Apr
30
Distracted
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Power over words should mean the ability to persuade, and persuasion should mean that at some point I can get what I want in some small degree.
Instead, what words used rightly do is make people think; “persuasion” occurs, but wow can it be limited. I probably have to confess I suck at this advice/persuasion game more than I like to admit. The frustration hits hardest when this problem occurs regarding people I want to love me (Note: this is absolutely not happening to me at the moment. It has happened before. I’m mopey right now for another “reason”). I actually do get them thinking, and when they start thinking, they start thinking about everything and everyone else except me.
Which is very weird, really. I always thought wisdom was intimately tied to gratitude, for to ask questions about something in order to probe its depths is to treat that something with the utmost respect. That’s probably the underlying reason why wisdom and moderation are linked: the questions have to “be fitting” for the object of inquiry. To ask too much too soon is to destroy the object, and that can only be done if one is certain there is something higher.
- Maybe I’m asking too much too soon. Maybe I’m destroying the possibility of the higher objects. -
But perhaps our age can be marked as fundamentalist: all of us know how and what to love, and we know we’re exactly right about it, and that’s it. Damn it, one reason why I pray is for ability, so that I can at least feel like I’m doing a bit more for myself. Instead I’m in the position where hearts and minds have to be engaged at a level well beyond my power, and this problem is happening publicly (exactly when is this blog going to get an audience that grows on its own?) and most certainly privately.
Closing comments - e-mail me privately if you wish to respond.
Apr
30
Eros and Violence: On Auden’s "Jumbled in the common box…"
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“Jumbled in the common box…”
W.H. Auden
Jumbled in the common box
Of their dark stupidity,
Orchid, swan, and Caesar lie;
Time that tires of everyone
Has corroded all the locks,
Thrown away the key for fun.
In its cleft the torrent mocks
Prophets who in days gone by
Made a profit on each cry,
Persona grata now with none;
And a jackass language shocks
Poets who can only pun.
Silence settles on the clocks;
Nursing mothers point a sly
Index finger at a sky,
Crimson with the setting sun;
In the valley of the fox
Gleams the barrel of a gun.
Once we could have made the docks,
Now it is too late to fly;
Once too often you and I
Did what we should not have done;
Round the rampant rugged rocks
Rude and ragged rascals run.
Comment:
The end of all things has come up many times before in this blog, but with Yeats’ “The Second Coming” as the impetus. Here we examine another source. We wonder about the erotic not merely as degenerative, but as leading to violence.
If we put aside the notion that eros is part of the Fallen world, the link between eros and violence is hard to conceive. It would be thumos - spiritedness, eros alienated from itself as it is not cognizant of its own incompleteness - which drives towards empire and incites violence. That certainly seems to be the Platonic teaching: Socrates’ eroticism is a softening of education. The Hesidoic myth of gods eating each other, of being trying to annihilate becoming, finds itself put in the background by the Odyssean wiles of the philosophic. Lovers who get angry and hateful and kill each other fall away from the truly erotic in many cases (not in all: I commend you to Nietzsche’s “Why must we destroy that which we truly love?” - a paraphrase). “Anger” must be the sign of spiritedness.
But here Auden gives us a “box of… dark stupidity.” Desiring is not knowing, certainly not self-knowledge. The nutritive, animal and rational souls are all represented by erotic beings - “Orchid, swan, and Caesar.” The last element seems out of place: Shakespeare’s/Plutarch’s Caesar is very much thumotic, knowing no bounds militarily. Perhaps the want to rule all, to be wed to Gaia, means a thumotic/erotic conflation. If we proceed with this, then Auden - despite his eloquence - is prephilosophic.
Yet - maybe something more subtle is going on. If everything is eros truly, then eros is not just constitutive of beings but also what drives moments. Maybe Time, which makes the Truth manifest at its own leisure, gives us another way of conceiving the problem.
Out of the current’s division, out of the current’s power, comes mockery of prophets. What “profit” they made, we can conjecture, is the few hearts they changed. Changing hearts and minds now is the same as making money. Similarly, poets are reduced only to punning, because the language itself has turned on them. Time unleashes Chaos that swallows up the sacred and the refined.
More interesting is when Time starts to cannibalize itself. The light of day giving into a blood red sky indicates there is no future for the future. The hunter is the hunted and human contrivance, which has meant no escape for so many other creatures, offers us no escape.
So what does Time teach about eros? What it does is force us to separate our personal lives from history. Time splits as prophet, poet, mother and hunter split: our roles are the indication that the end of all things is the end of each individual’s world. The separation can never be perfect, of course - if our couple makes the docks, they are still upon the Chaos, still subject in some way to the torrent’s cleft. Our individual mistakes mirror the larger tragedy, where we may be forced permanently into our beginning state. But our feeling that we’re separate somehow - that’s not useless. Despite the rejection of the Platonic teaching, despite the use of eros here as solely tragic, our spirit still exists somehow, aware it has something to say about love too. Notice that separation can be characterized as violence, however.
Apr
30
Writing
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Ugh. Sitting in front of the computer for hours on end yesterday did yield some pages of progress, but boy did my eyes start hurting well before I quit.
Today I have pens and notebook paper. Anytime dissertating gets too much, sit and write notes away from the computer.
Lots to do, lots to do - I’m organized at least, so far it is commentary on the text organized by section. A few big questions about theme need to be answered. I think the intro and the preliminary thesis should hold up for a while, but they may need to be rewritten. Amazing - I’ve only been through this book God-knows-how-many-times, and changes in what I think things mean are aplenty.
More whining later. Back to work.
Apr
28
Links, 4/28
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- Arts and Letters Daily has had a few good things recently - this article on how Islamic terrorists are competing with each other to be leader of the whole movement wasn’t too bad.
- They also linked to this review of Richard Dawkins’ first book, The Selfish Gene - it reads quickly and I learned something from it.
- Ario’s pics and description of his time in Rome indulge the senses.
- Jennifer’s musings on photography make me wonder about being a “quiet, perceptive eye” in order to capture what makes a moment significant.
Apr
25
Go Read Josh’s "A Fallen Generation"
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I merely want to commend Josh’s article to all of you because of its honesty. I would be interested in reading responses that follow up and expand on it.
Josh puts the problem facing all of us rather bluntly in his post “A Fallen Generation” - the best and brightest of our generation seem to be completely excluded from honors or even meaningful work. What I like best about his analysis is the logic underlying it. That logic goes “Since this seems to be a generational problem, let us see how our generation interacts with other generations.” What Josh finds is that we’ve been raised with a more conservative set of values that makes us submit to liberals in authority merely because they have authority. I think that “conservative” and “liberal” in this analysis are losing their explicit political connotations - the argument against environmentalists Josh uses could also be used against Creationists. Also, while I rant about the academy being Leftist tripe, I do owe more liberal professors of mine an enormous amount, and am all too aware of what conservative tripe can do scholastically. The issue ultimately is where authority for each of us is coming from, and how we’re limiting each other’s opportunities because we’re not standing up for each other. “The best lack all conviction / While the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
Anyway, that’s my two cents, and I am aware it was written hastily. If you do choose to write about Josh’s post, let me know and I’ll link to your response.