HOMO SAPIENCE
"If we turn our attention to the analogy of nature of the living beings in this world, in the consideration of which reason is obliged to accept as a principle, that no organ, no faculty, no appetite is useless, and that nothing is superfluous, nothing disproportionate to its use, nothing unsuited to its end; but that, on the contrary, everything is perfectly conformed to its destination in life -- we shall find that man, who alone is the final end and aim of this order, is still the only animal to be accepted from it. For his natural gifts, not merely as regards the talents and motives that may incite him to employ them -- but especially the moral law in him, stretch so far beyond all mere earthly utility and advantage, that he feels himself bound to prize the mere consciousness of probity, apart from all advantageous consequences -- even the shadowy gift of posthumous fame -- above everything; and he is conscious of an inward call to constitute himself, by his conduct in the world -- without regard to mere sublinary interests -- the citizen of a better" (Critique of Pure Reason 226-227).
In terms of being able to grasp the bigger picture of the universe only homo sapience appears able to achieve this end, unless of course we were right all along about those floating cathedrals of synodic symphony, the whales. The notion of two kingdoms in Kant could hardly be better or more thoroughly expressed than in this passage above.
Sunday, July 31, 2005
Friday, July 29, 2005
THE CRITICAL DIMENSION
Take a square 10" on each side. Run a diagonal from any corner to its opposite. You now have 2 equilateral triangles. Take one of these triangles and raise it to the height of about six inches by interlarding layers of chocolate cream and vanilla sponge cake. Take a fork & taste it. Ok, the taste is mere sense. Now judge the cake's taste. To do this you have to use a concept -- how sweet is the chocolate, what is the consistency of the sponge cake? You now deliver a judgment & the cake's maker (you) must now either weep or laugh with joy. This is the act of judgment.
In making a judgment we do not merely see how something accords with a concept. That's the Platonic idea. Instead, a judgment is an act of imagination in that it negotiates between the symbolic and the real (I'm shifting slightly to Lacanian from Kantian terminology perhaps because I find it more handy, or more grounding, I'm not sure which).
WCW screwed up American poetry because although he did shift away from the etiolated sphere of the purely imaginary and brought us back to the real in such phrases as "No ideas but in things," he also shaved off the necessary aspect of a poem as a judgment. Poetry without a judgment of some kind is as interesting as a contest without a winner. A purely symbolic poet such as Wallace Stevens at his worst is as useless as a purely realistic poet. The real must be in a poem, as it has been since Whitman. But the poem must also render a judgment. It does this in Whitman. It does it in Ginsberg (although I think Ginsberg's judgments are deeply marred by his having been a chester and a member of a useless generation of matriarchal birdbrains at least he does still judge). Judgment happens in all the poems that count.
Judgment is not well understood (I don't understand it quite). Kant is a big help. As I'm reading his Critique of Pure Reason I'm getting some good ideas. I'm on p. 202 and am weighing the book and thinking how sad it is that at some point this book is going to end. It's the most wonderful page turner I've read in years.
"A conception formed from notions, which transcends the possibility of experience, is an idea, or a conception of reason. To one who has accustomed himself to these distinctions, it must be quite intolerable to hear the representation of the color red called an idea. It ought not even to be called a notion or conception of understanding" (202).
Locke and Berkeley both call "red" an idea. The very idea! You go, Immanuel!
Take a square 10" on each side. Run a diagonal from any corner to its opposite. You now have 2 equilateral triangles. Take one of these triangles and raise it to the height of about six inches by interlarding layers of chocolate cream and vanilla sponge cake. Take a fork & taste it. Ok, the taste is mere sense. Now judge the cake's taste. To do this you have to use a concept -- how sweet is the chocolate, what is the consistency of the sponge cake? You now deliver a judgment & the cake's maker (you) must now either weep or laugh with joy. This is the act of judgment.
In making a judgment we do not merely see how something accords with a concept. That's the Platonic idea. Instead, a judgment is an act of imagination in that it negotiates between the symbolic and the real (I'm shifting slightly to Lacanian from Kantian terminology perhaps because I find it more handy, or more grounding, I'm not sure which).
WCW screwed up American poetry because although he did shift away from the etiolated sphere of the purely imaginary and brought us back to the real in such phrases as "No ideas but in things," he also shaved off the necessary aspect of a poem as a judgment. Poetry without a judgment of some kind is as interesting as a contest without a winner. A purely symbolic poet such as Wallace Stevens at his worst is as useless as a purely realistic poet. The real must be in a poem, as it has been since Whitman. But the poem must also render a judgment. It does this in Whitman. It does it in Ginsberg (although I think Ginsberg's judgments are deeply marred by his having been a chester and a member of a useless generation of matriarchal birdbrains at least he does still judge). Judgment happens in all the poems that count.
Judgment is not well understood (I don't understand it quite). Kant is a big help. As I'm reading his Critique of Pure Reason I'm getting some good ideas. I'm on p. 202 and am weighing the book and thinking how sad it is that at some point this book is going to end. It's the most wonderful page turner I've read in years.
"A conception formed from notions, which transcends the possibility of experience, is an idea, or a conception of reason. To one who has accustomed himself to these distinctions, it must be quite intolerable to hear the representation of the color red called an idea. It ought not even to be called a notion or conception of understanding" (202).
Locke and Berkeley both call "red" an idea. The very idea! You go, Immanuel!
ANOMALIES
Reality is something, negation is nothing...
(Kant, 185)
This reminds me of a student at Portland Community College. We were going through Aristotle's Poetics when we came across the place where he says that every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
And this fellow said quite furious at what he perceived to be the obvious nature of Aristotle's observation, "Yeah, and if I shit in my pants it stinks."
But the foundations of thought can easily be misconstrued. Aristotle also argues in his book on animal motion that every animal has a head. He says that this is like a narrative, in that every animal has a beginning, a middle, and an end. But what about the starfish?
Perhaps in a similar way we could find a something that is really a nothing? Are there any anomalies that contradict Kant's statement above?
Reality is something, negation is nothing...
(Kant, 185)
This reminds me of a student at Portland Community College. We were going through Aristotle's Poetics when we came across the place where he says that every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
And this fellow said quite furious at what he perceived to be the obvious nature of Aristotle's observation, "Yeah, and if I shit in my pants it stinks."
But the foundations of thought can easily be misconstrued. Aristotle also argues in his book on animal motion that every animal has a head. He says that this is like a narrative, in that every animal has a beginning, a middle, and an end. But what about the starfish?
Perhaps in a similar way we could find a something that is really a nothing? Are there any anomalies that contradict Kant's statement above?
Thursday, July 28, 2005
DOUBTS ABOUT SURREALISM
To be honest the only surrealist poetry I've ever liked was Soupault's. I have always found Breton's poetry to be too much based in the imaginary. I liked his novel Nadja, founded in an actual experience. Soupault's great novel Last Nights of Paris was also founded in experience. Many French critics have argued that Soupault's novel was the inspiration for Breton's. One has even claimed that the nightwalker they both slept with is the same woman. (I don't believe this to be true, and I have ample reasons for my objections, but I don't want to get into it here.)
In short I have always found that writing that is based on a lived human experience is more meaningful to me than writing founded in an ethereal phantasm. My canon as such veers very close to this lived reality. Soupault's work never travels very far from autobiographical concern. And his three great volumes of autobiography at the end of his life simply punctuate this. Breton on the other hand travels far away in much of his writing from life as it is lived in experience. I doubt if this vast bulk of his writing has any ultimate value.
I've always found Wallace Stevens' work to be etiolated by his fantasy world. Williams on the other hand with his more down to earth work remains quite important to me. More important perhaps is the work of Charles Reznikoff. The Beat writers such as Ginsberg and Kerouac always rely very closely on lived experience. Corso follows this to a great extent but because he had a stronger abstract mind he often somersaulted into theoretical expositions, but they were always in a sense grounded in and colored by lived reality.
Russell Edson is meaningless to me, as is James Tate. Fun? Sure, but meaningless.
Lewis Carroll is also meaningless to me. I dislike his leading of children off into a never-never land of paradoxical pirouettes. I do prefer Edward Lear. Lear's work is based on extensive travel throughout Europe and Africa and his curiosities always partake of a realistic substrata to which he leads children through a process of negative affirmations.
Ezra Pound writes in the ABC, "Literature does not exist in a vacuum" (32). I see his attempt to strip away language to get down to verbs and nouns to be an attempt to get literature back to reality.
Then there's this anecdote:
"Agassiz again told the student to describe the fish.
The student produced a four-page essay. Agassiz then told him to look at the fish. At the end of three weeks the fish was in an advanced state of decomposition, but the student knew something about it" (ABC 18).
Too much of academia is based now on parroting theories to do with race, gender and class. Locked into this mental world students are discouraged from looking outside into their real neighborhoods, and into the actual functioning manner of their own families, and nations. There is not enough empirical study or observation, and students are punished if their findings do not accord with the theory. It is probably worse today in our academia than when Galileo was punished for his discovery that the sun did not revolve around the earth.
Kant's destruction of Berkelean idealism, and Descartes' idealism is replaced by an insistence on the actual experience in time and space of humanity. And in a footnote this morning I found a phrase that I think will change my life, "...what we want to know being, whether it relates to an object and thus possesses any meaning" (161).
Strangely, I thus depart ever further from surrealism and its foundation on a science of dreams and move closer to objectivism, all the more reason to rename my blague Lutheran Objectivism. Or perhaps Lutheran Objectionableism.
To be honest the only surrealist poetry I've ever liked was Soupault's. I have always found Breton's poetry to be too much based in the imaginary. I liked his novel Nadja, founded in an actual experience. Soupault's great novel Last Nights of Paris was also founded in experience. Many French critics have argued that Soupault's novel was the inspiration for Breton's. One has even claimed that the nightwalker they both slept with is the same woman. (I don't believe this to be true, and I have ample reasons for my objections, but I don't want to get into it here.)
In short I have always found that writing that is based on a lived human experience is more meaningful to me than writing founded in an ethereal phantasm. My canon as such veers very close to this lived reality. Soupault's work never travels very far from autobiographical concern. And his three great volumes of autobiography at the end of his life simply punctuate this. Breton on the other hand travels far away in much of his writing from life as it is lived in experience. I doubt if this vast bulk of his writing has any ultimate value.
I've always found Wallace Stevens' work to be etiolated by his fantasy world. Williams on the other hand with his more down to earth work remains quite important to me. More important perhaps is the work of Charles Reznikoff. The Beat writers such as Ginsberg and Kerouac always rely very closely on lived experience. Corso follows this to a great extent but because he had a stronger abstract mind he often somersaulted into theoretical expositions, but they were always in a sense grounded in and colored by lived reality.
Russell Edson is meaningless to me, as is James Tate. Fun? Sure, but meaningless.
Lewis Carroll is also meaningless to me. I dislike his leading of children off into a never-never land of paradoxical pirouettes. I do prefer Edward Lear. Lear's work is based on extensive travel throughout Europe and Africa and his curiosities always partake of a realistic substrata to which he leads children through a process of negative affirmations.
Ezra Pound writes in the ABC, "Literature does not exist in a vacuum" (32). I see his attempt to strip away language to get down to verbs and nouns to be an attempt to get literature back to reality.
Then there's this anecdote:
"Agassiz again told the student to describe the fish.
The student produced a four-page essay. Agassiz then told him to look at the fish. At the end of three weeks the fish was in an advanced state of decomposition, but the student knew something about it" (ABC 18).
Too much of academia is based now on parroting theories to do with race, gender and class. Locked into this mental world students are discouraged from looking outside into their real neighborhoods, and into the actual functioning manner of their own families, and nations. There is not enough empirical study or observation, and students are punished if their findings do not accord with the theory. It is probably worse today in our academia than when Galileo was punished for his discovery that the sun did not revolve around the earth.
Kant's destruction of Berkelean idealism, and Descartes' idealism is replaced by an insistence on the actual experience in time and space of humanity. And in a footnote this morning I found a phrase that I think will change my life, "...what we want to know being, whether it relates to an object and thus possesses any meaning" (161).
Strangely, I thus depart ever further from surrealism and its foundation on a science of dreams and move closer to objectivism, all the more reason to rename my blague Lutheran Objectivism. Or perhaps Lutheran Objectionableism.
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
DIETER HENRICH SUMS UP
"The aim we must strive for, freedom under conditions of peace in a complex global society, still requires a context of ideas capable of a worldwide reach. Those ideas can only be made accessible within the consciousness of the undertakings and theoretical projects that classical German philosophy developed. A thinking that took its departure and orientation from the freedom of a spontaneously developing life of reason thus converges with the organization and maintenance of political freedom within modern states and modern conditions of production, to form a single task whose nature, difficulty and weight have not become a thing of the past for us."
(98-99)
Of the above, the only part that I think is certainly true is the first sentence. After that? Well, why is it that Germany is where we must look when it is precisely Germany that has offered us such a headache in the last century? Why not look rather to Locke, or to the English? They who developed the idea of fair play? Or to America, with its pragmatism? Or to the French, with their fluffy sense of fun. Or to the Icelanders, who have never had a philosopher of any weight. Or to the Greenlanders, whose misnamed country must cause them much needed reflection. Or to the Mexicans, who developed the tamale? Or to the Romanians, who gave us Dada. Or to Haiti, which offers us voodoo and solid drumming. Or to Finland, with its endless marigold fields dreaming of winter. It's because Dieter Henrich is German.
Lutheran Surrealism does have one foot deep in the German heartland with Herr Luther as our guide. We think that the enlightenment tradition does not look enough into the dark side of humanity and places too much emphasis on reason. Reason is a feeble straw to clutch in the typhoon. I prefer Christ & the New Jerusalem.
"The aim we must strive for, freedom under conditions of peace in a complex global society, still requires a context of ideas capable of a worldwide reach. Those ideas can only be made accessible within the consciousness of the undertakings and theoretical projects that classical German philosophy developed. A thinking that took its departure and orientation from the freedom of a spontaneously developing life of reason thus converges with the organization and maintenance of political freedom within modern states and modern conditions of production, to form a single task whose nature, difficulty and weight have not become a thing of the past for us."
(98-99)
Of the above, the only part that I think is certainly true is the first sentence. After that? Well, why is it that Germany is where we must look when it is precisely Germany that has offered us such a headache in the last century? Why not look rather to Locke, or to the English? They who developed the idea of fair play? Or to America, with its pragmatism? Or to the French, with their fluffy sense of fun. Or to the Icelanders, who have never had a philosopher of any weight. Or to the Greenlanders, whose misnamed country must cause them much needed reflection. Or to the Mexicans, who developed the tamale? Or to the Romanians, who gave us Dada. Or to Haiti, which offers us voodoo and solid drumming. Or to Finland, with its endless marigold fields dreaming of winter. It's because Dieter Henrich is German.
Lutheran Surrealism does have one foot deep in the German heartland with Herr Luther as our guide. We think that the enlightenment tradition does not look enough into the dark side of humanity and places too much emphasis on reason. Reason is a feeble straw to clutch in the typhoon. I prefer Christ & the New Jerusalem.
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
HUMAN RIGHTS AND LUTHERAN SURREALISM
Aesthetic Judgment and the Moral Image of the World by Dieter Henrich, Stanford Series in Philosophy, 1992, has a slim but powerful essay (the third essay) on the notion of the necessity for a universal standard of human rights that is global but he says that there are problems.
For the west to export the notion of human rights around the world is going to be considered colonialist.
So he implies that we shouldn't do that, because it's bad.
But then he implies that we have to do it, because it's the only way to save the world from imminent destruction.
And right there is I think the impasse between the Democrats and the Republicans. That we shouldn't do it because it's colonialist is the take of the nihilistic relativists who call themselves Democrats (Kerry and his supporters). On the other hand the Republicans have a very aggressive plan to push the notion of human rights around the world (Bush and his supporters).
"If one advocates rights generally, it must be because of their universal validity" (Henrich 84).
The whole idea of "universal validity" is what is problematic. We now almost universally agree that there are no universals within academia. And yet the notion of "human rights" continues to surface. Ron Silliman mentioned it on his blog several months ago. No one squeaked, but if that's not a universal then what is? But how can we have it outside of the notion of universal norms? The whole notion of human rights may be incompatible with the Wahabi sect's treatment of women within Islam. It is probably also incompatible with 1 Timothy where women are not to be leaders, or even to speak, and their sole glory is in the patient bearing of children.
And so perhaps the whole notion of human rights partakes of an enlightenment discourse that subsumes all of humanity (women included) into a notion of liberty and justice for all.
Henrich argues that there is nothing "natural" about human rights. But that it is something that we can will ourselves into wanting. The Iraqi people went to vote in amazing numbers. They seemingly want to join the west in the advocacy of the vote. Women voted, too. And in Afghanistan it is the rare woman who doesn't want to learn to read.
Women are human and under the legacy of human rights, they will have rights. That this is not in accord with the legacy of the Abrahamic faiths is certain. That's bad.
But what good is the utter nihilism of the Democrats in the assertion of the universal validity of human rights?
Lutheran Surrealism argues that we must find a way between Scylla and Charibdis toward the universal declaration of liberty and justice for all -- and the ability of everyone to speak. The Bill of Rights should be universal. We need a convulsive inner revolution that insists on human rights at any cost world-wide, but we have to somehow do it without seeming overtly colonialist. Therefore we need to seek the participation of local majorities. Henrich puts his finger exactly on the impasse that we face. His prescription is muddled, but his description is superb.
Aesthetic Judgment and the Moral Image of the World by Dieter Henrich, Stanford Series in Philosophy, 1992, has a slim but powerful essay (the third essay) on the notion of the necessity for a universal standard of human rights that is global but he says that there are problems.
For the west to export the notion of human rights around the world is going to be considered colonialist.
So he implies that we shouldn't do that, because it's bad.
But then he implies that we have to do it, because it's the only way to save the world from imminent destruction.
And right there is I think the impasse between the Democrats and the Republicans. That we shouldn't do it because it's colonialist is the take of the nihilistic relativists who call themselves Democrats (Kerry and his supporters). On the other hand the Republicans have a very aggressive plan to push the notion of human rights around the world (Bush and his supporters).
"If one advocates rights generally, it must be because of their universal validity" (Henrich 84).
The whole idea of "universal validity" is what is problematic. We now almost universally agree that there are no universals within academia. And yet the notion of "human rights" continues to surface. Ron Silliman mentioned it on his blog several months ago. No one squeaked, but if that's not a universal then what is? But how can we have it outside of the notion of universal norms? The whole notion of human rights may be incompatible with the Wahabi sect's treatment of women within Islam. It is probably also incompatible with 1 Timothy where women are not to be leaders, or even to speak, and their sole glory is in the patient bearing of children.
And so perhaps the whole notion of human rights partakes of an enlightenment discourse that subsumes all of humanity (women included) into a notion of liberty and justice for all.
Henrich argues that there is nothing "natural" about human rights. But that it is something that we can will ourselves into wanting. The Iraqi people went to vote in amazing numbers. They seemingly want to join the west in the advocacy of the vote. Women voted, too. And in Afghanistan it is the rare woman who doesn't want to learn to read.
Women are human and under the legacy of human rights, they will have rights. That this is not in accord with the legacy of the Abrahamic faiths is certain. That's bad.
But what good is the utter nihilism of the Democrats in the assertion of the universal validity of human rights?
Lutheran Surrealism argues that we must find a way between Scylla and Charibdis toward the universal declaration of liberty and justice for all -- and the ability of everyone to speak. The Bill of Rights should be universal. We need a convulsive inner revolution that insists on human rights at any cost world-wide, but we have to somehow do it without seeming overtly colonialist. Therefore we need to seek the participation of local majorities. Henrich puts his finger exactly on the impasse that we face. His prescription is muddled, but his description is superb.
Monday, July 25, 2005
FOOTNOTE IN KANT
Deficiency in judgment is properly that which is called stupidity; and for such a thing we know no remedy. A dull or narrow-minded person, to whom nothing is wanting but a proper degree of understanding, may be improved by tuition, even so far as to deserve the epithet of learned. But as such persons frequently labor under a deficiency in the faculty of judgment, it is not uncommon to find men extremely learned, who in the application of their science betray to a lamentable degree this irremediable want.
Critique of Judgment (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1990) , p. 98.
Deficiency in judgment is properly that which is called stupidity; and for such a thing we know no remedy. A dull or narrow-minded person, to whom nothing is wanting but a proper degree of understanding, may be improved by tuition, even so far as to deserve the epithet of learned. But as such persons frequently labor under a deficiency in the faculty of judgment, it is not uncommon to find men extremely learned, who in the application of their science betray to a lamentable degree this irremediable want.
Critique of Judgment (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1990) , p. 98.
Sunday, July 24, 2005
Paraphrased from Dieter Henrich's Aesthetic Judgment and the Moral Image of the World
An Aesthetic judgment must be valid for any rational being of our kind. In the judgment there is a harmonious play between imagination and understanding. Nevertheless aesthetic judgments are singular and are not ruled by a concept. They are made actively rather than passively and it is this which makes the link between thinking and aesthetics.
An Aesthetic judgment must be valid for any rational being of our kind. In the judgment there is a harmonious play between imagination and understanding. Nevertheless aesthetic judgments are singular and are not ruled by a concept. They are made actively rather than passively and it is this which makes the link between thinking and aesthetics.
Saturday, July 23, 2005
A FURTHER ELABORATION OF OUR INSIDIOUS DESIGN
LS is not a movement per se so much as an anti-movement calculated to detonate all previously existing movements and to de-program their members using a variety of psychological techniques such as comparison, humor, surprise and even the introduction of rhetorical cogitation into the wilderness of the American mind (and the Icelander in particular).
It is not so much agitation that we prefer, but cogitation (on a level previously held to be impossible).
We laugh at all fundamentalism, we cult crack Marxists along with Calvinists, and offer in the place of their monolithic pieties, a sneaky sense of impiety toward all that they regard as sacred. As we thus undermine the twin foundations of American (and Icelandic) intellectual life (much as OBL knocked over the twin towers) we also abjure physical violence as being incommensurate with the lofty spiritual status that we regard as basic to the human condition and regard those thugs who do practice interventions on the physical plane with a contempt bordering on hauteur, just as we regarded our kindergarten colleagues some forty years past with their obsessive fisticuffs as if we were no longer members of the same species. In short, we seek to promulgate and otherwise treat our impatience with a double-doze of Lutheranism and Surrealism. Lutheranism to promote independence of mind and rigorous disregard for those who claim to speak in the name of Truth when they only speak in the name of their Programming. Surrealism we reintroduce as a forgotten medley of mischievous melodies promoting a spirit of hopeful paradox. Perhaps the new twin towers henceforth known as Lutheran Surrealism will rejuvenate American (and Icelandic) religious and political correctness that too often has accompanied our life-denying creeds among the obese, and the otiose, and the more cash-crazy of our countrymen.
LS is not a movement per se so much as an anti-movement calculated to detonate all previously existing movements and to de-program their members using a variety of psychological techniques such as comparison, humor, surprise and even the introduction of rhetorical cogitation into the wilderness of the American mind (and the Icelander in particular).
It is not so much agitation that we prefer, but cogitation (on a level previously held to be impossible).
We laugh at all fundamentalism, we cult crack Marxists along with Calvinists, and offer in the place of their monolithic pieties, a sneaky sense of impiety toward all that they regard as sacred. As we thus undermine the twin foundations of American (and Icelandic) intellectual life (much as OBL knocked over the twin towers) we also abjure physical violence as being incommensurate with the lofty spiritual status that we regard as basic to the human condition and regard those thugs who do practice interventions on the physical plane with a contempt bordering on hauteur, just as we regarded our kindergarten colleagues some forty years past with their obsessive fisticuffs as if we were no longer members of the same species. In short, we seek to promulgate and otherwise treat our impatience with a double-doze of Lutheranism and Surrealism. Lutheranism to promote independence of mind and rigorous disregard for those who claim to speak in the name of Truth when they only speak in the name of their Programming. Surrealism we reintroduce as a forgotten medley of mischievous melodies promoting a spirit of hopeful paradox. Perhaps the new twin towers henceforth known as Lutheran Surrealism will rejuvenate American (and Icelandic) religious and political correctness that too often has accompanied our life-denying creeds among the obese, and the otiose, and the more cash-crazy of our countrymen.
Thursday, July 21, 2005
Fat Fat, Democrat
Thin, Thin, Republican!
The Callipygian Venus is a ball of fat. She is the central symbol of Matriarchy. Scrawny Christ on the other hand is the central symbol of patriarchy.
Democrats are Matriarchal and thus are usually fat.
Republicans are Patriarchal and thus are usually thin.
Think of Michael Moore, or Clinton's struggle with weight.
Republicans on the other hand are generally thin. W. is thin.
You could see it as Falstaff with one foot in the matriarchal night of Diana, and on the other side there is thin John of Gaunt, in the play Henry IV Part One.
If desire is the central principle then fatness will naturally follow. If hard work is the central value than thin-ness will naturally follow.
Of course there will be those Democrats who say, but yes, I'm not very fat, or even thin. But this means that they are secretly Republican according to my theory. And fat Republicans are secretly Democrats. That is to say that they are in denial about their true values. I think this means that Hillary Clinton is secretly a Republican.
I'm about twenty pounds overweight at present. About 175 on a 5'10" frame. I think this means that I am leaning a bit Democrat although my ideal self would be 20 lbs. thinner.
Thin, Thin, Republican!
The Callipygian Venus is a ball of fat. She is the central symbol of Matriarchy. Scrawny Christ on the other hand is the central symbol of patriarchy.
Democrats are Matriarchal and thus are usually fat.
Republicans are Patriarchal and thus are usually thin.
Think of Michael Moore, or Clinton's struggle with weight.
Republicans on the other hand are generally thin. W. is thin.
You could see it as Falstaff with one foot in the matriarchal night of Diana, and on the other side there is thin John of Gaunt, in the play Henry IV Part One.
If desire is the central principle then fatness will naturally follow. If hard work is the central value than thin-ness will naturally follow.
Of course there will be those Democrats who say, but yes, I'm not very fat, or even thin. But this means that they are secretly Republican according to my theory. And fat Republicans are secretly Democrats. That is to say that they are in denial about their true values. I think this means that Hillary Clinton is secretly a Republican.
I'm about twenty pounds overweight at present. About 175 on a 5'10" frame. I think this means that I am leaning a bit Democrat although my ideal self would be 20 lbs. thinner.
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
MUSLIM COMMUNITY DECLARES FATWA AGAINST OBL
Having now finished the Oriana Fallaci book The Rage and the Pride and having given it several days to sink in, it seems that perhaps her book was too hasty at dismissing the global Islamic community as "fascist." It wasn't well-publicized as it should have been but the Spanish Muslim Community declared a Fatwa against Bin Laden and Al Qaida on March 12, 2005. This was in all the major newspapers but has had little follow-up. I believe that a Fatwa means that any Spanish Muslim (there are one million) can legitimately kill OBL or any of his followers. I'm not completely sure of the meaning of the word, but that is my provisional understanding. Moreover I haven't heard of any major Islamic cleric who has gone against the Spanish Muslim fatwa (I haven't looked very hard and perhaps this does exist).
Fallaci's book is great in spite of its many errors. It is the rhetoric that is so strangely brilliant. Her persusasive abilities are powerful and she is world-famous for a reason. I still intend to read through her books.
I've also now finished Carmen Firan's The Farce. It follows a print journalist's career through the uprising of 1989 and into the uncertain years that have followed. We all remember the great days of the Timisoara uprising with Codrescu actually in Romania and reporting live from Bucharest on NPR. Astonishing events in which the darkest of the communist regimes exacted a bloody revenge during its tumultuous disintegration. But since then what has become of Romania? In Firan's version it took up feminism and families disintegrated, it took up new age religions and logic as well and the economy disintegrated, and many looked back to Ceausescu with nostalgia. Strange lovely book that may have slipped past the radar of most readers as it's from the mysterious publisher Spuyten Duvil (means, the Devil's Spit -- and is also the name of a tiny area in North Manhattan). Do they have much distribution? They appear to have many important books in print, but I rarely see them reviewed and of course they never appear in the tiny bookstores in this area so it's hard to look into them. It's a miracle that this Firan book ever actually appeared in my office one day -- sent by a Romanian friend.
I ordered a follow-up book by an Australian academic entitled Oriana Fallaci: The Rhetoric of Freedom by John Gatt-Rutter. Somehow the writing feels lifeless and I doubt if I will read it. It's good to read two new women authors who are both undeniably great. There is a lot of writing by women out now -- but very few of them are writers. I've never been able to read Toni Morrison after the cardboard agit-prop of her "novel" Paradise. 500-pages of feminist wryting. Fallaci and Firan aren't wryters. They're writers.
Having now finished the Oriana Fallaci book The Rage and the Pride and having given it several days to sink in, it seems that perhaps her book was too hasty at dismissing the global Islamic community as "fascist." It wasn't well-publicized as it should have been but the Spanish Muslim Community declared a Fatwa against Bin Laden and Al Qaida on March 12, 2005. This was in all the major newspapers but has had little follow-up. I believe that a Fatwa means that any Spanish Muslim (there are one million) can legitimately kill OBL or any of his followers. I'm not completely sure of the meaning of the word, but that is my provisional understanding. Moreover I haven't heard of any major Islamic cleric who has gone against the Spanish Muslim fatwa (I haven't looked very hard and perhaps this does exist).
Fallaci's book is great in spite of its many errors. It is the rhetoric that is so strangely brilliant. Her persusasive abilities are powerful and she is world-famous for a reason. I still intend to read through her books.
I've also now finished Carmen Firan's The Farce. It follows a print journalist's career through the uprising of 1989 and into the uncertain years that have followed. We all remember the great days of the Timisoara uprising with Codrescu actually in Romania and reporting live from Bucharest on NPR. Astonishing events in which the darkest of the communist regimes exacted a bloody revenge during its tumultuous disintegration. But since then what has become of Romania? In Firan's version it took up feminism and families disintegrated, it took up new age religions and logic as well and the economy disintegrated, and many looked back to Ceausescu with nostalgia. Strange lovely book that may have slipped past the radar of most readers as it's from the mysterious publisher Spuyten Duvil (means, the Devil's Spit -- and is also the name of a tiny area in North Manhattan). Do they have much distribution? They appear to have many important books in print, but I rarely see them reviewed and of course they never appear in the tiny bookstores in this area so it's hard to look into them. It's a miracle that this Firan book ever actually appeared in my office one day -- sent by a Romanian friend.
I ordered a follow-up book by an Australian academic entitled Oriana Fallaci: The Rhetoric of Freedom by John Gatt-Rutter. Somehow the writing feels lifeless and I doubt if I will read it. It's good to read two new women authors who are both undeniably great. There is a lot of writing by women out now -- but very few of them are writers. I've never been able to read Toni Morrison after the cardboard agit-prop of her "novel" Paradise. 500-pages of feminist wryting. Fallaci and Firan aren't wryters. They're writers.
Sunday, July 17, 2005
TOWARD THE TOTAL MISUNDERSTANDING OF LUTHERAN SURREALISM
As I write on this blague I am aware of the provisionality of my essays at ridiculing my own thought, and sometimes even that of others either through directly aping them, or by posing as them, or even by posing as myself. Everywhere I look is the abyss. Underneath the narrow ledge of reason and reasonableness is a vast universe of the unreasonable, the unreasoned, the mad and maddening. Lutheran Surrealism is a sort of trampoline. I bounce, and often leave the screen, trying to touch a star.
It is not possible to write anything serious about anything unless you have studied it for at least ten years.
Even then the thinking is generally provisional, and is not fixed.
But for many persons the idea of speech is so serious that every statement is a "Position," and yes, with a capital. And if you disagree with another Position, it's fisticuffs, or horrors. I don't see why anybody bothers with agreement, or why anybody even think its possible, or possibly interesting. I sometimes get such extremely zealous messages on the board. Stephen Baraban's warning that I must think such and such or he would SIC somebody named Jonathan Mayhew on me -- it all strikes me as so Massachusetts ca. Salem Witch trials only then everybody at least knew Latin.
So I've thought of going underground. It is almost impossible to have a conversation in this country as so many people want to own it.
I don't understand this. I have no idea what I think on most issues, and would like to have a conversation. I don't want to rule by fiat in my posts. I want to throw out a mad or maddening possibility and see what returns. Since the advent of political correctness too often what is returned is my own head.
It's not that I care. It's just that it is like Wittgenstein says it is like when you don't share a sense of humor with someone. You throw them a ball and instead of throwing it back they put it in their pocket and walk away.
As I write on this blague I am aware of the provisionality of my essays at ridiculing my own thought, and sometimes even that of others either through directly aping them, or by posing as them, or even by posing as myself. Everywhere I look is the abyss. Underneath the narrow ledge of reason and reasonableness is a vast universe of the unreasonable, the unreasoned, the mad and maddening. Lutheran Surrealism is a sort of trampoline. I bounce, and often leave the screen, trying to touch a star.
It is not possible to write anything serious about anything unless you have studied it for at least ten years.
Even then the thinking is generally provisional, and is not fixed.
But for many persons the idea of speech is so serious that every statement is a "Position," and yes, with a capital. And if you disagree with another Position, it's fisticuffs, or horrors. I don't see why anybody bothers with agreement, or why anybody even think its possible, or possibly interesting. I sometimes get such extremely zealous messages on the board. Stephen Baraban's warning that I must think such and such or he would SIC somebody named Jonathan Mayhew on me -- it all strikes me as so Massachusetts ca. Salem Witch trials only then everybody at least knew Latin.
So I've thought of going underground. It is almost impossible to have a conversation in this country as so many people want to own it.
I don't understand this. I have no idea what I think on most issues, and would like to have a conversation. I don't want to rule by fiat in my posts. I want to throw out a mad or maddening possibility and see what returns. Since the advent of political correctness too often what is returned is my own head.
It's not that I care. It's just that it is like Wittgenstein says it is like when you don't share a sense of humor with someone. You throw them a ball and instead of throwing it back they put it in their pocket and walk away.
Friday, July 15, 2005
LUTHERAN SURREALISM ON LIBERTY AND QUALITY
Lutheran Surrealism shares the American passion for Liberty and Equality but we place an extra emphasis on quality. We believe that beauty is not something that America should overlook in its passion for efficiency and scientific shortcuts.
Surrealism placed an emphasis on liberty but did so at the expense of equality. Only a few were permitted to be surrealists. We allow everyone to be a Lutheran Surrealist with the simple stipulation that you must attend a Lutheran church at least once a month and be interested in surrealism. We are ecumenical to the degree that we are willing to discuss with interested and interesting conversational partners from other disciplines and faiths, and we especially enjoy cynical atheists because we in a sense stem from that faith. It is our mother, even if Lutheranism is our father.
Lutheranism places a huge emphasis on equality in that we all have eternal souls.
We are currently reading two books on liberty and equality by southern European women. One book is called The Farce by Carmen Firan. She is the minister of culture from Romania and lives in New York City. Her book is a novel about a Romanian journalist caught up in the spectacular events of December 1989 when Ceausescu's assault on a Lutheran bishop caused an uprising of the entire Christian community of Romania which resulted in a revolution that toppled the genius of the Carpathian and his thuggish bitch of a wife and ended with their rapid execution by firing squad. The book is more than excellent. It is thoughtful, precise, and rather calming. It is a lovely book.
The other book we are reading is a raucous defense of the west in the face of Islamic terrorism. It is called the Rage and the Pride by Oriana Fallaci. I had heard Fallaci's name for years but have never read anything until the other day while larking through the Wall Street Journal they had an interview with her. She was so trenchant, so iconoclastic, that I immediately ordered two of her books. I'm three-fourths of the way through The Rage and the Pride. Written in the immediate weeks after 9/11 it is a call to battle against the mindless rage of Islamic extremism. But it is more than that. It is also an incredibly brilliant comparative study of world cultures. Fallaci is an atheist who likes mini-skirts and smoking and speaking her mind. In the Islamic world she feels therefore completely uncomfortable. Muslim teenage boys in her native Florence reach out and grab at her breasts and screech at her that this is their right. Obviously, this pisses her off.
Fallaci has interviewed the Dalai Lama, Kissinger, the Pope, Yassir Arafat (she mentions more than once that he had stinky saliva), and many others, and draws on this and her immense reading to present a very powerful indictment of Islamic culture especially from a woman's point of view. Among other problems -- women do not have the right to laugh in Islam. The penalty under the Taliban was death. Even having their hair done meant death. Fallaci brings up images many of us would rather forget such as the destruction of the millenia old Buddhist statues known as the Bamiyan Buddhas. She compares the destruction of these twin statues to the destruction of the twin towers.
Mohammed Atta stipulated that he did not want women or animals (impure beings) at his funeral.
And she says things that I've always thought but I've found no one ever to echo. She argues against communism that it is nothing other than old-style monarchy. Exactimente!
Fallaci, like Lutheran Surrealism, is interested in the concepts of liberty and equality, but is just as interested in quality as we are. Since she is from an older culture, and from a rather neglected one, her comparisons of the American Revolution to the Risorgimento in which the Italians fought for unification against the Austrian Hapsburgs, is more than just jolly reading. Her lucidity and her cool reasoned brilliance have made me wish to read everything she has ever written. This is a journalist who has absolutely no rival within the American milieu. Her book has sold millions of copies throughout Europe but has had almost no readers in America except for Lutheran Surrealism.
Lutheran Surrealism shares the American passion for Liberty and Equality but we place an extra emphasis on quality. We believe that beauty is not something that America should overlook in its passion for efficiency and scientific shortcuts.
Surrealism placed an emphasis on liberty but did so at the expense of equality. Only a few were permitted to be surrealists. We allow everyone to be a Lutheran Surrealist with the simple stipulation that you must attend a Lutheran church at least once a month and be interested in surrealism. We are ecumenical to the degree that we are willing to discuss with interested and interesting conversational partners from other disciplines and faiths, and we especially enjoy cynical atheists because we in a sense stem from that faith. It is our mother, even if Lutheranism is our father.
Lutheranism places a huge emphasis on equality in that we all have eternal souls.
We are currently reading two books on liberty and equality by southern European women. One book is called The Farce by Carmen Firan. She is the minister of culture from Romania and lives in New York City. Her book is a novel about a Romanian journalist caught up in the spectacular events of December 1989 when Ceausescu's assault on a Lutheran bishop caused an uprising of the entire Christian community of Romania which resulted in a revolution that toppled the genius of the Carpathian and his thuggish bitch of a wife and ended with their rapid execution by firing squad. The book is more than excellent. It is thoughtful, precise, and rather calming. It is a lovely book.
The other book we are reading is a raucous defense of the west in the face of Islamic terrorism. It is called the Rage and the Pride by Oriana Fallaci. I had heard Fallaci's name for years but have never read anything until the other day while larking through the Wall Street Journal they had an interview with her. She was so trenchant, so iconoclastic, that I immediately ordered two of her books. I'm three-fourths of the way through The Rage and the Pride. Written in the immediate weeks after 9/11 it is a call to battle against the mindless rage of Islamic extremism. But it is more than that. It is also an incredibly brilliant comparative study of world cultures. Fallaci is an atheist who likes mini-skirts and smoking and speaking her mind. In the Islamic world she feels therefore completely uncomfortable. Muslim teenage boys in her native Florence reach out and grab at her breasts and screech at her that this is their right. Obviously, this pisses her off.
Fallaci has interviewed the Dalai Lama, Kissinger, the Pope, Yassir Arafat (she mentions more than once that he had stinky saliva), and many others, and draws on this and her immense reading to present a very powerful indictment of Islamic culture especially from a woman's point of view. Among other problems -- women do not have the right to laugh in Islam. The penalty under the Taliban was death. Even having their hair done meant death. Fallaci brings up images many of us would rather forget such as the destruction of the millenia old Buddhist statues known as the Bamiyan Buddhas. She compares the destruction of these twin statues to the destruction of the twin towers.
Mohammed Atta stipulated that he did not want women or animals (impure beings) at his funeral.
And she says things that I've always thought but I've found no one ever to echo. She argues against communism that it is nothing other than old-style monarchy. Exactimente!
Fallaci, like Lutheran Surrealism, is interested in the concepts of liberty and equality, but is just as interested in quality as we are. Since she is from an older culture, and from a rather neglected one, her comparisons of the American Revolution to the Risorgimento in which the Italians fought for unification against the Austrian Hapsburgs, is more than just jolly reading. Her lucidity and her cool reasoned brilliance have made me wish to read everything she has ever written. This is a journalist who has absolutely no rival within the American milieu. Her book has sold millions of copies throughout Europe but has had almost no readers in America except for Lutheran Surrealism.
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Psychological Warfare
I haven't heard the term used since the spy wars of the 60s and 70s during the cold war. But tonight the phrase was reactivated. I was sitting in an Italian place in a suburb of DC with an Old Friend when we happened to be past closing time. Somebody in the back kitchen started to slowly raise the lights' intensity and then lower it. We left, which was the intention. Does this qualify as psychological warfare?
Going through northern Virginia we passed the battleground for Bull Run, and another for Manassas. It was 102 degrees. On our way to an IKEA near College Park. The real battles for northern Virginia held mementos on round hill tops on which ancient cannon stood. And there were criss-crossed wooden fences. IKEA's Swedish assault on the American consumer consisted of making very high quality lovely furniture and giving it to us at very low prices.
The psychological warfare of the Swedish was capped off with one dollar frozen yogurt swirls.
Actually I am not sure what war is and what it isn't. Let's just assume that everything is war since the phrase "psychological peace-making" seems rather uninteresting.
We stopped in to see the Lincoln Monument. I hadn't seen it since I was 8. Lincoln's Monument is what I've always imagined God himself to look like. To what extent was this psychological warfare to make him the embodiment of God? His wonderful phrasing engraved on the wall. Fourscore and seven years ago. What does that phrase mean? Lincoln's ingenious phrasing consolidated the gains of the Civil War, and of the battle at Gettysburg. It's odd that so many of the famous battles were fought within an hour's drive of the Capital. I should take a course in Civil War literature and see how Lincoln maneuvered within it, in order to use this model to advance the causes of Lutheran Surrealism in the battle for world supremacy within the avant-garde milieu. Lincoln said there were only two necessary books, Shakespeare and the Bible. The emotions that he touches in his Gettysburg Address seem to rival those of battlefield captains in those two books. War is probably more psychological than it is physical.
It means you have to place principles before men. You have to feel what is right and wrong to such a degree that you will die for what is right. Perhaps in the muddle of postmodernism this can no longer happen! I was explaining to my three-year old son in the Museum of American History about the Civil War ... The good guys of the north had to kill the bad guys of the south, because the bad guys had bad ideas. One young man shot me a look like I was the Beast from the Bible and clapped his forehead.
Good and evil. These are what make the Bible and Shakespeare so thrilling, and the absence of which make our time and our literature such swill.
I haven't heard the term used since the spy wars of the 60s and 70s during the cold war. But tonight the phrase was reactivated. I was sitting in an Italian place in a suburb of DC with an Old Friend when we happened to be past closing time. Somebody in the back kitchen started to slowly raise the lights' intensity and then lower it. We left, which was the intention. Does this qualify as psychological warfare?
Going through northern Virginia we passed the battleground for Bull Run, and another for Manassas. It was 102 degrees. On our way to an IKEA near College Park. The real battles for northern Virginia held mementos on round hill tops on which ancient cannon stood. And there were criss-crossed wooden fences. IKEA's Swedish assault on the American consumer consisted of making very high quality lovely furniture and giving it to us at very low prices.
The psychological warfare of the Swedish was capped off with one dollar frozen yogurt swirls.
Actually I am not sure what war is and what it isn't. Let's just assume that everything is war since the phrase "psychological peace-making" seems rather uninteresting.
We stopped in to see the Lincoln Monument. I hadn't seen it since I was 8. Lincoln's Monument is what I've always imagined God himself to look like. To what extent was this psychological warfare to make him the embodiment of God? His wonderful phrasing engraved on the wall. Fourscore and seven years ago. What does that phrase mean? Lincoln's ingenious phrasing consolidated the gains of the Civil War, and of the battle at Gettysburg. It's odd that so many of the famous battles were fought within an hour's drive of the Capital. I should take a course in Civil War literature and see how Lincoln maneuvered within it, in order to use this model to advance the causes of Lutheran Surrealism in the battle for world supremacy within the avant-garde milieu. Lincoln said there were only two necessary books, Shakespeare and the Bible. The emotions that he touches in his Gettysburg Address seem to rival those of battlefield captains in those two books. War is probably more psychological than it is physical.
It means you have to place principles before men. You have to feel what is right and wrong to such a degree that you will die for what is right. Perhaps in the muddle of postmodernism this can no longer happen! I was explaining to my three-year old son in the Museum of American History about the Civil War ... The good guys of the north had to kill the bad guys of the south, because the bad guys had bad ideas. One young man shot me a look like I was the Beast from the Bible and clapped his forehead.
Good and evil. These are what make the Bible and Shakespeare so thrilling, and the absence of which make our time and our literature such swill.
Friday, July 08, 2005
NEWSFLASH: ANGLOPHONE POETS TAKE SELVES TOO SERIOUSLY
This has been one of the great problems for me in terms of enjoyment of poetry. In the American and English tradition poets take themselves too seriously. Are there jokes in PB Shelley, or in any of the Romantic poets? Even Byron wants to be taken seriously. I prefer Billy Collins to any of them. And in the American tradition? Does Whitman ever tell jokes? What a boring puss. Emily Dickinson? Some feminists claim she has such a great sense of humor. I think that says more about feminists than about ED. Poe? Well, he does have a few stories that are humorous, but he's at his best taking himself too seriously.
Sir John Suckling was fun. Then there's Edward Lear. And now Billy Collins. Of course Gregory Corso was a lot of fun. Andrei Codrescu.
But there isn't a lot of fun or humor in Anglophone poetry. In a recent book by Andrew Stott entitled Comedy (Routledge 2004), Stott says that Jonathan Swift never once was known to laugh in public. That this just wasn't done in his social milieu as it was considered to be something that was relegated to the under classes.
Enormous chunks of English literature are anathema to me because they are ruled by agelasts. Shakespeare is ok, and then things are pretty good up until the death of Suckling. Then comes Milton who I had to read from one end to the other while holding my noses (I have two). Then the 18th century, then the 19th, and finally there is Edward Lear (I can't stand Lewis Carroll). Pound is funny in spite of himself in places. Marianne Moore tries to be fun, but it's mostly not. Then finally there's Corso, who isn't taken seriously but who is tremendous fun. Then there's Codrescu -- who comes out of the Romanian dada sensibility. And of course there's Billy Collins who I suspect is a great threat to the poetry guild because he doesn't take himself very seriously.
This has been one of the great problems for me in terms of enjoyment of poetry. In the American and English tradition poets take themselves too seriously. Are there jokes in PB Shelley, or in any of the Romantic poets? Even Byron wants to be taken seriously. I prefer Billy Collins to any of them. And in the American tradition? Does Whitman ever tell jokes? What a boring puss. Emily Dickinson? Some feminists claim she has such a great sense of humor. I think that says more about feminists than about ED. Poe? Well, he does have a few stories that are humorous, but he's at his best taking himself too seriously.
Sir John Suckling was fun. Then there's Edward Lear. And now Billy Collins. Of course Gregory Corso was a lot of fun. Andrei Codrescu.
But there isn't a lot of fun or humor in Anglophone poetry. In a recent book by Andrew Stott entitled Comedy (Routledge 2004), Stott says that Jonathan Swift never once was known to laugh in public. That this just wasn't done in his social milieu as it was considered to be something that was relegated to the under classes.
Enormous chunks of English literature are anathema to me because they are ruled by agelasts. Shakespeare is ok, and then things are pretty good up until the death of Suckling. Then comes Milton who I had to read from one end to the other while holding my noses (I have two). Then the 18th century, then the 19th, and finally there is Edward Lear (I can't stand Lewis Carroll). Pound is funny in spite of himself in places. Marianne Moore tries to be fun, but it's mostly not. Then finally there's Corso, who isn't taken seriously but who is tremendous fun. Then there's Codrescu -- who comes out of the Romanian dada sensibility. And of course there's Billy Collins who I suspect is a great threat to the poetry guild because he doesn't take himself very seriously.
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Occasionally I'm tossed a question that is so huge that Lutheran Surrealism simply throws up its hands, but in throwing up our hands and throwing in the towel, we still do not imply defeat. We only mimic it. Then we get up off the flummoxed floor and begin to function. In the following question (posed by Stephen Baraban) I am asked whether Horkheimer and Adorno are correct to subsume Luther and Bacon under the same banner of disgust toward a knowledge that is merely technical as opposed to spiritual? I can't even sort out what Horkheimer and Adorno are doing in this passage, but I think that is what they are doing. I'm assuming that H & A (neither of whom I have much read -- Minima Moralia for Adorno plus a few articles on Walter Benjamin and as for Horkheimer next to nothing -- perhaps two essays on agreement through reason) dislike Luther and are therefore trying to link him to Francis Bacon (the painter or the other earlier one -- who was a kind of follower of Occam as I recall and thus a forerunner of the scientific revolution?). It is a difficult passage because Luther calls reason a whore, and he makes fun of Aristotle for over-reliance on it. Why do H & A link Bacon and Luther? It seems that there is a dastardly attempt to use one to shoot the other into the corner pocket and dispense with him. So basically I'd say watch out whenever you're dealing with Frankfurt School hotshots. I don't understand why either Bacon or Luther would be much of a threat to the Frankfurt school. Knowing that I would understand the tendency of this passage. Basically, I'd say the only one you can trust at all of the Frankfurter gang is Benjamin because he's so close to Isaiah, these others -- well, it's all Dr. Frankfurter without even the benefit of the Gothic get-up. The communists believe in reason and in agreement that can be found through it, and they think this should be the basis of a community. I think that kneeling among the pews in silence and lifting our hearts to God is the only time I even begin to feel that there is agreement, but then I don't feel the need for agreement as most do. I don't even think that one person can agree on anything, much less two spirits coming to agreement. Is this really possible? I think everyone has a different narrative, and so the possibility of agreement is actually only contingent and never really possible. Nevertheless, I post this fascinating question in case anyone else would like to take a swing at a pinyata that is positively lush with problematic assertions, and curious sneaky vectors. My question in return is why are people still reading Adorno and Horkheimer after 1989? Almost everybody that I know is doing so. At present, I am the only one I know in academia who thinks that the Lutheran theoretical tradition is preferable to the communist. Communists are not satanists but they might as well be. Reason is the devil's whore. This is another point of possible SEEMING agreement between Lutherans and surrealists -- the distrust of reason.
Question-- Do you think Horkheimer and Adorno are being accurate about Luther when they link him with Francis Bacon thusly (in the opening essay of The Dialectic of Enlightenment): "For Bacon as for Luther, 'knowledge that tendeth but to satisfaction, is but as a courtesan, which is for pleasure, and not for fruit or generation.' Its concern is not 'satisfaction, which men call truth, 'but 'operation,' the effective procedure. 'The true end, scope or office of knowledge' does not consist in 'any plausible, delectable, reverend or admired discourse, or any satisfactory arguments, but in effecting and working, and in discovery of particulars not revealed before, for the better endowment and help of man's life.' (4) There shall be neither mystery nor any desire to reveal mystery". Footnote 4 tells us that a passage from Bacon is being quoted--but CAN Luther's assent be assumed?
That's the whole passage that Baraban sends me. I'd say the whole thing reveals a complete misunderstanding of Luther, but where and why this passage has been cobbled together with Bacon so as to remove an obstacle of some kind is beyond me. Can anybody else explicate what H & A -- that diabolical duo -- are up to on this occasion deep in the bowels of the Frankfurt School fog machine?
Question-- Do you think Horkheimer and Adorno are being accurate about Luther when they link him with Francis Bacon thusly (in the opening essay of The Dialectic of Enlightenment): "For Bacon as for Luther, 'knowledge that tendeth but to satisfaction, is but as a courtesan, which is for pleasure, and not for fruit or generation.' Its concern is not 'satisfaction, which men call truth, 'but 'operation,' the effective procedure. 'The true end, scope or office of knowledge' does not consist in 'any plausible, delectable, reverend or admired discourse, or any satisfactory arguments, but in effecting and working, and in discovery of particulars not revealed before, for the better endowment and help of man's life.' (4) There shall be neither mystery nor any desire to reveal mystery". Footnote 4 tells us that a passage from Bacon is being quoted--but CAN Luther's assent be assumed?
That's the whole passage that Baraban sends me. I'd say the whole thing reveals a complete misunderstanding of Luther, but where and why this passage has been cobbled together with Bacon so as to remove an obstacle of some kind is beyond me. Can anybody else explicate what H & A -- that diabolical duo -- are up to on this occasion deep in the bowels of the Frankfurt School fog machine?
Sunday, July 03, 2005
The service this morning ended with Julia Howe's Battle Hymn of the Republic -- Hymn #332 in the Lutheran Hymn Book. I was stunned by its power, its righteousness.
"As he died to make men holy let us live to make men free, as God goes marching on."
Written during the Civil War upon a request from Lincoln's administration, the song was written one morning when Howe arose from a dream in which the song and music came to her together in a flash. It's the only work of hers that has had any staying power. Howe was a Unitarian and she originally published Battle Hymn in the Atlantic Monthly -- a Unitarian vehicle for the upper class elite of Boston who had dropped their Congregationalist affiliation by and large in favor of the new ethos of reason and reasonableness and of course ART. Many of the Boston brahmin such as Thoreau and Emerson were abolitionists and were connected to the Unitarians. John Brown received his funding from them.
This Unitarian ethos seemed so self-righteous and certain in the Civil War. Now they are rather multicultural and tolerance is their watchword. Their symbol is the symbol of 12 major religions in a common circle implying equality. The Muslims and the Catholics side by side with the Buddhists and Hindus. I know a couple of Unitarians. They have no creed at all, nothing that they must believe in order to be Unitarians. Oddly, the two that I know are among my favorite people. Chatty and intelligent and confident in their religion.
One has been my friend since kindergarten. He's a total peacenik knucklehead in terms of his politics but somehow we get along even though he sees me as a knucklehead, too. As time unrolls we will see who's the knucklehead. While you're in the middle of historical events it is hard to know what's what. Lincoln had some very hard years as CIC. W's casualty rate has been incredibly light compared to Lincoln's half-million dead in pursuit of unification with the Unitarian song all aflutter. We don't have any songs along those lines today. Who would be the most likely to pen a passionate war anthem that unites the nation around the cross today?
Perhaps Howe's hit still has legs, but I can't imagine it on MTV.
"As he died to make men holy let us live to make men free, as God goes marching on."
Written during the Civil War upon a request from Lincoln's administration, the song was written one morning when Howe arose from a dream in which the song and music came to her together in a flash. It's the only work of hers that has had any staying power. Howe was a Unitarian and she originally published Battle Hymn in the Atlantic Monthly -- a Unitarian vehicle for the upper class elite of Boston who had dropped their Congregationalist affiliation by and large in favor of the new ethos of reason and reasonableness and of course ART. Many of the Boston brahmin such as Thoreau and Emerson were abolitionists and were connected to the Unitarians. John Brown received his funding from them.
This Unitarian ethos seemed so self-righteous and certain in the Civil War. Now they are rather multicultural and tolerance is their watchword. Their symbol is the symbol of 12 major religions in a common circle implying equality. The Muslims and the Catholics side by side with the Buddhists and Hindus. I know a couple of Unitarians. They have no creed at all, nothing that they must believe in order to be Unitarians. Oddly, the two that I know are among my favorite people. Chatty and intelligent and confident in their religion.
One has been my friend since kindergarten. He's a total peacenik knucklehead in terms of his politics but somehow we get along even though he sees me as a knucklehead, too. As time unrolls we will see who's the knucklehead. While you're in the middle of historical events it is hard to know what's what. Lincoln had some very hard years as CIC. W's casualty rate has been incredibly light compared to Lincoln's half-million dead in pursuit of unification with the Unitarian song all aflutter. We don't have any songs along those lines today. Who would be the most likely to pen a passionate war anthem that unites the nation around the cross today?
Perhaps Howe's hit still has legs, but I can't imagine it on MTV.
Saturday, July 02, 2005
GENIUS
The impossible task of reading -- almost everybody does it in a stereotyped way. Dummies who read a poem through the simplistic lens of race, gender, class are just one example. It's probably common that everybody has some simplistic terminological lens that prevents them from reading with any great particularity. I read Marianne Moore and then read ten volumes of criticism on the poems. In those ten volumes I didn't see a single sentence that said anything that was accurate. Too often the problem is lumping her into a "progressive" agenda, which is laughable. She hasn't moved one centimeter past Augustine.
The impossible task of writing. Writing often reveals the stereotypical way in which we have read, unable to open out toward the task. Spent a week in Florida grading AP exams for high schoolers who want to skip freshman comp. The task was to respond to a mock press release in the Onion concerning a pair of shoe inserts. The first failure of those who tried to opt out of freshman comp was that about 35% of the students didn't realize it was a "mock" press release. How is this possible? These students read it as a genuine press release even though the prompt said it was a satire. Perhaps they don't have satire in some parts of this country, or perhaps the use of irony is not found in the upper reaches of Minnesota or in the wilds of Wyoming. Then too many of the others didn't have the ability to look at any of the rhetorical devices through which the "release" undermined American commercial strategies. In fact of the 1500 essays I read only one fellow named Timothy who was from South Carolina completely responded to the prompt in the way I'd expect someone to be able to do.
And who would have thought a kid from South Carolina would be the one to come through? But the people who can read are anomalies, just as are the people who can write. To write well means to be completely individual but also able to communicate through symbols and connect with the universal. There were only three poets who did this in the American 19th century -- Whitman, Poe and Dickinson. In my view only two did it in the American 20th century -- Marianne Moore and Gregory Corso.
Too often the idea that a writer is a member of some group is all that we have today for criticism. And so we criticize the group, or the demographic, or praise them, accordingly. But only genius matters in poetry, and genius must be first and above all absolutely individual. It must stand in complete solitude, sui generis. Charles Olson manages this. But then he remains an eccentric isolato. He doesn't connect. On the other hand a poet like Billy Collins manages to connect with the crowd, but he hasn't first become completely individual. He's a stereotype who remains a stereotype, like a vaudevillean who remains within the history of vaudeville and adds nothing of his own individuality. Those are two kinds of near miss. But a miss in poetry isn't like a miss in horseshoes. You are either completely a ringer in poetry or you are a mess.
Literature is not a job for the "organization man," or the joiner, as Phillip Lopate put it to us at a reading after dinner during the AP exam week in Daytona. And criticism? It's even more likely to be marked by a stereotypical approach, but the true critic must also be an individual who connects to the particular as well as the universal. To my mind American poetry has had at most five great poets. I don't think we've had a single critic yet. Kenneth Burke is good in spots, but he is still rather eccentric and isolato. When will we have a critic who is as good as Aristotle, or to name a more contemporary philosopher-critic -- Martin Luther. Here I Stand, I can do no other. God help me. How does this begin to happen? Is it numbers?
When one thinks of the genius in soccer such as Diego Maradonna -- breaking free and going on a broken field run -- utterly solitary, and yet totally united with his team....
I do think we have had a few geniuses in tinkering. Edison comes to mind. Bill Gates.
And in boxing. Mohammed Ali.
In politics, Lincoln. And the most aggravating of all to the mindless hordes of the sheepish left -- Tony Blair.
NB: As I was doing the lawn this afternoon I realized I had lost the thread of this essay. Why did I end with politics, and why especially with A BRITISH politician? Mindless, since the whole piece was on American genius. What I should have said is that 19th century had three geniuses, and the twentieth, two. In the twenty-first the laws of progression state there should be only one.
I wonder if Rome diminished in its poetry as it began to fall apart. And what of Athens? My supposition is that poetry is a queen of sorts and that the MIND of the culture can only feed on the royal honey created by it. Shakespeare kept the Brits alive and well for four centuries. Did Carthage have a great poet? (Note to self -- check.) The role of the politician is to build a culture in which a poet can thrive. I don't think the Islamic civilizations are going to have another one with the way they're going. Reading Bin Laden's poetry it is certainly sterile. But the leading political figure doesn't also have to write poetry. Bush is certainly not going to become a great poet. Kerry? No. Nader? No. But which one would have created the conditions for great poetry? Absolute freedom of inquiry, and a highly intelligent readership. Certainly those are the two most important conditions. Corso and Moore did it without the readership. There are maybe three people who've actually read Corso. I doubt if anyone has ever actually read Moore.
The impossible task of reading -- almost everybody does it in a stereotyped way. Dummies who read a poem through the simplistic lens of race, gender, class are just one example. It's probably common that everybody has some simplistic terminological lens that prevents them from reading with any great particularity. I read Marianne Moore and then read ten volumes of criticism on the poems. In those ten volumes I didn't see a single sentence that said anything that was accurate. Too often the problem is lumping her into a "progressive" agenda, which is laughable. She hasn't moved one centimeter past Augustine.
The impossible task of writing. Writing often reveals the stereotypical way in which we have read, unable to open out toward the task. Spent a week in Florida grading AP exams for high schoolers who want to skip freshman comp. The task was to respond to a mock press release in the Onion concerning a pair of shoe inserts. The first failure of those who tried to opt out of freshman comp was that about 35% of the students didn't realize it was a "mock" press release. How is this possible? These students read it as a genuine press release even though the prompt said it was a satire. Perhaps they don't have satire in some parts of this country, or perhaps the use of irony is not found in the upper reaches of Minnesota or in the wilds of Wyoming. Then too many of the others didn't have the ability to look at any of the rhetorical devices through which the "release" undermined American commercial strategies. In fact of the 1500 essays I read only one fellow named Timothy who was from South Carolina completely responded to the prompt in the way I'd expect someone to be able to do.
And who would have thought a kid from South Carolina would be the one to come through? But the people who can read are anomalies, just as are the people who can write. To write well means to be completely individual but also able to communicate through symbols and connect with the universal. There were only three poets who did this in the American 19th century -- Whitman, Poe and Dickinson. In my view only two did it in the American 20th century -- Marianne Moore and Gregory Corso.
Too often the idea that a writer is a member of some group is all that we have today for criticism. And so we criticize the group, or the demographic, or praise them, accordingly. But only genius matters in poetry, and genius must be first and above all absolutely individual. It must stand in complete solitude, sui generis. Charles Olson manages this. But then he remains an eccentric isolato. He doesn't connect. On the other hand a poet like Billy Collins manages to connect with the crowd, but he hasn't first become completely individual. He's a stereotype who remains a stereotype, like a vaudevillean who remains within the history of vaudeville and adds nothing of his own individuality. Those are two kinds of near miss. But a miss in poetry isn't like a miss in horseshoes. You are either completely a ringer in poetry or you are a mess.
Literature is not a job for the "organization man," or the joiner, as Phillip Lopate put it to us at a reading after dinner during the AP exam week in Daytona. And criticism? It's even more likely to be marked by a stereotypical approach, but the true critic must also be an individual who connects to the particular as well as the universal. To my mind American poetry has had at most five great poets. I don't think we've had a single critic yet. Kenneth Burke is good in spots, but he is still rather eccentric and isolato. When will we have a critic who is as good as Aristotle, or to name a more contemporary philosopher-critic -- Martin Luther. Here I Stand, I can do no other. God help me. How does this begin to happen? Is it numbers?
When one thinks of the genius in soccer such as Diego Maradonna -- breaking free and going on a broken field run -- utterly solitary, and yet totally united with his team....
I do think we have had a few geniuses in tinkering. Edison comes to mind. Bill Gates.
And in boxing. Mohammed Ali.
In politics, Lincoln. And the most aggravating of all to the mindless hordes of the sheepish left -- Tony Blair.
NB: As I was doing the lawn this afternoon I realized I had lost the thread of this essay. Why did I end with politics, and why especially with A BRITISH politician? Mindless, since the whole piece was on American genius. What I should have said is that 19th century had three geniuses, and the twentieth, two. In the twenty-first the laws of progression state there should be only one.
I wonder if Rome diminished in its poetry as it began to fall apart. And what of Athens? My supposition is that poetry is a queen of sorts and that the MIND of the culture can only feed on the royal honey created by it. Shakespeare kept the Brits alive and well for four centuries. Did Carthage have a great poet? (Note to self -- check.) The role of the politician is to build a culture in which a poet can thrive. I don't think the Islamic civilizations are going to have another one with the way they're going. Reading Bin Laden's poetry it is certainly sterile. But the leading political figure doesn't also have to write poetry. Bush is certainly not going to become a great poet. Kerry? No. Nader? No. But which one would have created the conditions for great poetry? Absolute freedom of inquiry, and a highly intelligent readership. Certainly those are the two most important conditions. Corso and Moore did it without the readership. There are maybe three people who've actually read Corso. I doubt if anyone has ever actually read Moore.
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