A place for studious minds (2)

[M]ethinks, it is enough to mortify the Proudest of us all, to remember, that, altho’ we may adorn our outward Parts with fine Cloaths, and sweeten them with costly Essences, yet our Insides are no better than common Bogs, and are composed of Materials too foul to name. […] This is a true State of the human Body; and, I fear, that upon Examination, our Minds will appear but little better; and, that the Emanations of one do not surpass in Cleanliness the Voidings of the other. If we survey the learned World, as it is called, what do its modern Productions consist in, but the Excrements of Wit, and Sham-Patriotism, Bawdy, Blasphemy, and Disputes among Players. What is thy Shop, O Jacob! but a Bog-House, fill’d with nothing but Bum-Fodder. […] Bending my Eye downwards, into this subterraneous Cavity, I said to myself, Does Man live for this? Do all his Pursuits tend only to encrease these Stenches, and swell this noisome Profundity? Alas, for nothing else! The Toils and Ambition of the Great, as well as the Labours and Fatigues of the Vulgar, are subservient to this End. For what do we live, but to eat and drink, and exonerate ourselves in these voracious Abysses? The Body of Man is but a Thorough-fare to the common Receptacles of all Things. What an infinite Variety of Creatures is here blended together? Methinks I see, and, Oh! that I could not say, I smell ten Thousand various Dishes, toss’d up together, and jumbled into a second Chaos of Matter.

 

Serious and Cleanly Meditations upon an House-of-Office. Humbly inscribed to the Gold-finders of Great-Britain. By Jeffrey Broadbottom, Esq. [1744]

A place for studious minds

Whatever apologies it might become me to make at any other time for writing to you, I shall use none now, to a man who has owned himself as splenetic as a cat in the country (*). In that circumstance, I know by experience, a letter is a very useful, as well as amusing thing; if you are too busied in state affairs to read it, yet you may find entertainment in folding it into divers figures, either doubling it into a pyramidical, or twisting it into a serpentine form (†): or, if your disposition should not be so mathematical, in taking it with you to that place where men of studious minds are apt to sit longer than ordinary; where, after an abrupt division of the paper, it may not be unpleasant to try to fit and rejoin the broken lines together. All these amusements I am no stranger to in the country, and doubt not but (by this time) you begin to relish them, in your present contemplative situation.

 Alexander Pope to Jonathan Swift, 18 June 1714 

(*) Disgusted at public life in general and the failure of his attempts to reconcile Harley and Bolinbroke in particular, Dr. Swift had left London, retiring to the country house of his friend, the Reverend Gery, at Upper Letcombe in Berkshire, at which place Pope's letter was addressed to him. 

(†) In the Dublin edition of the Pope and Swift correspondence the phrase 'to light a pipe' occurs in inverted commas after 'a serpentine form', but Pope omits it in the quarto of 1741.

Une promenade avec monsieur de Balzac

Le sans-gêne un peu rustique de Balzac, ses façons brusques, sa personne un peu massive, devaient effaroucher Latouche. Je vis clairement sur sa physionomie que son hôte commençait à lui faire peur. Balzac touchait à tout, et mettait par conséquent perpétuellement sur les épines ce pauvre Latouche, qui tremblait à chaque instant pour ses porcelaines et pour ses statuettes. Aussitôt arrivé, Balzac s'était débarrassé de son havre-sac, de son bâton, de sa ceinture; tous ces objets avaient été jetés à l'aventure sur les meubles, et leur propriétaire, enfoncé dans un canapé, ses gros souliers sur le velours, se reposait bruyamment de ses fatigues.

 

Latouche prit un air sérieux, et, à partir de ce moment, je m'aperçus qu'il commença, toutes les fois qu'il s'adressait à son hôte, à l'appeler : monsieur de Balzac.

 

Tout alla bien cependant jusqu'au dîner, qu'on ne tarda pas à servir. Après le repas, nous partîmes pour aller faire une promenade dans les environs.

 

Balzac, malgré son intelligence si fine et si distinguée aimait la grosse plaisanterie; dans l'intimité, on retrouvait plus souvent en lui l'auteur des Contes drolatiques que l'observateur de la Femme de trente ans. L'aspect des champs avait sans doute ce jour-là surexcité sa verve, car il se mit à nous débiter toutes sortes de gauloiseries. Parvenus sur une éminence d'où l'on apercevait le magnifique panorama de la vallée, nous nous arrêtâmes, et, tout à coup, Balzac fit retentir les échos d'alentour d'un de ces bruits grotesques qu'on ne nomme pas, et qu'il accompagna de ses plus bruyants éclats de rire. Les lèvres de Latouche n'en restèrent que mieux fermées, et la promenade s'écoula au milieu d'un flux intarissable de paroles de Balzac et du parfait silence de son compagnon.

 

Henri Monnier, Mémoires de Monsieur Joseph Prudhomme, vol. 2, Paris, 1857

Balzac's somewhat rustic lack of embarrassment, his brusque manner, his somewhat massive physique, must have been alarming to Latouche. I could clearly see from his face that his guest was beginning to frighten him. Balzac kept touching everything, and as a result he had the poor Latouche constantly on tenterhooks, making him tremble every moment for his porcelain and his statuettes. No sooner had he arrived than Balzac disencumbered himself of his knapsack, his stick, his belt, all of them tossed at random over the furniture, as their owner sank onto a sofa, laying his big shoes on the plush, noisily at rest after his exertions. 

 

Latouche assumed a serious mien and I noticed that whenever he spoke to his guest he thenceforth addressed him as 'Mr Balzac.'

 

Nevertheless, all went well until dinner, which was soon served. After the meal, we set off for a walk in the surrounding countryside.

 

Despite his refined, discriminating intelligence, Balzaz loved a coarse joke; in private, one found in him the author of the Droll Stories more often than the observer of the Woman of Thirty. The sight of the fields had undoubtedly overstimulated his wit that day, for he fell to rattling off to us all kinds of bawdy anecdotes. On reaching the top of a rise from which we could survey the magnificent vista of the valley, we came to a stop and, all of a sudden, Balzac made the surroundings resound to the echoes of one of those grotesque noises that are not to be named, and which he accompanied with raucous peals of laughter. Latouche compressed his lips all the harder, and the walk proceeded amid the inexhaustible flow of Balzac's words and the perfect silence of his companion.

trans. Alistair Ian Blyth

 

 

cœnæsthesis (2)

[J]e me sens moi-même assailli par une foule de sensations et d'images que chacun de mes sens m'apporte, et dont l'assemblage me présente un monde d'objets distincts les uns des autres, et d'un autre objet qui seul m'est présent par des sensations d'une certaine espèce, et qui est le même que j'apprendrai dans la suite à nommer moi. Mais ce monde sensible, de quels éléments est-il composé ? Des points noirs, blancs, rouges, verts, bleus, ombrés ou clairs, combinés en mille manières, placés les uns hors des autres, rapportés à des distances plus ou moins grandes, et formant par leur contiguité une surface plus ou moins enfoncée sur laquelle mes regards s'arrêtent : c'est à quoi se réduisent toutes les images que je reçois par le sens de la vue. La nature opère devant moi sur un espace indéterminé, précisément comme le peintre opère sur une toile. 

 

Les sensations de froid, de chaleur, de résistance, que je reçois par le sens du toucher, me paraissent aussi comme dispersées çà et là dans un espace à trois dimensions, dont elles déterminent les différents points; et dans lequel, lorsque les points tangibles sont contigus, elles dessinent aussi des espèces d'images, comme la vue, mais à leur manière, et tranchées avec bien moins de netteté. [...] 

 

Quoique les sensations propres de l'ouïe et de l'odorat ne nous présentent pas à la fois (du moins d'une façon permanente) un certain nombre de points contigus qui puissent former des figures et nous donner une idée d'étendue, elles ont cependant leur place dans cet espace dont les sensations de la vue et du toucher nous déterminent les dimensions; et nous leur assignons toujours une situation, soit que nous les rapportions à une distance éloignée de nos organes, ou à ces organes mêmes.

 

Il ne faut pas omettre un autre ordre de sensations plus pénétrantes, pour ainsi dire, qui, rapportées à l'intérieur de notre corps, et en occupant même quelquefois toute l'habitude, semblent remplir les trois dimensions de l'espace, et porter immédiatement avec elles l'idée de l'étendue solide. Je ferai de ces sensations une classe particulière sous le nom de tact intérieur, ou sixième sens. J'y rangerai les douleurs qu'on ressent quelquefois dans l'intérieur des chairs, dans la capacité des intestins et dans les os même ; les nausées, le malaise qui précède l'évanouissement, la faim, la soif, l'émotion qui accompagne toutes les passions; les frissonnements, soit de douleur, soit de volupté; enfin cette multitude de sensations confuses qui ne nous abandonnent jamais, qui circonscrivent en quelque sorte notre corps, qui nous le rendent toujours présent, et que par cette raison quelques métaphysiciens ont appelé sens de la coexistence de notre corps. 

 

Turgot, Existence (article extrait de l'Encyclopédie)

Cœnæsthesis (1)

First of all, it is noteworthy that a state of consciousness at any one moment is an exceedingly complex thing. It is made up of a mass of feelings and active impulses which often combine and blend in a most inextricable way. External sensations come in groups, too, but as a rule they do not fuse in apparently simple wholes as our internal feelings often do. The very possibility of perception depends on a clear discrimination of sense-elements, for example, the several sensations of colour obtained by the stimulation of different parts of the retina. But no such clearly defined mosaic of feelings presents itself in the internal region: one element overlaps and partly loses itself in another, and subjective analysis is often an exceedingly difficult matter. Our consciousness is thus a closely woven texture in which the mental eye often fails to trace the several threads or strands. Moreover, there is the fact that many of these ingredients are exceedingly shadowy, belonging to that obscure region of sub-consciousness which it is so hard to penetrate with the light of discriminative attention. This remark applies with particular force to that mass of organic feelings which constitutes what is known as cœnæsthesis, or vital sense.

 

James Sully, Illusions: A Psychological Study, New York, 1891 

Possible worlds

Warum wandern die Tschuktschen aus ihrem schrecklichen Lande nicht aus, überall würden sie besser leben, im Vergleich zu ihrem gegenwärtigen Leben und zu ihren gegenwärtigen Wünschen. Aber sie können nicht; alles, was möglich ist, geschieht ja; möglich ist nur das, was geschieht.

 

Franz Kafka, Tagebücher, 5. Januar 1914

 

Why do the Chukchi not leave their dreadful land, anywhere else they would live a better life, in comparison with their present life and their present wants. But they cannot; all that is possible does happen, only that which happens is possible.

Télévision au XVIIe siècle : un monde rempli d'horreurs

Vn Professeur en Theologie m'a ecrit que depuis peu un gentilhomme ayant prié un Italien qui est soldat dans la garnison de Sedan de luy faire uoir quelque chose d'extraordinaire, il luy auoit faict uoir dans un miroir une femme qui est a cent lieues dela ecriuant sur sa table, ce qui l'effraya et l'obligea de se retirer. Pour iuger de ceste auanture il faudroit auoir la chose et examiner le lieu ou estoit le miroir, s'il n'y auoit rien derriere. Ie uoudrois encore qu'il y eust plusieurs personnes qui pussent rendre temoignage de ce qu'ils auroyent veu, et il seroit necessaire que ces temoins la ne fussent pas credules ny preoccupez ny timides parce que la peur nous represente les obiects autrement qu'ils ne sont. Ie croy que Dieu ne permet pas que les hommes ayent commerce auec les demons parce que le monde seroit rempli d'horreurs. que ne feroit un Ambitieux et un vindicatif s'ils pouuoient venir a bout de leurs desseins.

 

Henri Justel to G. W. Leibniz, 9 November 1677 

(Allgemeiner und Politischer Briefwechsel 1676-1679, No. 275)

 

A theology professor wrote to me that recently, when a gentleman asked an Italian who is a soldier at the Sedan garrison to show him something out of the ordinary, the Italian caused him to see in a mirror a woman writing at her table a hundred leagues away, which terrified the gentleman, forcing him to leave the room. In order to judge this episode, it would be necessary to have the mirror and to examine where it was, in case there was anything behind it. I would further like to have a number of people able to provide an account of what they saw, and it would be necessary that such witnesses not have been gullible or distracted or fainthearted, since fear represents objects to us differently than they are. I believe that God does not allow mankind to engage in commerce with demons because then the world would be filled with horrors. What would an ambitious and a vindictive man not be capable of if they were able to achieve their designs?

On Obscurity

 

§ 672 Cicero (De finibus, 2,15) goes so far as to allow two unblameworthy modes of discourse whose aim is not to be understood. One is when you are deliberately obscure, as Heraclitus was when he discoursed on nature with the utmost obscurity, the other when it is the obscurity of the subject matter in itself rather than the language that makes the discourse obscure, as is the case in Plato’s Timaeus. Here, then, you have two obscure thinkers who are unblameworthy. If you take ‘deliberately obscure’ to mean intentional obscurity κατ᾽αἴσθησιν [i.e., in how he is perceived] lest in his scientific and esoteric considerations he fall into obscurity κατὰ νόησιν [i.e., in how he is understood], and if you hold him to have discoursed thus in his writings on nature, then Heraclitus is unblameworthy: assuredly, he did not discourse in such a way as not to be understood, but rather in such a way as not to be understood by readers who almost entirely bring to bear an analogue of reason in their reading, while declining to exert the power of actual reason.

 

§ 673 If you construe him to be deliberately obscure when, rather than making sure he accommodates an audience that is not yawning but giving him the requisite attention, he pours forth darkness and peddles smoke with a mind set on doing so, and if at least in places he succumbed to this due to his melancholy and his contempt towards his fellow citizens, then Heraclitus is blameworthy. If you interpret obscurity of subject matter as that weakness on the part of most people whereby their minds are unable to comprehend a given thing that is by its nature remote from their sense perceptions, even though not only are others perfectly able to understand the same thing thanks to a more diligent exercise of their mental acuity but also Plato himself clearly and distinctly grasps the matter to be discussed, and if in the Timaeus you therefore deem him to speak of matters utterly dark, then for these reasons he is actually unblameworthy in his obscurity, since he does not discourse in such a way as not to be understood, but in such a way as not to be understood except by those who likewise take pleasure in the mental stimulation of contemplating, now seriously, now in a more relaxed and pleasant way, matters that are by their very nature remote from the senses.

 

§ 674 If you interpret obscurity of subject matter as either the absolute obscurity proper solely to chimaeras, objective dreams, utopian fictions (*) and interpretations thereof, or that of things which from the contemplation of the human race 'the god coneals in murky night' (†) so that we cannot fathom anything of them even by a probable cause from aesthetics, meaning that nobody who would discuss them will either understand them or ever even mentally perceive them in a lucid way, and if you concede that at least in places in the Timaeus Plato sets out to depict things of this kind, or that by some other path he falls into such avoidable obscurity of subject matter, then for this reason he is not unblameworthy in his obscurity, it being baseless to plead obscurity of subject matter as an excuse. For worst of all are ἀδιανόητα, i.e., words that are plain but have a hidden meaning (Quintilian, Institutiones Oratoriae, 8, 2, 20). 

Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, Aesthetics, vol. 2 (1758), 

trans. Alistair Ian Blyth

 

 

§ 672 L. de fin. II. 15. eo usque procedit, ut concedat duobus modis sine reprehensione fieri, si quis ita loquatur, ut non intelligatur. Si aut de industria facias, ut Heraclitus, qui de natura nimis obscure memorauit, aut quum rerum obscuritas, non verborum, facit, ut non intelligatur oratio, qualis est in Timaeo Platonis. Habes duos dogmaticos obscuros sine reprehensione. Si de industria obscurum interpreteris obscurum κατ᾽αἴσθησιν  deliberato consilio, ne per meditationes scientificas et acroamaticas in obscuritatem κατὰ νόησιν incidat: si talem in scriptis suis physicis fuisse Heraclitum statuas: est ille quidem sine reprehensione, verum tunc non ita loquutus est, ut non intelligatur, sed ita, ut non intelligatur a lectoribus solum paene rationis analogon ad lectionem afferentibus, rationis autem nervos intendere recusantibus. 

 

§ 673 Si de industria obscurum interpreteris eum, qui spectatoribus, quales praesertim attendere tenetur, non oscitantibus et merito requisitam attentionem offerentibus, tamen tenebras offundere, fumumque vendere fixum animo habet et propositum: si Heraclitus aliquando saltim, ex atra bile, contemtuque civium, eo lapsus est; non est sine reprehensione. Si rerum obscuritatem interpreteris eam plerorumque hominum infirmitatem, qua datam rem a sensibus suis natura remotiorem ne mente quidem assequuntur, licet eandem tum alii mentis aciem diligentius exercentes pulcre possint intelligere: tum ipse rem eandem tractaturus clare dilucideque perspiciat; si Platonem in Timaeo de rebus hac ratione subobscuris loqui senseris: hanc ob caussam obscurus est ille quidem sine reprehensione, verum nec ita loquutus est, ut non intelligatur, sed ita, ut non intelligatur, nisi ab iis, quibus volupe est aeque mentem acuere, rerum a sensibus per ipsam naturam remotarum contemplatione, nunc severiori, nunc remissa magis atque iucundiore. 

 

§ 674 Si rerum obscuritatem interpreteris vel eam absolutam solis chimaeris, somniis obiectivis, figmentis utopicis ac eorum interpretamentis propriam, vel istarum rerum, quas intuitu generis humani adeo

 

    Caliginosa nocte premit deus,

 

ut earum quicquam ne probabili quidem aestheticis ratione possimus hariolari, ut eas ne tractaturus quidem de iisdem vel intellexerit, vel dilucide saltim animo perceperit unquam: si Platonem in Timaeo, saltim aliquando, res eiusmodi pictum ire concesseris, vel alia via vitabilem rerum obscuritatem incurrere, hanc ob caussam obscurus non est sine reprehensione, nequicquam obscuritate rerum excusatus. Nam pessima sunt ἀδιανόητα, h. e. quae verbis aperta occulto sensu sunt. Quint. VIII. 2.

 

Alexand. Gottlieb Baumgarten, Aestheticorum Pars Altera, 

Frankfurt: Kleyb, 1758

 

 

(*) Baumgarten defines as 'utopian' those primordial mythological fictions that are not grounded in metaphysical truth (veritas metaphysica).

(†) Horace, Carmina, 3, 29, 30.

Une certaine espèce de petits vers

In 1666, Le Journal des Sçavans published a letter from Amsterdam that described ships returning from the East Indies whose hulls were infested with a destructive 'worm', no doubt the Teredo navalis which was to inflict such devastation on the North Sea dykes sixty-five years later:

 

Quoy que vous ayez souvent visité nostre port, je ne sçay si vous avez remarqué le mauvais estat où se trouvent les vaisseaux qui reviennent des Indes. Il y a dans ces mers une certaine espece de petits vers, qui s'attachent aux œuvres vives des vaisseaux, & les percent de sorte qu'ils prennent eau de tous costez, ou s'ils ne les traversent pas entierement, ils affoiblissent tellement le bois, qu'il est presque impossible de les racommoder.

 

Extrait d'une Lettre escrite d'Amsterdam, Le Journal des Sçavans. Du Lundy 15. Fevrier, M.DC.LXVI

 

This Extract is borrowed from the French journal des Scavans of Febr. 15. 1666. and is here inserted, to excite Inventive heads here, to overtake the Proposer in Holland. The letter runs thus:
    Although you have visited our Port (Amsterdam) I know not whether you have noted the ill condition, our ships are in, that return from the Indies. There is in those Seas a kind of small worms, that fasten themselves to the Timber of the ships, and so pierce them, that they take water every where; or if they do not altogether pierce them thorow, they so weaken the wood, that it is almost impossible to repair them.

An Extract Of a Letter, Written from Holland, about Preserving of Ships from being Worm-eaten, Philosophical Transactions, Vol. 1 (1665-1666)

Parasitic worlds within worlds (2)

Jan Ruyter, Three pieces of wood from the piles on the sea-dikes showing how they were eaten through by the worms, 1731. Rijksprentenkabinet, Amsterdam

 

Quodsi porro in immensum animalculorum, quæ Teredinem inhabitant, numerum contemplationem nostram dirigamus, novum ecce detegimus illius finem, licet omnes imaginationis nostræ limites transcendentem. Ordo, locusque, concinna quam maxime ratione, singulis velut assignati animalculis Teredinem nobis marinam repræsentant, ceu mundum, illis particulariter creatum, in quo domicilium, vitæque sustentationem inveniant: neque hoc solum; sed, velut Teredine, ad parandum sibi cibum, opus habent animalcula; ita et his, ad propagationis opus, indigere rerum illa sicque, quod ajunt, manus manum lavare videtur. 

 

Godofredi Sellii, J.U.D. ex Societate Regia Londinensi, Historia Naturalis Teredinis seu Xylophagi Marini, Tubulo-Conchoidis Speciatim Belgici: cum tabulis ad vivum coloratis. 

Trajecti ad Rhenum Apud Hermannum Besseling, 1733.

If we further consider the vast number of animalcules that dwell within the ship-worm,(*) then, behold, we discover a new purpose to it, albeit one that passes beyond all the bounds of our imagination. So elegantly conceived, the order and place that are as if assigned to the animalcules show us that the ship-worm is like a world created specifically for them, in which they find a home and life's sustenance. But this is not all: as the animalcules need the ship-worm in order to furnish themselves with food, so too the ship-worm needs the animalcules in order to propagate and thus, as they say, one hand washes the other.

(*) Teredo navalis (Linnaeus, 1758), a marine bivalve mollusc that bores into the wooden hulls of ships, underwater piles, submerged timber, and which lives in symbiosis with nitrogen-fixing bacteria—the animalcules described by Sellius—whose enzymes help the ship-worm to digest the cellulose on which it feeds. 

    In the winter of 1731, the dikes along the Dutch North Sea coast collapsed, flooding villages inland, and it was subsequently discovered that they had been undermined by a ship-worm infestation that left their wooden piles riddled with holes. The worm-engendered calamity was seen by the fanatical ministers of the Reformed Church as divine punishment for the depravity then supposed to be flooding the Dutch Republic: 'The worm had been, it was said by the authors of The Worm a Warning to the Feckless and Sinful Netherlands and The Finger of God, Or Holland and Zeeland in Great Need from this Hitherto Unheard Plague of Worms, custom-made by the Almighty for the express purpose of punishing a stiff-necked people steeped in filth and sin' (Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches. An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age, Vintage Books, 1997, p. 607).

 

Parasitic worlds within worlds (1)

Sollte nicht eine Naturmythologie möglich sein? — Mythologie hier in meinem Sinn, als freie poetische Erfindung, die die Wirklichkeit sehr mannigfach symbolisiert.

Genialische, edle, divinatorische, wundertätige, kluge, dumme usw. Pflanzen, Tiere, Steine, Elemente usw. — Unendliche Invididualität dieser Wesen, — ihr musikalischer und Individualsinn — ihr Charakter — ihre Neigungen usw. Es sind vergangene geschichtliche Wesen.

Wir leben eigentlich in einem Tiere als parasitische Tiere. Die Konstitution dieses Tiers bestimmt die unsrige, et vice versa. Die Bedingungsverhältniße der atmosphärischen Bestandteile sind vielleicht sehr mit den Bedingungverhältnißen derselben Bestandteile im organischen Körper übereinstimmend. 

— Novalis

Why should a nature mythology not be possible? — I here take mythology to mean free poetic invention, which symbolises reality in a highly multifarious way. 

Ingenious, noble, divinatory, miraculous, stupid etc. Plants, animals, stones, elements etc. — endless individuality of such beings — their musical and individual meaning — their character — their tendencies etc. They are past historical beings. 

In actual fact we live as parasitic animals within another animal. This animal's constitution determines ours, and vice versa. The interdependent relations between the constitutive parts of the atmosphere are perhaps highly congruent with the interdependent relations of the same constitutive parts in the organic body.

The allotted world

So, to our business, now—the fate of such

As find our common nature—overmuch 

Despised because restricted and unfit

To bear the burthen they impose on it—

Cling when they would discard it; craving strength

To leap from the allotted world, at length

They do leap,—flounder on without a term,

Each a god's germ, doomed to remain a germ

In unexpanded infancy, unless . . . 

But that's the story—dull enough, confess!

 

Robert Browning, from Sordello (1840), Book the Third

Obscure waters

Still, what if I approach the august sphere

Named now with only one name, disentwine

That under-current soft and argentine

From its fierce mate in the majestic mass

Leavened as the sea whose fire was mixt with glass

In John's transcendent vision,—launch once more

That lustre? Dante, pacer of the shore

Where glutted hell disgorgeth filthiest gloom,

Unbitten by its whirring sulphur-spume—

Or whence the grieved and obscure waters slope

Into a darkness quieted by hope;

Plucker of amaranths grown beneath God's eye

In gracious twilights where his chosen lie,—

I would do this! If I should falter now!

Robert Browning, from Sordello (1840), Book the First 

 

 

The Fate of Yaakov Maggid

 

Ludovic Bruckstein, The Fate of Yaakov Maggid, Istros Books, 2023

 

In his obituary of Ludovic Bruckstein, published in Viața Noastră [Our Life] on 12 August 1988, Jewish-Romanian literary critic Eugen Luca (1923–1997) was to write that like the protagonist of ‘The Fate of Yaakov Maggid’, Bruckstein himself accepted ‘the condition of the maggid’, the vocation of storyteller within the East-European Jewish tradition of Hassidism that was particularly strong among the Jews of Maramuresch. The maggid, says Luca, is a storyteller not for the sake of fame or fortune, but in fulfilment of a mitzva, a solemn, divinely ordained obligation towards his fellow man. In Bruckstein’s tales, there is also a strong sense that the maggid is a homeless wanderer between this world and the next, perhaps even a heavenly messenger in disguise, like the angel in the Book of Tobit. In Hebrew, the word also carries the meaning of daemon, a denizen of the interval between the celestial and the mundane planes, such as the maggid that conveyed messages regarding the divine mysteries to Rabbi Joseph Karo (1488–1575) during a series of nocturnal visitations stretching over five decades, recorded in Maggid Mesharim [Preacher of Righteousness] (Lublin, 1646).  The Hassidic maggidim can be distinguished from the earlier, widespread tradition of the maggid as wandering preacher, in that rather than admonishing their listeners for their sins and holding out the prospect of divine retribution—the Tocheichah, or the list of terrifying punishments laid out in the fifth book of Moses—they emphasised the indwelling divine holiness to be found in the simplicity of everyday communal life, the joy of prayer and celebration of the Sabbath and Pesach. In particular, they told hagiographic tales of the life of the movement’s founder, Israel ben Eliezer (1698–1760), a tzaddik, or holy man, who was to gain the title of Baal Shem Tov, abbreviated as ‘Der BeShT’, or ‘Master of the Good Name’.[ . . . ]A gezerah (Hebrew) or gzar (Yiddish), meaning ‘(evil) decree’, often features in the Hassidic tales told by the maggidim and is typically circumvented by the tzaddik protagonist, often by means of a miracle. In the Russian Empire, for example, any law, regulation or decree that specifically named the Jews was automatically a gezerah in that it inevitably brought anti-Semitic persecution in one or another degree.  ‘Rabbi, Tsar and Faith’ is typically Hassidic in its tale of the Rabbi of Rizhin, who disguises himself as the tsar and goes to the Kremlin in order to avert a pogrom, fooling the tsar’s ministers into signing an act rescinding the order. Even the scientific-minded Dr Iserovitch, a descendant of the Rizhiner Rebbe, who recounts the episode, is forced to conclude that the story must be true: there is simply no other reasonable explanation, given that the appointed pogrom did not take place.  In ‘The Good Oil’, another scientist descended from rabbis, Professor Johann-Josef Moellin, is likewise forced to recognise the existence of the miraculous, in the form of the otherwise inexplicable cures effected by Rabbi Moishe-Leib Sassower using ordinary sunflower oil. And this, ultimately, is what Ludovic Bruckstein invites his readers to do in short stories that draw deeply from the wellsprings of his ancestral Hassidism and the lost cultural milieu of Unterlander Jewry: to recognise and reacquaint themselves with the miraculous that exists in the pious simplicity of humble everyday life.

(from the Introduction)

Locus quidam

 

A pluralitie of worlds

Angels, who do not propagate, nor multiply, were made at first in an abundant number; and so were starres: But for the things of this world, their blessing was, Encrease; for I think, I need not aske leave to think, that there is no Phoenix; nothing singular, nothing alone: Men that inhere upon Nature only, are so far from thinking, that there is any thing singular in this world, as that they will scarce thinke, that this world it selfe is singular, but that every Planet, and every Starre, is another World like this; They finde reason to conceive, not onely a pluralitie in every Species in the world, but a pluralitie of worlds.

 

John Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, and severall steps in my Sicknes: digested into 1. Meditations upon our Humane Condition. 2. Expostulations, and Debatements with God. 3. Prayers, upon the severall Occasions, to him. London. Printed by A.M. for Thomas Jones. 1624

Metaphysical detritus

What might be termed metaphysical detritus: the subtle excremental matter voided by the demons that throng the lower aerial sublunary regions like falling snow or like the swarms of gnats and mosquitoes that obnubilate the skies above the Danube Delta and the Bărăgan Steppe in summer. In his commentary on Leviticus 17:7, (*)  cabbalist Nahmanides reports that demons (šedim) dwell in the far- flung wastes (šedudim) of the cold, septentrional climes and that their substance is elemental, consisting of fire and air only. Although compounded from subtle fire, they emanate a terrifying coldness. But since they are elemental, like humans they are mortal and susceptive to decay. In his dialogue De daemonum operatione, Byzantine philosopher Michael Psellus makes startling allusion to the vermicular seminal matter excreted by such demons. (†)  It would be incorrect, however, to infer that if demons’ physiology allows such excretion (perittōsis), they are therefore possessed of spermatic vessels or vital parts. (‡)  Rather, they feed in the manner of sponges or shellfish by absorbing vapours or moisture from the surrounding air, before voiding the aforementioned secretions. (¶)  Centuries later, thanks to the invention of the microscope, empirical evidence of such demonic matter might be said to have been discovered, based on which Christian Franz Paullini makes a painstaking theologico-physiological inquiry into whether bodily death itself be a ‘wormy substance,’ (§) a maggoty underlying essence, leading the reader through a vast macrocosm whose every nook and cranny, whose every substance, be it animal, mineral or vegetable, swarms with the living death (mors viva) of countless invisible worms (vermes), seethes with their fecund seed, ovules, and animate faeces (excrementa animata).

 

excerpt from Alistair Ian Blyth, Card Catalogue, Dalkey Archive Press, 2020

ISBN-13: 978-1628972696 

(*) ‘And they shall no more offer their sacrifices unto devils, after whom they have gone a whoring. This shall be a statute for ever unto them throughout their generations.’
(†) Sperma nonnulli eorum emittunt, et vermes quosdam spermate procreant 
(‡) vasave spermatica et vitalia 


(¶) Aluntur alii quidem inspiratione, ut spiritus arteriis nervisque contentus, alii humiditate, non tamen ore, ut solemus, excepta, sed spongiarum testaceorumque piscium more adjacentum quidem humorem extrinsecus attrahentes, posteaque concretionem spermati- cam excernentes.
(§)  Disquisitio curiosa an mors naturalis plerumque sit substantia verminosa? Revisa, aucta et emendata, multisque raris, selectis et curiosis DEI, Naturæ Artisque magnalibus, mys- teriis, et memorabilibus illustrata et confirmata, Frankfurt and Leipzig, Apud Johann Christoph Stösseln, 1703.
On 1 October 1803, at Greta Hall, Keswick, S. T. Coleridge opened his copy of this little-read title, which ‘had remained uncut an exact century, 8 years of the time in my possession,’ and was prompted to remark: ‘It is verily and indeed a Book of Maggots.’

See also: De daemonibus (2): physiological processes

 

A labyrinth made of labyrinths

The Universe is a labyrinth made of labyrinths. Each leads to another. And wherever we cannot go ourselves, we reach with mathematics. Out of mathematics we build wagons to carry us into the inhuman realms of the world. It is also possible to construct, out of mathematics, worlds outside the Universe, regardless of whether or not they exist. And then, of course, one can always abandon mathematics and its worlds, to venture with one's faith into the world-to-come. 

Stanisław Lem, Fiasco (1986), trans. Michael Kandel, Chapter 4

Hanenpoot

Hanenpoot (1807) is an eight-page picture booklet consisting of pen and ink drawings captioned with rhyming couplets, mostly four to a page, which was made by Willem Bilderdijk for his young son Julius Willem, and whose content is nonsensical and scatological. In Dutch, hanenpoot ('cockspur', Echinochloa crus-galli) can also mean 'illegible handwriting'. Unknown for more than one and a half centuries, Hanenpoot was published in facsimile in 1977 (Willem Bilderdijk, Hanenpoot - Prentenboek voor zijn zoontje Julius Willem, Tjeenk Willink).

                                Cockspur's a clever imp, no doubt,

                                He blows the candles in and out. 

 

 

                                His ingenuity he boasts,

                                When meat and bread alike he toasts.

 

                                Let each one choose the way he goes!

                                As for me, I walk upon my nose.

 

                                What Cockspur in his breeches sows

                                Might the next day smell like a rose.  

                      What fun it is for him to set   

                      Cockspurishness inside a net                 

 

                       Says Jonah, looking out: Beware,

                       Inside the fish there's room to spare.

Translation: Alistair Ian Blyth

Image sources:

 

The Bilderdijkkamer, exhibition curated by Professor Rick Honings in collaboration with Leiden University Libraries and the Things That Talk Foundation to mark the 265th anniversary of Bilderdijk's birth on 7 September 2021.

 75 jaar doodsverlangen: het leven van Bilderdijk in vogelvlucht, exhibition, KB Nationale Bibliotheek

 

Willem Bilderdijk (1756-1831), poet and dramatist, historian and millenarianist, lawyer, reactionary satirist and vitriolic controversialist, anti-progress, anti-liberal, anti-democracy and anti-Enlightenment monarchist and mystical nationalist, theosophical Neoplatonist and metaphysical fatalist, was the author of a posthumously published thirteen-volume history of Holland (Geschiedenis des Vaderlands, ed. H. W. Tydeman, 1832-53). His collected poetic works (Dichtwerken, ed. I. da Costa, 1856-9) run to sixteen volumes and include De Geestenwareld (1811), which encapsulates his interest in Swedenborg, spiritualism and the esoteric, and the unfinished epic De ondergang der eerste wareld (1820), which narrates the world's decline from the Fall to the Flood. Bilderdijk believed that the Dutch language alone, if purged of corrupting French and Latin accretions, could provide access to prelapsarian knowledge, as the purest offshoot of the original language of paradise (See: Eijnatten, Joris van. “Vestige of the Third Force: Willem Bilderdijk, Poet, Anti-Skeptic, Millenarian.” Journal of the History of Ideas 62, no. 2 (2001): 313–33).

 

“A monumental and grotesque figure, [Bilderdijk's] great talent and feeling made him appear the leader of a new golden age and think himself the chosen vessel of divine gifts, but his brilliant intellect is debased by lack of self-criticism and distorted by an egotistical and impulsive temperament. His originality and sometimes unbalanced passion are yet harnessed to neo-classical imagery and rococo flourish which mar the greater part of his work. His style is equally effusive whether he is expatiating on the evils of rationalism or the boiling of eggs” (The Penguin Companion to Literature, vol. 2: European, ed. Anthony Thorlby)

Dystheoric and aporetic speculations

Ὡς γὰρ οἱ ἐν νοσήμασι χρονίοις πρὸς τὰ κοινὰ βοηθήματα καὶ τὰς συνήθεις διαίτας ἀπειπόντες ἐπὶ καθαρμοὺς καὶ περίαπτα καὶ ὀνείρους τρέπονται, οὕτως ἀναγκαῖον ἐν δυσθεωρήτοις καὶ ἀπόροις σκέψεσιν, ὅταν οἱ κοινοὶ καὶ ἔνδοξοι καὶ συνήθεις λόγοι μὴ πείθωσι, πειρᾶσθαι τῶν ἀτοπωτέρων καὶ μὴ καταφρονεῖν, ἀλλ’ ἐπᾴδειν ἀτεχνῶς ἑαυτοῖς τὰ τῶν παλαιῶν καὶ διὰ πάντων τἀληθὲς ἐξελέγχειν·

 

Plutarch, Moralia 920 b-c

 

Just as those suffering from chronic diseases give up on the common remedies and the customary regimens and turn to purificatory offerings and periapts and dreams, so too in irreducible and insoluble speculations, when the common and generally accepted and customary arguments are unpersuasive, it is necessary to attempt those that are paradoxical and not to disdain them, but artlessly to repeat to ourselves the magic charms (*) of the ancients and to put the truth to the test by every means. 

 

(*) Cf. Plato, Phaedo 114d, where Socrates, after recounting the eschatological myth of the immortal soul's abodes in the next world, says that it is proper and worthy for the man of sense (νοῦν ἔχων ἀνήρ) to venture to believe such things, and even that he should repeat them to himself like magic charms (χρὴ τὰ τοιαῦτα ὥςπερ ἐπᾴδειν ἑαυτῷ)

Into the hollow halls of the Underworld must every poet venture

Weil vom Wohllaut deiner Lieder 

Selbst das Totenreich erbebte, 

Kam's, daß die Geliebte wieder 

In den lichten Äther schwebte.

 

Hättest du nur nicht so zweifelnd 

Deinen Blick züruckgewendet, 

Wäre ihr ein neues Leben 

Durch des Liedes Kraft gespendet.

 

In der Unterwelt Gehäuse

Muß sich jeder Dichter wagen,

Um wie Orpheus Eurydiken

In das Licht emporzutragen.

 

Meines Weinbergs Hyazinthen,

Welche Muskatduft verhauchen,

Haben ohne Zweifel Wurzeln,

Die bis in den Hades tauchen.

 

Dieser Duft ist wie ein Schlüssel

Zu den allerfernsten Räumen,

Wo die Geister aller Blumen

Ihre Liebesträume träumen.

 

Charons schwarzer Nachen kann nicht

Nach dem andern Ufer finden,

Ohen daß die lichten Horen

Hier ein Rosensträußchen winden.

 

 Friedrich Georg Jünger (1898-1977)

 At the euphony of your songs, the kingdom of the dead itself did tremble. It came about that the beloved did float once more into the bright upper air. / Had you not so doubtingly turned back your gaze, to her would have been granted new life through the power of song. / Into the hollow halls of the Underworld must every poet venture, that like Orpheus he might carry Eurydice up into the light. / There is no doubt that my vineyard hyacinths, which exhale a scent of musk, have roots that plunge into Hades. / This fragrance is like a key to the farthermost spaces, where the spirits of all flowers dream their dreams of love. / Charon's swart boat cannot reach the other shore unless here the bright hours wind a garland of roses.

The horrors of Sleep

Hell? but whence came the descriptions of its Torments? From the imagination? But who having experienced what can be suffered in distempered Sleep, will compare the imaginative unsensational power of the man awake with the imagination that the Soul produces & suffers in Sleep?---One of the most horrible of these states of Morbid Sleep is the Sensation that counterfeits Remorse---& actual Remorse we know, when intense, realizes all the horrors of Sleep & seems indeed the identity or co-inherence of Sleep & Wake, Reality and Imagination.---If then Hell mean, & I know no more rational meaning, the state & natural consequences of a diseased Soul abandoned to itself or additionally tortured by the very organic case which had before sheltered it, and the force of the blows & blunted the point and edge of the daggers---it must contain---& surpass all the description of Hell, that were the portraits of the disturbed imagination---/---To consider the proper consequences an Act or Course of Action is to consider the Act itself, and no way inconsistent with the hatred of Sin for its own sake. 

Entry 4846, The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Vol. 4: 1819-1826, ed. Kathleen Coburn and Merton Christensen, London: Routledge, 2002.

A paskudnyak

He turned out to be the ultimate swindler, a phoney, a lecher, a conman, a sleazeball, an out-and-out scoundrel: if there’d been a Nobel Prize for all that, he’d definitely have won it.

Haim Goldenstein, Regn-Boygns. Dertzeylungen [Rainbows. Short Stories], Bucharest: Verlag Kriterion, 1981, p. 119.

Er hot zikh aroysgevizn der letster aferist, a gots-ganev, a khamereyzl,(*) an opnarer, a paskudnyak, a vos-in-der-kort, volt men far dem ales gegebn dem nobel preyz, volt er im zikher geven gekrign.

ער האָט זיך אַרויסגעוויזן דער לעצטער אַפֿעריסט, אַ גאטס־גנבֿ, א כאַמעראייזל, אַן אָפּנארער, אַ פּאַסקודניאַק, אַ וואָס־אין־דער־קאָרט, וואָלט מען פֿאַר דעם אַלעס געגעבן דעם נאָבעל פּרייז, וואָלט ער אים זיכער געווען געקריגן

חיים גאָלדענשטיין
רעגן־בויגנס (דערציילונגען)
פארלאג קריטעריאָן, בוקאַרעשט 1981

(*) Khamereyzl כאַמעראייזל [sic = חמור־אייזל] ‘lecher, womaniser, libertine, debauchee, oysgelasener’, lit. ‘donkey-donkey’. A bilingual tautology, the expression compounds the Yiddish words for ‘donkey’, khamer (< Hebrew חֲמוֹר khamor) and eyzl (< German Esel), to create a humorous term of abuse—in its figurative sense of ‘chucklehead’, the word khamer is inherently humorous.

Caryatides

Bucharest

 

Wagner (2)

Wagner's operas tend towards magic delusion, to what Schopenhauer calls 'The outside of the worthless commodity', in short towards phantasmagoria. This is the basis of the primacy of harmonic and instrumental sound in his music. The great phantasmagorias that recur again and again occupy a central position in his work (...) The phantasmagorical nature of the Venusberg music can be analysed technically. Its characteristic sound is created by the device of diminution. A diminished forte predominates, the image of loudness from afar. (...) The Venusberg appears to Tannhäuser diminished in size. It is reminiscent of the distorting mirror effects of the Tanagra theatre that can still be found in fairgrounds and suburban cabarets. (...) the concept of illusion as the absolute reality of the unreal grows in importance. It sums up the unromantic side of the phantasmagoria: phantasmagoria as the point at which aesthetic appearance becomes a function of the character of the commodity. As a commodity it purveys illusions. The absolute reality of the unreal is nothing but the reality of a phenomenon that not only strives unceasingly to spirit away its own origins in human labour, but also, inseparably from this process and in thrall to exchange value, assiduously emphasizes its use value, stressing that this is its authentic reality, that it is 'no imitation' — and all this in order to further the cause of exchange value. In Wagner's day the consumer goods on display turned their phenomenal side seductively towards the mass of consumers while diverting attention from their merely phenomenal character, from the fact that they were beyond reach. Similarly, in the phantasmagoria, Wagner's operas tend to become commodities. Their tableaux assume the characters of wares on display.

Theodor Adorno, Verssuch über Wagner (1952),  

In Search of Wagner, trans. Rodney Livingstone, Verso, 2005, pp. 74-79

Entrance to the Venusberg

Wagner

At that time I was a great Wagnerian. I never lost an opportunity to hear Wagner's music either in the theatre or at concerts. Today I have lost my love for that music in which I feel something mawkish and immoral, something which is also perhaps bad. 

 

Giorgio de Chirico, Memorie della mia vita (1962),  

The Memoirs of Giorgio de Chirico, trans. Margaret Crosland, 

Peter Owen, London, 1971

 

 

Library-cities (2)

If the world lasts another thousand years and as many books are written as today, then I think entire library-cities will come into being; but time's attrition and various causes will destroy many of them. 

 

Godfrey William Leibnitz, Otium Hanoveranum, ed. Joachim Friedrich Feller, 

Leipzig: Johann Christian Martin, 1718.

 

Si mundus adhuc mille annos durabit, et tot libri, ut hodie, conscribentur, vereor, ne e Bibliothecis integræ civitates fiant; Sed iniuria temporum et casus varii multas perdent. 

 

Otium Hanoveranum, Sive, Miscellanea, Ex ore et schedis Illustris Viri, piæ memoriæ, Godofr. Guilielmi Leibnitii, S. Cæs. Maj. Consiliarii, et S. Reg. Maj. Britanniarum â Consiliis Justitiæ intimis, nec non à scribenda Historia, Quondam notata et descripta, Cum ipsi in colligendis et excerpendis rebus ad Historiam Brunsvicensem pertinentibus operam navaret, Joachimus Fridericus Fellerus, Secretarius Ducalis Saxo-Vinariensis. Additæ sunt coronidis loco Epistolæ Gallicæ amoebeæ Leibnitii et Pelissonii de Tolerantia Religionum et de controversiis quibusdam Theologicis, jampridem editæ, nunc recusa. Quibus præmissum est supplementu vitæ Leibnitianæ. 

Cum Privilegio Reg. Polon. et Elect. Saxon. Lipsiæ M DCC XIIX. 

Impensis Joann. Christiani Martini.

Library-cities

Die Bibliotheken werden endlich Städte werden, sagt Leibniz. [C 212]

Wenn, was Leibniz geweissagt hat, dereinst die Bibliotheken Städte werden, so wird es auch düstere Straßen und Schindergäßchen geben so wie jetzt. [J 861]

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799), Sudelbücher

 

Libraries will finally become cities, says Leibniz. 

 

If, as Leibniz prophesied, libraries one day become cities, there will still be dismal streets and back alleys as there are now.

Infinite divisibility

Nothing is more pleasant to the fancy, than to enlarge itself, by degrees, in its contemplation of the various proportions which its several objects bear to each other, when it compares the body of man to the bulk of the whole earth, the earth to the circle it describes round the sun, that circle to the sphere of the fixed stars, the sphere of the fixed stars to the circuit of the whole creation, the whole creation itself to the infinite space that is every where diffused about it; or when the imagination works downward, and considers the bulk of a human body, in respect of an animal, a hundred times less than a mite, the particular limbs of such an animal, the different springs which actuate the limbs, the spirits which set these springs a-going, and the proportionable minuteness of these several parts, before they have arrived at their full growth and perfection. But if, after all this, we take the least particle of these animal spirits, and consider its capacity of being wrought into a world, that shall contain within those narrow dimensions a heaven and earth, stars and planets, and every different species of living creatures, in the same analogy and proportion they bear to each other in our own universe; such a speculation, by reason of its nicety, appears ridiculous to those who have not turned their thoughts that way, though, at the same time, it is founded on no less than the evidence of a demonstration. Nay, we might yet carry it farther, and discover in the smallest particle of this little world, a new inexhausted fund of matter, capable of being spun out into another universe. 

Joseph Addison, The Spectator, No. 420

Realism

Qu’il soit fondé sur un fait ou librement inventé, de toute façon ce n’est pas le sujet qui fait le roman, à plus forte raison ne peut-on lui demander de débrouiller les relations du « vrai » et du « feint », dont la complexité outrepasse de beaucoup l'opposition tranchée admise par les articles des dictionnaires. A strictement parler, en effet, tout est « feint » dans un monde créé de toutes pièces pour être écrit : quelque traitement qu'elle subisse et sous quelque forme qu’elle soit suggérée, la réalité romanesque est fictive, ou plus exactement, c’est toujours une réalité de roman, où des personnages de roman ont une naissance, une mort, des aventures de roman. En ce sens on peut dire qu’il n’y a ni plus ni moins de réalité dans les Voyages de Gulliver que dans Madame Bovary, dans le Château que dans David Copperfield, dans Don Quichotte que dans un roman des Goncourt ou de Zola. Le Prague de Kafka n’est pas plus irréel que le Londres de Dickens ou le Saint-Pétersbourg de Dostoïevski, les trois villes n’ont que la réalité empirique des livres où elles sont créées, celle d’objets dont rien ne tient lieu et qui ne remplacent rien, mais qui viennent un jour s’ajouter réellement aux autres objets réels du monde. Le degré de réalité d’un roman n’est jamais chose mesurable, il ne représente que la part d’illusion dont le romancier se plaît à jouer.

 Marthe Robert, Roman des origines et origines du roman, Éditions Bernard Grasset, 1972