation, or, as Hulusi seems convinced, the source of a deep metaphysical truth.

114: A little unclarity here.  "They" seems to mean the enemy of v. 104, who are then said to be deceitful (105), self-destructive (107), conspiratorial (108), slanderous (112), and heretical (113).  There is nothing in this string of verses to suggest a shift in pronoun referent that I can see.  And here we are in 114 promising them a reward for their acts of charity.  

115: And more confusion.  "We will abandon him" seems to directly contradict the "and lead him to hell" that follows it.

116: Hulusi takes a liberty that the other three translators do not.  The text is clearly a proscription against assigning partners to Allah, but Hulusi extrapolates that into duality in general.  It's a nice point, but not in the text.

117:This is a fascinating prospect.  Allah is the alpha male.  Satan is the correspondingly naughty female.  the first mention of the supposed topic of this book in some pages.

118-120: Even more fascinating! Who is this Iblis, and what is his connection with the Satan of the previous verse?  Most importantly, why does Hulusi insert him here when there is no mention in the original text, and these verses are clearly referring to the same being as 117.

121-122: Of course we can't go a full page without a few of these verses.  

123: The subject of this sentence evidently leaves a lot of room for wiggling.  "Sunnatullah" in Hulusi, "Divine grace" in Khattab, "Paradise" in Saheeh.  Perhaps the unattributed translation I'm referencing has the right idea to simply leave it as "it".

124: A little more of the eponymous topic, and pretty unequivocal at that.

125: More linguistic wiggling here.  حَنِيفٗاۗ is rendered "upright" and "inclining toward truth", but in the other two is left untranslatable as "Hanif".  No dictionary I tried seems to be up to the task either.

126: Our obligatory interlaud  (a word I just coined and of which I am incredibly proud) for this page.

127: I sense that we are about to get to the point . . . and I also know that I am always wrong when I sense that.

128: Oh.  I was wrong about being wrong.  And this is a delightfully concise summary of the matter.

129: A nice bit of advice to the polyamorous among us.

130: We have stayed on topic for a record of 4 verses!

131: Aaaaaaaand it's gone.  

132: I don't recall this Name before, and it stands out from the others: وَكيلًا rendered as agent, trustee, or dispoer of affairs.  This is somehow more comforting to imagine than the all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-righteous names.

133: Wouldn't it be a kick if mankind was not, in fact, the first try.

134: more familiar Divine Names here, no doubt gearing up for a warning or admonishment.

135: I love this verse, and there's no ambiguity among the translations either.

136: Unlike this verse, in which Hulusi finds room to reinsert his emphasis on the mystical nature of the letter ب.  There does indeed seem to be some room for interpretation here, and the Book mentioned in other places, ٱلۡكِتَٰبَ, is clearly different than the book mentioned here, كُتُبِهِۦ.  I may be predisposed to think that ب bears some mystical power, though.

137-139: Fairly straightforward, and mirrors can be found in other religious texts.

140: Hulusi may go too far here, extracting a reference to "mirror neurons" from this verse.  It damages his credibility, in fact, and gives him the air of an uninformed youtube video.

141-146: Continuing the admonition starting in 137, this may be this longest passage that remains on one topic so far.  One wonders exactly what situation arose to cause such emphasis.

147: I am growing unimpressed with the structure of this book.  Isolated verses such as this seem utterly meaningless.

148-149: Even verses such as these, with a clear and relevant message, lose some of their power due to the "Oh, BTW" algorithm.  It is irresistible to take verses out of context when there is no context.

150-152: These verses present a bit of a dilemma for they who would take them literally.  All Rasul must be believed, including Moses, Abraham, and Jesus, without distinction or exception.  This certainly undermines the idea of the Prohpet's hegemony.  Hulusi's approach finds the happy middle ground here.  There is no such thing as duality, after all.  One must see all aspects of the Divine to truly approach it and, one might suppose, even those Rasul who come after.

153-155: A hilarious and valid reading of the Hebrews' actions at Sinai, muddies only slightly by more pronoun fuzziness.  All four versions render this "We", but it seems that it could easily be "I", and the translators are likely erring on the side of reverence.

156-158: I was prepared for this respect of Jesus, but did not expect to find Mary similarly exalted in this book.  She is given rather more weight here and in Al-Imran than one would think.

159-161: It is interesting to think that the Mosaic Law was rather a punitive Law than a prescriptive one.

162: One is tempted to judge Hulusi harshly for inserting another paean to the letter بِ here, but he may just be on to something.  It does seem to pop up here and there, especially attached to the Divine Name, without being acknowledged in the other translations.

163-165: Rather a lengthy list of Rasuls.  One would scarcely think to give Aaron or Ishmael the same weight as Jesus or Abraham.  As for my part, I rather like the idea of adding Baháʼu'lláh and others to the list after the fact.  It is even more tempting to think who in more modern times we might add to the list.  

166: The divine name gets an extra بِ here again, but Hulusi forgoes mention of it in favor of his other obession, the equally compelling concept of HU.

167-169: A breather after all that metaphysical mystery, and a brief return to generic religious flavor text.

170: After which we get the third fascinating Sufi obsession: the Rabb.  If by the end of this project I have some working concept of بِ, HU, and Rabb, I will count this as time well spent. 

171: I would wager money that this verse alone has given rise to volumes of analysis and commentary. There's so much to unpack here.  The doctrinal points are clear enough, but the role of Mary in all of this, along with Hulusi's decision to insert HU again, slowed me down considerably.  This latter, unlike the other two Sufi mysteries, seems to have little linguistic root.

172-174: Winding down a bit.  Will there be a twist ending?

176: The only surprise is a sudden return to the topic.  There are those who say the the Quran is remarkably progressive in its treatment of women, and there are points to be made in that regard.  this summary makes it clear though:  women are important! Just not as important as men.

Peter Handke: Kaspar and Other Plays

 Is it a tribute or a reproach that I couldn't help but imagine how I would produce these plays as I read them?  Was I imagining the possibilities that the author opened up before me, or trying to imagine how the flaws could be repaired?  A little of both, as it turns out.  Handke makes no secret of his intention to challenge the audience, rather than to entertain.  The obviously titled "Offending the Audience" is not the only example of his gleeful contempt.  I wouldn't be surprised if, had I cared to consider critical approaches to this work, they were filled with comparisons and connections to Samuel Beckett, a similarly sneering playwright for whom I have never developed a taste.  

And yet the ideas in these plays were undeniably interesting.  Fun, even.  I thought about different ways to stage the works as I read them, and came up with some rather creative, if I do say so, ways to remove the the voice of a mediocre white male whose pride has been bruised from them and make them enjoyable without diluting them.  Neither is it only in the tone of the works that the author is the chief obstacle.  It is no surprise that the man who created these diatribes is also something of a controversial figure, and by some measures a genocide apologist.  No one else could have possibly been so brazen.  

I like brazenness, of course, and I like diatribes. I even like offense and scorn and contempt.  They all have their part to play in literature, and perhaps especially on the stage.  In this case, however, I wish that they just didn't smell so much like fragile male ego.  These were not works of genius, but they were works of incredible gall, and that is at least something.

박하령: 기필코 서바이벌!

 유챃과 읽기 실력을 노피기를 위해 읽은 캑 뿐이다.   깊은 의미를 찾을 기대가 안 됐음에도 불구하고 인문학 전공의 본능을 못 말려 생각이 든다.  한국 아동 소설 중에 부모 둘 다 제대로 대해주는 이야기가 없는가?  물론 서양 아동 소설 중에도 고아 주인공이 있기는 있지만 전부 다 그런 게 아니다.  제가 자라면서 읽던 책들에 위로해 주고 충고해 주는 부모 절반이상였다.  이왕에 말 나오는데 한국 아동 책 뿐만 아니라 모든 한국 소설에 부모가 없거나 원수가 돼서 없는 샘인 이야기 . . . 95%이상? 제가 아는 한국 친구 중에도 부모 둘 다 옆에 있어주는 사람이 없다.  

재목에 나오는듯이 이와 같은 잔인한 끔찍한 세상에서 서바이벌 밖에 생각이 된다.  기필코 행복이란 책이 한국에서 연출할 수 없겠다.  오히려 의지를 펴서 군략을 쓰고 적을 격퇴해야한 다는 이와 같은 책 필요하다.

In The Heat of the Night

 Objectively speaking, this is the perfect film.  Every single element of it was executed to the very highest standards, not just mine but those who are in charge of doling out awards and laurels of various sorts.  Furthermore, it transcends the realm of good filmmaking and reaches the apex of "great" by virtue of having a reason to exist, a painful truth to uncover, and a message that people needed to hear whether they wanted to or not.  

Which makes my reaction to it a bit incongruous.  When the movie ended, I was seriously frustrated.  Such a good movie, and yet so many plot holes, unanswered questions, and tenuous connections.  I stewed in that frustration for a good while.  As a film, it was genius.  As a story, it was almost insultingly amateurish.  So I thought.  

Whether intended or not, my reaction revealed another element of the genius of this film.  somehow over the course of the film, I had become so invested in Tibbs' story, his outlook, that I had fallen into the same trap that almost undid him.  Those plot holes and incongruities that so frustrated me--they didn't really exist.  I only felt them because I expected something else, for the vast conspiracy at the heart of the mystery to be exposed, and for the bigots and bullies to get their comeuppance.  When that didn't happen, I was so frustrated that I instinctively blamed the film for what I perceived as a flaw, but was instead the very fabric of the story.

If I had watched the movie purely as a murder mystery, it would have been tied up in my mind as neatly as Jessica Fletcher or Matlock could have hoped.  But I didn't watch it that way.  I scarcely noticed the ostensibly central mystery, just as Tibbs did and, like him, was blinded.  Blinded to the extent that for some time after the movie was over, I didn't even believe that the mystery had been solved.  And that, in my book, is art.

Dante Alighieri: Divina Commedia

 I wonder if Dante was satisfied when he finished this.  With neither progenitor nor offspring, this work certainly has earned its place in the pantheon of world literature.  No work before or since can compare to it in ambition as far as I am concerned.  it is not simply that Dante set out to explain the mysteries of the afterlife; evidently that would have been to easy for his taste.  Rather he set out to do that backward and in heels, so to speak, in a hobbling meter of his own device, and with a radial symmetry that would impress even with today's ability to go back and adjust things after the fact.  This would have been a herculean task for any, but he did the thing, and then topped it off with riveting narration, indelible characters, and a cosmic imagination so profound that many today take it to be gospel fact.  The orders and ranks of angels, for example, are taken as metaphysical fact in some circles, when in fact this is something of Dante's pure invention.

Dante's trip through hell is the most widely known, of course, and I had even committed passages from it to memory decades ago.  Naturally, the gruesome and inventive punishments there tend to capture the memory, and who among us has not found ourselves "Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura ché la diritta via era smarrita"? Even those who have not yet reached the "mezzo" can relate.  

Familiar though I was with the Inferno, I had never touched the other two books in the Commedia before finally setting myself to it this year.  Fully aware of the book's import and influence, it seemed insulting to read it in English, and I set out to do it backward and in heels--in Middle Italian.  Refusal to do things the easy way is a point Dante and I have in common.  Like Dante, I set my nose to the belt sander, and did it.  I wonder if, like me, Dante also felt dissatisfied with the result.

The Commedia is a masterpiece; of that there is no doubt.  It's a fractal mosaic of words and ideas, as awe-inspiring in its geometry as in its language.  But that was the easy part.  Dante eats words and shits terza rima.  What he set out to do, however, was not merrely to write a glorious labyrinth of epic poetry.  He set his sights no lower than to solve the mysteries of existence, and resolve the fundamental contradictions at the heart of the religion that shaped his entire life.  His decision to make himself the sojourner in the story makes it obvious that it's an allegory of the doubts he wrestled with in life, but it would be a mistake to stop there.  The journey of the character Dante parallels that of the believer Dante, to be sure, but there is a third journey here:  that of the author.  The Commedia is not an explication of the conclusions that bolstered  his faith; it bears the marks of a thought in progress, the conclusion of which was unsure at the outset.  

And the conclusion of those three journeys, the believer, the writer, and the character, might possibly have been less definitive that they would have wanted.  After all of that, after a literary, if not literal, trip to hell and back, the answer to the question, "How can all of this that I believe and have been taught possibly be true?" turns out to have been, "None of your business.  It is for God to know and understand.  It is for you to believe and follow."  The character was satisfied.  He even pretended that it was an actual answer.  Maybe the believer in Dante was also content to leave it there.  But how could the writer have been?  How could a mind that would bother to ask the question have been satisfied with that answer?  One who set out to prove by logic and theology that God is indeed just and good . . . surely he saw how thoroughly he failed at that task.  And the reader--this reader, who wore Dante like a robe while reading, and eagerly awaited the ultimate answer in the ultimate sphere, some truth buried in the cornices of this towering masterpiece--how could he feel otherwise?

마부

 예술과 문학은 무슨 역할을 맡는 걸까?  우리 아는데로 보여줄까? 아니면, 우리 보는대로 보여줄까?  이 질문은 왔다 갔다 하는 추처럼 예술의 역사의 핵심 질문이다.  Caracci와 Caravaggio, Constable과 Turner, Manet와 Monet, 예술 뿐만 아니고 전체 문화의 쟁점이다.  한편에, 오발탄과 같은 작품이 우리 겪는 대로 존재를 반영하는 점에 가치가 있다.  윗사람들이 아랫사람들을 밟는 게 현실이라 그렇지 않다는 게 착각 뿐이다.  예술은 위로해야 하는 역할 아니라 아무리 끔찍해도 현실을 밝여야 한다는 측면이다.

다른 한편에 오발탄과 같이 1961년에 개봉한 마부는 무참히 현실을 반성할 필요가 없다는 측면이 있다.  우리 다 겪는 고통스러운 생활을 화면에서 볼 필요가 있냐는 작품이다.  잠깐이라도 인생에서 탈출해서 안도할 수 있다면 좋은 거 아닌가에도 의미가 있다.  마부에 나오는 얘기는 현실에 볼 수 없다.  아무리 열심히, 아무리 도덕적으로 살아도 결국은 또 같다. 인명재천이라더니.  기적을 기다리자는 작품 아니고 잠시 기적을 기다리면 안 되는짖를 잊자는 작품이다.

Okot p'Bitek: Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol

Progress or tradition?  When I say "fuck, no" to the cisheteronormative white ableist phallic theocapitalist kyriarchy, am I just another colonizer?  Just another outsider trying to impose my beliefs on a long established culture that celebrates all the things I abhor?  When I say that religion is unequivocally harmful, and I do, am I really a paternalist know-it-all with an inflated sense of my own importance?

As ever, the problem is on its face an either/or, a dichotomy in search of a synthesis, and p'Bitek's work is a revealing study of the problem.  What is his conclusion?  Whose side is the author taking, Lawino's or Ocol's?  Is p'Bitek in favor of tradition, or progress?  It would be understandable if one took Ocol to be a straw man, a comically oblivious and deluded foil, whose only purpose is to strengthen his opponent's arguments.  It is surely not without purpose that the author paints him so clearly as a sad pawn in the political games of the Pan-African movement.  Lawino gets an undeniably more forgiving treatment: the woman wronged, the preserver of tradition, the voice of reason, not to mention around three times as many pages to make her case.

But she is wrong.  Maybe not on every level, and maybe not even in the broader intention of the work, but she is wrong, and p'Bitek does not shy away from highlighting it:

That child lying

On the earth

. . . Heavy with malarial parasites

Raging through his veins,

The mad woman

spits on the palms

Of his hands

And on his feet,

Squirts beer

On his face

to cool him,

Spills chicken blood

On his chest,

A gift to Death! (III)

 

This boy does not need chicken blood; he needs quinine.  The old ways may be lovely and touching, but they are false.  There is no disputing this.  And the new ways that Ocol is championing are not, as Lawino seems to think, some ridiculous Western intrusion.  She rails against the ridiculousness of the celibate priests; the dry, spiritless teachers who can't even dance properly.  She glories in the wild freedom of the culture she knows.  To her, of course her husband is ridiculous, learning English, desiring a Westernized moppet, wearing ludicrously impractial trousers.  Her wit is so biting, her imagery so vivid, one is seduced into thinking that she is the voice of this book.  In reality, it is Lawino who is the straw woman.  

Ocol struggles, to be sure.  His position is unsolidified, even contradictory.  He rails against Western intrusion, declaring,

To the gallows

With all the Professors

of Anthropology

And teachers of African History,

A bonfire

We'll make of their works,

We'll destroy all the anthologies

Of African literature

And close down

All the schools

Of African Studies

But it is not because they intrude that he wishes to abolish them.  It is because they remind him of something he doesn't want to see, and which he desires to escape:

 Smash all these mirrors

That I may not see

The blackness of the past

From which I came

Reflected in them (III).

One doesn't need to know that this very closely reflects p'Bitek's own stated position in life, to make the connection.   As beautiful as the old ways are, wild and free and glorious, they are wrong.  Quinine works.  Chicken blood does not.  To Lawino, this Ocol is just a colonial stooge, but to p'Bitek he seems to be more.  He is a man struggling with the reality that progress is good, but the ways in which progress wants to come are bad.  Ocol, in his poem, is on the verge of realizing what p'Bitek knows: that Leopold II, Bismarck, Livingstone and Stanley bring nothing but death with them.  But so did Mansa Sulayman, Askia, and Shaka.  None of these has the answer.  What is needed is not a Western answer to an African problem.  What is needed is "A new City on the hill" (IX),  a truly African way forward that is beholden neither to colonizers nor to ancestral spirits.  Ocol never does resolve this dilemma, and his diatribe is correspondingly inconsistent,  but somewhere in this dilemma there is an answer.

Gil Vicente: Four Plays

 I am reminded of a terrible movie: Art School Confidential, wherein one of the characters' paintings is lauded because "it's as if he's never seen a painting before."  This is exactly the impression I get from reading these accidental attempts as drama by a man for whom play-writing was certainly not a primary vocation.  Vicente was, as far as we know, a goldsmith who offhandedly prepared a little staged production for the Queen, and turned out to be rather good at it.  Because he was nothing resembling a literato, his plays are startlingly unplaylike, something of a bridge between medieval passion plays and commedia dell'arte.  No plot, nor characterization, nothing that we would think of as suitable for the stage, rather more like arranged speeches.  Convoluted and inelegant.  Charming, and occasionally insightful, there was nothing here that I am likely to read again.

And yet.

What a bizarre overlap there is with Benvenuto Cellini.  Both European men operating around the year 1500.  Rather a tenuous connection.  Both goldsmiths first and writers offhandedly.  Very well.  Both inadvertently engraved in posterity for something they no doubt thought of as a trifle at the time.  More promising.  Compare, however, these words of Vicente's:

If hard work and merit spelt success I would have enough to live on and give and leave in my will (To the Conde de Vimioso, III. 382-3).

with these of Cellini:

It is not enough to be a man of virtue and talent (Autobiography, can't be arsed to look up the page number).

This takes the parallel from convenient to spooky.  One is tempted to look for evidence of Cellini's frustration in Vicente's plays, and vice versa. for now, I will instead observe the frustrating truth that talent, hard work, and merit (I make no claim to virtue) have absolutely fuck all to do with what this existence recognizes as success, and that I can sympathize with both men. 

Robert Hughes: Seventy Proven Hypnosis Scripts

 There is not much to say about this book, but an awful lot to say about the place it represents on my current path.  I took some valuable concepts and tools away from it, several that I have already applied with success.  On the whole, it is repetitive and reductive, and by no means needed to be as long as it is.  One gets the impression that vast swaths were copied and pasted from one section to another, which is presumably because they work.  

But what can I say about the new doors that are opening to me, of which this is a mere splinter?  Shall I wax dramatic, and marvel at the wonders of the human mind to which I am being awakened?  Shall I confess my fear that I am not suited to open these doors and ask these questions?  Shall I make some forced attempt to connect what I am learning about human experience to the rather more stable rocks of literature and philosophy?  Shall I leave the reader, of which there are presumably none, with the impression that I might be going mad?  Yes, I think this last one will do nicely.

Svetlana Alexievich: In Search of the Free Individual

I am an unapologetic, though recovering, completionist.  As one who has stumbled across my blog might gather, it is rather a sense of pride that I have written about absolutely every book iI have read (and some movies I have watched) for roughly fifteen years.  Even though it scarcely qualifies as a book ( being rather the transcription of a speech), reading, and writing about, this item is definitely a sacrifice at the altar of completionism--twice so, insofar as it is also a notch on the list of "Nobel Prize winners".  

How frustrating, therefore, that it has done rather the opposite of what I intended.  I had hoped to cross Alexievich off the list, add her to the collection, and set her upon the shelf to be admired.  I was, instead, smitten by her perspective, brutally realistic and deeply philosophical.  Raw and clear, and most importantly unafraid of the implications of what she sees.  I have read rather a few books in my time, quite a few that are brutal observations of reality, and slightly fewer that are bold and clear attempts to answer unanswerable questions.  If this brief glimpse is to be trusted, Alexievich is of that rare flavor that dares to do both.  

Accordingly, as much as I want to put her on the shelf and mark her "done," I simply cannot.  I am intrigued and smitten, and must dive further into her mind before I can let her go.

Tom Stoppard: Complete Plays Volume 2

 It is in the fabric of this volume, consisting as it does only of dramas written for radio, that it feels somehow more and less complete than Stoppard's fully staged works.  There is something liberating about not being beholden to visualization.  The fact that these plays are entirely auditory means that there is no imagination required.  What is on the page is all there is, unlike staged works which are designed to incorporate the additional elements of set, lighting, costume, etc.  The mind needn't wander.  The writer has possibly even more freedom.  He needn't ask himself while writing, "Is is possible to do this even?" It is all possible.

And yet these freedoms from constraint are also limitations.  The first apparent of such limitations is that of length.  So many of the ideas Stoppard considers here are left undeveloped, with the possible exception of "In the Native State," the longest of the radio plays.  It is a great comfort to know that there are three stout volumes filled with his other works on my shelf, and plenty of room for these ideas to blossom.  The other unique feature of these plays, however, is analogous to the limitations of reading a fully staged work.  Stoppard so often relies on the main creative tool allowed to an audio drama: simultaneity.  It is manifestly impossible for me to experience the words on the page in parallel as they were intended, and, as with other dramatic works, there is simply no substitute for the experience of the finished product.