I must admit after struggling a month to finish the 252 pages of James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and falling behind schedule to hit my self-appointed target of 50 books this year I chose Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbot because of it's small size. I found the book in a 25 cent pile and read the jacket without knowing what it was and it seemed worth a read and it was surprisingly interesting. It tells the story of a two-dimensional being that has the opportunity to see a world with three-dimensions, one-dimension and no dimensions at all. Given my recent drive to create something concerning space and time travel, I thought and was affirmed that it might give me some ideas. Besides that, it was pretty good in spite of my lack of interest in geometry or mathematics in general.
The narrator is a square and is attempting to tell his readers in the three-dimensional world about his world and his trips to the others. He talks about his world and the light in it and because there is no sun the question arises then, where does the light come from. He explains that though it has been pondered and sometimes answered it doesn't quite turn out right. "What is the origin of light? and the solution of it has been repeatedly attempted, with no other result than to crown our lunatic asylums with the would-be solvers" (Abbot, 5). It's an interesting notion that to ponder the great mysteries of the universe could and in fact, should render the would be answers worthy of the asylum.
In the flatland of the two dimensional world the highly pointed triangles are either criminals or soldiers, but the deadliest of all the inhabitants are the woman who are merely lines. "If our highly pointed Triangles of the soldier class are formidable, it may be readily inferred that far more formidable are our Women. For if a soldier is a wedge, a Woman is a needle: being, so to speak all point" (Abbot, 10). That's just funny.
Future Modern Ancient Greeks - The square in enquiring of his teacher the sphere (of a third dimension) what of the fourth dimension world, finds himself wondering that if a square (2-D) has four end points and a cube (3-D) has eight points then the next shape up like a square must have sixteen end points. "And consequently does it not of necessity follow that the more divine offspring of the divine Cube in the Land of Four Dimensions, must have 8 bounding Cubes: and is not this also, as my Lord has taught me to believe, 'strictly according to analogy'" (Abbot, 73). In the story when the protagonist of Future Modern Ancient Greeks goes to other dimensions he should travel in a space ship surrounded by 8 bounding cubes. Play with the word bounding and it'll be a nod to this book in mine.
"Yet mark his perfect self-contentment, and hence learn this lesson, that to be self-contented is to be vile and ignorant, and that to aspire is better than to be blindly and impotently happy" (Abbot, 75). Again, I seem to have latched on to something that describes my restlessness in something I've read. This time though I don't find anything profound in it. I find it sad to say. Self-contentment is vile and ignorant. To be happy, even impotently so, ought to be better than to be aspirational. Aspiring and not reaching that aspiration cannot, surely, be preferable to happiness of any kind.
Future Modern Ancient Greeks - I find the whole passage of the non-dimensional being fascinating. He has no conception outside of himself. Everything that exists exists in him. He is his own world. I think that could be used somewhere in Future Modern Ancient Greeks.
Tuesday, May 24, 2016
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce
Oh boy. What a grind it was to finish this one. First of all, there is no denying that this is truly a phenomenal book with incredible insights and Joyce does an amazing job of putting you into the story as a fly on the wall who can use every sense to imagine being in the story. We see, hear, feel, taste and smell alongside Stephen Dedalus. Secondly, I find much of Stephen Dedalus to be extremely boring. That may be sacrilegious, but I fear and fear not the repercussions of that sentence.
After I finished the book I did some reading and found that Joyce had originally submitted this as a treaty on Aesthetics. I found his take on aesthetics to be interesting. "-Art, said Stephen, is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an esthetic end" (Joyce, 207). In fact, Stephen's entire conversation with Lynch about art, aesthetics and beauty is fascinating. His contention that beauty should create a stasis between pity and terror rather than a kinetic emotion is an interesting and dispassionate notion. I think it is wrong, but it is at the very least thought provoking. His take on false art producing kinetic emotions like desire and loathing is something to take into account. Sadly, his attempt to get his thoughts on aesthetics was unpublished and he housed it in this semi-autobiographical tale that had more boring parts than interesting ones. I guess he accomplished his goal and left me in sort of a stasis, offering few kinetic emotions about his book.
One of the few times I felt kinetic emotion was during the retreat section when the priests were calling for repentance so that no soul would suffer eternal damnation. In my mind's eye I recalled terrifying sermons from the retired senior pastor who gave such terrifying images of hellfire and brimstone I prayed nightly to escape such a fate. Tears and stress overtook me overtime he preached this message and I can't imagine hell much scarier than as he put it. I empathized with Stephen as he struggled with repenting and the notion that he had done to much to escape this terrible fate. "What did it avail to pray when he knew that his soul lusted after its own destruction?" (Joyce, 103-104). I understand that line on a visceral level. I also understand his wrestling with faith throughout the book, though I find my ending point to be vastly different than that of Stephen's.
I found that like Daumal in A Night of Serious Drinking Joyce also sends a jab to the nose of reason. While Daumal called reason the off-loading of the responsibility to think, Joyce calls reason a pollutant. "A phrase of Cornelius Agrippa flew through his mind and then there flew hither and tither shapeless thoughts from Swedenborg on the correspondence of birds to things of the intellect and of how the creatures of the air have their knowledge and know their times and seasons because they, unlike man are in the order of their life and have not perverted that order by reason" (Joyce, 224-225).
Joyce unleashes a stinging attack on Protestantism in the back end of the book. Much of this book houses an Irish history that I don't fully know and can't fully know. It concerns self-rule and the religious trappings of a Protestant-Catholic war that has obvious political overtones. But, I do, even as someone who isn't Catholic understand his criticism of the disorganized way in which protestantism worships and structures there fragmented theological opinions. "I said that I had lost the faith, Stephen answered, but not that I had lost selfrespect. What kind of liberation would that be to forsake an absurdity which is logical and coherent and to embrace one which is illogical and incoherent?" (Joyce, 243-244). I don't agree that faith is necessarily an absurdity nor do I find Protestantism illogical. But, I do find and struggle with the fact that Protestantism is so incoherent and crave some of the symmetry and logically soundness behind Catholicism.
Lastly, I found this line to be sadly beautiful in its composition and meaning. "The past is consumed in the present and the present is living only because it brings forth the future" (Joyce, 251). I find that restlessness and striving to be endearing, but also wearying.
I heard only the hum of silence
A Night of Serious Drinking by René Daumal was fantastic. It was a very enjoyable read; and, for those of you following this blog it should come to no surprise to you that I enjoyed it as it is yet another surrealist work of literature. The book is basically satirical in nature and like Voltaire, it's satire is about as subtle as a sledgehammer. And like Voltaire, Daumal's pace is incredibly rapid and absurd. There is a whole host of good satire on philosophy, theology and the human condition throughout the book and it is slam bang full of fantastic one-liners. One such example concerns a simile about suicide (which isn't really a laughing matter but is darkly humorous nonetheless). "There are aerial battles where sound waves bounce back on themselves, start spinning and whirl between heaven and earth, like the indestructible regret of the suicide, who halfway down from the sixth floor all of a sudden no longer wants to die any more" (Daumal, 19).
Again, my obsession with writing a good space/time travel piece saw me take some inspiration from what I was reading. In Daumal I found this passage which I might make use of somehow. "'It's the same here as anywhere else, but here it's made quite clear: space is generated by need. Let's say you'd like to take a walk. You simply project in front of you the necessary space which you walk across and when. The same with time. Just a s spider secretes the thread down which she climbs, so you secrete the time you need to do whatever you have to, and you proceed along this thread which is visible only behind you but usable only had of you. The key its in working it out properly. If the thread is too long, it goes into loops and if it's too short, it snaps'" (Daumal, 38). Future Modern Ancient Greeks stuff.
The builders of a fantastic house were describing it to the protagonist of the story and I had an audible chuckle when they told him about the climate controls. "The temperature is kept exactly at the ideal level for the ideal human organism as defined by our experts. It is the only temperature at which nobody feels comfortable: some shine and others sweat" (Daumal, 45). That's funny!
The definition of reason given in this book is another funny passage. "Reason, n., an imaginary process onto which the responsibility for thinking is off-loaded" (Daumal, 55). It's funny because those who are slavishly devoted to reason are often more dogmatic that those slavishly devoted to a certain comprehension of a religion. It's good sarcasm.
In describing a certain group of people in the asylum, the guide tells the protagonist these people are called The Nibblists. Upon reading the guide's description I realized I might be exactly who the guide was describing. "They spend their time retailing imaginary lives in writing. Some relate what they themselves have experienced and attribute it to characters of their invention so that they might avoid their obligations and indulge all manner of impertinence. The others, through their characters, live out everything they would like to have experienced themselves, in order to have the illusion of having really experienced it" (Daumal, 57). Guilty as charged.
Chapter 20 in part 2 as a whole is hysterical. But, the best line in the chapter is "philosophy teaches how man thinks he thinks; but drinking shows how he really thinks" (Daumal, 59). The humor in this statement is dark and finds its relevance in its truthfulness.
Lastly, Daumal makes reference to Homer and his hero Ulysses. Upon listening to intellectual conversations so tantalizing the protagonist of this story remembers the warnings of his guide. Suddenly, he takes action. "But, remembering the companions of Ulysses, I stuffed those ears with thick plugs of common sense, and, listening with another ear - my trust ear, my only good ear - I heard only the hum of silence" (Daumal, 77). What a good line.
While I still think that I enjoy Queneau more than any other surrealist authors, A Night of Serious Drinking is up at the top of my list. I look forward to reading other books by René Daumal.
Again, my obsession with writing a good space/time travel piece saw me take some inspiration from what I was reading. In Daumal I found this passage which I might make use of somehow. "'It's the same here as anywhere else, but here it's made quite clear: space is generated by need. Let's say you'd like to take a walk. You simply project in front of you the necessary space which you walk across and when. The same with time. Just a s spider secretes the thread down which she climbs, so you secrete the time you need to do whatever you have to, and you proceed along this thread which is visible only behind you but usable only had of you. The key its in working it out properly. If the thread is too long, it goes into loops and if it's too short, it snaps'" (Daumal, 38). Future Modern Ancient Greeks stuff.
The builders of a fantastic house were describing it to the protagonist of the story and I had an audible chuckle when they told him about the climate controls. "The temperature is kept exactly at the ideal level for the ideal human organism as defined by our experts. It is the only temperature at which nobody feels comfortable: some shine and others sweat" (Daumal, 45). That's funny!
The definition of reason given in this book is another funny passage. "Reason, n., an imaginary process onto which the responsibility for thinking is off-loaded" (Daumal, 55). It's funny because those who are slavishly devoted to reason are often more dogmatic that those slavishly devoted to a certain comprehension of a religion. It's good sarcasm.
In describing a certain group of people in the asylum, the guide tells the protagonist these people are called The Nibblists. Upon reading the guide's description I realized I might be exactly who the guide was describing. "They spend their time retailing imaginary lives in writing. Some relate what they themselves have experienced and attribute it to characters of their invention so that they might avoid their obligations and indulge all manner of impertinence. The others, through their characters, live out everything they would like to have experienced themselves, in order to have the illusion of having really experienced it" (Daumal, 57). Guilty as charged.
Chapter 20 in part 2 as a whole is hysterical. But, the best line in the chapter is "philosophy teaches how man thinks he thinks; but drinking shows how he really thinks" (Daumal, 59). The humor in this statement is dark and finds its relevance in its truthfulness.
Lastly, Daumal makes reference to Homer and his hero Ulysses. Upon listening to intellectual conversations so tantalizing the protagonist of this story remembers the warnings of his guide. Suddenly, he takes action. "But, remembering the companions of Ulysses, I stuffed those ears with thick plugs of common sense, and, listening with another ear - my trust ear, my only good ear - I heard only the hum of silence" (Daumal, 77). What a good line.
While I still think that I enjoy Queneau more than any other surrealist authors, A Night of Serious Drinking is up at the top of my list. I look forward to reading other books by René Daumal.
Curiosity Assuaged
Well, well. It has been a considerable amount of time and I am sure you have missed me. My apologies. Much has happened in said considerable amount of time, some more considerable than others. Firstly, I have changed jobs. Twice. Secondly, I've moved into our first purchased home with my wife. Exciting times. But, this is neither here nor there, so let us away and back to the intellectual pursuits.
Since I've last journaled on here, which was in February I haven't been completely intellectually idle. I have read four books - so not incredible prodigious, but not completely unstimulated. The first of which I will assess is Philippe Soupault's Last Nights of Paris. I really enjoyed this one, as seems to be the case with most Surrealist literature (and most French literature for that matter). With its many corridors and narrow rabbit trails however, it seemed to come to an incredibly abrupt ending, which I won't give away. But, I will offer some thoughts on a few passages that stuck out to me.
"Very clearly I was the only one still listening to the discussion of the two comrades, and I was divided between the desire to question and that of keeping my mouth shut in order to learn more" (Soupault, 73). What a great paragraph that is. It captures the feeling of being intrigued and thus, being drawn into question but also the apprehension and the truth of the matter if one would just shut up and listen he would acquire some knowledge.
There is a paragraph in the book dealing with 'chance' that I rather enjoyed. "Chance, said I to myself, is at least sincere in that it does not conceal its deceptions from us. On the contrary it exposes them in broad daylight, and trumpets them at night. It amuses itself, from time to time, by stupefying the world with the shock of a terrible surprise, as if to remind men of its great strength, thinking they might forget its flightiness, its mischief, its whimsicalities. The complacencies of chance are not favors but treacheries: it does not amaze us to save to keep us in its grasp and all that we receive from its hands are not so much gifts it is offering us as pledges we make to remain its slaves in perpetuity, subject to the grievous visitations of its harsh and malicious power" (Soupault, 83-84). It shows the merciless and faceless nature of chance encounters, but strangely shows that chance acts to remind man, negating the very essence of what chance is. It's a fascinating anthropomorphism.
In remarking about some men gambling, Soupault turns his focus on the human emotion of hope. "Near the wickets old men were in the majority and I marveled at the perpetuity of hope" (Soupault, 87). I just get the image of desperate men seeking out against all odds and yet, despite their memories of failure, he still describes the men as hopeful. It is simultaneously inspiring and sad, tragic and happy.
Again in the surrealist style I find some interesting sentences strewn together. It affirms something in the first and then casts doubt on what we just learned in the second. That kind of subtle jarring is one of the things I find most fascinating about surrealism. "Did he know that he had been betrayed in this place? And what is more, was it he whom they had betrayed?" (Soupault, 94). In a way it almost seems like an Abbot and Costello skit.
"Slowly I went on my way, following the day's ascent. While the sun rose and came to greet me, I marveled at being able to live in the midst of mystery without being wonderstruck each second. I admitted that we grow accustomed to the strangest circumstances and smiled with pity thinking of those who refuse to be what is called dupes - who want to know everything and who are not even able to perceive the diurnal mystery which suffuses and bathes them from head to foot" (Soupault, 122). What great irony! In desiring so strongly to know everything those who don't want to be dupes are duped by the mystery surrounding them on a daily basis.
"You loved her without quite loving her. She was feared a little, but above all you were uneasy as much because of her presence as her absence" (Soupault, 132). Great line.
"Dullness would seize them and to drive it off they sought mystery and created phantoms" (Soupault, 132). It sounds like Soupault has walked around in my brain a little.
"Empty handed, I set out upon the discovery of the flight of time and space" (Soupault, 135). Given my recent obsession with time and space in my writings this line stuck out to me.
"Again I felt that disgust which follows curiosity assuaged" (Soupault, 143). My restlessness, my constant groaning and groping for that which I do not want, my need for constant stimulation, all of this I have levied as a punishment for the sins of hyper stimulation. But all this time it was hyper stimulation as a result of a certain disgust I felt when I came to the end of my object du jour of curiosity. "Again I felt that disgust which follows curiosity assuaged". Ennui. Is there any line ever written more French?
Since I've last journaled on here, which was in February I haven't been completely intellectually idle. I have read four books - so not incredible prodigious, but not completely unstimulated. The first of which I will assess is Philippe Soupault's Last Nights of Paris. I really enjoyed this one, as seems to be the case with most Surrealist literature (and most French literature for that matter). With its many corridors and narrow rabbit trails however, it seemed to come to an incredibly abrupt ending, which I won't give away. But, I will offer some thoughts on a few passages that stuck out to me.
"Very clearly I was the only one still listening to the discussion of the two comrades, and I was divided between the desire to question and that of keeping my mouth shut in order to learn more" (Soupault, 73). What a great paragraph that is. It captures the feeling of being intrigued and thus, being drawn into question but also the apprehension and the truth of the matter if one would just shut up and listen he would acquire some knowledge.
There is a paragraph in the book dealing with 'chance' that I rather enjoyed. "Chance, said I to myself, is at least sincere in that it does not conceal its deceptions from us. On the contrary it exposes them in broad daylight, and trumpets them at night. It amuses itself, from time to time, by stupefying the world with the shock of a terrible surprise, as if to remind men of its great strength, thinking they might forget its flightiness, its mischief, its whimsicalities. The complacencies of chance are not favors but treacheries: it does not amaze us to save to keep us in its grasp and all that we receive from its hands are not so much gifts it is offering us as pledges we make to remain its slaves in perpetuity, subject to the grievous visitations of its harsh and malicious power" (Soupault, 83-84). It shows the merciless and faceless nature of chance encounters, but strangely shows that chance acts to remind man, negating the very essence of what chance is. It's a fascinating anthropomorphism.
In remarking about some men gambling, Soupault turns his focus on the human emotion of hope. "Near the wickets old men were in the majority and I marveled at the perpetuity of hope" (Soupault, 87). I just get the image of desperate men seeking out against all odds and yet, despite their memories of failure, he still describes the men as hopeful. It is simultaneously inspiring and sad, tragic and happy.
Again in the surrealist style I find some interesting sentences strewn together. It affirms something in the first and then casts doubt on what we just learned in the second. That kind of subtle jarring is one of the things I find most fascinating about surrealism. "Did he know that he had been betrayed in this place? And what is more, was it he whom they had betrayed?" (Soupault, 94). In a way it almost seems like an Abbot and Costello skit.
"Slowly I went on my way, following the day's ascent. While the sun rose and came to greet me, I marveled at being able to live in the midst of mystery without being wonderstruck each second. I admitted that we grow accustomed to the strangest circumstances and smiled with pity thinking of those who refuse to be what is called dupes - who want to know everything and who are not even able to perceive the diurnal mystery which suffuses and bathes them from head to foot" (Soupault, 122). What great irony! In desiring so strongly to know everything those who don't want to be dupes are duped by the mystery surrounding them on a daily basis.
"You loved her without quite loving her. She was feared a little, but above all you were uneasy as much because of her presence as her absence" (Soupault, 132). Great line.
"Dullness would seize them and to drive it off they sought mystery and created phantoms" (Soupault, 132). It sounds like Soupault has walked around in my brain a little.
"Empty handed, I set out upon the discovery of the flight of time and space" (Soupault, 135). Given my recent obsession with time and space in my writings this line stuck out to me.
"Again I felt that disgust which follows curiosity assuaged" (Soupault, 143). My restlessness, my constant groaning and groping for that which I do not want, my need for constant stimulation, all of this I have levied as a punishment for the sins of hyper stimulation. But all this time it was hyper stimulation as a result of a certain disgust I felt when I came to the end of my object du jour of curiosity. "Again I felt that disgust which follows curiosity assuaged". Ennui. Is there any line ever written more French?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)