Thompson from Sunderland

Avez-vous réfléchi quelquefois, cher vieux compagnon, à toute la sérénité des imbéciles ? La bêtise est quelque chose d’inébranlable ; rien ne l’attaque sans se briser contre elle. Elle est de la nature du granit, dure et résistante. À Alexandrie, un certain Thompson, de Sunderland, a sur la colonne de Pompée écrit son nom en lettres de six pieds de haut. Cela se lit à un quart de lieue de distance. Il n’y a pas moyen de voir la colonne sans voir le nom de Thompson, et par conséquent sans penser à Thompson. Ce crétin s’est incorporé au monument et se perpétue avec lui. Que dis-je ? Il l’écrase par la splendeur de ses lettres gigantesques. N’est-ce pas très fort de forcer les voyageurs futurs à penser à soi et à se souvenir de vous ? Tous les imbéciles sont plus ou moins des Thompson de Sunderland. Combien, dans la vie, n’en rencontre-t-on pas à ses plus belles places et sur ses angles les plus purs ? Et puis, c’est qu’ils nous enfoncent toujours ; ils sont si nombreux, ils reviennent si souvent, ils ont si bonne santé ! En voyage on en rencontre beaucoup, et déjà nous en avons dans notre souvenir une jolie collection ; mais, comme ils passent vite, ils amusent. Ce n’est pas comme dans la vie ordinaire où ils finissent par vous rendre féroce.

 

Gustave Flaubert à François Parain, 6 octobre 1850

 

Have you ever, dear old companion, thought about how self-possessed nitwits are? Stupidity is an unshakeable thing; nothing can assail it without being shattered up against it. Its nature is that of granite: hard, infrangible. At Alexandria, a certain Thompson, from Sunderland, has written his name on Pompey's Pillar in letters six feet high. They are readable from a quarter of a league away. It is impossible to see the pillar without seeing the name Thompson and, consequently, without thinking of Thompson. This chucklehead has made himself an integral part of the monument, has made himself everlasting along with it. What am I saying? He crushes it with the magnificence of his gigantic letters. Is it not something very great to force every traveler hereafter to think of you and remember you? Every nitwit is to a greater or lesser degree a Thompson from Sunderland. In this life, how many of them do we not meet in the most beautiful places and the choicest corners? And then there is the fact that they are always bursting in on us; there are so many of them, they are so frequently recurring, they are in such rude health! On a journey, you encounter them aplenty, and by now we have quite a nice collection in our memory, but given they are fleeting, they are amusing. Unlike in everyday life, where they end up driving you wild.

 

 

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.

Tout est crasse

Nicolas Poussin, Le Triomphe de Cthulu (1633)

Mercredi 10 juillet [1957]

Bref nous vivons au milieu de crétins, en plein crétinisme, chez les sourds et chez les aveugles, que la prétention rend impardonnables puisqu’elle les prive des bénéfices de la naïveté, propre aux limites d’un organisme qui ne se transcende que pour prendre les mauvaises routes. Prêtrise, police, tout cela dans un monde où, s’il existait un humour supérieur au lieu de puissances atroces et bestiales, les hommes seraient sans cesse giflés et bottés par des mains et par des pieds énigmatiques. Mais hélas, tout est crasse, l’éternité, l’infini comme le reste, et la puanteur dont Lovecraft accompagne les manifestations de l’inconnu illustre à merveille la terrible parole de Renan : « Il se pourrait que la vérité fût triste. » Devenue pour moi : « La vérité est triste. D’autant plus triste qu’il n’y a même pas de vérité. »

Jean Cocteau, Le Passé défini, vol. 5, 1956-1957, eds. Pierre Caizergues, Francis Ramirez, Christian Rolot, Paris: Gallimard, 2006, p. 621

In short, we live in the midst of idiots, in complete idiocy, among the deaf and the blind, whose pretension makes them unforgivable because it deprives them of the benefits of the naïveté peculiar to the limits of an organism that goes beyond itself only to take the wrong path. Priesthood, rules of polite society, all this in a world in which, if there existed some higher humour instead of atrocious, bestial powers, people would be constantly slapped and kicked by enigmatic hands and feet. But unfortunately, all is crass, eternity, infinity the same as everything else, and the stench which in Lovecraft* goes along with the manifestations of the unknown perfectly illustrates the grim words of Renan: ‘It may be that the truth is bleak.’ Which for me becomes: ‘The truth is bleak. All the bleaker for there not even being any truth.’

* In 1954, Cocteau had remarked on the stench emanated by Lovecraft’s entities of cosmic evil, when reading Jacques Papy's newly published translations La Couleur tombée du ciel (Paris: Denoël, 1954) and Dans l’abîme du temps (Paris: Denoël, 1954):

[24 octobre 1954] Importance olfactive chez Lovecraft. Son invisible pue. (Ce qui est étrange car il se dénonce par une infecte odeur.) 

Importance of the olfactory in Lovecraft. His invisible [world] stinks. (Which is strange since it gives itself away by a vile odour.)

[14 novembre 1954] L’aspect qu’il donne à ses abominable entités et l’odeur infecte qu’elles répandent autor d’elles ne varient guère d’un conte à l’autre.

The aspect that he lends his abominable entities and the vile odour that they give off varies barely at all from one story to another.

In October 1954, on learning that Hemingway has won the Nobel Prize for Literature, Cocteau remarks on the triumph of mediocrity (‘Le médiocre marche tout seul’) and the epoch of journalists who think themselves great modern writers, whereas it took many years for Lovecraft to be translated into French and there are no publishers or translators to be found for Bierce, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, Lord Dunsany, M. R. James, Sheridan Le Fanu.

Claude Gellée (Le Lorrain), Paysage avec le dieu Cthulu (1634)

The reign of the uncreating word

 Art after art goes out, and all is night,

See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled,

Mountains of casuistry heaped o'er her head!

Philosophy, that leaned on Heaven before,

Shrinks to her second cause and is no more.

Physic of metaphysic begs defence,

And metaphysic calls for aid on sense!

See mystery to mathematics fly!

In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave and die.

Religion blushing veils her sacred fires,

And unawares morality expires.

For public flame, nor private, dares to Shine,

Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!

Lo! thy dread empire, Chaos! is restored;

Light dies before thy uncreating word;

Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall,

And universal darkness buries all. 

Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

Lies

[P]seudologia phantastica [is] that form of hysteria which is characterized by a peculiar talent for believing one's own lies. For a short spell, such people usually meet with astounding success, and for that reason are socially dangerous. Nothing has such a convincing effect as a lie one invents and believes oneself, or an evil deed or intention whose righteousness one regards as self-evident. At any rate they carry far more conviction than the good man and the good deed, or even the wicked man and his purely wicked deed. Hitler's theatrical, obviously hysterical gestures struck all foreigners (with a few amazing exceptions) as purely ridiculous. [...] It is also difficult to understand how his ranting speeches, delivered in shrill, grating, womanish tones, could have made such an impression. But the German people would never have been taken in and carried away so completely if this figure had not been a reflected image of the collective German hysteria. It is not without serious misgivings that one ventures to pin the label of "psychopathic inferiority" on to a whole nation, and yet, heaven knows, it is the only explanation which could in any way account for the effect this scarecrow had on the masses. A sorry lack of education, conceit that bordered on madness, a very mediocre intelligence, combined with the hysteric's cunning and the power fantasies of an adolescent, were written all over this demagogue's face.

Carl Gustav Jung, "After the Catastrophe",  
Essays on Contemporary Events, 1936-1946, 

translated by R. F. C. Hull,
Routledge, London, 2002, pp. 70-71

Potency imparted to idiot imbecility

For be a man's intellectual superiority what it will, it can never assume the practical, available supremacy over other men, without the aid of some sort of external arts and entrenchments, always, in themselves, more or less paltry and base. That it is, that for ever keeps God's true princes of the Empire from the world's hustings; and leaves the highest honors that this air can give, to those men who become famous more through their infinite inferiority to the choice hidden handful of the Divine Inert, than through their undoubted superiority over the dead level of the mass. Such large virtue lurks in these small things when extreme political superstitions invest them, that in some royal instances even to idiot imbecility they have imparted potency.

Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (1851),
Chapter 33, The Specksynder

Stupidity and vulgarity

To discriminate schools, of art, of literature, is, of course, part of the obvious business of literary criticism: but, in the work of literary production, it is easy to be overmuch occupied concerning them. For, in truth, the legitimate contention is, not of one age or school of literary art against another, but of all successive schools alike, against the stupidity which is dead to the substance, and the vulgarity which is dead to the form.

Walter Pater, "Romanticism", Macmillan's Magazine, November 1876

De stultorum natura (3)

He hath a soule drownd in a lumpe of flesh, or is a peece of earth that Prometheus put not halfe his proportion of fire into. A thing that hath neither edge of desire, nor feeling of affection in it; the most dangerous creature for confirming an Atheist, who would sweare his soule were nothing but the bare temperature of his body. He sleepes as hee goes, and his thoughts seldome reach an inch further than his eies. 

John Donne, The True Character of a Dunce

De stultorum natura (2)

Chichikov himself is merely the ill-paid representative of the Devil, a travelling salesman from Hades, “our Mr Chichikov” as the Satan and Co. firm may be imagined calling their easy-going, healthy-looking but inwardly shivering and rotting agent. The poshlust [i.e. пошлость] which Chichikov personifies is one of the main attributes of the Devil, in whose existence, let it be added, Gogol believed far more serously than in that of God. The chink in Chichikov’s armour, that rusty chink emitting a faint but dreadful smell (a punctured can of conserved lobster tampered with and forgotten by some meddling fool in the pantry) is the organic aperture in the devil’s armour. It is the essential stupidity of poshlust.

Vladimir Nabokov, Nikolai Gogol, 1959, 2nd edition 1961

De stultorum natura (1)

Il semble à chacun que la maîtresse forme de nature est en lui : touche et rapporte à celle-là toutes les autres formes. Les allures qui ne se règlent aux siennes sont feintes et artificielles. Quelle bestiale stupidité.

Essais de Michel de Montaigne, Liv. II, chap. XXXII

Ô humanité! Ô turpitude!

La Bêtise publique me submerge. (...) La Bourgeoisie est tellement ahurie qu'elle n'a plus même l'instinct de se défendre. -- Et ce qui lui succédera sera pire! J'ai la tristesse qu'avaient les patriciens romains au IVe siècle. Je sens monter du fond du sol une irrémédiable Barbarie. -- J'espère être crevé avant qu'elle n'ait tout emporté. Mais en attendant, ce n'est pas drôle. Jamais les intérêts de l'esprit n'ont moins compté. Jamais la haine de toute grandeur, le dédain du Beau, l'exécration de la littérature enfin n'a été si manifeste. J'ai toujours tâché de vivre dans une tour d'ivoire. Mais une marée de merde en bat les murs, à la faire crouler.

Gustave Flaubert. À Ivan Tourguéniev, [Croisset], mercredi 13 [novembre 1872]

I am overwhelmed by the stupidity of the public. (...) The bourgeoisie is so bewildered that it no longer even possesses the instinct of self-defence. And what will come after it will be even worse! I feel the same sadness as the Roman patricians of the fourth century. I sense an irremediable barbarism rising from the depths of the earth. I hope I will be a goner before it all gets swept away. Never have the interests of the spirit counted for less. Never has the hatred of all greatness, the disdain for the beautiful, the execration of literature been so blatant. I have always striven to live in an ivory tower. But a sea of shit is beating against the walls to make them totter.