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Sunday
Nov102013

Pascal, "Faiblesse de l’homme"

An essay ("Man's weakness") by this French man of letters.  You can read the original here.

It is surprising to see how each of us remains unsurprised by his own weakness.  We act in all seriousness, each in pursuit of his own lot in life, not because it is actually worth pursuing as fashion suggests, but as if we knew for certain where reason and justice lay.  Along this path we will be disappointed; and by dint of some pleasant humility we will believe it is our fault, and not owing to the methods of which we have always boasted.  How good that there exist in our world so many people of this kind, if but to show us that man is quite capable of more extravagant opinions.  Why?  Because man is capable of believing himself free from this natural and inevitable weakness, and of believing that, on the contrary, he basks in the warmth of natural wisdom. 

The weakness of man's reason seems more prevalent in those who do not know such weakness than in those who do.  

One cannot exercise good judgment if one is too young; the same can be said if one is too old.  If one does not think enough, or if one thinks all too much, one becomes stubborn and unable to find the truth.  If one judges one's work immediately after having completed it, one will be far too biased.  If too long a time has passed, that same work will never be revisited.  There is but one indivisible point that remains the true location whence to gaze upon a painting, all other points being too near, too far, too high, or too low.  Such a perspective is determined during the very act of painting, yet within the truth and morality of this same determination.       

Error's willing partner, which we may term imagination and opinion, is even more deceitful than is her habit.  For if she is deemed incapable of a lie, so then will she become the infallible barometer of truth.  Yet being more often false, she will reveal no mark of her quality, marking in the same manner both the false and the true.  

This splendid power, enemy of reason, one who enjoys controlling and dominating her foe if only to demonstrate such an ability in all matters, has established a second nature within man.  She has her happy and her unhappy souls; her healthy and her unhealthy; her rich and her poor; her madmen and her sane.  And yet nothing causes us greater vexation than to see her fill her hosts with a satisfaction far more substantial and whole than reason might provide.  The talented, as it were, take a certain enjoyment in themselves which the prudent could not possibly experience.  They regard others with a majestic sway.  They argue with confidence and audacity, while others resort to fear and defiance.  And this joyousness of countenance often grants them an advantage in the opinion of onlookers.  So many imaginary sages gain the favor of judges of a kindred nature.  This splendid power cannot make madmen sane, but she can indeed make them happy, in contrast to reason, who can only make its friends miserable.  One showers them in glory; the other covers them in shame.

Who dispenses reputation?  Who bestows respect and veneration upon people, works, and historical figures, if not opinion?  How insufficient would all the riches of the earth be without opinion's satisfaction?  

Opinion has a hold on everything.  She creates beauty, she creates justice; and she creates happiness, the pinnacle of this world.  I wholeheartedly would like to see that Italian book, of which I know but the title, a title which suits it alone: Della opinione Regina del mundo.  I would subscribe to the book's teachings, apart from anything evil, should there be any, without even knowing them.  

In changing climates, one will notice almost nothing just or unjust which does not change in quality.  Moving three degrees of elevation north changes the jurisprudence entirely.  A meridian decides the truth, as a few years may decide possession.  Basic laws change.  Rights have their eras.  Satisfactory or pleasing justice determined merely by a river or a mountain border!  Truth on this side of the Pyrenees, falsehood beyond them.     

The art of wreaking havoc in a state involves shaking up established customs and penetrating to their very source to expose the flaw in authority and justice.  One must, it is said, recur to those basic and primitive laws of the state which some unjust custom has abolished.  This is a high-stakes game.  Nothing in this equation will be fair.  Nevertheless, the people will lend an ear to such discussions because the yoke is shaken as soon as the people are acknowledged, with major figures profiting from such discussions to the people's detriment, as well as to the detriment of those curious examiners of accepted customs.  Yet, by a contrary shortcoming, men sometimes believe themselves capable of acting justly in all matters which are not unprecedented.   

You can place the greatest philosopher in the world on a plank so large that he may walk as he would ordinarily; yet if below him lies a precipice, no matter how much his reason may convince him of his safety, his imagination will prevail.  Many could not even tolerate the thought without turning pale and sweaty – I do not wish to enumerate the effects.  Who knows what possesses those who become unhinged upon the sight of cats, rats, or the crushing of a piece of charcoal?     

Would you not say that the magistrate whose venerable old age demands respect from everyone is governed by pure and sublime reason, and that he judges things by their nature without wallowing in those vain circumstances that only afflict the imagination of the weak?  Watch him now as he enters the room where he is to dispense justice.  There he sits, ready to listen, in exemplary solemnity.  Now if an attorney appeared, and nature were to bless this attorney with a hoarse voice and an odd patch of face which a barber might have badly shaven, and on which, furthermore, chance had put splotches against his beard, I would bet on the loss of the magistrate's solemnity. 

The mind of the greatest man in the world is not sufficiently independent for him not to be troubled by the slightest racket in his immediate surroundings.  The boom of a cannon is not needed to interfere with his thoughts; the noise from a weathervane or pulley will suffice.  Do not be surprised if at such a time reason fails him.  A fly buzzing in his ear is enough to make him incapable of providing good advice.  If you want him to be able to find the truth, chase away the animal who holds his reason in check and troubles this powerful intelligence which governs cities and kingdoms.

We have another principle of error, the knowledge of illnesses.  These spoil our judgment and our sense.  And if great illnesses alter our judgement perceptibly, I do not doubt the smaller ones make a proportionate impression.

Our own interest is still a marvelous means for us gladly to gouge our eyes out.  Affection and hate change justice.  In fact, to what degree does an attorney, well-paid in advance, find the cause he pleads any more just?  Yet by another oddity of the human mind, I know of some who, so as not to fall into such traps of vanity, were in contrary bias the most unjust people in the world.  The sure way to lose a very just case was to have it referred to them by their closest relatives.  

Justice and truth are two points so subtle that our instruments are too blunt to touch upon them exactly.  If they manage to do so they, in so doing, blunt the tip and press down more on the false than on the true.  

Old impressions are not the only ones capable of hurting us.  The charms of novelty possess the same power.  Hence come all the disputes of men who reproach one another, or follow the false impressions of their childhood, or run recklessly in pursuit of new things.

To whom then belongs the happy medium?  To that person who appears to have it, and who can prove it.  There is no natural principle as to what it may be (even from childhood) which we could not dismiss as a false impression, be it inculcated or sensed.  One side will say: just because you believed since childhood that a trunk was empty when you saw nothing there, you believed that this emptiness was possible.  This is an illusion of your senses reinforced by custom which science will then have to correct.  Others will say: on the contrary, because you were taught in school that there is nothing empty, your common sense has been corrupted.  And your common sense understood things so clearly before this bad impression that we now need to correct it by recurring to your first nature.  Which has now triumphed, sense or indoctrination?  

All of man's occupations are to have some good in them; and the title by which they possess this good is merely in the imagination of those who created laws.  There is no force to possess the good for certain: a thousand accidents deprive them of it.  It is the same with science: illness removes it from us.

Without grace, man is therefore a subject full of indelible errors.  Nothing will show him the truth: everything will abuse him.  The two principles of truth, reason and sense, apart from the fact that they often want for sincerity, will mutually abuse one another.  Senses will abuse reason through false appearances and will, in turn, be subjected to this same deception as reason will have its revenge.  The passions of the soul will trouble the senses and create upsetting impressions.  They will lie, and again and again they will deceive.  

What are our natural principles if not our accustomed principles?  In children, those they received after the custom of their parents, like hunting in animals.

A different custom will yield different natural principles.  This we can see in our own experience.  And if there are some indelible elements to custom, there are also indelible customs within nature.  This will depend on disposition.

Fathers fear that children's natural love will dissipate.  What then is this nature subject to dissipation?  Custom is second nature, one that destroys the first nature.  Why is custom not natural?  I fear somehow that this nature might itself be a first custom, like custom is a second nature.    

Thursday
Nov072013

Blok, "Осенний вечер был. Под звук дождя стеклянный"

A work ("One autumn eve, beneath the rain's glass rapping") by this Russian poet inspired by this work of genius.  You can read the original here.

One autumn eve, beneath the rain's glass rapping, 

The selfsame vexful thought my strength impair'd,  
When to my large, dim study there was tapping: 
A gentleman and shaggy dog stood there. 

A hearthside seat soon held my guest so weary, 
Beside his rug-warm'd shoes did hound prostrate. 
My guest politely asked: "Wherefore still dreary?  
'Tis time, sir, to submit to lustrous fate."  

"Old age is youth's return, its sunswept shore –"
So I began. Yet he cut in, insisting:  
"'Tis all the same: mad Edgar's lost Lenore.
There's no return.  And I need say no more."

Strange that in life were storms, hell, bliss persisting, 
Yet in one hour alone with unknown guest,
I, his long-calm and steady gaze resisting,
Came to see life far simpler now, compress'd ...

This man has gone, his hound my hearth still facing.
Yet its good gaze, one bitter hour, will sit, 
With rigid paw upon my knee so placing, 
As if to say: 'Tis time, sir, to submit.  

Monday
Oct282013

Pasternak, "Осень"

A poem ("Autumn"), first in a cycle of five, by this Russian author.  You can read the original here.

Image result for Бори́с Леони́дович Пастерна́к

 

From those days on, a harsh October flew 
Leaf-crushing ice through the park's fulvous core:  
And throats are seiz'd and broken elbows sore 
When each flight's end was forg'd each daybreak new. 

The fogs have died.  Forgotten is the gloom.  
For hours 'twas dark; yet every eve there gazed 
A sickly skyline, in the heat unfazed,
In fever and catarrh, on courtyards' bloom. 

But blood did freeze. Yet it appeared that ponds  
Would not freeze. Yet it seemed – late weather meant –  
That days would not move, yet a firmament, 
Like limpid sound, was from the world now gone. 

And there began a gaze so distant; hard  
Was it to breathe, to see so painful; such 
Peace did spread, uninhabited as much 
As resonant, forgetful peace unmarred.  

Friday
Oct252013

The Assistant Producer

There are only two things that really exist – one's death and one's conscience.

 

Some of us, foolishly perhaps, believe in fate. We believe that somewhere, somehow, divorced of any particular spiritual affiliation, a destiny is unfolding, a destiny that may not be unique, because death is the great equalizer, but a destiny individual to our choices, to our thoughts, to our character. Some others of us, even more foolishly perhaps, consider such impressions the idle daydreams of those unwilling to perceive the world for what it really is: a lonely planet of endless extinction. It is of no small coincidence that those who have endured not-so-simple twists of fate feel most persuaded of its powers; even less hazardous are the lives of the jilted, the spurned, the exiled, for they shall repay scorn with scorn. A fine way to introduce this classic tale.

We begin with a former Russian peasant girl who will quickly become, in time's occasional gallop, La Slavska. Her sobriquet she owes to the French who, despite repeated claims to the contrary, cannot resist a gypsy songstress, or in this case, a one-seventh gypsy songstress. Yet the "physical splendor of her prodigious voice" does not compensate for her aesthetic sensibilities (or lack thereof):

Her artistic taste was nowhere, her technique haphazard, her general style atrocious; but the kind of people for whom music and sentiment are one, or who like songs to be mediums for the spirits  of circumstances under which they had been first apprehended in an individual past, gratefully  found in the tremendous sonorities of her voice both a nostalgic solace and a patriotic kick. She was considered especially effective when a strain of wild recklessness rang through her song. Had this abandon been less blatantly shammed it might still have saved her from utter vulgarity. The small, hard thing that was her soul stuck out of her song, and the most her temperament could attain was but an eddy, not a free torrent. When nowadays in some Russian household the gramophone is put on, and I hear her canned contralto, it is with something of a shudder that I recall the meretricious imitation she gave of reaching her vocal climax, the anatomy of her mouth  fully displayed in a last passionate cry, her blue-black hair beautifully waved, her crossed hands  pressed to the beribboned medal on her bosom as she acknowledged the orgy of applause, her broad dusky body rigid even when she bowed, crammed as it was into strong silver satin which made her look like a matron of snow or a mermaid of honor.

It is unlikely that such a woman could have sustained herself alone; that is to say, either a series of lovers ensued, or just one. And if in the singular, then one who in every way was as unassuming, uninterested in attention, and slight of figure and words as our diva absorbed every corner of any room she entered. The name of this lucky fellow is General Golubkov, and his profession very often involves the unassuming collection of other people's secrets.

Among his fellow White Russian émigrés, our General – whose surname means dove when his life's entire purpose is hawk – has been, in career terms, steadily climbing the rungs to a penthouse balcony. He is an "efficient member" of the White Warriors Union, syncopated simply to W.W., perhaps to avoid the dreadful echo of its antagonists. A plum job, surely, even if some may deem it "but a sunset behind a cemetery" (such was the Russian exile's recurring landscape). Like all intelligencers, however, he is fundamentally a fraud. Although he may counter that his utter commitment to his craft (he is a "triple agent," which somehow suggests a cleaning liquid) makes him realer than all the charlatans, socialites, and pseudo-intellectuals polluting the company he keeps. He is not like the Slavic thugs we have come to admire as paragons of a certain quaint alcoholic anarchy; nor does he possess – and how could he, after all – any of the solid religious mantel engirding Russian poets and politicians alike. Even his appearance implies hollowness, a carved-out shell:  

Physically he lacked attraction. There was nothing of your popular Russian general about him, nothing of that good, burly, popeyed, thick-necked sort. He was  lean, frail, with sharp features, a clipped mustache, and the kind of haircut that is called by Russians "hedgehog": short, wiry,  upright, and compact. There was a thin silver bracelet round his hairy wrist, and he offered you neat homemade Russian cigarettes or English  prune-flavored "Kapstens," as he pronounced it, snugly arranged in an old roomy cigarette case of black leather that had accompanied him through the presumable smoke of numberless battles. He was extremely polite and extremely inconspicuous.

The physical description we receive is not so much that of a ghost as that of a lackey, a ghost enslaved to a purpose, but our author does not hesitate to say as much. Golubkov, you see, is something of a folk hero among his erstwhile compatriots, if a folk hero whose genteel manners trick more than one faction into mistaking serpentine stillness for unflappable poise. As the W.W. chairmanship, or supreme commandership, or whatever title a bunch of exiles wish to foist on a purely symbolic and likely short-lived position, seems within reach, we come to understand why some folk heroes begin their public life as enemies of the people.    

The Assistant Producer is a very typical Nabokov story in setting, but very unusual in its effect. It does not read, at first blush, as a tragedy; it does not, in fact, seem to be of any significance whatsoever until Golubkov's terrible game is revealed. Here and there, snippets of genius cannot be avoided ("Russian émigrés whose only hope and profession was their past"; "The sentries of history have let it pass unchallenged"; "Russian humor being a wee bird satisfied with a crumb"; "Certain dark symptoms attending his sudden illness suggested a poisoner's shadow"; "It had half slipped down from one of those vestibule chairs which are doomed to  accommodate things, not  people"). But unlike the lyricism in most of Nabokov's prose, the gauche vulgarity of Slavska and her thin, chain-smoking cardboard cut-out of a husband renders what would normally be the conspicuous leisure of once-wealthy snobs into something far more sinister, a hell parallel to the one they fled:

A very horrible criminal, whose wife had been even a worse one, once told me in the days when I was a priest that what had troubled him all through was the inner shame of being stopped by a still deeper shame from discussing with her the puzzle: whether perhaps in her heart of hearts she despised him or whether she secretly wondered if perhaps in his heart of hearts he despised her. And that is why I know perfectly well the kind of face General Golubkov and his wife had when the two were at last alone.

And why could our General come to hate the beloved, the inimitable Slavska? What man can ultimately resist a voluptuous and bawdy woman? A woman whom bearers of ill tidings suspect could faint on a whim? A woman whose siren song has charmed one benefactor after another, resulting in the General's good fortune, both materially and for other ends? That would mean that the quote that begins this review could not possibly exist, at least as an idiom in the Russian language, and that, furthermore, it was concocted as a means to demonstrate how little people take into account life's twists and turns. And how incorrectly, of course, they foresee their own sad lot.

Tuesday
Oct222013

The Rescue Artist

In our languorous days of globalization, a movement into a planet that will not be uniform so much as on allegedly equal footing, one may wonder why the theft of art has become increasingly popular.  Is it because everything now has a price tag, as if there were no object worth contemplating for its beauty and mystery alone?  Or does knowing something about art mean having good taste?  Without refuting either one of these cynicisms, one should remember not to place the art before the course – that is to say, good taste will necessarily involve a knowledge of our most brilliant and sublime creations.   Now it may be overmuch to ask our government to spend millions to protect our artistic treasures when it could be earmarking that same sum to ensure the safety of our citizens.  After all, who but the most self-indulgent aesthete would claim that saving a painting is more important than saving a human life?  A point strategically omitted in this well-known book.

The crime was shocking, yet hardly unprecedented.  Painted when the city was still called Kristiania, one of the most heralded works of European symbolism or expressionism or something or other was stolen almost effortlessly from an Oslo museum on the eve of this event.  There is rampant hypothesis, in both this book and the sources it collects, that the action was planned as something anti-establishment – a somewhat mistaken point to which I will return.  What can be said is the following: On February 12, 1994, two men shimmied up a ladder and into a museum window, then exited about a minute closer to daybreak by the same means, leaving the ladder in its very compromising position.  One filched getaway car was exchanged for another, and by the time the Lillehammer Olympics were about to begin all of Norway was infected by scandal.  An Italian or Dutch work from centuries past would not have been nearly as painful.  No, this was ostensibly the most famous painting by Norway's most acclaimed artist, and one that had already become an icon equally in popular culture and among those of fine taste.  Edvard Munch's "Scream" was gone, and the police was as clueless as the reader staring wildly at his newspaper's headline.  A hero is needed, a hero who will brave all dangers and hoodlums to regain one of Norway's national treasures and one of the most influential paintings in world history.  And that hero is an Anglo-American detective by the name of Charley Hill.

We learn much, almost too much, about Hill, but the book is called The Rescue Artist for a reason.  Hill comes to Norway after a checkered career in just about every field he chose except the retrieval of stolen works of art.  His American father was a career serviceman, his British mother a dancer, and Hill bears both lineages in addition to being a stout casuist.  He fought in Vietnam, pounded a beat for Scotland Yard, and all the while talked back to every superior he had, not because of a lack of social skills but owing to his realization that any type of fettered, scripted existence would contradict the very chirpings of his soul.   Bureaucrats, Hill's mortal foes, are nothing more than "whingeing, plodding, paint-by-number dullards," which explains his attraction to crime.  It would have been easy to romanticize the roughs who steal paintings to trade them for money, drugs, or arms.  But author Edward Dolnick does nothing of the sort.  Using Hill and his aliases as a prism, Dolnick endeavors to peel open the lid on art theft (even though he claims police involvement of the kind enjoyed by Hill in his heyday is a thing of the past) through a survey of some of the more infamous twentieth-century thefts.  The large country manor appears as the obvious target, as does the moneyed nobleman too doddering or indifferent to count his masterpieces every last morning.  There is one amazing story about a French waiter and his mother's highly lamentable actions which I will not spoil, as well as a number of interesting factoids such as the ban in Luxembourg on undercover police operations, a clear legacy of the Second World War.  We also learn a few things about the particularly striking work of this Dutch master, about Munch's life and motives (larded, alas, with speculative psychobabble), and a few other bits of information that will serve the careful reader quite well at his next cocktail party.  Through it all our constant is Hill, who tries his best to come off as a refined gentleman but who really does possess all the characteristics of his underworld antagonists except the unwieldy conscience.

Which brings me to the matter as to why paintings and suchlike are stolen in the first place.  Dolnick has a concept of art that is distinctly that of the non-artist.  On two separate occasions, Dolnick uses cartoon characters as references to people's physical appearance; and while his catachresis does not extend into malapropism (one night in May is "winter," the next day is a late-arriving "spring"), his imagery and metaphors are often decidedly mixed.  Perhaps, given the time line, he was a bit worried that his story might not be nearly as exciting as he had first hoped.  Amidst this brand of forced journalese we find some magnificent observations ("Duddin's world and the conventional one are not self-contained.  They meet occasionally, as the lion's world sometimes meets the antelope's"; "He is, after all, a lone wolf, not a creature made to work in harness"; "No heavy lifting, except for the occasional glass of wine at a fundraiser"; "Physical courage turned out to be just a fact, like being six feet tall or having brown hair"), and Dolnick's perspective on why The Scream was lifted when it was suggests concord with Hill's much-belabored non-conformist attitudes towards, well, just about everything.  Yet Hill's portrayal as an eccentric could not really be farther from the truth.  As it were, the combination of a short temper, thuggery, competitiveness, intellectual capacity, and a taste for adventure all describe a certain type of man who in another lifetime might have been an explorer, but in our days is usually a sea captain.  A more revealing question would be: when does a thief want publicity?  Perhaps when he's afraid that no one really cares about what he has stolen.