Hiatus

Dear reader,

About two years after giving up regular posting, I've decided to archive all the old stuff on this blog.  You may remember, if you read it way back at the beginning, that this blog was created to host a collection of disjointed and incorrect ramblings based loosely on what I was reading or watching at the time.  The best things to come out of it were a series of film and TV reviews, and some translations of german poetry.  Most of the rest can safely be consigned to the digital wastebasket with nothing lost but embarrassment down the road.  That said, I still have all the articles, and if there's some piece you're interested in, drop me a line through the comment box below, and if I see your message I may send it to you.

Thanks for reading.  I wish you all well.

Sincerely,
The Author

Some Thoughts on the Act of Reading

As I get older, I realize that I do not enjoy the act of reading. I enjoy some of the things I read, but reading itself is not a pleasure to me. I am not sure why this is this case, since for others it seems not to be. There are many things that I would be happy to have read, but which I will never read simply because the act would be so unpleasant or difficult. I regret somewhat that I will never be such a person who has read such and such works, but I am not a glutton for text. I read when I am hungry, and my appetites are (perhaps pathetically) dainty.

A Rumination on the Foundation of Civil Society

Perhaps, in life, people shouldn't be divided between the useful, who will help you achieve your desired pleasure or ambition, and the rest, who need to be tossed aside or derided for their inadequacy.  Perhaps the division shouldn't be between the knowing in-group and the rest of the world, the promising and the unpromising, the interesting and the passé.  Maybe there are just people, muddled and misguided, frequently wicked, yearning for something good, worthy of politeness and respect, even when their wits are cluttered, or they are stuck in a rut, or whatever.

What is the sine qua non of civil interaction, of affability?  Benevolence and civility.  What are the vices that offend against these necessities?  Irony, malice, rudeness, narcissism.  What does one get from immersing oneself in a culture without civility or benevolence?  One becomes uncivil; one loses the ability to distinguish between acts of malice, indifference, and friendship.  If one can maintain an affable demeanor in such a milieu, that is heroic virtue.  But for the rest of us, we should remember the words of the psalmist:

Blessed is the man 
who does not walk in the counsel of the impious,
or stand in the path of sinners,
or sit in the seat of scoffers;
but his will is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law he meditates by day and by night.

The distinction among men that should be drawn is the distinction between those whose company we can keep without traveling in consilio impiorum, and everyone else.  Whatever other wickednesses there may be, whatever other virtues we may desire, civility and benevolence are at the foundation—if these are absent, whatever other goods we pursue will fail.

The King in Thule

A translation (my own) of Goethe's Der König in Thule.

There was once a king in Thule
Who was faithful to the grave,
To whom his dying mistress
A golden goblet gave.

To him was nothing dearer,
He drained it when he supped;
His eyes would overflow with tears,
As he tipped the golden cup.

And when the king was dying
He surveyed his domain,
Bequeathed it all unto his heir,
But the goblet he retained.

One day at royal repast
He sat among his knights
In the high hall of his fathers
In the castle on the heights.

There stood the old carouser,
Drained out his life's last glug,
And cast the sacred vessel down
Into the stormy flood.

He watched it, plunging, filling,
Sink deep into the main.
His eyes, with him, were sinking too;
He never drank again.

The Text of Rhythm and Blues

A poem from peter handke's collection
Die Innenwelt der Außenwelt der Innenwelt.

Everything is in order.
She walks down the street.
Do you feel well?
I would like to go home.

Come closer!
I will go home.
Everything is in order.
She walked down the street.

I feel well.
I am going home.
Don't run away!
She walks down the street.

Early in the morning—
I go home.
She walked down the street.
I feel better.

Here she comes!
Hurry!
Take me home!

Early in the morning—
Come closer!

At midnight—

I can sense it.
Don't run away!
I'm going home.

Come closer!
We are home.
Do you sense it?

At midnight—
Come!

Come over.
Hurry!

Early in the morning—
At midnight!

Do you feel it?
Hurry!

I am trying.
At midnight—

Do you feel it?
Here it comes.
Come closer!
I am trying!
Do you feel it?
Hurry!

I'm trying!
Do you feel it?
I'm trying!
Do you feel it?
Do you feel it?

Oh yes.

The American Experience

PBS was an essential part of my childhood.  The influence played on my intellectual development, interests, and personality by the programming made available on Chicago's WTTW is difficult to overstate.  There are so many things that I know and was made aware of, curiosities inspired, landscapes opened up, because of the different children's and documentary series shown there.

In the past eight years, PBS has morphed into something different.  There is still good programming, but it tends much more often to follow some political or ideological trend line.  WTTW has split into four separate sub-channels, one of which is frequently devoted to mutliculturalist programming with heavy social justice themes.  I do not know why the change has happened.  I don't know why, when Jim Lehrer was still running The News Hour, it was a beacon of impartiality and intelligent commentary (the last light in the TV news establishment), but now that he has left, Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff have more or less destroyed it.  I don't know why Nova spun off "Nova ScienceNow" with the awful Neil DeGrasse Tyson, or why Bill Moyers was given so many different weekly talk shows for a Sunday platform, or why Chicago Tonight manages (despite its long broadcast window) to be the worst local news program in Chicago.

What can I say?  We live in a decadent age.  Even PBS can't stay good.

Of course, there is still a lot of good programming.  Some of the cooking shows are still quite good, (although Barbecue University was never among them), there are still some great travel programs (Globe Trekker!), and above all the core news magazine and documentary series (American Experience and Frontline) remain excellent.  They may have killed Arthur by extending the series ten years too long, transforming the characters into degenerate millennials, and cycling out the old voice actors with shrill replacements, but at least they're still making excellent 5+ hour documentaries about the lives of Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan.

Which brings me to the very modest point that motivated this post.  I can't help but feel very intense nostalgia when I watch the old opening sequence from American Experience.  It manages, in the space of a minute, to make me feel a kind of piety for this country, and a love for its history.  It is beautifully done.

On the Need for Beautiful Things

The other night, before falling asleep, I started reading Moby Dick.  Let me be more precise: while trying to fall asleep, I started listening to a free audiobook recording of Moby Dick.  (This one.) It was beautiful.  Having picked up the novel in bookstores and libraries perhaps dozens of times during the course of my life without ever making it past the first page, the unveiling of Melville's description of the "Island of the Manhattoes" and everyman's impulse to go to sea was stunning.

What other experiences of this sort have I had lately?  Little lines in Rilke: "Ich glaube an Nächte." or "Du, Nachbar Gott, wenn ich dich manches mal in langer Nacht mit hartem Klopfen störe..." (Such meter!)

The harmony of a well-designed page with good fonts.

What is the beautiful? A tedious question, because it is too easy—better to ask what is beautiful?  Knowing in abstract what constitutes beauty enables us to find the links between things that are beautiful and their higher causes.  But because beauty in things is the manifestness of their interior order, which discloses to us what they are, while directing us to something higher than what they are—it is more enriching to learn by beholding what is beautiful than by thinking in the absence of beautiful things about the structure of aesthetic delight.

On the Notion of Soullessness

In college and after, i used to talk a lot about "soulless" diversions and professions.  If asked to define the notion, I would have said something like this: "Something is soulless to the extent that it detracts from the pursuit of higher things—philosophy, contemplation, and the ordered pursuit of the good."  In application, though, the notion of soullessness was more narrowly targeted.  Certain things were definitely soulless, because of their decadence or (more often) their materialism.  Finance and management consulting, economics and related subjects were all harshly condemned for their lack of "soul".

Lying in bed tonight, trying to fall asleep, I wondered what it meant to be soulless—I wondered whether, despite my best intentions and hopes, I am slowly becoming soulless, simply through the gradual transformation of my character over the past ten years.  The question is an echo of one of the great anxieties of the boomer generation—the fear of selling out, of being assimilated by "The Man".  But for me "The Man" isn't the concept of authority in general, it's the conversion of the mind into a tool.  Soullessness isn't obedience, nor is it cheating oneself out of the spontaneity of individual genius or talent—it's the instrumentalization of the intellect in such a way that the mind's habitual occupation is neither ipsum esse (whether merely esse commune or esse per se subsistens), nor the truth, but the accomplishment of tasks so minute that their ordination can exist in a state of perpetual suspension, without reference to the ultimate good.

One experiences a certain delight in accomplishing tasks.  There's the delight of accumulation (a materialist pleasure), and the delight of the imposition of will (Διὸς δ᾽ ἐτελείετο βουλή), but there is also a basic delight in the preoccupation lent to the mind by the process of accomplishment.  

Goethe's Mephisto warns that ars longa, vita brevis.  It is true, but also in a different way—work draws out and fills time, for better or worse, depending on the occupation.  Mann complements and completes this insight: Work that is truly ars fills time in a way that enriches it, slows and suspends it, drawing nearer to the eternity which is the plenitudo perfectionis.  But work which occupies the mind without directing it toward a higher end, which truly diverts the soul from its life, work which is too much for its own sake by virtue of being for the sake of who knows what invisible or undirected end—this work leaves time barren, and while it may leave one short of life, it does not fill it.

What is needed for good work is not merely a sense of the dignity of labor or the importance of perfection—what is needed is an orientation from the work one accomplishes to a higher end, not merely material, but transcendental—not simply quantifiable or relative or contextual in its claim to value, but stemming somehow from what is absolute.  In the absence of that, I think, soullessness sets in.

Der blasse Abelknabe spricht...

The pale young Abel speaks:

I am not.  My brother did something to me,

Something that I did not see.
He covered up my light.
He drove away my face
with his face.
Now he’s alone.
I think he must still be alive.
Since no one does to him, as he to me.
All of my paths have passed,
and all now come before his wrath,
and all pass by him, lost.

I think my older brother watches
like a judge.
The night remembered me,
but not him.



Der blasse Abelknabe spricht:

Ich bin nicht. Der Bruder hat mir was getan,

was meine Augen nicht sahn.
Er hat mir das Licht verhängt.
Er hat mein Gesicht verdrängt
mit seinem Gesicht.
Er ist jetzt allein.
Ich denke, er muss noch sein.
Denn ihm tut niemand, wie er mir getan.
Es gingen alle meine Bahn,
kommen alle vor seinen Zorn,
gehen alle an ihm verloren.

Ich glaube, mein großer Bruder wacht
wie ein Gericht.
An mich hat die Nacht gedacht;
an ihn nicht.



(From Rilke's Stundenbuch.  Several of my favorite poems are from the book's first part, "Of Monastic Life."  I am currently working through it from the beginning.)

Ich lese es heraus aus deinem Wort...

I read it aloud out of your word,
out of the story of the gestures,
with which your hands, around the things becoming,

rounded themselves, confining, warm and wise.
You uttered “live” aloud but whispered “die”
and repeated ever over: “be”.
But murder came before the first man’s death.
And thereupon a rip tore through your swelling circles
a scream broke out
and tore the voices forth,
which gathered only then
to say around you
to bear about you
the bridge over every chasm –

And what they since have stammered,
are pieces
of your ancient name.



Ich lese es heraus aus deinem Wort,
aus der Geschichte der Gebärden,
mit welchen deine Hände um das Werden

sich ründeten, begrenzend, warm und weise.
Du sagtest leben laut und sterben leise
und wiederholtest immer wieder: Sein.
Doch vor dem ersten Tode kam der Mord.
Da ging ein Riss durch deine reifen Kreise
und ging ein Schrein
und riss die Stimmen fort,
die eben erst sich sammelten
um dich zu sagen,
um dich zu tragen
alles Abgrunds Brücke -

Und was sie seither stammelten,
sind Stücke
deines alten Namens.


(From Rilke's Stundenbuch.  Several of my favorite poems are from the book's first part, "Of Monastic Life."  I am currently working through it from the beginning.)

Ich lebe grad, da das Jahrhundert geht...

I live just there, where the century passes.
One feels the wind from a great leaf,
that God and you and I have written on
and which is turned in strangers’ hands.

One feels the glint from a new page,
upon which everything has yet to come to be.

The quiet powers test each other’s breadth
and look upon the darkness in each other.



Ich lebe grad, da das Jahrhundert geht.
Man fühlt den Wind von einem großen Blatt,
das Gott und du und ich beschrieben hat
und das sich hoch in fremden Händen dreht.

Man fühlt den Glanz von einer neuen Seite,
auf der noch Alles werden kann.

Die stillen Kräfte prüfen ihre Breite
und sehn einander dunkel an.



(From Rilke's Stundenbuch.  Several of my favorite poems are from the book's first part, "Of Monastic Life."  I am currently working through it from the beginning.)

Wenn es nur einmal so ganz stille wäre...

If only just for once it were so still.
If only chance and guesswork would fall silent
and the laughter of my neighbors,
If the noise, which my own senses make,
did not prevent me so from watching – :

Then could I in a thousandfold reflection
approach the edges of you with my thought

And own you (only for a smile’s length),
In order then to give you to the living
as an act of thanks.



Wenn es nur einmal so ganz stille wäre.
Wenn das Zufällige und Ungefähre
verstummte und das nachbarliche Lachen,
wenn das Geräusch, das meine Sinne machen,
mich nicht so sehr verhinderte am Wachen -:

Dann könnte ich in einem tausendfachen
Gedanken bis an deinen Rand dich denken

und dich besitzen (nur ein Lächeln lang),
um dich an alles Leben zu verschenken
wie einen Dank.


(From Rilke's Stundenbuch.  Several of my favorite poems are from the book's first part, "Of Monastic Life."  I am currently working through it from the beginning.)

Du, Nachbar Gott...

You, neighbor God, when now and then

in dead of night, with heavy knocks I wake you, –

It’s so, because I barely hear you breathe,

and know: You are alone in the hall.

And when you have a need, there’s no one there,

to bring a drink to satisfy your fumbling.

I’m always listening.  Give a little sign.

I am close by.

Only a narrow wall divides us two,

By chance; since it could be

that, but a call from your mouth or from mine,

And it caves in

without any fuss or din.

It is built out of your images.

Those pictures stand in front of you like names.

And when at times the light in me burns out,

by which my depths perceive you,

They waste themselves like glints upon their frames.

And my senses, which are quickly tired,

are homeless and apart from you.

Du, Nachbar Gott, wenn ich dich manches Mal

in langer Nacht mit hartem Klopfen störe, -

so ists, weil ich dich selten atmen höre

und weiß: Du bist allein im Saal.

Und wenn du etwas brauchst, ist keiner da,

um deinem Tasten einen Trank zu reichen:

ich horche immer. Gib ein kleines Zeichen.

Ich bin ganz nah. 

Nur eine schmale Wand ist zwischen uns,

durch Zufall; denn es könnte sein:

ein Rufen deines oder meines Munds -

und sie bricht ein

ganz ohne Lärm und Laut.

Aus deinen Bildern ist sie aufgebaut.

Und deine Bilder stehn vor dir wie Namen.

Und wenn einmal in mir das Licht entbrennt,

mit welchem meine Tiefe dich erkennt,

vergeudet sichs als Glanz auf ihren Rahmen.

Und meine Sinne, welche schnell erlahmen,

sind ohne Heimat und von dir getrennt.

(From Rilke's Stundenbuch. Several of my favorite poems are from the book's first part, "Of Monastic Life." I am currently working through it from the beginning.  I have translated this poem at least once before.)

Da neigt sich die Stunde und rührt mich an...

The hour bends down and touches me

with a clear, metallic blow:

My senses tremble. I feel: I can—

and I take hold of the moldable day.

Nothing was finished before I perceived it,

Every single change stood still.

My glances are ripe, and like a bride

To each comes the thing that he wills.

Nothing is so small but I nonetheless love it

and paint it against a golden field, and large,

and hold it high, and I do not know whose

Soul it may set free. . .

Da neigt sich die Stunde und rührt mich an

mit klarem, metallenem Schlag:

mir zittern die Sinne. Ich fühle: ich kann -

und ich fasse den plastischen Tag.

Nichts war noch vollendet, eh ich es erschaut,

ein jedes Werden stand still.

Meine Blicke sind reif, und wie eine Braut

kommt jedem das Ding, das er will.

Nichts ist mir zu klein, und ich lieb es trotzdem

und mal es auf Goldgrund und groß

und halte es hoch, und ich weiß nicht wem

löst es die Seele los...

(From Rilke's Stundenbuch.  Several of my favorite poems are from the book's first part, "Of Monastic Life."  I am currently working through it from the beginning.)

What is the relationship between Justice and Self-Care?

M.F. [...] A man possessed of a splendid ethos, who could be admired and put forward as an example, was someone who practiced freedom in a certain way.  I don't think that a shift is needed for freedom to be conceived as ethos; it is immediately problematized as ethos.  But extensive work by the self on the self is required for this practice of freedom to take shape in an ethos that is good, beautiful, honorable, estimable, memorable, and exemplary.

Q. Is this where you situate the analysis of power?

M.F. I think insofar as freedom for the Greeks signifies non-slavery—which is quite a different definition of freedom from our own—the problem is already entirely political.  It is political in that non-slavery to others is a condition: a slave has no ethics.  Freedom is thus inherently political.  And it also has a political model insofar as being free means not being a slave to oneself and one's appetities, which means that with respect to oneself one establishes a certain relationship of domination, of mastery, which was called arkhé, or power, command.

Q.  As you have stated, care of the self is in a certain sense care for others.  In this sense, the care of the self is also always ethical, and ethical in itself.

M.F. What makes it ethical for the Greeks is not that it is care for others.  The care of the self is ethical in itself; but it implies complex relationships with others insofar as this ethos of freedom is also a way of caring for others.  This is why it is important for a free man who conducts himself as he should to be able to govern his wife, his children, his household; it is also the art of governing.  Ethos also implies a relationship with others, insofar as the care of the self enables one to occupy his rightful position in the city, the community, of interpersonal relationships, whether as a magistrate or a friend.  And the care of the self also implies a relationship with the other insofar as proper care of the self requires listening to the lessons of a master.  One needs a guide, a counselor, a friend, someone who will be truthful with you.  Thus the problem of relationships with others is present throughout the development of the care of the self.


(Taken from an interview given by Michel Foucault in January 1984, a few months before his death.)

Foucault at Berkeley, October 1980

Foucault is center left with the cowboy hat.

Today I began listening to a (so far) delightful set of lectures by Michel Foucault, given at UC Berkeley in 1980, on the topic of Truth and Subjectivity.  His accent is quite clear, and he presumes relatively little in the way of background knowledge (although, if you know his game, you will find it easier to laugh along with the audience).  They're available in mp3 form from the UC Berkeley library:

Lecture One

Lecture Two

Lecture Three

Lecture Four

Ich liebe meines Wesens Dunkelstunden

Original text, from Rilke's Stundenbuch:

Ich liebe meines Wesens Dunkelstunden,
in welchen meine Sinne sich vertiefen;
in ihnen hab ich, wie in alten Briefen,
mein täglich Leben schon gelebt gefunden
und wie Legende weit und überwunden.

Aus ihnen kommt mir Wissen, dass ich Raum
zu einem zweiten zeitlos breiten Leben habe.
Und manchmal bin ich wie der Baum,
der, reif und rauschend, über einem Grabe
den Traum erfüllt, den der vergangne Knabe
(um den sich seine warmen Wurzeln drängen)
verlor in Traurigkeiten und Gesängen.

English rendering:

I love my nature's darkened hours,

in which my senses deepen themselves;

In them I discovered, as in old letters,

my daily life already lived

and like a legend, long and overcome.

Out of them knowledge comes to me, that I have space

for a second timeless stretch of life.

And sometimes I am like the tree,

that, ripe and rustling, over someone's grave

fulfills his dream, which the fallen boy

(about whom its warm roots press)

had left behind in sorrows and in songs.

We dare not paint of our own accord

The original text, from Rilke's Stundenbuch.

Wir dürfen dich nicht eigenmächtig malen,
du Dämmernde, aus der der Morgen stieg.
Wir holen aus den alten Farbenschalen
die gleichen Striche und die gleichen Strahlen,
mit denen dich der Heilige verschwieg.

Wir bauen Bilder von dir auf wie Wände;
so dass schon tausend Mauern um dich stehn.
Denn dich verhüllen unsre frommen Hände, fromm
sooft dich unsre Herzen offen sehn.

My butchered English rendering:

We dare not paint of our own accord,

you twilights, out of which the morning climbed.

We fetch out of the olden color bowls

The same strokes and the same rays,

with which the saint once hid you.

We build images of you upon the walls;

so that already a thousand walls surround you.

Then our pious hands enshroud you, pious

whenever our hearts truly see you.

I have many brothers in Soutanes

From Das Stundenbuch.  The original Text:

Ich habe viele Brüder in Soutanen
im Süden, wo in Klöstern Lorbeer steht.
Ich weiß, wie menschlich sie Madonnen planen
und träume oft von jungen Tizianen,
durch die der Gott in Gluten geht.

Doch wie ich mich auch in mich selber neige:
Mein Gott ist dunkel und wie ein Gewebe
von hundert Wurzeln, welche schweigsam trinken.
Nur, dass ich mich aus seiner Wärme hebe,
mehr weiß ich nicht, weil alle meine Zweige
tief unten ruhn und nur im Winde winken.

My butchered English version:

I have many brothers in Soutanes

in the South, where laurels fill the cloisters.

I know, how they plan humane Madonnas

and I often dream of young Titians,

Through whom God walks in passions.

But as I bend back further toward myself:

My God is dark and like a fabric

woven from a hundred roots, drinking quietly.

Only that I lift myself out of his warmth,

I know no more than this, since all of my branches

rest deeply and wave only in the wind.

Ich lebe mein Leben in wachsenden Ringen

The original poem, from Das Stundenbuch:

Ich lebe mein Leben in wachsenden Ringen,
die sich über die Dinge ziehn.
Ich werde den letzten vielleicht nicht vollbringen,
aber versuchen will ich ihn.

Ich kreise um Gott, um den uralten Turm,
und ich kreise jahrtausendelang;
und ich weiß noch nicht: bin ich ein Falke, ein Sturm
oder ein großer Gesang.

My butchered English version:

I live my life in widening rings,

which draw themselves over all things.

I may never finish the very last,

But I mean to try.

I circle round God, in his primeval tower,

And I circle round for thousands of years;

And I still don't know: whether I am a hawk, a storm,

Or a great song.