چهارباغ

Struggling to understand (2)

2010-04-07T03:26:00.000-07:00

In great abbreviation: although no one has ever raped anyone in my presence; nor urinated upon me; yet my life has not been without a certain degree of heroic drama. I was once a political refugee: there were in it illegal border crossings and time served in refugee camps; emigration across the ocean; struggle to conquer a foreign language once; again; and then once more; responsibility for a family of four at the tender age of sixteen; a colonial venture in early manhood: trying to establish myself in Asia, to build from scratch friendships and alliances, to found and grow a business, to beat off a bankruptcy; a love story which probably deserves to be called epic. Then, throw in the usual smattering of adventure travel: a night frozen out on a rock at 4500 meters, in the Alps; surviving an armed bus robbery in Assam; and so forth; and you could say that my life has not lacked excitement altogether comparable to that
experienced by the author of the reviewed book. (If never as humiliating, thanks be to Mighty Athena).

Yet, nothing in my life has felt as exciting, as meaningful, as enriching and as lasting as my cultural experiences: the discovery of Balinese dance-drama, Kathakali, Thai matmee and benjarong, of fencai porcelain, makie lacquer-ware, serialism, Josquin's L'Homme Arme masses, some poems by Milosz, the Pillow Book, Mann's Faustus' third chapter. I am therefore puzzled and disappointed that so many presumably intelligent cultured men writing books of technically attained literature -- through their very narrative complexity clearly not destined to please the common man -- never seem to refer to cultural experiences as their hero's most important -- or even significant. That, for example, a book about the friendship of a monk and an artist (read "spiritual types") -- Goldmund and Narcissus -- should in the end turn out to be a book about one's longing for one's unmet mother seems -- well, pretty disappointing to me. It is as if cultured men were really no different from everyone else. As if their cultural adventures did not really matter, were no more than a decorative margin illustration on a page of prose diary which reads: "Woke up at seven, walked the dog, in the afternoon it rained, I missed my Mom and worried about my personal popularity".

Gad.

(Interrupting myself: Reunion)

2010-04-05T03:03:00.000-07:00

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Here -- oh Herr Jahnn, in case you did not know -- is how a cultured man lives his life: he may, for example, imagine it to be a replay of the classics; or, rather, a variation on them.

If so, then this one is one of the oldest; and the variation is this: this time he -- Ulysses -- went ahead to prepare the place; and she -- Penelope -- followed, braving monsters, dangers, contrary winds, sea-currents, gods' curses, technological failures, brigands and -- suitors. Yet, she persevered and, at last, here she is. And here they are rejoined: do they not look good together?

But, pray, old friends, tell me, can you tell: which is the male and which is the female?

As is right and proper, the male is the more beautiful one, even if, contrary to nature, he is not the more gaudy. Of course, that is merely the function of the relative value of the classics and the moderns: the classic patterns, like Popper's well-tested theories, have been tried by generations of makers and consumers, they are veterans, and therefore they continue to perform well. As for the new patterns -- in part, their weakness lies in the fact they are obliged to be different from the past, novel; and thus their makers are banished to search in territories which had already been combed over by artists of the past and found to be -- marginal land, poor mineral deposits, incapable of true greatness. No amount of 14K gold is ever going to disguise that.

Here, judge for yourselves:

The male of the species.

The female.

(Yes, Grasshopper, how smart you are, and how well you remember your lessons. These are Benjarong. Three cheers for The King!)

(Interrupting myself)

2010-04-04T05:56:00.000-07:00

The Philosopher's Zone (pardon them their name) has recently had a discussion of "the liar's paradox and other philosophical absurdities". (In brief: "I am lying", says a liar, which means that he's not! Etc.)

It occurs to me that the point to be made about these things is that in order to see the liar's paradox as paradoxical, one has to be a logician; the error lies within logic, so to speak -- because any average-minded adult can see instantly that the liar's paradox is nonsense; what's more: that it is -- irrelevant. Ordinary men and women shrug at the liar's paradox. They know it's garbage.

Now, noble souls like Russell have justly spent their lifetimes trying to fix the liar's paradox: for, if we are to trust logic (and math) in those outlying areas of reality which they seem to penetrate while our minds don't -- things like the shape of the universe at time one times ten to minus ten billionth of a second following the big bang, spacial distortions at the edge of the anomaly, behavior of things in seven-dimensional space, strange matter, why, indeed, things far closer to earth, such as fat tail risk of credit derivatives) - then the instruments of logic and math better be rid of anomalies themselves. All power to them who set out to fix them.

But here is an area of research that is just as intriguing; why, it may have within it the seed to the solution: nearly everyone who hears the liar's paradox (unless they are mentally retarded or a professionally trained logician) knows instantly that the thing is hogwash. I mean, knows to shrug and ignore it. Knows it is an anomaly. Knows something's wrong and also knows that -- well, it does not matter. Knows to sidestep it.

So, here is my question: how does everyone know it? There must be an algorithm; a mental procedure; some sort of a trick, a matrix perhaps, within our brain that instantly reveals the nonsensical nature of the liar's paradox. In some sense, therefore -- in this sense -- we are more intelligent than our logic -- and our logicians. How do we manage that?

If we can figure this one out -- the liar's paradox will have been solved and the likes of Russell will be able to finally rest in their graves.

Struggling to understand what is going on

2010-04-03T02:06:00.000-07:00

The 12 cm worm at work

I have written something like this before. In fact, more than once, I am sure. So, why say it again?

Because the topic bothers me greatly. Bothers me? No! It drills me -- like a great jointed, horned, steel-and-tungsten mechanical burrowing worm. (See above). For all the struggle, the business remains unresolved, yet, I will write about it again -- because I must, but also because I think I am making some progress at last.

(Er... Maybe. Bear with me).

This time, I return to the topic on the excuse of having read a review of a modernist German writer. The review is to be found here. (Note the rather cute way in which (I hope) I have managed to post a link and yet remain hidden from the author of the original review to which I am linking... To the same end, all names -- of authors and heroes -- have been removed from this post, because... I wish to speak to you, my friends, not the larger world of admirers of the work in question: years of experience on internet have taught me not to expect to learn anything from debates on it. Nor do I court readership: I am happy if my words are never read by more than the five of you).

Now, I have not read the work in question. And, though I do read German, I never expect to read it. What gives me the right to speak up, then? Well, it is precisely this I wish to speak to you about: the reason why I will not read it.

I will not read the book because, well, thanks to the reviewer, I think I know it already. The review suggest to me that the novel is too much like a lot of other modernist work -- that in fact I know it, have read it elsewhere -- different author perhaps, perhaps a different language -- but I have read it, more than once, and have worse than not liked it.

The work in question, like so much modernist work, appears to me mind-boggling -- and not a little scary -- because of the incongruous combination (as it seems to me) of (on the one hand) great narrative technique -- the descriptions of the technical complexities of the work excite me and make me want to read it right now, right here; and (on the other hand) well -- absolute dullness.

The dullness comes from three directions:

1) uninteresting characters (what can possibly be interesting -- to any healthy human being-- about the sexual travails of a "not-hero"? could someone please explain this to me?);

2) a certain preoccupation with the sordid which I do not share ("Wow! He peed on me!" Well, shucks, for some odd reason, I am determined to manage my life in a manner which will never expose me to being peed on; but if, by some unforeseeable twist of fate such a thing should ever happen -- an unexpected Don Cossack invasion of Northern Thailand, say -- I am sure I would try to forget about the experience rather than dedicate a book to it);

and -- but? -- most puzzling of all -- and this is my central point (after all, lack of interest in dull, boring, ordinary men; and lack of interest in the boulversant facts of life, such as one man peeing on another, can be, well -- local; I mean, it could be a matter of my personality; of the shape of my mind) --

3) total absence of any interest at all in art and culture.

This last is really puzzling to me: weren't these men -- these modernist authors -- think James Joyce, think the author of the book under review -- themselves cultured? Why did they not write novels about the lives of cultured men, then? The lives of cultured men seem to me so much more interesting, so much more worth talking about!

Now, some modern/ist writers can and do write about the lives of cultured men: Mann, who writes about Goethe, an imaginary composer, the Josephus myth; Proust who appears to live a life -- I think one has to take his novel as autobiographical -- which is an adjunct to, or, perhaps, a variation on his encounters with art: his servant makes him think of Italian primitives, a day in the garden -- of stained glass in Chartres, etc.; Parnicki, who writes about the internal lives of intellectuals struggling with new philosophical trends, say, ca. 202 A.D. and trying to make sense of new the outlooks on life risig about them). But not many. Most... most... don't?!

So, then perhaps one could say, perhaps these authors -- Joyce, this guy -- were not cultured? Certainly, their novels don't create an impression of them being cultured, of them engaging in any meaningful way with poetry, or painting, or music, or porcelain, or historiography, or ideology. If they have read the classics, their effect on them lies solely, it seems to me, in the point of style and is otherwise... wholly and completely undetectable. Indeed, if these authors insist on writing about themes such as -- well, being peed on, for example -- (OK, OK, I do get it: the peeing in fact symbolizes a relationship of power and control -- but then perhaps I am not interested in such relationships any more than I am interested in being peed on) -- it means either one of two things: either they have not had strong, memorable, life changing encounters with art and culture; or else they think such encounters are somehow -- trivial, not worth their or their readers' time, compared to the more fundamental (?) experiences, such as being peed-on.

(Which perhaps amounts to the same thing. Really, it does. Think about it).

I can't help feeling that this is a sort of... intellectual failure on their part; and cannot grasp how superior verbal technique can go hand in hand with -- well, a kind of untutored, primitive view of life. It's, as I said above, incongruous: it's like using the great St Jacobi organ (in Hamburg) to play "Fernando". It can be done, certainly. But why do it? Doing so seems a kind of -- slap to the instrument, not so? A kind of... sacrilege?

The problem does not stop there... the reviewer of the book presents himself on his blog as an eminently cultured person, with varied interests pursued in depth... His range of knowledge of the world must be far broader than that of book's hero (and possibly of the book's author's himself). So -- I wonder -- what can possibly interest the blogger in the book in question?

Christ, I so am puzzled.

(T.B.C.)

Laughing my head off at Mme Sei's wit

2010-03-27T14:10:00.000-07:00

The fact that there is nothing known about the life of Sei Shonagon after she'd left court has left an opening for the nasty rumor to arise that she'd fared badly: died alone in poverty and so forth. But, observed Ian Morris, who could take a difficult woman, "this is probably the invention of moralists who were shocked by her promiscuity and thought she deserved retribution."

The problem with Morris's theory is that today's sexually revolutioned Americans also find Mme Sei deeply immoral. It is not her bedly doings -- it follows -- certainly nothing especially bad in any case -- which are the cause of the moral opprobrium. Rather, divine the root of the moral outrage from this, No. 5 (as Morris counts them):

Different Ways of Speaking
A priest's language.
The speech of men and women.
The common people always seem to add extra syllables to their words.

The essay starts ambitiously enough: priests do speak an odd language (meaning it to be otherwordly and mysterious); and it continues interestingly, too: in Japan, as in many countries, men and women speak differently. Both facts could have made a good point of departure for an intelligent essay, which is probably what she had intended, and one of which her superior wits would have been perfectly capable (even if her readers' were not)... had she not been diverted by her last comment -- and disarmed by her own guffaws in its wake, bringing the whole thing to a sudden crash.

It's a joke, no more; and old jester's trick: to start high and suddenly drop low. It never fails to amuse.

And she's right, of course: commoners do speak an odd language; and often they are just plain funny, too, seeming -- with their unhealthy teeth, their ungainly laughter, their colorful patois -- no more than a caricature of better men. The problem is -- one is not allowed to say it. We can all see it, of course; but to admit as much is -- somehow damnable: the emperor's new clothes and all.

Which is why I love Mme Sei more with every passing day: a smart, cultured, sensitive woman, she was too intelligent, too honest, and too confident of herself to pay stinking lipservice to politically correct "respect" for instances of bad manners, lack of culture, phariseeism and cabotinism. Surrounded as she was by insecure empty suits whom she delighted rubbing the wrong way, she was envied and hated, and... if she'd not been a woman of independent means, I should not be surprised if she did not end up poor and lonely in her old age: there would have been too many all too ready to delight in her downfall.

My lord, the master of the west wind

2010-03-26T15:39:00.000-07:00

Arriving home from faraway travels, after many month's absence and a grueling long trip, how pleasant it is to be welcomed at one's threshold by an old faithful friend who'd rushed on ahead to sweep the cobwebs, warm and light the house and whisk up a frothy tea.

We sit and chat and then in passing she mentions the west wind:

In the ninth month, the west wind quickens
Under the cold moon, flowers of frost have formed.
When I think upon my lord, the spring day seems long.
My soul, nine times, rises towards him in one night.

In the second month the east wind comes
Tearing at the plants till the flowers lay bare their hearts.
When I think upon my lord, the spring day passes slowly.
My heart, nine times, leaps up to him in one night.

Which is a fancy way to say that I have found, upon arriving home, a copy of The Pillow Book waiting in the mailbox -- of all the books that I had preordered, this one was the first to come and the only one to be already waiting. So, having dropped my bags and shoes at the door, I curled up on the sofa with it. This poem, by Po Chu Yi, is mentioned in its 150th chapter (as Morris numbers them), but only obliquely, of course, with the sort of reference you are liable (and calculated) to miss.

I can't explain what I find so very moving about it... surely, I hope, not just the fact that I do not understand it (and my head spins trying to understand it).

Nothing wrong with this neck, though

2010-03-19T03:18:00.001-07:00

(Or: if you can't get the neck right, remove it).

About 4 inches in diameter.

What I cannot photograph is the experience of holding one of these things in your hand: the bowls and their lids fit together perfectly; and they weigh -- nothing: the porcelain seems no thicker than an egg-shell and you get the impression that a merest breath would cause them to float away in the air. I saw them for the first time about a week before I could buy them; and during that whole week, every time I recalled holding them in my hand, a soft, warm feeling arose in my chest, like a steamed Chinese bun. And when I closed my eyes at night, I could see their zany colors float up before my eyes. What incredibly precise painting! And what an audatious move: purple dragons?! Only Qianlong could have dared to come up with that.

Paid for the two about a third of I paid for the mynah-vase, too. Peanuts. Not even a hundred bucks. A crap dinner for two with mediocre wine would cost more. I simply cannot believe it. Can you?

On picking one, or, why aesthetics should be taught in school

2010-03-12T22:47:00.000-08:00

You know about the silk brocade wrapper, I suppose. Except... this one is yellow. And you know what that means, of course.

The quality of the painting is very impressive: note that this bird is about 5 cm long in the original!

But then you turn it over to see the seal and... no, it does not say "Made in the Qianlong reign of the Great Qing"! It says... Gugong -- which is to say, of course, The National Palace Museum.

These copies -- this one is of a very famous Qianlong piece dated to 1742 (see here) -- are mass produced now, somewhere on the Mainland -- I am told in Guangdong. But they are produced by traditional techniques and the level of technical attainment is really very high.

Picking the vase I wanted from among the seven that were available was an interesting exercise:

1. One was not stable -- something went wrong with the foot in the initial firing.

2. Another one I rejected because of its shape -- the gall-bladder shape is famously difficult to reproduce. This is important -- the potter must achieve seemless, shoulderless curvature as the body profile inflects from concave to convex around the neck and shoulder (which ought to be indistinguishable). This is very hard to do. The rejected piece looked decidedly shouldered, even square-shouldered, like a football player in armor, and therefore -- graceless. Even in this case, the shape is not perfect, but at best satisfactory. My vase is therefore not a true collector's item; it will neither appreciate in value nor even store it. But I could not have the best shaped vase -- which was as close to perfect as I have ever seen: its painting was awful; and I wanted to have one of these -- on my desk, now, and it had to be at least passable.

3. I rejected another vase because it had a firing flaw: a serious flaw, in fact: too large to be on display in the museum. The piece ought to have been destroyed at the workshop, not shipped out to ruin the potter's name.

4. I rejected another yet because it had a barely perceptible stain on the glaze -- someone handled it with dirty hands before second firing and fixed his fingerprint in eternity for us to admire.

5. And among the remaining three there were noticeable differences in the quality of painting. This painter pleased me especially with his fine, small-brush detail of bird feathers, even though his flowers were paler than on the other vases; nor was his tree bark as gratifyingly gnarly. But I figured: this genre of decoration -- huaniao -- flowers and birds -- requires well painted birds, right?

Back in the days of Qianlong, one vase -- or perhaps two -- would have been selected from among not seven but perhaps -- a thousand; and the rest of the production -- would have been destroyed. The resulting unsurpassed quality of the imperial pieces affects their price (in tens of millions of dollars these days, if you can ever find one) as much as the fact that they once belonged to The Main Man Himself.

A footnote is in order. "Mass produced" -- a word I used above -- is a funny word: it still takes many men and many man-hours to produce each bottle by hand... And the quality of the best pieces is hardly "mass" in any way. I should really be careful about what I say...

After all, the production run cannot be very large: all the porcelain people here confirm this: the production of these copies has moved to China, true, but that was not much of a loss because... -- and this is the point -- the market for them has disappeared. Modern Taiwanese middle class is no longer educated to appreciate the traditional arts. In fact, Taiwanese middle class, like the middle class everywhere else in the world, is no longer educated at all in terms of aesthetics. It is taught to be good doctors and engineers and brokers and mathematicians -- those things which advance the state's cause of ever-rising GDP; but in the matter of enjoyment of life's pleasures, the middle class is left to its own devices, abandoned by the education system, left languishing in the joyless darkness of ignorance. Absent most rudimentary guidelines, it is preyed upon by the purveyors of childish glitter and empty notoriety -- the sort of BS in art it would not accept from quack doctors or fake religious prophets.

Now, if, like me, you think that sex education is a good thing not only because it allows for family planning and disease control but also because it helps people experience more joy in their lives -- makes them happier, and therefore, presumably more productive and more law abiding -- then you must admit that there are good arguments for instating aesthetic education in school.

Wei jun nan

2010-03-10T17:26:00.000-08:00

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Good things always come wrapped in silk brocade.

In this case, it is a chop -- and its vermilion ink pad:

The chop is made from veined resin in a kind of dark ceremonial red. On the side is inscribed a suitable classical quotation:

And on top, a crouching dragon:

And here is the impression in a kind of seal script:

It says... taoyen gongzuo -- "bung work".

The chop carver took a double-take when I presented to her my order. "You want it to say what?" she asked, her eyes as big as frying pans. "How can one possibly want to make such a seal!?" Chops are either utilitarian -- they serve his in place of our signatures -- for signing bank and legal documents -- or else suitably morally edifying or propitious, or both.

So, I told her about this seal:

It belonged to Yongzheng, Kangxi's son and successor, father of Qianlong; one of China's best and most effective administrators and one of the most interesting, complex characters ever to sit on her throne. He had been a low ranking son and, never expected to succeed to the crown, he'd been left to enjoy life of cultured and cultivated leisure until, suddenly, an unforeseeable sequence of events elevated him to the throne in middle age. Once crowned, he dedicated himself wholly to the duties of his office out of the Confucian sense of moral duty -- to his ancestors and his subjects -- but without any sense of pleasure. I guess it was with a sense of longing that he continued to sponsor, throughout his reign, paintings which portrayed him in his former life: enjoying hunting, literary gatherings, palace games with his concubines, his large collection of art. He used this seal for his private purposes: to seal private letters and as an ex-libris mark on his favorite art objects. It reads: wei jun nan: "it is hard to be emperor".

Speaking of Fen Cai

2010-03-08T18:34:00.000-08:00

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The National Palace Museum has a very good copy of this. Four hundred bucks! Not the sort of money one meets walking around unattended in the street, but certainly a fantastic deal considering that the original, if it ever came to market, would likely fetch seven figures. You could use it as a spitoon, for instance.

Hiroshi Suzuki

2010-03-06T18:28:00.000-08:00

...says Japanese are lousy at shapes but good at surfaces/textures. I am not sure that this is true about all Japanese art, but it certainly is true about Hiroshi himself. Here. Right click on the images then select "View Image" to see the details.

Mountain memories

2010-03-03T21:44:00.000-08:00

Very many years ago I lived here. I was a student then -- the Normal University gave me a scholarship to study Chinese -- but as that was not enough, and as I was eager to get ahead, I also worked. I woke up at 4 a.m. and studied; at 7 a.m. I taught an English class to bankers; at 8 I went to my Chinese class; at 10 I taught my favorite class -- a group of "retired" housewives (there is a sweet spot in a traditional housewife's life, when the children have grown up and gone to work; but the husband still works; his hours are still long and his income has reached its peak; as a result she has both free time and money to burn); at twelve I lunched with my students and went home to take a nap; then at 5 p.m. I began to teach again and taught till 10; and some days till midnight. It was a pretty busy life.

Taipei was then a sick city -- nightmarish traffic, horrible air. It has since de-congested (much business has left the city for China); and built the subway; yet, even today it smells of gasoline early in the morning; back then it seemed to me the seventh ring of hell. So, on weekends, I fled to the country. Usually, I got up at 5, took the first bus out of Tapei to Keelung and from there I hitched whatever ride I could. (I once even rode in a garbage truck). There were hardly any white dudes in Taiwan then, and in the countryside none at all. All I had to do is stand by the road side and wave: every car stopped to see what was going on. "Can I ride with you?" I would ask and the drivers would always be surprised ("what a weird idea!") and would always say "qing ni" ("I invite you"). We'd ride some distance and chat. "What on earth are you doing here?" they wanted to know. But often they were far more interesting than me. (Read on).

My direction was east. The island's west has wide, fertile plains, large successful cities, factories, dense population, and a few monuments of traditional Chinese life, such as is no longer to be found in China proper where the cultural revolution has destroyed much of it. But the east, separated from the west by the central north-south spine of high mountains -- 4 thousand meters high -- is a wild country, hard to reach, rough, and incredibly beautiful. It's hard to reach by air since there are few places where planes can land; and it is hard to reach by land because the rough mountains make access difficult; and regular mighty earthquakes keep dropping tunnels, ripping down bridges and tumbling down whole sections of tarmac.

In many places in the east, the mountains come all the way to the sea. In several places, where five- or six-hundred meter sheer rock drops into the ocean, the coastal road bores into the mountain side; cars travel in a kind of intestine, some 200 or 300 meters above the sea level: rock above, rock below, rock to the right, and to the left the intense blue of the glittering sea. A section of that road (Su-Ao) is time-wise one-way. By which I mean that 9 am to 12 pm cars travel south. A check point at the northern end of the section counts them then radioes their number south to the final check point there. That check point then counts them on their way out before the road is closed north-south and opened south-north and cars are let into the opposite direction.

I once traveled on the Su-Ao section with three civil engineers, who, being engaged in the road's maintenance, had a permit to travel up it in the wrong direction. You'd think they'd go slow: no such luck. We barreled north like madmen; blasting the horn at every turn was our only security precaution; otherwise traffic was the usual Taiwanese: we talked dirty, listened to Taiwanese songs, sang along, ate binglang (betel nuts), pitched out favorite stock picks, discussed the best kinds of moonshine and where to pick it up, and the most reliable aphrodisiacs; every now and then the driver cast a passing glance at the road; once in a blue moon he suddenly swerved to avoid a head on collision.

About half way down the coast is the Taroko Gorge: a narrow pass turns left, inland, and leads up the main range.

Yes, that crack in the sheer rock below: that is the road leading up the gorge.

Eventually, that road takes you to the top:

Photography does not do justice to the view: on the horizon there is a feature barely perceptible in photography but clear as the palm of your hand to the naked eye: the horizon: the line where the sea (visible from the top of the road) meets the sky. Looking from the height of the Li-shan tunnel (about 2.500 meters above sea level), you can just make out that the earth is round: the horizon curves ever so slightly. (The effect is very obvious from the top of mount Fuji, in Japan, which, being 4000 meters high and right at the sea-shore, offers an even better vantage point).

Here, in the rare air of the high mountains, I have had other memorable encounters -- with the old man who ran the Li-Shan youth hostel, a former soldier of Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang, the nationalist army which, having lost the war in China, evacuated to the recently seized Taiwan. He was, he said, twenty when, drafted into the army, he had to bid good bye to his just married wife; by the time I met him, it had been forty years since he'd last seen her. She'd remarried, had children and grandchildren, and was, somewhere in Hunan, a matron to three generations of her new husband's descendants. But he still loved her. He had remained faithful. His voice broke and his eyes welled up with tears when he spoke.

Then, there were the gold prospectors. Gold, it turns out, can be found in small quantities anywhere. Life in the mountains is cheap: one lives in a tent, shoots most of his food. To live well all one needs if 10 or 20 ounces of gold a year. That, it seems, can be found almost anywhere. Not economic for commercial production but to keep the soul and body of a lazy bone -- easy enough to find and extract. And your wives? I asked. Guan tamen, was the answer: the devil may care.

And then there was the Bunun headman's son on the other side of the Li-shan tunnel, in Nantou County. The Bunun are a mountain folk -- or, as the polite language has it -- the aborigines. Some twenty tribes once lived on the island, before the coming of the Chinese. Some of them took a few Polish heads when Beniowski arrived here in 1771, touching land somewhere near Keelung. ("Hey, look at this white head I took", said one to another presenting his catch. "A nice addition to my collection, don't you think?" "That's nothing, old man", said the other, "check this out: I got a red-head!") Today at least nine tribes remain -- some 300,000 people -- depending on how you count them. (There are still places -- like Ba Du ("eighth bump") and Qi Du ("seventh bump") near Taipei -- and others, like Jiu Fen ("Seventh Division"), near Keelung which record the successive steps by which the aborigines had been driven out of the flatlands and up into the hills).

Well, this Bunun fellow had, at the entrance to his house (otherwise perfectly normal Taiwanese farm house) a rack and in it some dozen or dozen and a half-heads. Seeing me pale, he rushed to explain: "Oh, these are my grandpa's. We don't do that anymore."

My favorite memory remains that of the Taiwanese truck driver on the Gong-Heng Gong-lu (Central East-west highway which eventually connects into the Taroko gorge) who, at every dangerous turn, took his hands off the wheel, and his eyes off the road, in order to burn paper money and throw it out the window to propitiate the hungry ghosts of the drivers who had fallen to their deaths on all those dangerous pin turns. For safety's sake, of course.

And the snow-white-headed white-dude, professor of Chinese from Oxford, who once picked me up somewhere on the Nantou County side of the Li-shan pass; and, impressed by my Chinese complained about his students; (it is easy to be impressed by my Chinese, most western students never learn to speak the language at all). It was great fun speaking to him: I was at the time bedding one of his students in Taipei and she thought he was the worst language teacher she had ever had.
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The word and the flesh (60)

2010-03-02T21:10:00.000-08:00

It is not really the novel's 60th installment. I am in fact not sure which installment it is... but given the novel's fragmentary and jumbled up nature, I don't suppose it will make a whit of a difference in which order I present the letters of Khesroes to Markia, as long as I preserve the letters themselves in their entirety as written. So here are the two I was reading yesterday: letter the 11th and letter the 12th.

Wait, first we need a suitable picture. With a suitable caption, of course.

Opus tesselatum factum saeculo III post Christum natum

11

Is it true that you were not at all conceived to the repeat and breathless recitation of Quandocumque igitur nostros mors claudet ocellos accipe quae serues funeris acta mei? That Hiankintos found you three-year-old, cold and hungry, hugging a somewhat older boy, who was to grow up one day into the elusive Son of Vengeance? Were you his sister, Markia? Or were you two joined by accident, at the cross-roads of two paths of pain: orphancy and homelessness? Oh, upon the god of freedmen and men of mixed parentage, do I benefit richly from giving new year parties to Romans!

12

In a moment I’ll be leaving for Rome. Not alone: with Didia Klara and Numerianos. You will ask: perhaps orders have arrived from the kaisar altering my assigned place of residence and revoking Didia Klara’s exile? No. No such orders have come. Indeed, the exalted Septimios can at most open for us the portals of the Rome he rules, while our destination is the capital city of Kommodos, that city which still knew women-attorneys. It did not have as many of them then as it had had in the time of Hadrianos or the time of the first Antoninos; yet, as you moved – mournfully, I am sure – from the bed of Humidios Kvadratos to the bed of the kaisar, one could still hear in the basilicas defense speeches made by three or four proponents of the theory of the equality of genders – or at least their equality in the field of defense of justice and preservation of the art of rhetoric.

Yet, within eight short years, two or three more believers of this thesis let themselves be convinced that these fields, too, ought to be the exclusive preserve of men. The clinching argument may have been ridicule; or threat; or perhaps the awareness that a woman may well earn her daily bread in the legal profession – perhaps even her daily onion, too, if with some difficulty; but she will most certainly not earn her olive oil; and even less likely her wine; not to mention an occasional small bauble with which to grace her hair, neck, dress or shoe. But one woman could not be chased away from her lectern, not even by you: the ridicule did not bother her, the threats did not scare her, and as for income… – she had the wherewithal with which to bribe all the judges Urbis, and, if need be, Orbis, the most powerful of them all, your lover, the purple-wearer, included.

She did not bribe them, or rather, she says she did not; and perhaps she tells the truth: her father, the richest man of Rome, had in his time not been as rich as he had been vain; perhaps, taking after him, she was vain enough rather to lose a case than to owe its success to anything other than her own – never mind how true or imagined – capacity to convince the judges regarding the merits of her defense.

Of course, the fact that no one has ever tried to bribe her proves nothing – beyond the fact that Romans can’t think. Which they will one day regret; and which some regret already – Numerianos, for instance. Yesterday, during our lesson, his voice was shaken repeatedly by violent sobs; two hours later he was still reading this most amazing, most unbelievable book De spectaculis. And he interrupted his reading with frequent wild -- indeed, animal-like -- guttural cries of “Tear out his tongue!” and “Cut off his arms!” and “Gouge out his eyes!”; and yet there is so much intellectual honesty in his love of knowledge, that through all this thicket of his barely suppressed tears and through all his guttural cries of anger a whisper cleared its path towards his lips, a whisper of deep admiration, bordering on humble submission: “What a master of words! What an architect of sentences! How easily he managed to chain to his chariot Kikero, Julios Kaisar, Apuleios, Juvenal! How he manages to drive this quadriga! How proudly he races towards the victor’s podium to receive there, from the hands of Christ, the laurels of a sportsman above all sportsmen: the laurels of Christ himself!”

An d yet, if only Romans could think, De spectaculis could never have been written! Indeed, had but one been able to think – that fellow with three L’s in his name, your one-time companion in expeditions towards triangular cities of red-bearded monkeys… Of course, there had once been a moment when he did begin to think… it came the day after Klara had submitted her motion in the case “Klaudia the British versus her step-brother” the motion that the investigating committee call Hiakintos as witness. Yet, in his ruminations this Roman did not move beyond the conviction that res priuata could not tempt the daughter of Didios Julianos… which done, he lost his way and went aimlessly in the darkest wilderness... Perhaps only to accuse her father of crimen lesae maiestatis? Or to send an assassin to kill her?

A Greek would have done differently; too bad your father was by then dead! For he, familiarized with all the aspects of the case and after some moments of reflection would surely have asked: “Is there a thing which Didia Klara desires very much but which may not be bought for all the treasures in the world?” But the Roman thought of Livios was not capable of reaching such sophisticated heights… and so you have De spectaculis!

In case I forget, would you, Markia, please ask Alexandra to remind me when I return from Rome: I intend to ask Herais whether she knows De spectaculis and whether she continues to think herself capable of being wholly satisfied with the possession of the chariot of the eparchos of Egypt for a thousand human years and the whole eternity of the otherworldly time thereafter? For it now appears that an even better deal can be obtained for the same price: such as, for instance, the harnessing of… the chariot’s owner (instead of merely some purple swans) and the driving of him in the arena for a thousand years…

I wonder what Tatian-Taddeo-Adonai might say about De spectaculis? Would it be again something on the order of “Did you create the eparchos of Egypt?” Perhaps this time he might say more? For instance: “Florens Tertulian says that Christos promises this and that, but what assurance do we have that Christos is in fact speaking through Tertulian’s lips?”

I should like him to say this. I am very disturbed by the image of the amphitheater with Christ reigning upon its podium, while in the arena are tortured to death (and yet unable to die) for a thousand years consules, praefecti, procuratores. What a primitive mind has this master of words! They say that it is not written anywhere that Christ has ever laughed while he remained clad in his human body; but perhaps now he laughs at this supposed worshipper and defender of his? How I wish he may! Again my words of a few moments ago are clearly proven: Romans cannot think! An excellent lawyer that he is, and a brilliant writer, yet Tertulian is unable to penetrate through mere appearances to the essence of the obvious truth: when it comes to the science of the soul, nowhere can one find as much wisdom as in the commandment: “When your brother strikes you on the right cheek, offer him the left”.

Though perhaps I am mistaken? Klaudios Julian is also Roman, yet he appears to understand the profundity of this commandment, however vaguely. It is simply impossible to explain otherwise his enthusiasm for the idea of employing the brotherhood of Klaudioses in the defense of the Third Race against both the anger of the street and the cunning plots of the Civilian Association for the Combating of Godlessness. Of course, all of his enthusiasm will be for nothing, should Klara go into the street with her story that you murdered principem Romanorum et omnium gentium in your role of a fanatical Jewess avenging the destruction of the Zion temple. It is precisely in order to prevent this deadly snake from crawling into the Alexandrian street that Klaudios Julian, and Klara, are sending me to the Rome of eleven years ago...

I am very curious about this sojourn. It should work. If, as the High One claimed (echoing Gautama Buddha) -- and as Samgila now claims echoing the High One – all time is illusion, then surely so must be all space. And so, now, watch this, Markia: without leaving the table, without standing up, without even interrupting my writing – here I am in Rome! And I am now ascending the steps – I must be very careful, they are chipped and worn out – (Numerianos has once fallen on precisely this section of the staircase, between the fourth and fifth stories – fallen and hurt his knee). How strange that Didia Klara has never suffered a mishap here! Not even on the day on which Tertulian pushed her down the stairs while yelling at her: “You Babylonian whore!” Indeed, what a sight this must have been for that whole story! I should gladly dive into that day, into that hour. Alas, I am in a hurry to get to another evening, some six months earlier, into that moment when, undressed by Numerianos for the benefit of Tertulian, Didia Klara asked her dresser, willing but unfree:

“Is it true, my dear grammarian, that Vergilios Maron was able to see into the far away future? And that he recorded what he saw in his great work, twisting his words somewhat in order to hide their meaning?”

“I do not know what you are talking about” mumbles darkly Numerianos, checking once more whether his bed – his only nighttime companion for so many nights – might be sufficiently comfortable for the two lovers.

“I shall give you an example. But first rub my feet, they are so cold... No, no – first the right one. You liar! You want to cast a spell upon me… you want to prevent the African from being taken in by me… well, listen: what is the name of the Greek who, in the first book of the Aeneid lies to the Trojans regarding the true purpose for which the wooden horse had been built?”

“Sinon” mumbles Numerianos even more darkly, not raising either his sight or his hands from the instep which seems to taunt him: “Will you dare to kiss me?”

“Precisely. Sinon. But did Vergilios put an n in the place of an m?”

“I do not follow” answers submissively Numerianos, addressing himself to the instep rather than the excited voice.

“I always knew you were thick, though all around you always say “What a learned man!” Sinon – Simon, do you now understand? It is written “Sinon”, but it should be read -- “Simon”. The Jew Simon, otherwise known as Peter. That Peter to whom it was said: “whatever you dissolve on earth, shall remain dissolved in heaven…” and “to you I give the keys of the kingdom”…
“Who said that to him?”

“The Jewish Agamemnon, of course. Jesus. Joshua, Iozue – I am not too sure of his real name. He who twice performed silly magic tricks with the sun, as if it were but a red copper serving dish: once he stopped it, while he killed others; and then again later, when he was killing himself and threw a darkness upon his face at the moment of dying…”

“Troy! Judea? Where is Judea! And where is Troy!”

“Nothing… You know nothing! You do not know history… Who killed Ulysses?”

“His own son, born of Kirke, Telegonos.”

“And whom did he lead?”

“Some pirates.”

“Some! Some! Let go of my foot. Hear me? Our Eminence is approaching… If he only performs in bed like he does at the lectern… Go away now. And do not return until the first watch…”

“You were supposed to tell me whom Telegonos was leading… You will tell the two of us now.”

“I know what you want. Oh, yes, I do know you well. And no, you have not earned it yet…”

You will say, Markia, that it is no journey. That it is but empty talk. But I repeat, word for word, only as much as was said in that apartment on that night: first, I was told it by Klara herself; later, Numerianos confirmed everything. Yet, what is most interesting to me in this conversation is that Didia Klara’s banter had been confirmed to me, so to speak a priori, by Rachela Erato. I did not know then as much as the existence of Didia Klara and Numerianos… why, I had not even met Klaudios Julian at the time… and I certainly have not heard about Vergilios Maron…

Now, in the second year of our pretend-marriage, Rachela Erato began to read Greek with great enthusiasm. The memoirs of Herod Antipatride were not enough for her; she moved on to Apolodoros the Artemisian; and then to Appian. Both – the very same copies – I still have here with me now. Before I began to write to you, I looked into them frequently. These are notebooks, not scrolls; and every time I open Appian’s Syrian Wars, I always chance on the same place: the beginning of the Forty-Sixth chapter. There is a print of Rachela’s three bloodied fingers there: she had once sat down to read immediately after having robbed some caravan, without as much as having washed her hands first. She usually cut the throats of her bound prisoners with a short fruit knife… having first released one of them, of course, so that he may bear witness to wherever his caravan had set out from (and all places in between) – bear witness to the great and glorious power of the God of Gods who had donated all the silks of the world, and all her spices, to the… not so much descendants of Abraham as his adopted descendants… those who have not submitted their necks to the yoke of Edom, but who, like sharp-horned mufflons, disport themselves in the freedom of the highlands, and praise the Lord of Even Greater Heights by jumping upon the necks of the Edomites… necks weighted with the goods of the East and West, South and North… goods which are all the rightful possession of Israel.

“Something isnt’t right here”, I said once to Rachela. “Why has not your God of Gods warned those people whom you call the Edomites that everything they possess, and everything they will ever possess, is really the exclusive property of Israel? You can’t possibly tell me, and if you do, I will refuse to believe you, that your God of Gods is less just than the King of Kings… Yet, Vologases III, making my father the feudatory of Elamis, had warned him clearly: “You receive it for only as long as you live… without the right to pass it onto your sons...”

Just as Klara answered Numerianos, so did Rachela now answer me: “I have always known you were thick, even if everyone always says about you that you are oh-so-very learned…”

And then she began to explain to me how Yahwe had warned the Chinese by way of a parable; and Indians by way of the Jewish script; wanred both to the effect that everything that seems to belong to them, in truth belongs only to Israel. The argument made a huge impact upon me at the time, I listened to it with ever increasing amazement and respect; but as great as my admiration for Rachela had been then, so much more silly she seemed to me years later when, already in the Kushan state, I learned the secret of that Chinese prophecy; and the secret of the similarity of the script called kharoshti to Hebrew letters; similarity which, if it at all establishes anyone’s right to the riches of India, it hundredfold more so supports the rights of Ardashir than of Rachela; and thereby my own right to these riches, since Ardashir himself belongs to me, and with him all of his possessions; belongs to me and will continue to belong to me for as long as I please, regardless of Alexandra’s whims.

Returning, however, to the strange similarity of views between Klara and Rachela: they both hold that Rome, Troy and Edom are but three children of the same ancestor, while Jews and Spartans are branches of another tribe. Hence Rachela’s constant readings in the lives of kings Agis and Cleomenes. And Klara’s firm belief that Telegonos, son of Kirke and Ulysses, was leading a band of Edomites, when he clashed with his own unrecognized father at sea, who, by the way, was on his way to Judea, to render help to Moses. All of these are very interesting things; and may seem even more interesting, if I could afford at present the luxury of occupying my mind with anything other than the mystery of your origin. For if you are indeed a foundling, and not an incarnation of one half of a love wish of two Seleukian Greeks, then the last twenty years of my life have been but a confused dream, and all the heads in my room may laugh at me in derision. And most sarcastically, of course, the head of Rachela Eratona: for I will have escaped rendering services to one Jewess – to what end? Only to lay them at the feet of another Jewess; a foundling into the bargain!

Yet, here I am seized by doubts: after all, the Second Race – like the Third – does not have among her customs child-abandonment. Yet, the little boy in whose arms you were supposedly discovered by Hiakintos carried upon his body undoubtful signs of having had close familiarity with a stone knife. Is there really no way to penetrate this mystery, to shine light upon it? Herais says: “Oh, but there is a way: Christ will return and raise Hiakintos from the dead, and then we shall know everything.” But when will he return? Is it not enough that half my life already is subject of the ridicule of six women’s heads? And whence the certainty that he will return? He said: “it is but a short time before you see me”. But everything depends on the question of who he was. Alexandra says: god. Theodotos: man. Herais: both this and that. But even if I assume that Herais is right, not either of the other two, yet this does not help me in my calculations as to when this arrival could possibly be expected. By saying “a short time” did he speak as man, or as god? If as man, then he should have returned a long time, a very long time ago; but if as god? Oh, then he may not return yet for a million years and no one should have the right to accuse him of making false promises. Herais, of course, repeats her story: that he promised his second coming as both god and man. Do you understand what you are trying to say? I ask her. She says she understands. I ask her to help me understand then. To which, she:

“Can you, prince, make a blind man see these beautiful women’s heads on the walls of your room? Forgive me, I misspoke. Not a blind man, but a man with cataracts on both his eyes?”

I: I can. I will bring and pay a surgeon. He will remove the cataracts.

She: The surgeon is waiting for you. He is waiting for you, even though you have not yet called him.

I understand what she is trying to say. But does she not realize that by saying it she only confirms the whisperings of the most determined enemies of the Third Race? That there is some kind of secret knowledge, which they reveal to no one who does not join? Yet I, however much I would like to plumb the secret of this “short time”, will not join them; I will not join them for two reasons. The first does not matter now -- for now, at least -- but the second I can reveal to you: I did not allow the posthumous thoughts of the High One, or its proponents, or Samgila and her circle to pull me onto the fourfold path of Buddha; all the less can I forget, for all my admiration, indeed, all my worship for your divine ally, the withered fig tree; or the terror of the pigs rushing towards the abyss. He created them as well as he created me and – the hippopotamus and crocodile? Well, first, I repeat what I had once said to Rachela already: I do not know who created me, you, the High One, crocodile, hippopotamus, pigs and the fig tree. But if I did know, I would ask the creator, whoever he was: “Did you make us so that we could be your toys? Why? So that you may be amused by your own powers, right?” Of course, I would not expect an answer: many who have asked this question broke down at this point: they believed that they deserved an answer; and when they received none they all drew but one conclusion: who are they to deserve the answer? Who are they even to ask? But I will do differently: having asked my question, I will add, all in the same breath: Was not the legless Achilles a greater master than you? He took great care to make sure that the toys he created could never ask him the question: Why did you make us? Or: to what end?

One could, of course, like one of the agents of Felix, join the Third Race formally, but say to oneself, one’s employer, and one’s gods: “I am only pretending. I am fooling them.” I would ask such a man: whom do you mean by “them”? Christians? Or Christ, also? For if he means to deceive the god as well as the men, I should advise him to be careful: imagine a dog belonging to Klaudios Julian pushing in among my dogs towards the food I give them, trying to convince me that he’d come with me from beyond the Tigris! But even if Theodotus were right, and Christ were not at all divine, only the greatest of all men who have ever lived – that is hardly reason enough to think oneself justified in deceiving Christians by fraudulent joining. What might the king of Atropatene say if Rachela, entering into the archery and singing games, were to shoot four arrows into the target, and reach for the luth four times, even though she’d been informed that each contestant is allowed three arrows and three songs? Would the king not ask: Is there not in your language, o knight, a word for “Respect”?

No, Markia: it is hard for me to resign myself to the possibility that I may learn the truth of who you really are only from Hiakintos raised from the dead. “A short time” may well mean a million years and I – am in a hurry. Are you curious: hurry to what? Why, to laugh back at the six heads. Or at least one of them.

You are asking me something else, are you not? Is it not – how I liked the Rome of Kommodos? Imagine this: far less than I had expected. I was in the amphitheater, I saw you in the disguise of an Amazon, standing next to your purple-clad lover. I had the impression that Kommodos had made fools of you all – of all the well born Romans as well as you personally. You thought that his performances in the arena were signs of madness – you were pained by it, you bewailed it; yet I think these performances were proof of extraordinary cunning, not madness. How could you – you of all people – not have realized the same thing? But perhaps I am mistaken? Perhaps you did realize it? Perhaps this is precisely why you killed him? Not because you could no longer stand the ridicule and the shame to which he exposed himself, not because you loved him, but because you felt you owed him unfaltering loyalty and faithfulness because he – loved you; you, the only person under the planets, other than himself. Oh, how I like such beautiful stories, filled with noble sentiments! But, as legless Achilles used to say, the most beautiful, the most edifying story about a lion will not convince its listeners to enter into a lion’s cave. And therefore neither will I, while trying to plumb the mystery of your origins, follow the trail of your fairy-tale duties of loyalty and gratitude towards Kommodos. Rather, I will sell to the Son of Vengeance, or, as he now styles himself, the Son of the Blind Woman, the right to hide here. I know that by doing so, I take a serious risk. But the sword which might cut my neck one day, remains yet in its scabbard, while the Son of Vengeance has a sword on his neck already. He was five and a half years old when (if one is to believe Klaudia and Klara) Hiakintos found you two; at such age one understands and knows a lot. And more: one remembers long afterwards what one has experienced and known at such an age. Let him pay for his hiding with the truth – the whole truth – about himself and – you.

Some Japanese enamels

2010-03-01T20:02:00.000-08:00

Cloisonne enameling was not a traditional art in Japan and its birth is owed to just one fellow, Kaji Tsunekichi who, apparently bored out of his wits in the small provincial town of Toshima, in Owari, began to make reproductions of Chinese cloisonnes sometime around 1830. After 15 years he was joined by another, then another, then another; then the practice moved to bigger cities: Yokohama, Kyoto, Nagoya and cloisonne production became big business: both for export and domestic production. As the business grew, Japanese experimented with the technique ceaselessly, introducing new breakthroughs. Among the techniques they invented was musen ("no-fret") technique (in which wire is glued to the object, enamel applied to the spaces in between and the object then fired, but the wire is then removed while the enamels are still not fully dry). This creates clear color boundaries without the fret outlines. In a variation of the technique, enamels can be applied without fret at all, in which case the neighboring colors blend along a gradient, which creates the impression of wet on wet ink wash. Another technique is nagare-gusuri ("running colors"), in variation of which a dab of one enamel is applied in the center of another prior to firing. Here are a couple examples of effects which were made possible by these techniques.

More nationalist pride

2010-02-28T19:42:00.000-08:00

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The Thai term benjarong is derived from Sanskrit panchrang for "five colors". It describes a type of pottery still made in Thailand today. It was originally made exclusively for the ceremonial needs of the Thai court, to Thai designs and patterns, in China. Several producers make it in Thailand today, with varying degrees of technical expertise. This one, my newest puppy, about 20 cm high, is by one of the best, Vangtal. The gold is 14K.

The earthly success of the Lims

2010-02-26T21:12:00.000-08:00

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I spent a better part of the afternoon last night learning about the irreversible nature of time. I was at an exhibition of Qing curio boxes -- an interesting show both on account of the technical mastery required to produce them; and on account of their kinship with the contemporaneous western Wunderkammer collections -- kinship with a difference: instead of collecting, like any other normal people, objects the Chinese curio collectors collected... their miniature effigies.

One could wax philosophical here on the Huntington themes, but a much simpler message forced itself upon me: I discovered that I was too old for the show. The objects were small, behind glass and the light was dim. I squinted at them glasslessly, then through my reading glasses, then in my prescription glasses, finally with the help of a small magnifying glass; yet, from more than half of the displays I had to walk away unsatisfied: I would never catch the details. It was all nothing but blur to me. I have missed, it would seem, the chance to admire them.

I suppose this is what happened to my Taiwanese friends, too. Encouraged -- compelled! -- by their families, teachers, and friends, they went out and were productive: they worked 12-hour a day jobs, saved and economized, and gave birth to numerous children. Now, thirty years of hard work has born its fruit: their children are healthy and tall, intelligent and well educated, and soon they will be loosed upon the world to make their mark upon it. And they have amassed a great deal of property which they will pass on to their children: several apartments in the city, acres of land and houses in the countryside. (Being traditional Chinese they believe in only one store of value: land). But they have grown old and frail; their bodies have acquired the usual long list of chronic complaints; not debilitating, by any means, but enough to make simple comfort a matter of considerable rarity and difficulty. They have lived this otherwise successful life frugally and selflessly, devoid of luxuries and pleasures, without the smallest measure of self-indulgence (except, of course, for food, which was always simple, economic fare). Now, knowing them as closely as I do (as a non-Chinese outsider I am on occasion able to pierce the veil of pretense imposed by the society) I know what few do: how intensely unhappy they have been all these years; how much they have had to sacrifice; how much pleasure and gratification they have delayed, thinking sometimes no doubt that it was temporarily delayed, while it fact it was, as they now well know, like my ability to appreciate Qing curios, foregone; lost never to come back.

Today, their happiness consists in this: at their parents' farm, over the Chinese New Year, four generations of Lims sat down to eat a sumptuous feast: 78 people: 2 parents, 12 children, 62 grandchildren, and -- a sign of things to come, the first shoots of the next generation -- 2 great-grand-children. This was their success. It sounds Biblical. The earth has been populated. The Lim tribe has become an economic power to reckon with. The Lim ancestors have been assured of progeny to sustain them into infinity by their worship¹.

Yet, for me, it is hard to tell what my friends have gained through this personally. Millionairies, they still economize. He insists on wearing plastic shoes to work. She will still not send laundry out to wash.

Yet, sitting with their relatives at the jam-packed six tables, eating and talking, they say they are content. This is the warmth of the family, they say; this is their reward. Anyone who knows the Taiwanese knows that being in their company can be nothing but pure pleasure; not only for us, foreigners, I am sure, but, surely, for the Taiwanese themselves. If you didn't know them as I do, you would never know what I do -- and what they seem not to remember on most days -- the cost in self-sacrifice and denial paid for this family warmth.

On the fourth day of the New Year, six nephews and nieces -- all between 18 and 22 -- drop in for a day on my friend, Mr Lim. He spends the morning cooking for them, and the afternoon feeding them, with an expression of absolute delight on his face. "You are their favorite uncle", I say to him, and he beams. He is the traditional ideal male: he lives to feed people. He likes it. If you ask him he will say, and he believes it firmly, that personal happiness is irrelevant.

My grandfather came from a similar background to his: a hard working, farming family of modest means. And he lived his life in a similar manner: relentlessly making a living in order to feed countless mouths; he paid for the project the way Mr Lim is still paying for his: by denying himself simple comforts and pleasures, by never resting and sleeping very little, by putting up with an unhappy marriage, cheap clothes, uncomfortable furniture; in short, by taking nothing for himself out of his life. Men like my grandfather, and Mr Lim, think themselves virtuous; and think virtue to consist in constantly giving and taking nothing in return. Virtue to them is a kind of perpetuum mobile, an economic engine which never stops and runs on empty. It is hard not to admire these wonderful traditional men. But it is also difficult not to feel sad for them.

But perhaps one should not. Their life protects them against one pain at least, the pain of the Chinese curio box. They'll never know what they are missing there; and -- they won't miss it.

Footnote: On the origin of the surname Lin (Lim)

¹During the reign of Shang Zhou, 1154 BC to 1122 BC, the last king of the Shang dynasty (1783 BC to 1122 BC) had 3 of his uncles advising him and his administration. The king's uncles were Bi Gan (also spelled Pi Kan), Qi Zi and Wei Zi. Together the 3 men were known as "The Three Kindhearted Men of Shang" in the kingdom.

Bi Gan was the son of Prince Ding, son of Emperor Shang and, thus, was King Zhou's uncle.

Unfortunately, Zhou was a cruel king and the state's citizens suffered tremendously. His 3 uncles could not persuade him to change his ways. Failing in their duty to advise the king, Wei Zi resigned. Qi Zi faked insanity and was relieved of his post. Only Bi Gan stayed on to continue advising the king to change his ways. “Servants who are afraid of being killed and refrain from telling the truth are not righteous,” he said. This put him in danger of incurring the king's wrath. Bi Gan stayed at the palace for three days and nights to try to persuade the bloodthirsty and immoral king to mend his ways.

The stubborn king would not relent and had his uncle, Bi Gan, arrested for treason. Upon hearing this, his pregnant wife (surname Chen) escaped into the forest to protect her unborn child from death. She knew, in time, the king would execute Bi Gan and his entire family. In the forest the baby was born. Alone with no one to help, she grabbed hold of two trees and gave birth to a baby boy whom she named Jian. When she reached the nearest town, she gave her child the surname Lin (Chinese character depicted by two trees).

Thanks to the efforts of my friends, the spirits of Bi Gan and his son are well taken care of for decades to come.

All I ever needed to know I had learned years back

2010-02-24T19:34:00.000-08:00

The stunning decorative porcelains from the Chianlung period show at the National Palace Museum (here) is a chance to a) see old friends, b) see their never before seen friends (who chill their heels in cool dark of the museum storage caverns), c) learn that some friends have twins (having been executed in pairs; sometimes quartets; the NPM has at least two of these, for instance), and above all d) learn that one may go round the world to see everything it has to offer and in the end decide that what he still likes best what he had liked in the beginning.

It is also a chance to learn, thanks to a great educational video -- part of the show -- the 12 step production process:

1. Throw the piece on wheel using wet clay. This produces a surprisingly rough-hewn, fat, lumpy object. In fact, it looks surprisingly like the sort of stuff your friends throw in their weekend pottery class.
2. Let it dry and then carve and grind it (yes!) into final shape. This is what produces the extra-fine, thin walls and elegant shapes. The connoisseur's expression "well potted" does not mean "well-thrown", it means well well carved!
3. Paint the reign mark on the foot of the object.
4. Apply white glaze. (Spray).
5. Let dry and load in the furnace.
6. Fire. (The glaze turns clear, leaving a shiny white body with a clear reign mark).
7. Draw the decor design using charcoal.
8. Apply color glaze and let dry. (The decor design remains visible through the partly transparent glaze).
9. Carve the dry color glaze. There are two options: 1. carve all the way through to the (previously fired) clear gaze underneath. This leaves flat areas which can be painted in later. These will be the roundels for landscape or figurative scenes; or the scrolling colored leaves and flowers. Or 2. carve half-deep. This leaves a fine, barely impressed, somewhat lighter in color barely perceptible pattern which looks like -- well, brocade. (Magnify the two purple objects beneath to see the pattern within the purple "background").
10. Fire to fix the color glaze.
11. Paint the decorative elements (color flowers, landscapes, figurative elements).
12. Fire again to fix the painted decorations.

(The high rates of breakage and failure at every step make flawless pieces literally unique).

Some objects are decorated without the scrolling brocade pattern.

Here is a pair of dishes, top (enamel painting on white glaze) and bottom (brocade pattern yellow with painted scrolling flowers).

The quality of the miniature painting on these pieces is stunning. Enlarge yourself:

Having seen so much pottery everywhere in the world, I remain helpless slave of the detail, technical mastery and rich color of Qing fencai pieces.

In which I am, I suppose, like Ibn Battuta of Tangier, who, having traveled half the world, returned home and for the next 30 years, until his dying day, never left the city of his birth again.

PS. The video and the objects used in its production (and now part of the display at the show) suggest that someone still commands this technique. This could be the Jia Yang Company, of Jing de Zhen, listed in the credits. It has no internet presence.

Concerning the nomadic mind

2010-02-20T21:10:00.000-08:00

(Mushroom picking makes a good metaphor for all life projects. How so? Read on).

Imagine going out mushroom picking in an area where you have never picked mushrooms before with a group of experienced locals. Once they enter the forest, they all turn right. What do you do?

If, like yours truly, you have true nomadic instincts, you of course... turn left.

For although the fact that everyone turns right probably indicates that plentiful mushrooms are to be found right and perhaps hardly any left; and to any normal mind this just might seem a strong reason to turn right (“surely, these people know where the mushrooms are”); yet – the fact that everyone turns right also means that there will be stiff competition for any mushrooms found. While, even though by going left instead, the nomadic mind risks finding no mushrooms at all, yet he also gains the chance of leisurely taking 100% of everything he finds (assuming he finds it) -- a far better shot at the jackpot than anyone has on the right hand path. Plus he gains something priceless: freedom from stress: he can afford to stroll slowly, stop to take in the view, etc. He avoids the mad scramble of competition of the right hand path. Surely, it would seem, these benefits are worth the risk of going mushroomless every now and then?

Now, this the universal truth: everywhere and always, the right hand path is overcrowded; too many intelligent, efficient, capable people chase too few opportunities there; as a result there are no opportunities for arbitrage and profit margins are egg-shell-thin. Unless one is much faster and much stronger than everyone else -- and can therefore thrive in competitive, crowded situations -- the profits of the right hand path are simply too meager to be worth their while. For most participants, the right hand path is all work and hardly any reward.

On several occasions, when asked for advice, I tried to explain the nomadic left-hand-path logic to friends who stood before significant life choices (education, profession, migration, business venture, management of family affairs). They nearly always rejected my advice. Often, I could see that they could see the point of my argument. Often, they even thanked me for my brilliant insight. But understanding the logic of a proposition is one thing; trusting it with one’s life is another. My friends' minds were settled minds, farmers' minds. They could understand the logic of my idea, but they could not see it applying to their lives.

I have sometimes thought my friends timid on this account. But that is a silly view: one does not call a snake timid because he crawls into holes, or a monkey timid because she lives in a tree. This is what snakes and monkeys do. Likewise, this is what the settled minds do: they take the right hand path. They cannot help themselves.

Nor is there anything especially heroic about the nomadic mind's persistent preference for the road less traveled. A nomad like myself cannot help himself, either. In the nomad’s risk-taking decision to take the left-hand path there is no heroism at all: this is how his mind works. It takes no courage whatsoever because the decision comes automatically; there is no pride in it; there is hardly any premeditation; it just makes sense. That anyone would turn right boggles and amazes him. The nomad is no more free to go right than the settled mind is to go left. The nomad knows -- just like the Hurons did -- that the strains of the right hand path would emotionally kill him.

Whether the nomadic mind turns out more successful in specific instances depends more on luck than anything else. A nomad who turns left and stumbles upon some chanterelles, will be acclaimed a genius; one who comes up with nothing and starves, or, as is more common, ends up having to eat berries instead, will be deemed a fool. Such views are silly, too: at the time when the choice between the right hand path and the left hand path is made, no one can know how thigns will turn out. The choice is simply this: poor odds of a good payoff versus good odds of a meager one. Which do you take?

To settled minds, the relatively high certainty of the poor pay off, makes the right hand path more attractive. To my mind, the choice is skewed in favor of the left hand path by the fact that the left hand path, being less crowded, is more leisurely. If I do not find the chanterelles, at least I did not have to scramble in search for them.

The bottom line, I suppose, is that the nomad is... a lazy bone.

Seven Against Thebes (15)

2010-02-15T22:37:00.000-08:00

Gustave Moreau

THE TWO FACES OF THE SPHINX

Many mysteries surround this strange beast. First: where lay its origins? Does it come from distant peoples, or is he the product of the imagination of Greece and Crete? What kind of beliefs were associated with it? And what does the name “sphinx” mean? We can try to answer some of these questions already.

During the Mycenaean era many foreign sailors visited Egypt. After returning home they told about the wonders they have seen there, especially her great buildings and statues. Nothing like it existed at the time anywhere else on earth. They also reported:

“Near the pyramids there is a great rock, tall, long, reddish in color. The Egyptians expended great labor to carve it in the shape of a reclining lion with the head of a man. His expression is mysterious: he projects divine calm, but he also wears a gentle human smirk, part-sad, part-ironic. The priests say that this is one of the forms assumed by the god of the sun, Ra; it guards the great road west, along which both the sun and the dead depart for the land of mists. Egyptians are much enamored of this creature; and often place many statues of it in long rows on both sides of avenues heading up to important temples. They sometimes say it represents the pharaoh, who combines the power and courage of the lion, king of all animals, with the wisdom of man. These statues are placed at entrances to temples in order to prevent evil spirits from approaching the seats of gods.”

A modern scholar might also add:

The great sphinx near the pyramids was carved on the orders of Pharaoh Khafre, who ruled around the year 2600 B.C. Its dimensions are truly impressive: it is 57 meters long and 20 meters high. It was originally an effigy of the ruler himself, but later became associated with one of the deities of the sun. It was several times buried by the desert sand, even in the times of the pharaohs. There are papyri of two Egyptian kings who ruled around 1400 B.C. in which they report – speaking very poetically – how the sphinx appeared to them in their dreams and asked them to be dug up from the sand and promised them that if they do, they will become pharaohs (both were mere princes at the time of their dreams).

The Egyptian sphinx was nearly always represented with the face of a man; and with the face of a woman only when it represented the principal wife of a pharaoh. Sphinxes with heads of eagles or rams were also sometimes carved. All these sphinxes, regardless of their style, were always considered as good, protective spirits. They were called in Egyptian shespankh, which could be interpreted as “a living statue” and it would seem that the Greek word sphinx is a corrupt form of the Egyptian.

Yet, in Greek, sphinx is feminine. And indeed, on Mycenaean artifacts we see a very different representation of this creature. It is a lion, but with the head of a young woman, and it is – winged! Sphinxes, sometimes appearing in twos, are a frequent element of Mycenaean decoration on gems, seals, vases and tablets of ivory and gold. In the ruins of Mycenae a plaster head of a woman was found; it was of natural size and painted; there are indications that it was part of a larger statue – quite possibly a sphinx. This is all the more interesting because there survive no other examples of large free-standing statuary from those times.

Perhaps, because it was frequently represented as decoration on utilitarian objects, the sphinx did not represent special religious significance on Crete and in the Mycenaean world; and perhaps it was considered auspicious, just as it was in Egypt.

But why was the Mycenaean sphinx represented with a woman’s head and a pair of wings? Further, the Mycenaean sphinx usually wears a special kind of flat head-gear, perhaps a diadem, which is never seen on any Egyptian monuments. For these reasons, the figure of Mycenaean sphinx would seem to have been borrowed not from Egypt but from some other country with which the Mycenaeans might have had close contact. Syria is usually mentioned. It was there that the Egyptian sphinx was transformed and assumed the shape which was to rule forever in Greek art and imagination from Mycenaean times to the end of antiquity.

But this is not the end of the mysteries of the sphinx. We have seen that this creature usually represented good. Yet, we all know the somber myth which represents the sphinx as a bloodthirsty monster, a demon hostile to men. The myth is very ancient, Mycenaean in origin, perhaps even older.

This sphinx did not roam all of Greece. It was associated with only one location. Interestingly, it is not some distant, wild and mountainous land, but a land which in Mycenaean times was densely populated and belonged to the richest. The myth places the sphinx in the vicinity of Thebes! It tells that the monster has selected a rock along the narrow path which lead along the shore of lake Copais from Haliartus to Thebes. The name of this rock was Phicyon. So, some say, perhaps that’s the origin of the monster’s Greek name? Perhaps it was later transformed in the likeness of the verb sfingo, which means “I choke, kill”? But if so, then why does the myth ascribe this particular appearance to the monster associated elsewhere with auspicious forces? Perhaps this bloodthirsty demon was originally nothing but an image of death, which often is represented as a winged monster carrying off its victims’ souls?

Thus, whatever explanation one accepts, it only leads to new questions. The sphinx is a truly mysterious being, not only in legend.

The Theban sphinx attacked and kidnapped young men only (it was, after all, a female monster) but not only in the vicinity of the rock of Phicyon. Sometimes it appeared unexpectedly within the city, too, in broad daylight, in the midst of a crowd. It toyed with its victims, posing first simple riddles and promising:

“If you do not solve the riddle, you will die! But if you solve it, I will kill myself!”

But no one was able to answer even the simplest questions: fear paralyzed the victim’s minds. Within a few short years dozens, perhaps hundreds of young men, died.

Looking at the shield of Polyneices, Adrastus understood well why he’d chosen the sphinx for his emblem. The story of his father’s, Oedipus, famous exploit was famed across all Mycenaean lands. Traveling singers told it frequently by the megaron fireside on long autumn and winter evenings:

Oedipus was a young man, unknown to anyone in Beotia. He walked along the mountain path towards the seven-gated Thebes. He knew that the monstrous sphinx roamed in these parts and he hoped to meet it because Thebans had advertised it across all Mycenaean lands that whoever would kill the monster would receive a great reward: he will be raised to the royal throne, empty now following the tragic death of king Laius, and will marry the queen, his widow.

A lion with a girl’s head barred Oedipus’ path. It said:

“Guess what this is: it is an earthly being; it has four, two and three legs; it is weakest when it uses all four, but strongest when it uses only two!”

Fear did not dim the mind of Oedipus. He replied without hesitation:

“This is quite simple: man!”

And seizing his spear, he leapt at the monster. Others said later than the monster killed itself by jumping into the lake of its own volition.

Oedipus received the reward promised by Thebans. He became king on Cadmea and husband to the beautiful queen, Iocasta. But it was soon to prove that the young man defeated the sphinx to his own tragic detriment, his and his country’s. And this would seem to present another mystery: did Oedipus really defeat the sphinx, or was the monster defeated because it wanted to be defeated – defeated by Oedipus?

Seven Against Thebes (14)

2010-02-13T22:26:00.000-08:00

Adrastus King of Argos and Sicyon, Dareios Painter Vase

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ORACLES AND GUESTS IN THE HOUSE OF ADRASTUS

But let us return to the conversation at Simmias’ bed-side.

Theocritus continued to defend the idea of the protective spirit of Socrates with great enthusiasm. This was understandable: he himself passed for an expert on the business of auguries and oracles. And his opponent, Galaxidoros, did not deny in the least that the future can be guessed at; he merely ridiculed certain naïve ways of understanding how this could be done through signs.

“By themselves”, he continued, “they are trivial; they are but inconclusive evidence by which the powers that be announce their intentions, events barely in the course of shaping themselves, barely approaching the door of the present. But there should not be anything surprising in this; the soothsayer’s art is not supernatural. After all, the cries of sea birds, or tiny clouds in the sky, announce to the sailor the approaching storm.”

From the very beginnings of the human race, and in all parts of the world, things have been that way: there was a certain fear of the future; but also a curiosity; and the impression that the good and evil forces around us can be recognized through certain subtle signs; and if only one could identify and understand these subtle signs… Hence the belief in oracles; and hence great respect for those who could recognize these signs – whether from the flight of birds, or their entrails, or from dreams, or even from – sneezes. It has always been so with all peoples. But what surprises us about Greeks is that in their case these beliefs and practices have coexisted with a critical, inquiring, even contrary mind. It has so often happened among Greeks that within one man one found great intellectual, critical, rational talents and the superstitious belief that gods reveal their intentions and desires through signs or even inner voices. Even Plato himself said that auguries are a bond of friendship between men and gods! Powerful states were sending official embassies to consult the oracle of Apollo in Delphi regarding the most crucial matters of state business. Every town maintained official soothsayers, whose opinions were consulted before any decisions. In every country of Greece there were shrines dedicated to gods and heroes where pilgrims went because there, by diverse methods, future was said to be regularly revealed. Especially many such oracles were found in Beotia, the land in which Thebes was located, and soothsayers like Theocritus enjoyed here particular popularity.

But if the plotters took seriously the soothsaying skills of Theocritus, why did none of them turn to him with the question:

“Will the expedition be successful? Will our friends in Kithairon arrive here safely? Will we be able to liberate our fatherland together?”

These questions must have been foremost in everyone’s mind at Simmias bedside: after all, the turn events were to take that day would influence not only the history of their city, but perhaps also determine whether they themselves lived or died. They thought about it constantly – about it and perhaps about nothing else; and only covered their tension with their pretended curiosity regarding the status of sneezes as potential omens. Perhaps they were simply too afraid to ask, reasoning that whatever happens, it is better not to know in advance, since it is in any case already too late to go back?

Yet another consideration may have worried them, though no one would have mentioned it: the first expedition of seven against Thebes ended in disaster and it had been preceded by very evil omens which, nevertheless, the leader of the expedition chose to ignore. Of course, he could have pointed to other auguries which in fact commanded him to wage war. All of this was reported in various versions in the myths, and drama and poetry presented it ever more colorfully. But if one assumes that behind all the legendary tales there lie indeed some real events from the Mycenaean Era, then one might assume that the first scene of the drama happened more or less like this:

That night, the night on which everything began, Adrastus slept poorly; it was muggy, from somewhere far away wafted in the threatening growls of thunder. The prince kept waking; and whenever he did, the old worry came to him: those strange words whose meaning he was unable to penetrate. They said: you will marry one daughter to a lion, the other – to a boar!

Oracles always spoke the language of metaphor; the art of understanding them lay not in taking the answer verbally, but in discovering the right key for interpretation. Therefore, in this case, does the oracle mean men whose names perhaps are derived from “lion” and “boar”? But there are many such names; besides, such an interpretation seemed much too straightforward. Or does the oracle concern men whose character will be market by the courage and fierceness typical of these animals?

Larissa, the city which Adrastus ruled, lay on a hill, at the edge of the fertile plane of Argos; in later times the city was to take on the name of the surrounding plane, and the name Larissa to become limited to its castle hill alone. Beautiful and fertile Argos lay in the north-east of Peloponnesus. In it there were many principalities, cities and castles, whose lords would have been glad to enter into a marriage alliance with the mighty house of Adrastus, but he was not interested. All his neighbors, the near as well as the far, were constantly at odds – over land, or cattle, or women. Alliances were constantly shifting; there were frequent bloody battles and treacherous raids. Yesterday’s enemies became friends for a day only to plunge their sword in today’s ally’s back tomorrow. Adrastus has done well in this small community; he was considered a very agile operator. But when the time came to marry off his daughters – two for now, the third not yet being of age – a new kind of trouble, one which he did not know how to handle, appeared. Whom to choose for sons in law? There were many candidates and therein lay danger: those rejected might band together and raid Larissan territory. And, besides, one will have to pay two dowries!

For these reasons, Adrastus turned to the Delphic oracle for advice but the advice he received appeared useless. Where was he supposed to look for a lion and boar, kings of wilderness, who might defend their father in law? The prince was very worried; human wits failed him; gods’ word was no help.

Adrastus slept alone, in a room upstairs. The house of the basileus of Larissa was not especially large; it hardly differed from those of some of his subjects. Downstairs was the great hall; it was called megaron. A fire burnt there permanently; at its side the householders ate their meals, made sacrifices to gods, and received guests. Small rooms next to it, and upstairs, served as bedrooms. They were furnished quite simply: animal skins, small stools, chests. One rose early and spent whole days out of doors – working in the fields, herding cattle, hunting, or raiding. But when the dark night descended, one sat at the megaron fireside for many hours, talking, telling ancient tales, and singing. Here was the center of family life on rainy or cold days.

Suddenly, some sort of strange noise woke Adrastus from the torment of half-sleep. He sat up, frightened. Was it armed men trying to break down the gate? Was it fighting? He could hear the clangor of swords against shields, yelling, and cursing. It was not an unusual thing in those days: an unexpected raid by pirates who’d arrived at the shore after dark; for this reason, cities were never built at the shore. Adrastus had repelled many such attacks; and had taken part in many: he was always prepared for a fight. But what frightened him now was the strange silence within the house. Why is no one up? What are the servants doing? Where are the women? Did gods put them all to sleep? Is this – treachery?

Adrastus jumped up, grabbed his sword and shield – weapons had to always be close to one’s side – and leapt downstairs, into the megaron. But the great hall was empty. Even the fire was very low: no one was tending to it. The prince ran outside. There he saw his people: the servants crowded at the gate; others stood on the wall, holding up torches. But no one seemed frightened; on the contrary, there were laughter and joyous cries.

When the prince ran up to the top of the gate, he saw below him two armed men. They faced each other, wearing helmets and chest plate and holding swords and shields at the ready; they looked like two wild animals readying to pounce on each other. Further away there stood their chariots and help. Adrastus saw this in an instant and immediately understood: these two princes had arrived at his gate simultaneously, hoping to find refuge from the approaching storm; then they quarreled over which one had the right to knock on the gate first.

But before he managed to call out to the men before, Adrastus saw something which filled his heart with pious fear and hope: the helmet of one of the men, the shorter one, was decorated with boar’s fangs; on the shield of the other was painted – a reclining lion!

Tydeus was short, stocky, and grim. He resembled a boar. He spoke rarely and tersely. He seemed a terrible barbarian; his speech had a foreign, rasping sound, and his weapons, too, differed from those normally worn by the knights of Mycenae, Tiryns, Thebes or Athens. In fact, he had come from very far away. His fatherland lay in the high and wild mountains which stretched west of Beotia all the way to he sea; it was called Aetolia.

But his descent was magnificent, royal. The cause of his exile was also famed; even before his arrival itinerant beggars and singers passing through Larissa had told the tale of the misfortune which came upon him by the will of gods and fate. These vagabonds told their stories to pay for the place at the megaron fire, a cup of wine, a piece of cake, a place to sleep in the stables at night: they brought the news and gossips, sometimes adding a bit from themselves to make it all more interesting and to earn a better welcome. But if there were no recent news worthy of telling, they retold old stories, singing tales of gods and heroes. Thus, by the time Tydeus retold his story by the megaron fireside, muttering reluctantly – “I killed a relative. Not intentionally. It was on a hunt” – the prince did not learn anything he hadn’t heard already. And he understood immediately, without any need to hear pleas or explanations, what the stranger wanted: pursued by his family, he hoped that perhaps at last here, beyond the sea, he might find a safe welcome and a host who might aid him in performing the sacred ritual of purification to clear him of the stain of innocent blood. And Adrastus was ready to do all this gladly. Here is a prince from a distant land, strong and brave, a son in law indicated by the oracle!

It was Tydeus who was surprised that night then. Despite his natural aloofness, he was unable to hide his surprise when he heard the words:

“Very well. I accept you in my household. I will purify you of your ritual pollution and then I shall return you to the throne in Aetolia which is rightfully yours, by force if I must. And I shall give you my daughter for wife.”

Adrastus then immediately turned to the young man sitting on the other side of the fire; tall and handsome, with regular facial features and lively eyes, he seemed the very opposite of Tydeus. The lord of Larissa said to him:

“As to you, Polyneices, I give my other daughter. And I shall return you to your throne, too. It is justly yours, I know, not your brother’s. I shall return you to your throne first because it will be on my way… because then, together, we shall all set out from your Thebes to Tydeus’ Aetolia!”

There was great pride in the words of the prince of Argos; at the same time, he felt indebted to the oracle, which until so very recently had worried him. How wise and omniscient, and how generous towards his house, is the God of Delphi! The fact that the princes are from far away, and that they are landless, is the best of all gifts he could have ever expected from fate. It will not be necessary to provide the daughters with large dowries: fat cattle and fiery battle stallions can now remain in his stables. Of course, while they remain by his side, the princes will receive land in lease and he will deny them nothing; but only until the time of the expedition comes.

Adrastus was not afraid of the coming war; on the contrary, he was looking forward to it with great joy. He loved adventure and battle, and above all – he loved war booty. And when Polyneices and Tydeus settle at last in their own ancestral palaces, he, Adrastus, will be counted among the most powerful of princes of Greece: three rich lands will be united in his clan: Larissa, Aetolia and Thebes; and Thebes, the famed, rich Thebes most of all!

Nothing that happened in the megaron of Adrastus’s house that night was somehow extraordinary. Exiles from far-away lands often knocked on the doors of powerful men. Usually they were received very hospitably, because this was required by ancient laws of gods and men. Of course, not every exile could count on receiving his host’s daughter in marriage; but this also happened sometimes, if one is to believe myths and epics. After all, marriages were usually contracted mainly with the view towards advancing family business and property. No one asked young girls their opinion; and the young men did not have to worry about the girl’s looks, as long as they were healthy and their dowries good. Love could always be found in some other way – with a war slave, for example.

The shield of Polyneices stood leaning against a wooden post. It was rectangular and very large. Every time more wood was thrown into the fire and the flames leapt up, the concave surface, covered with bronze plate, burnt with a dull red glow. One could then see clearly: the beast represented upon it had only the torso and paws of a lion, but its head was that of a young woman and out of its back there grew powerful bird wings. Thus in the glow of the fire, as the great marital and military plans were hatched in the darkness of the megaron, there lit up and died down by turns that mysterious beast: the Theban sphinx.

I know this fellow

2010-02-09T23:53:00.000-08:00

Across a busy street, and down a little alley (aklang with urgent jabbering of hammers), another temple is being aluminum-clad. In the ordination hall, amidst a jumble of half-finished repousse panels, brick, mortar, cement and various vicious-looking builders' tools; and partly obscured by a door (like a naughty student punished to stand in a corner), there stands this head, about four feet high chin to top-of-headdress. It will be a giant statue of a supernatural being. Just what being, I do not know: not a Buddha (wrong sort of face), not an apsara (the headdress is too regal), not a Hindu god (the face is too sweet and too... Thai, while Hindu gods are odd-looking -- presumably Indian, or the best a Thai artist who'd never seen an Indian can imagine one).

This face is so Thai in fact that at first glance I thought it was a portrait of a friend.

This work is quite unique: I have seen few temple statues of this beauty anywhere in Thailand, none at all made within living memory. Further, temple images usually strive for the stiff monumental look -- it is meant to be otherworldly: the creatures which populate Thai Buddhist heaven are not like us (or else we would not need to strive to change ourselves). The only piece which approaches the lively realism of this head that I can think of is the 7th century black soapstone male torso of a Hindu god, discovered in the 19th century in Nakhon Si Thammarat, in the Kra Peninsula, and now housed in the Bangkok National Museum. (It is easily the most beautiful piece there). So, this is a very special work.

I want to know where this head is going. That will be the temple to worship at, obviously.

Temple Silver

2010-02-07T23:49:00.000-08:00

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Both sides of Wualai Road -- the so called "Silver Street" -- are little alleys packed with silver manufactories. The sound of hammering comes here from every house. Men sit packed tightly, shoulder to shoulder, at small working benches, hammering, soldering, rolling and polishing. The silversmiths are neither a guild nor a caste, but are united by the traditional feudal master-servant relationship -- smiths receive room and board plus a small stipend -- and, for those established in business, intermarriage. They are united enough to undertake joint projects such as lobbying for government subsidies and temple construction. This temple is covered head to toe (except for its roof tile), both inside and outside, with hand wrought aluminum.

The technique known in Thailand as "Lanna Silver" is really nothing but good old repoussé. It works even better with aluminum which is similar in color, far cheaper, softer, and does not need to be heated during hammering (unheated silver often cracks when hammered). Its only downside is that it does not tarnish with age, which is what some of the repousse designs call for, but this effect can be achieved by staining.

Below is a wall panel from the temple, showing half-life-size Rama leading the monkey army against Lanka. The panel is probably 2 meters high by 1.5 meters long.

Here is a three-panel window blind with stories from the Jataka.

Here is a Dutch silversmith (she works in one of the silver factories here) with the temple minder and a bit of outside wall decoration. The peacock is a mystical symbol in many religions. In Christianity he represents the glory of life after death, in Buddhism the sudden unfolding of the mind at the moment of enlightenment.

Here are two life-size heavenly guardians on the outside wall, each side of the window. They are wearing Burmese court dress (as only befits a city with such strong Shan influence).

And here is the entrance to the temple:

Take a look at the doors again: Indra on Erawan on the left, carrying Brahma on his shoulders.

And Vishnu riding Garuda on the right:

And a Ramayana scene in the tympanum:

In Khmer architecture (and all things Khmer are still the cultural model for Thailand), the tympanum is the triangular stone above the door opening, within the arch created by the two entwined nagas (heavenly snakes). In the one below there is a scene from the Ramakhien (the Thai Ramayana): Sita has been kidnapped; Hanuman arrives to tell Rama and Lakshmana of her whereabouts.

And in this, another scene from the Ramakhien, Rama and Sita, reunited, have taken refuge in Hanuman's mouth.

And here is a wall decoration: a man-sized Ganesha, Remover of Obstacles, with his rat vehicle and a bowl of gulab jamun (his favorite sweet).

And here is Indra again, in greater detail:

Uniquely, and perhaps a sign of things to come, this one has been signed. (Enlarge yourself and look on bottom right). Walking back along the main street I saw a similar panel being completed. "How many men did it take to make it?" I asked. "One", was the sly answer. "And how long did it take you?" "A year."

Typically of gender-confusing Thailand, about a fourth of the silversmiths are women.

And here is the tree of life again (a photo from the interior).

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PS A friend asks how it is done: One places the sheet of metal (silver/aluminum) on a bed of warm tar, which then sets; and glues to it the desired picture in reverse. One then proceeds to hammer out the outline roughly by pounding with a hammer at the paper picture (and the underlying metal). One then warms the tar, detaches the sheet of aluminum, turns it over, places it on a bed of warm tar again, and, as soon as the tar has set, hammers out the details from the front.

Traditional mural painting is alive in Thailand

2010-02-05T01:06:00.000-08:00

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I think it was in 2003 that, by complete accident, I stumbled upon this book. While perusing it, I was suddenly seized by a powerful desire to go and see all the mural paintings reproduced in it. The next morning I rented a car and set out on the journey. It lasted four weeks, covered perhaps 4,000 kilometers, visited seventeen different establishments, and culminated in a ramshackle temple in Thonburi, Bangkok, where a small crowning epiphany descended upon me like a fine spring shower.

Everywhere I went I was struck by how much the murals had deteriorated in the fifteen years since the book's publication. They all had, but those in Thonburi especially so. As I looked at them with love and the sweet heart-breaking sadness of regret -- and monks around me chanted their sutra -- I experienced one of those sudden revelations of Dharma: of course the monks do nothing to preserve the murals: that is the very essence of Buddhism, is it not, to know that everything is an illusion, everything passes, and that one must not try to hold onto illusory ephemera. It is well to admire a flower, but it is foolish to regret its wilting.

But, luckily (for us aesthetes), there is a cognitive dissonance at the heart of Thai Buddhism: while the monks know that all art is impermanent, all ritual is waste of time, and all temple building a pain-begging exercise in vanity; they do not teach these facts strenuously. (That, too, is the essence of Buddhism, is it not: to want to teach would mean to strive. This is why Thai monks are generally Savakas (Śrāvaka), that is, they are assumed to receive instructions directly from Lord Buddha himself: not even their teachers bother to teach them).

Thus untaught, ordinary Thai lay believers continue to strive; and, in particular, to strive to build and decorate temples. All of Thailand is abuzz with the noise of construction machinery. A full tithe, in my estimation -- one in ten sites -- is a temple going up.

One is going up nearby. I have been visiting it over the last four years to watch the progress of the work. Currently a Burmese style chambered stupa is being decorated. It has two halls, one lower and one upper. It is dark in the upper hall, and photos mostly do not come out as a result, but here are a few taken recently to give you a flavor of what is going on.

The temple is associated with the royal family and is therefore both richer and more gorgeous than most. Most temples in Thailand are pretty kitchy; but this one, well, this one shows that mural art is not dead in Thailand. Old murals rot, fade and fall away, but what is the big deal with that when new beautiful murals are painted afresh every year?

Here is a view of a section of the upper room.

The hall has entrances in the northern and southern walls; while the eastern and western walls are decorated with full-wall murals. (The view above is of the south-eastern corner of the room: a full painted wall is on the left and the southern entrance just to the right).

The eastern wall, which hosts the main image (its eyes have not yet been "opened" so it is OK to photograph it in any old way), features a view of the Buddhist cosmos: the stupas, floating in the clouds of fragrant ether, each represent a different universe, of which one is ours (with all its eight billion light years and all); and in the center of this multiverse grows the great tree of life. It is, of course, golden.

The western wall represents another heavenly scene: Hindu divinities (including Erawan (in Thai, Airavata in Sanskrit, the thousand-headed white elephant who is the vehicle of Indra, the old god of war) disporting themselves in the flying palaces of the Western Paradise. (Note that the picture is not complete yet and there are still blank spaces).

And here are a few details from the sides. These two are sections of the eastern wall -- they are found under the small side windows located to the right and left of the main mural.

And this is a panel next to the northern door.

The next (and last) photo is different. This one is executed in gold dusted-paint and gold-leaf on black lacquer base. It is a leaf of a double-door leading into the hall. (As it is the external surface of the door, it is covered with sturdy plastic to protect it against gold thieves). Around new year's, I watched the painters -- it was a husband and wife team -- both of them in their fifties, fat, squat, indifferent looking, poorly dressed; for their looks you could have thought they operated a fermented-pork-sausage and booze stand in the village night market-- he painted the images freehand in black; she colored them in gold. The dissonance between their less than ordinary looks -- and unassuming demeanor -- and the incredible work they turned out was really very thought provoking. What is it like to make stuff like this all day? What is it like to then return home to the hovel one lives in and look at oneself the mirror?

Then there the old saw, too: do not judge a book by its cover, though obviously, in this case, you would not go wrong judging the hall by its entrance.

Bathroom Aesthetics (4)

2010-02-03T00:18:00.000-08:00

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This is a suitable bathroom tile. The first impression is a lot like celadon, but a closer look reveals it is not: there are two layers of glaze: the dull, colored on the bottom (the color is intentionally uneven); and the clear on top. The latter cracks when cooling, producing nifty patterns.

The crackle produces more than a web pattern: it also creates an uneven surface. The effect is a little like cracked eggshell: different sized splinters (flat areas defined by the cracks) are all at a slight angle to each other and the horizontal. This is barefuly perceptible in full daylight, but when ambient light is low, it becomes very obvious that each splinter reflects light at a different angle. This produces a nice effect when you half-close your eyes:

(The light is coming from the garden, through the length of the shady bedroom and into the windowless shower).

Bathroom Aesthetics (3)

2010-02-01T00:17:00.000-08:00

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But perhaps you do not have an open-air shower. In such a case, you could do a lot worse than install a glass brick window in your indoor bathroom:

Come closer. Take a look:

Can you see how the view from outside is transformed: the slender betel palm stalk, the jumbled greenery, the wooden side-wall of the house -- twisted and jumbled in the bricks' kaleidoscopic eye; and shifting -- now this way, now that -- as you yourself shift on your feet, now a little to the left, now a little to the right? Can you see the little yellow veins in the cocoa wood? And the flashes of green lightning in the bush -- like the green flash in the peacock's tail or in the setting sun over the ocean?

And can you believe the impossible twistiness of the palm-tree stem? It seems to want to tie itself in knots.

The judges say (Radamanthes and all): 9.3 - 9.3 - 9.4 - 9.5 - 9.2 - 9.3 - 9.4

Bathroom Aesthetics (2)

2010-01-30T00:16:00.000-08:00

If you can then arrange for an unseasonal afternoon squall to dump about 3 inches of water into your open-air shower, along with more broken flowers and debris; and to clear up before sunset so that a blue sky -- and the shadow of the fire tree -- can be reflected on the surface the water; that's +7 points.

Continuing education

2010-01-29T19:31:00.000-08:00

Oy's a rare enough story anywhere, much more so in the developing world: grown tired of her prospect-less life in the provincial town where she was born, she rebelled, dumped her love-home-town-want-to-stay-near-mom boyfriend and moved to the city, managed to get a job which gives her significant control over her work and pays her enough to afford her own place, a car, and a few extras. At thirty she is were some of us find find ourselves about that age: in control of her life, confident and reasonably content. She realizes the rarity of her success, and is proud of her achievement, but also knows that she's not likely to do much better and does not strive to. There is contentment in accepting our limits -- when they are comfortable.

This is one way a young person's life can turn out: crowned with the contentment of early maturity.

I know, because mine did.

I remember well when I reached that point -- I was then around thirty myself. It felt like the final victory in a long struggle. We spend our teens and twenties trying to figure out what kind of life we want to -- and can -- live and what kind of person we can and should be. And when we at last arrive at a juncture at which it seems that we have finally figured it out, we quite suddenly feel unusually comfortable with ourselves. A period of easy contentment ensues; we call it maturity; and we assume that it will stay with us forever.

Yet, life, it turns out, does not stay still. While we kick back in the comfort of our content thirties, all the while our life changes: we change -- we get older, uglier, frailer, we begin to tire easily, our old routines begin to master us -- and bore us; and the world around us changes: our friends become older, their life situation is now different, and the world around us turns relatively younger, people begin to see us in a new light. As a result some things we assumed we knew -- how to dress, smile, apologize; how to seduce a woman, say, or charm a client -- no longer work.

Back when I was thirty, if I got drunk at a party and made a pass at a woman she might have rejected me perhaps, but would have thought the whole incident funny and me a silly prank, at worst; today the possible downside is far worse: if she does not like me, she's liable to be upset and think me a repulsive lecher. Little things may be even more important, because they are with us every day: with only half my former hair left, I no longer look cute -- but -- miserable -- when uncombed... And since my beard has mostly turned white, I can no longer afford to go unshaven every other day and count on sympathy... If I fall asleep with a lover, I must get up before her and shave... or else she'd think she's dating a geriatric...

I can no longer afford to dress in sweat pants and ripped T-shirts because I no longer have the charm of youth which excuses poverty... Poorly dressed at twenty five or even thirty, I was to many an attractive rogue and it was assumed that I was on the make... but poorly dressed today, I am to those who look at me and don't know me, a poor old bastard: I appear to them a pitiful financial failure. And how much of our success -- and contentment! -- depends on how they -- the people who do not know us -- see us!

Thus, it seems, the period of contentment in which we know perfectly how to act in all situations -- the early maturity -- is just that: early; we outgrow it and we must change and learn again. We must learn new lessons -- the lessons of the middle maturity; and above all how to project confidence, dignity, and probity: the virtues expected of people of our age. (And the only way to earn respect).

And how to accept our new limits -- since trying to go beyond them when so obviously it is not possible exposes us to nothing but ridicule.

(Ah, the new limits. These are the hardest, of course).

Bathroom Aesthetics (1)

2010-01-28T00:15:00.000-08:00

You have heard of bathroom humor. You at least should have heard of bathroom literature. Now, it is time for you to hear of bathroom aesthetics.

A good place to start is with an open air shower, tiled in deep sea-green celadon, with a fire-tree for a roof. Not too leafy or else you won't see the sky while you shower. Then you must arrange for a nice stiff breeze from time to time to strike your tree, shake its branches, and strew a few flowers on your floor. Not too many, and, please, not too symmetrically.

It's best if the fire-tree if of the blood-orange variety, but, in a pinch the yellow blossom will do. Of course, yellow blossoms go better with deep blue tile; and as retiling is really only a little more hassle than replanting a tree (after all, once planted, a tree mostly grows by itself); it's best to get your blossoms-and-tile color scheme right -- right off the bat.

Then, you tread upon the whole thing with bare feet. And boy, does it feel nice.

Some thoughts upon the reading of Tanizaki

2010-01-22T05:01:00.000-08:00

Tanizaki's life doubles up on itself, in the shape of the letter U. He started out as a Westernizing Young Turk -- from Tokyo, too: through which all foreign ignorance and diseases enter -- the fish rots from the head, don't you know. But he ended up as a back-to-our-(Japanese)-roots cultural conservative -- and even moved to Kyoto -- the delicious Hana no Kyoto, the cultural capital, away from the Tokyo head-rot.

How very moving, say the critics -- a Damascus like conversion. They point to Some Prefer Nettles as the inflection point. They point to the Bunraku in it as the beginning of Tanizaki's interest in Japanese traditional arts.

Too bad about the Bunraku in it, though: I could have written those bits. Why, I could have written them better: to write them better would not have been very hard.

For instance, Tanizaki's discussion of the art form (through the father-in-law's lips) proposes that puppets are to be appreciated in proportion to their life-likeness. Thus, he argues that western marionettes are inferior to Bunraku because they are not as lifelike as Bunraku. (Tanizaki must not have seen good western marionettes).

But any seasoned puppet-theater connoisseur knows that a puppet's excellence lies precisely in its puppet-likeness; that is to say, in the ways in which it explores puppethood; in all the wonderful and surprising ways, in other words, in which puppets are unlike men. Indeed, this is puppet theater's whole -- and only -- aesthetic rationale -- to be unlike the life it depicts. It would have no business existing otherwise (since live actors will always be more lifelike than puppets). Was it Grotowski? Theater which pretends to be life is not a theater, it is a pretense.

Nettles' other traditional bit -- Tanizaki's comparisons between the Osaka and Tokyo singing styles -- is mere obfuscation, too. But let us not be harsh: it is extraordinarily difficult to think about music even for those who understand something of its structure. (It may seem to the speaker to be weighty and meaningful to say, as Tanizaki does, that a certain song sounds vulgar but, in fact, what needs to be observed is that it is unusually low-pitched, for instance).

And so, while I had hoped that Nettles might be an interesting discussion of Bunraku, set, like stones in a bracelet, in any old narrative, treated as a mere excuse for taking up Bunraku, Nettles' best bits turn out -- disappointingly -- the central love story, after all. But these bits read autobiographical, and autobiographical in the worst of all autobiographical ways: they read like the autobiography of a writer whose greatest claim to interest was that -- he was one; which isn't much interest really. (How interesting is a guy who sits all day at his desk, writing?) The autobiography is dull and the character uninteresting. Sorry.

Perhaps the problem lies in Tanizaki's productivity. Perhaps he was too busy writing to have any time left to experience, learn and digest; as a result, there is not enough content in the words. Try to do less, young man, they should teach at the school of creative writing. (Do they?) "Do not try to write thirty novels in your lifetime, young man; only God and Thomas Mann could write more than one good novel in their lifetimes, and both are dead."

Why, when one studies a foreign language, it is safe to assume that one needs to do at least four hours of homework for every hour of classwork; when one writes about art, the ratio has got to be even greater: one needs to spend a year at a minimum studying an art-form before one can hope to write an intelligent page about it; if then.

I would dearly have loved to read a good novel about some traditional art of Japan, but Tanizaki's isn't it. Kawabata's Old Capital is far more successful in this regard. Perhaps because it is Kawabata's last novel: he'd had fifty years of art appreciation behind him at the time of writing. He'd done his homework.

We should be glad of Tanizaki's U-turn, of course: he spent the last 25 years of his life rewriting Genji Monogatari into modern Japanese (the tenth century classic is too archaic for anyone to read today). This is, arguably his greatest contribution to civilization. But it does him little credit that his U-turn simply tracked state policy: Tanizaki westernized when the government policy called for westernization; and he began to go "native" just as the state propaganda turned nationalist. I am not saying he was slavishly following party-line, but he certainly wasn't going against the grain. Kawabata's (and Mishima's) Japaneseness is more convincing: they embraced it against the (again) westernizing policies of the post-war state.

To me, Nettles' only convincing section was Tanizaki's discussion of how Japanese cities rapidly uglified during modernization. This isn't a Japanese phenomenon alone: cities uglify everywhere equally, as if following some universal law of nature: all corpses rot, all cities develop. Development, it seems, necessitates ugliness. (De Soto, a Peruvian economist, explains why: they grow too fast to stay pretty. He promises hope: what are today relatively pretty parts of central London were as recently as 1840 god-awful slums. Just wait 170 years, it'll get better, it might seem. Why even Tokyo might look OK by the year 2080).

It occurs to me that the longing for the past which men like Tanizaki and Kawabata experienced was perhaps not the longing for national roots or authenticity but a flight from the ugliness of development.

Why should development be ugly? Why was the past so much prettier?

One could think up a million ad hoc theories. But -- are they? Were they? Is it possible that what survives of the past comes down to us as it were through a sieve, filtered; only the good survives, the bad having been eliminated and recycled? Has the past, so to speak, been censored for us by our ancestors?

Perhaps. If so, I wish we were censoring the present more actively.

The mystery at the heart of the idea of Eric Rohmer

2010-01-21T06:14:00.000-08:00

Eric Rohmer was a misanthrope: his films by and large show people who are stupid, nasty, hypocritical, and self-deceived. The films show no violence and very little suspense, yet they are are "strong" -- psychologically exhausting -- stuff: I can never take more than one a month. (90 minutes' listening to these characters makes me feel sick to the heart).

The fact that the man lived his entire life in great privacy constitutes further evidence of his misanthropy.

I understand the man well: my view of the race isn't any better than his; and I suspect that I am even more secretive and further removed from society than he ever was.

It is this proximity to him which makes me aware of the great mystery at the heart of the idea of Eric Rohmer: why on earth did he continue to make all these films?

If people are nasty -- not worth knowing -- then, surely, there is no point making movies about them. After all, if reality sucks, then nothing much is gained by saying -- repeatedly -- how much it sucks. One should either try to change it; or create alternatives to it; or escape it; or forget it. Constant belaboring of an intractable problem is a recipe for nothing but frustration. Was Rohmer not frustrated by the very labor of making his films?

What's more: if people are nasty, then there is no point making movies for them to see. (Or writing novels for them, or cooking them dinners, or serving them breakfast in bed). And if they are self-deceived deceivers, then there is no point engaging them because -- well, because they don't really know what they are saying and what issues from their lips is not worth hearing.

(Everyday I walk past a pig-sty. I know the pigs are pigs, but there seems to be no point telling them so: they would not understand it).

My guess is that Rohmer knew all this but could not help himself. This strikes me as very sad for Rohmer (who could not have been happy making them) but lucky for us. His films are depressing stuff, not to be taken lightly, but they are still very good films. It does us well to take them -- in small doses, far apart.

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A note concerning the title:
I am convinced that Eric Rohmer does not actually exist. He is an idea. A masonic cabal, like the Rosecrucian Society. (Lot's of people believed in its existence, too).

Staring at the pond

2010-01-20T20:38:00.000-08:00

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My pond is a fascinating place and staring at it is a full time job. It lies in the shade of the trees. In places direct sunlight hits it, and, penetrating below the surface, it scatters within the depths off the small particles of mud suspended in the water creating milky areas of impenetrability. Other areas of the pond lie in varying densities of shadow: the deeper the shadow, the more faithful the reflection of the world above: trees, sky, and clouds. The wind moves the trees and with it, the effects on the water shift.

Now, add to that complexity other layers of complexity: that there are here and there objects -- usually dry leaves or flower petals -- scattered and floating on the surface of the pond. In other places objects sunken under the surface can be seen: branches dropped in the water by the wind, or fish sunbathing lazily right under the surface. As if that was not enough, the surface of the pond is sometimes disturbed: perhaps a fish has stirred near the surface; or a kingfisher skimmed the surface in an attempt to catch a small fry; or something fell into the water from the trees above. All these events cause different sorts of waves, resulting in different patterns on the water; and sometimes two happen at once, creating a kaleidoscopic interference.

An American naturalist who sometime in the 1820's retired to live in a shack by a pond, wrote how sitting by the pond and staring pointlessly brought up to his lips, unawares, a silly smile. I emulate that great literary model a great deal these days.

Two kinds of happiness

2010-01-18T20:39:00.000-08:00

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Back in the 1950's a woman wrote a book about ecstasy: her point was to argue that there really is such an experience (since descriptions of it ranging from religious to literary to erotic texts were all strikingly similar across all ages and cultures) and that, presumably, there must be a brain mechanism responsible for its generation.¹ Though she did not say it, the book's one possible implication was that, if we only learned to manipulate that mechanism...

The book passed without an echo. (It was the fifties, after all: too early to talk about sex; and ecstasy does not seem to interest anyone unless it be sexual).

I have forgotten it, too: the experience which interested the author did not interest me. It seemed too tiresome: it was too intense sort of thing for me. Who wants to writhe with pleasure? (Don't get me wrong: pleasure is fine, but I am not such a great fan of writhing).

What interested me in her book was another experience of pleasure. This the author did not discuss at great length -- only long enough to define it and to say that it is not the subject of her book. She termed it "The Adamic Experience" (that is, that of Adam in Eden, before The Fall). She also called it the Oceanic Experience, from the way it feels: the experience of utter and complete calm, like looking at the ocean from a great height, gently undulating beneath us.

Milosz has a poem which captures it:

A day so happy.
Fog lifted early. I worked in the garden.
Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers.
There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.
I knew no one worth my envying him.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.
To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.
In my body I felt no pain.
When straightening up, I saw the blue sea and sails.

I became intimately familiar with the experience during the six years when I lived by the sea. And I have done well to tame it since; at times seem able to just turn it on at will.

(Alas, un-philosopher-like, this ability to do so depends entirely on the circumstances in which I find myself: the place must be both beautiful and -- quiet. You see, the oceanic experience enters, so to speak, through the eye but escapes through the ear).

But my last several days have taken me away from the oceanic calm and back towards ecstasy.

I don't have Laski's book with me here, so will make a literary reference I can recall: Lawrence Weschler's Vermeer in Bosnia. In one of its essays a man recalls: "it was soon after I returned from Japan... I was driving on [some freeway in Southern California] and these waves of intense pleasure just rolled over me one after another."

Well, that's what happened to me yesterday while I lay on my terrace in the afternoon and looked up at the sky through the trees:

Intense waves of pleasure, like waves of heat emerging from a kiln, washed over me.

I stared up hungrily, insatiate.

It was no doubt a malfunction of the brain.

Ecstasy is bad for us. It upsets us. It makes us greedy. It makes us grasp. We want more. We fear it may stop.

And happiness is not built on fear and desiring.

But I was OK with it for a day.
A little writhing is good every now and then, I suppose.
At my age and all.

¹ Marghanita Laski, Ecstasy: a Study of Some Secular and Religious Experiences

And new cups, plus a word on universal goodness

2010-01-17T20:41:00.000-08:00

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The two mugs are thinly potted, well proportioned (both pretty to look at and well-shaped to limit heat-loss through surface evaporation), light-weight (easy to lift, don't take too much heat out of the tea), and they fit my hand perfectly (they are five-fingers-high and just the right width for my hand to wrap around comfortably). They take about 200 ml of tea, which is about the right serving for my body-size (and appetite). The fluted opening assures that the edge remains cool, allowing one to lift them (as one lifts Asian cups -- by the edge) without burning one's fingers.

The first one is matte. I have yet to research this type of glaze.

It's certainly very pretty: mildewed reeds in early autumn. This cup is especially pretty inside:

even though, personally, I prefer cups with white or light-colored glazing inside as they allow one to see the color of the tea. (This is not only pleasant, but also has the practical benefit of allowing one to judge whether the tea is strong enough).

The second cup is glossy-glazed. The outside glaze is called robin's egg: the glaze contains a mixture of two different salts which melt at slightly different temperatures and separate in the kiln, creating tiny, milkish runs in a dark-blue background.

This is not the best robin's egg I have seen, or even the best I own, but it is the best robin's egg I own on a cup which is comfortable to drink from. This glaze is famously difficult to fire: out of 10,000 cups perhaps 2 or 3 might be "perfect" (and command huge prices). Finding a piece which has both the right shape and a well-executed robin-egg is very difficult.

The inside is glazed in a different color: a kind of blond caramel. This, too, has run revealing finger marks on the inside of the cup (the cup was thrown on a wheel). They seem to me like the ribs of the great behemoth -- seen from inside the belly.

I like containers with a strong color contrast between inside and outside. And the caramel color is light enough to allow me to see the color of my tea.

I have declared these two cups to be a set: similar enough to be a set, yet different enough to be interesting. I like to mis-match my pottery this way: uniform sets testify to the aesthetic laziness of the host.

I'll serve you your tea in them when you come. By the side of my pond, of course (small ponds being, as you know, the perfect place to have tea, especially if there is a small wooden bridge nearby, or a small painted wooden boat; or so says a Chinese classic, the Chasu).

Here I have them all: the pond, the bridge, the boat, and the tea.

The Platonic question as to whether there are universal values has herein its answer: some cups are better than others. A cup must be not too large (or one can't finish the tea) and not too small (or one is kept busy rebrewing and refilling); it must be of a shape that fits one's hand well; and shape and thickness which won't cool the tea excessively; it should be white or light-colored inside to allow one to evaluate (and enjoy) the color of the tea.

Thus a goodness of an object can be shown to depend on the use to which it is put. It is very well for someone to say "I prefer that cup over this", but what if he is not a tea-drinker? Then, in a certain sense, his opinion is irrelevant and his cup is probably useless -- for tea.

Similarly with glazes: as one learns about the techniques and looks at different pieces executed in it one learns to recognize quality -- the difficulty of the piece and the excellence (or not) of its execution: a connoisseur is only as good as the sum total of everything he has seen. It's hard to say that a robin's egg is better than a celadon; but it is quite easy (and uncontroversial) to say that this robin's egg is better than that. And thus under certain circumstances one may well say that this robin's egg (a rare, well executed robin's egg) is better than that celadon (a badly executed celadon). In this sense it is true that quality is relative; but not in the sense in which the phrase is usually meant: there is nothing arbitrary about the goodness, only the initial conditions are. (E.g. shall we have a tea cup in robin's egg? If so, which one will do best?)

Thus it can be seen that there are true value judgments: they are true within a context. It's a little like the direction in which you point your car: north is the good direction if that is in fact where your destination lies. But if that is where your destination lies, no other direction will do.

Some new pottery on the table, too

2010-01-16T20:36:00.000-08:00

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I read somewhere recently (I think it was in Tanizaki) that men who are too fond of ladies when they are young, generally turn into antique collectors when they are old.

"Tea-sets and paintings take the place of sex", the quote continued, rather coarsely.

Well.

Here's a plate in what is called "robin-egg" glaze, not terribly good, but coloristically very pleasing and a pleasure to eat off. Bright yellow omelets especially make for a nice color contrast.

And here is a large shallow serving bowl, sang-de-boef ("bull's blood", a paste-like deep brownish red) on the outside, buckwheat ("soba") glaze on the inside. Look up close at the glaze: it looks like it contains tiny flecks of gold.

This one is great for stir-fried greens, especially the bitter dark-green sorts.

Plate three bucks, bowl ten. Aesthetically speaking, my life is worth billions. I bet Warren Buffet does not get half the pleasure out of his Cherry Coke (registered trademark).

But, reluctantly, I am prepared to concede that Hari-Hara II (he of 20,000 wives) probably had more fun in his late forties.

Two cheap "batik" prints, Indonesian, ca. 2009

2010-01-15T20:36:00.000-08:00

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Like the title says. Each less than 4 bucks. What a cheap way to beat the blahs.

Seven Against Thebes (13)

2010-01-11T22:28:00.000-08:00

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PARKINSON’S LAW

Thanks to poetry and works of art, the Mycenaean Age lives on today in our imaginations as the springtime of our civilization, our first blushing youth. Adventures of daring heroes, loves which bound mortals and gods, mysterious oracles, great feats of arms, dangerous sea expeditions towards unknown lands where great treasures lay guarded by terrible monsters – such is the legendary stuff of those few centuries.

The decipherment of the clay tablets has revealed a new face of that age. Of course, even before the decipherment it was understood that poetic imagination must surely have lent a shining glow to what must have been a more prosaic truth. Yet, as soon as the script has spoken, we learned that the age which serves as the setting of practically every Greek myth was first and foremost an age of tireless pedantic bureaucratic activity: a vast army of bureaucrats controlled a strictly centralized economy through the manufacture of tons of accounting records. It turns out to make no difference whether one writes on paper or on clay; nor does the bookkeeping system make any difference. Indeed, considering their primitive level of material development we must admit that when it came to their efforts to record all details of their economic reality, Mycenaeans could easily compete with every other economic management to date.

And this despite the fact that the archives which have come down to our times must surely be but a small fragment of the great bureaucratic output of the vast state apparatus of command and control of the time. Yet even this is enough to create a rather depressing impression. It’s natural, of course, that the palace had to keep records of various categories of soil and a careful population census. The constant recounting of the contents of the state treasury – objects made of gold, silver, bronze, ivory, weapons and chariots – is also understandable. What is striking, though, is the meticulous record of every smallest vessel of olive oil or wine, of every measure of wheat: from whom it was received, to whom it was issued, how it was spent or used – for the needs of the king or the staff, or for divine sacrifice. The office also wished to know what at any one moment every one of its subjects is doing – and where; what work he was performing and the amounts – in goods or labor – still due from him.

Thus, we have before us several thousand short warehouse notes: lists, receipts, and commands of the sort: issue; send; receive; owes; there is. These short notes allow us to form a certain image of the state and its society. It’s only fragmentary, of course, and somewhat nebulous but some things are quite clear: both the political structure and the class and property relations were complex and inflexible; they do not recall in the least any of those idyllic freedoms which are so easy to imagine when we think of the mythical age.

There were in Greece at the time several centers of political power; all may have recognized the primacy of Mycenae, at least formally. At the head of each state stood a ruler titled wanax. In later Greek the original meaning of this word was changed: wanax (or rather, as one then began to pronounce it, anax) was merely a powerful lord, an aristocrat. In the Mycenaean times, wanax meant the first person of the kingdom, its king; he performed also priestly functions; his position was nearly divine. This is perhaps why so many heroes of the myths are considered to be sons of gods and why the title “son of Zeus” is used by Homer for every prince. Below the wanax there stood his highest official, lawagetas, which could be rendered as “leading the people”, the equivalent of our wojewoda. It seems that his political power may have been no smaller than that of the wanax; and in some instances he may have controlled the reins of power. The subsidiary princes controlling smaller divisions of land were called basileus. It was this title which in later centuries, after the fall of the Mycenaean world, assumed the meaning of “ruler” or “king”.

Rulers had by their side a team of warriors; these were called epeta. In addition to them, to courtiers and court ladies, and to the lower serving classes (who may have been slaves) there were also, in each palace, large numbers of artisans: smiths, goldsmiths, potters, cartwrights, even makers of incense. Above them was placed a large contingent of scribes noting scrupulously how many cloaks were left in storage, how many oarsmen ought to be sent to Pleuron, who, and in what amount, submitted spices for food, which chariot needed a new wheel. We must say one thing in their defense: as Mycenaeans did not possess coins and all pay was paid in kind, careful evidence of property was in order.

We will yet have the chance to speak of the great treasures of Mycenaean palaces, and where they came from; for now let us say that the basis of the economy lay in the production of grain, vine and olives as well as in animal husbandry. But what of the property relations? Sources are not clear on this and scholars are divided. It seems that the lands belonging to the king – and perhaps to the princes, also – were called temenos. The same word was used for the property of the gods. Some pieces of land seem to have been held in common by the communities; others were held privately; both kinds were often leased out. Every piece of land was of course evidenced in the state archive and weighed with heavy dues. It could not be leased without state permission.

Mycenaean bureaucracy was not unique in the world at the time. We see similar systems of government in Egypt, Syria and Mesopotamia. But comparison with the record of the clay tablets found in the Syrian city of Ugarit is instructive. Ugarit archives date to the same period (fourteenth-thirteenth centuries B.C.). Yet, in the Ugarit record we also find religious texts and fragments of poems as well as trade and tax records. But the Mycenaean record is nothing but pedantic, all-encompassing, merciless account-keeping.

It is often said that the Mycenaean world collapsed in the twelfth century as a result of the invasion of wild barbarians from the north, the Doric tribes. But it is interesting to try to imagine how these arrivals from the north managed to capture the massive Mycenaean fortresses. It is suggested that their victory was due to their superior weapons: the Dorians are supposed to have had iron while the Mycenaeans only bronze. This is not certain: there is no evidence that the Dorians used much iron; and in any case, iron weapons do not confer much advantage over bronze weapons, certainly not the sort that firearms offer over bows and arrows. Finally, neither iron swords, nor indeed numerical superiority would have been of much use against the Cyclopean walls of Mycenaean fortresses, had only those fortresses been manned by a people determined to defend themselves. Even later, in classical times, large and well armed armies often proved useless when faced with even minor fortifications: there was simply not enough useful siege machinery.

Given all this, another theory seems attractive: that Mycenaeans gave in to Dorians because their subjects were not interested in defending a state whose sole purpose was to record – control – collect. The greatest enemy of Mycenaean fortresses were not iron-clad Dorians down below but their own bureaucrats scratching out little symbols on their clay tablets inside.

Various aspects of bureaucracy are subject to the famous laws of Parkinson (summed up in Parkinson's Law: The Pursuit of Progress). The first of these concerns the self-sufficiency and alienation of the bureaucracy; other laws, proposed in a later work, present in great detail the mechanism and consequences of the growing tax burden. The basic problem, says Parkinson, lies in the fact that the bureaucracy is unable to understand that there is an objective upper limit to tax obligations. It is difficult to discover this limit through economic measurement because it is not a function of the level of income or productivity, but of certain inalienable features of human psychology. In some situations, given a certain tax burden, it simply becomes inefficient for the populace to continue working productively; its main object becomes finding methods to dodge its tax obligations. In such instances, the bureaucracy becomes a kind of cancerous growth, which functions very well for its own needs, flourishes and multiplies but – kills the organism which supports it.

Ancient history knows many examples of sudden collapses of great states and whole civilizations as a result of this disease. Perhaps the fall of the Roman Empire, bureaucratized to its very core, is the most famous example. Roman citizens welcomed their barbarian invaders with relief. Mycenaean archives allow us to guess that the destruction of the world which they served came in a similar manner.

If so, it would the first instance of the functioning of the laws of Parkinson on our continent.

Seven Against Thebes (12)

2010-01-09T22:26:00.001-08:00

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TABLETS FROM PALACE OFFICES

The first clay tablets covered with symbols were discovered in Knossos, on Crete, in the year 1900. Identical symbols were found on clay amphorae discovered in 1921 in the ruins on Theban Cadmea. The number of tablets dug up in Knossos rose every year: we now have more than four thousand: it was in fact the palace archive. But Crete was only one of the centers of Mycenaean civilization. The Mycenaeans captured it only around the year 1450 B.C., arriving from the mainland. Yet, there were hardly any examples of the script on the mainland; the only proof that the script was used there were inscriptions on the amphorae discovered in Thebes and later in Tiryns and Mycenae; and, of course, the tablet from Alcmene’s tomb.

But this all changed in 1939. In that year great excavations were began in Pylos, on the western shores of Peloponnese. In the Mycenaean period it was one of the more important castles; it was the seat of the old wise man Nestor, before whose wisdom even king Agamemnon, the commander of all the Greek armies at Troy, bowed his head in respect. Like in Knossos, a palace archive was found in Pylos. In the first year alone over six hundred clay tablets came to light. After World War II, excavations were resumed in 1952; and every year since then dozens, sometimes hundreds, of new clay tablets have come to light. Yet, in Mycenae, though it gave its name to the entire period, and though it was perhaps the most powerful of all the castles of its era, barely a few score tablets have been found. Nor has an archive been discovered in Tiryns. Perhaps this is not an accident: perhaps the richer centers have been pillaged more mercilessly by invaders?

What do the tablets look like? They are made of ordinary clay, in various shapes; some are rectangular, like the pages of a notebook, and covered with even lines of symbols which march, as in our own script, from left to right; others, long and narrow, look more like palm leaves. Sometimes the tablets were dried in the sun, though they were never fired. Nor was it necessary: even those unable to read the script can quickly figure out that most of the symbols represent nothing but rows of numbers, weights and measures. The tablets served a practical purpose: they were intended for the keeping of accounts and the maintenance of lists. Once they have fulfilled their role, they were mixed with water, erased, and reused. It was the cheapest and most readily available writing material. The tablets which survive to our times owe their survival to the great fires which raged in the palaces when their civilization collapsed, when the Mycenaean principalities fell and their states went into ruin.

One is free to speculate, perhaps, that those works, which were considered important and valuable, may have been recorded on a more expensive but less durable material – such as papyrus imported from Egypt (since Mycenaean trade contacts with Egypt, and the whole Middle East, were very close); but while in its country of origin, papyrus was preserved for millennia by dry air and desert sand, in the humid climate of Greece it rotted away quickly. Some texts, held to be especially valuable, were perhaps inscribed on bronze tablets; a practice also followed later by Greeks and Romans. But bronze has always been valuable and sought after and, following the fall of the Mycenaean world the conquerors probably ruthlessly melted down all bronze objects which they could lay their hands on; only those buried in the ground survived – as was the case with the tablet later found in Alcmene’s grave. This history was to repeat itself: when the Graeco-Roman world collapsed, most ancient bronzes were destroyed (and religious fanaticism aided the destruction): tablets and statues went into smelting furnaces to be reborn in new shapes. Even marble was not safe: masterpieces of sculpture were used as ordinary building materials.

But back to the humble clay tablets, of which we have by now thousands. As their number grew, efforts to decipher them became ever more intense. All sorts of hypotheses were proposed in order to break their secret. Some even followed in the footsteps of the Spartans, turning to Egyptian hieroglyphs for help, or Babylonian cuneiform. But these odd ideas proved fruitless. Most scholars turned in other directions. Egyptian hieroglyphs did play a certain role: the story of the decipherment of such a difficult, complicated script over a hundred years earlier inspired hope: why should the Mycenaean signs, so much simpler, resist decipherment?

First, scholars arrived at a general outline of the history of ancient scripts on Crete and on the Greek mainland. By about the year 2000 B.C. there already existed on Crete a hieroglyphic script: its signs represented objects and concepts and we know it only from short inscriptions on seals. Later a new, simpler script appeared, called now Linear A. Then, in the fifteenth century B.C. Mycenaeans conquered Crete and took over the script, adapting it significantly in the process. This is the script known as Linear B; it spread quickly across the Mycenaean world and survived until the end of the civilization in the twelfth century B.C. while the use of the earlier scripts has always been limited to Crete itself. Following the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization, the knowledge of Linear B script was lost forever. For several centuries, Greeks managed without any sort of script at all and only sometime in the ninth century B.C. they borrowed Phoenician alphabet, which became the basis of the Greek, which in turn gave basis to Latin, and therefore ours.

Even before the script was deciphered, much could be surmised about its nature. First, it was possible to distinguish a large number of signs which represented persons, animals, plants, weapons and vessels. There are several score such signs; we have mentioned them already. Their precise meaning is sometimes not clear as they are often very sketchy, simplified, symbolic representations; but it is quite clear that they are ideograms, that is, signs representing objects or concepts. It was also clear that some signs were used to represent numbers. Their discoverer, Arthur Evans, the excavator of Knossos, established their values by 1935: horizontal lines represented units, vertical lines – tens, circles – hundreds, circles with four spokes sticking out – thousands. There also existed signs representing fractions, weights, and measures. But the most critical is a set of over eighty symbols which are found in ever shifting combinations, like the letters of our own alphabet. But they could not simply represent vowels and consonants, because to do that job a much smaller number of signs would have been sufficient. The idea suggested itself therefore that this may have been a syllabary script. It was remembered that still in historical times the Greeks of Cyprus used a strange script, possibly a distant descendant of the Mycenaean, whose every sign represented a syllable: either a vowel or a consonant plus a vowel, for example a, i, to, ro, ka.

But these were all general observations; none addressed the heart of the problem: in order to decipher Linear B we first had to know what language it was used to transcribe. Only then one could try to propose phonetic values for different signs and, through the process of trial and error, arrive at some sort of result. And thus the crucial question arose: who were the Mycenaeans? What was the language in which all these thousands of tablets from Knossos and Pylos and all the inscriptions on the amphorae in Thebes and Mycenae and Tiryns were written?

The Greeks themselves considered the men of the Heroic Age as their own ancestors (if more courageous and capable). But in modern times completely different views on this matter arose. There were those who claimed that the civilization was Illyrian; this people, now extinct, did indeed occupy much of the Balkan Peninsula in antiquity. And though most scholars thought that the Mycenaeans had been Greeks, there was no proof of it as long as the script remained silent.

We don’t have the space here to present the whole laborious process of decipherment of Linear B. And though we should mention Alice Kober, an American scholar, who, in 1950, was the first to observe that certain groups of signs of the script appeared with a frequency suggesting the existence of inflection of nouns in the Mycenaean language, we won’t repeat the whole story: someone else has already told it much better: the close collaborator of the discoverer of the truth, John Chadwick, in his highly readable The Decipherment of Linear B. The actual discoverer of the mystery was a young architect, Michael Ventris. Both were English, but we’re allowed to mention that the mother of Michael Ventris was Polish.

In 1953 there appeared an article jointly penned by the two men; it summarized the main findings of the many years of their labor; asserted that the Mycenaean language was Greek; and provided a glossary of the phonetic value of the signs of Linear B. But Ventris did not live to see the publication of the definitive monograph – Documents in Mycenaean Greek – published in 1956: he died in a car accident that year, aged only thirty four.

Using the phonetic key provided by Ventris it is possible to decipher the tablets, though with an important proviso: the script had not been originally designed to fit the phonetic structure of the Greek language; and in fact, since it was borrowed from another language, it lacks some signs necessary to record certain sounds indispensable in Greek, such as the consonant l. As a result, practically all words recorded in it were distorted; and thus we find in the tablets the name Castor recorded in the script as Ka-to-ro, the word leukos as re-u-ko, pater as pa-te, Pylos as py-ro, sperma as pe-ma, krater as ka-ra-te-ra. These distortions are not too difficult to decipher, but in some cases it is quite difficult to figure out what Greek word was meant.

The second obstacle to decipherment is equally important: in the Mycenaean language there existed many words, some native, some borrowed, which in time dropped out of use and were no longer known in classical times; some others changed their meaning entirely. This, of course, should not surprise: gradual change lies in the nature of language: after all, we find fifteenth and sixteenth century texts in our own language difficult to read without use of dictionary or reference to footnotes. But Mycenaeans have left us neither footnotes nor dictionaries: any word whose meaning is not apparent from the context, or through its links with some classical Greek term, is for us, today, simply dead; it is only an empty sound. This is why the text of many of the tablets remains mysterious or doubtful.

But broadly speaking, it is possible to say that the Mycenaean archives have opened up; that they have spoken.

Reading Marcel, at last

2010-01-08T18:03:00.000-08:00

Giotto, Charity, Capella degli Scrovegni, Padua.

I have waited until now to begin reading Proust.

For many reasons: first, the book is famously slow and dense, so I waited for the right, slow moment in my life to start it. This winter, I thought, the time had come: I had three months on a farm in the country, all to myself; and it was a content, contemplative time, a good moment to take up a slow book.

Also, I had delayed starting on Proust because I was a little hesitant about Old Marcel... So many highly regarded classics have turned out disappointing... Most prominently, authors like Jane Austen and James Joyce, writing beautifully about the middle class of their time, tired and bored me precisely because they wrote about the middle class of their time. (Stupid and dull, yes, why belabor it over 1800 pages?) Proust's reviewers suggested Marcel's work was also about people who would bore me... Certainly their life problems seemed, well, Austenjoycean, uninteresting in the extreme. In short, I was afraid that Proust might turn out to be just like Joyce: all fireworks of style and structure and -- stupid boredom within.

But now I know that the reviewers had not done Marcel justice. Indeed, that Marcel is not even the book they describe.

For one, not one of them has mentioned that what Marcel writes about are chiefly aesthetic impressions, of which a substantial part is about the sort of impressions that interest me most in my own life: encounters with art (much of it decorative), literature, and nature.

Take, as an illustration, track 8 of the audio-book (I am listening to Marcel rather than reading him with my own eyes, which leaves me time to stare at the sky and clouds).

The track starts with the discussion -- not so much learned as sensitive and therefore insightful in the sort of way one never gets from art historians and scholars -- of Giotto's Virtues. (I quote it at length at the end of this post to give you a taste of Marcel).

The track then goes on to cover the joys of reading books in a summertime garden (hear, hear!) which turns into a sort of review of an imagined author to whom Marcel confesses a special connection. ("Bergotte" appears to write his own thoughts for him, a bit like Parnicki -- a real author, I swear -- seems to write mine for me). It is, in fact, a description of the sort of literature Marcel wished someone had written for him to read -- instead of the sort of literature he was obliged to read (my own experience much of my reading time). It then launches into a speculation on why it is that characters in books feel closer, more immediate to us than the real people we meet in waking life, and -- wow -- better stuff on aesthetics of literature has not been written by any scholar I have read.

Then Proust launches onto a few childhood memories, sweet and beautifully rendered, but not important: they serve as a kind of delightful itermezzo -- a side dish of pickles to rest one's lips between the bouillon with pork dumplings and the roasted phaesant -- before he turns to the discussion of the different ways in which his aunts (provincial Jane Austens all of them) discussed art (with worshipful but firm judgments, voices of rote-educated certainty) and the way Swann -- a true connoisseur, from the capital, too -- did: full of hesitations, value words used with reservation, in quotation marks, so to speak, as if forever wanting to say both yes and no all at the same time.

Each one of these reflections -- on Giotto, on literature, on connoisseur perceptions of art -- is a mini essay on subjects which interest me vitally. And they are interesting, observant, and well written. And that is just track 8, of 24 of the first volume, Swann's Way. You see, the novel is perhaps nothing so much as a collection of essays on aesthetics, a fabulous necklace of fantastic vignettes strung together haphazardly: an aesthetic miscellany a la Sei Shonagon except richer because, since Shonagon's time, there has been another thousand years of art and literature to store up and savor.

Why has no reviewer I ever read ever mentioned the existence of these vignettes on art and literature within the body of the novel? Why have all repeatedly spoken about memory, falling asleep, middle class life, plots, emotional tangles, Proust's poetic prose, his homosexuality, and his famous encounter with Joyce but not this -- this, the stuff which makes the heart of the novel, its true purpose and point? Could it be that the reviewers, like Proust's dumb middle class aunts, have no such experiences themselves, entertain no such thoughts, and when they do encounter them, they consider them insignificant, merely decorative intermezzi between the main dishes of... plot and character description?

But no more of that. Time to go back and re-listen to track 8... I have heard it perhaps ten times already and each time it ends, I decide to hear it again, feeling that I have merely skimmed its intense richness. A part of me wants to memorize it, word for word.

Listening to Proust is a bit like watching the daybreak. When it is on, we are wholly engrossed in it, but when it is over, we feel that we have missed most of it; and that it has dealt with us underhandedly because it ended and it had no business ending.

____

A Taste of Marcel

Proust's essay on Giotto's Virtues, from the chapter entitled Combray. Enjoy.

"...These last recalled the cloaks in which Giotto shrouds some of the allegorical figures in his paintings, of which M. Swann had given me photographs. He it was who pointed out the resemblance, and when he inquired after the kitchen-maid he would say: "Well, how goes it with Giotto's Charity?" And indeed the poor girl, whose pregnancy had swelled and stoutened every part of her, even to her face, and the vertical, squared outlines of her cheeks, did distinctly suggest those virgins, so strong and mannish as to seem matrons rather, in whom the Virtues are personified in the Arena Chapel. And I can see now that those Virtues and Vices of Padua resembled her in another respect as well. For just as the figure of this girl had been enlarged by the additional symbol which she carried in her body, without appearing to understand what it meant, without any rendering in her facial expression of all its beauty and spiritual significance, but carried as if it were an ordinary and rather heavy burden, so it is without any apparent suspicion of what she is about that the powerfully built housewife who is portrayed in the Arena beneath the label 'Caritas,' and a reproduction of whose portrait hung upon the wall of my schoolroom at Combray, incarnates that virtue, for it seems impossible, that any thought of charity can ever have found expression in her vulgar and energetic face. By a fine stroke of the painter's invention she is tumbling all the treasures of the earth at her feet, but exactly as if she were treading grapes in a wine-press to extract their juice, or, still more, as if she had climbed on a heap of sacks to raise herself higher; and she is holding out her flaming heart to God, or shall we say 'handing' it to Him, exactly as a cook might hand up a corkscrew through the skylight of her underground kitchen to some one who had called down to ask her for it from the ground-level above. The 'Invidia,' again, should have had some look on her face of envy. But in this fresco, too, the symbol occupies so large a place and is represented with such realism; the serpent hissing between the lips of Envy is so huge, and so completely fills her wide-opened mouth that the muscles of her face are strained and contorted, like a child's who is filling a balloon with his breath, and that Envy, and we ourselves for that matter, when we look at her, since all her attention and ours are concentrated on the action of her lips, have no time, almost, to spare for envious thoughts.

Despite all the admiration that M. Swann might profess for these figures of Giotto, it was a long time before I could find any pleasure in seeing in our schoolroom (where the copies he had brought me were hung) that Charity devoid of charity, that Envy who looked like nothing so much as a plate in some medical book, illustrating the compression of the glottis or uvula by a tumour in the tongue, or by the introduction of the operator's instrument, a Justice whose greyish and meanly regular features were the very same as those which adorned the faces of certain good and pious and slightly withered ladies of Combray whom I used to see at mass, many of whom had long been enrolled in the reserve forces of Injustice. But in later years I understood that the arresting strangeness, the special beauty of these frescoes lay in the great part played in each of them by its symbols, while the fact that these were depicted, not as symbols (for the thought symbolised was nowhere expressed), but as real things, actually felt or materially handled, added something more precise and more literal to their meaning, something more concrete and more striking to the lesson they imparted. And even in the case of the poor kitchen-maid, was not our attention incessantly drawn to her belly by the load which filled it; and in the same way, again, are not the thoughts of men and women in the agony of death often turned towards the practical, painful, obscure, internal, intestinal aspect, towards that 'seamy side' of death which is, as it happens, the side that death actually presents to them and forces them to feel, a side which far more closely resembles a crushing burden, a difficulty in breathing, a destroying thirst, than the abstract idea to which we are accustomed to give the name of Death?

There must have been a strong element of reality in those Virtues and Vices of Padua, since they appeared to me to be as much alive as the pregnant servant-girl, while she herself appeared scarcely less allegorical than they. And, quite possibly, this lack (or seeming lack) of participation by a person's soul in the significant marks of its own special virtue has, apart from its aesthetic meaning, a reality which, if not strictly psychological, may at least be called physiognomical. Later on, when, in the course of my life, I have had occasion to meet with, in convents for instance, literally saintly examples of practical charity, they have generally had the brisk, decided, undisturbed, and slightly brutal air of a busy surgeon, the face in which one can discern no commiseration, no tenderness at the sight of suffering humanity, and no fear of hurting it, the face devoid of gentleness or sympathy, the sublime face of true goodness."

___

The whole text is to be found here. You can hear the delightful opening of the book, its first 2.5 minutes, with its two Homeric metaphors, here.

Seven Against Thebes (11)

2010-01-06T17:48:00.000-08:00

THE MYTH OF SOCRATES’ DEATH

These last words of Polymnis have caused Simmias to lose all sense of time and place. The faces upon which he gazed seemed to him to be the faces of others, and their voices seemed to reach him from far away, bringing to his ears words from twenty years earlier.

Yes, it happened twenty years ago. The small, damp room was also full of young men. And on the bed there also sat an old man. He rubbed his ankles because only a moment ago chains had been removed from them by the government commissioners who also informed him at the same time that his sentence would be carried out that day. Xanthippe was still there, by his side, crying and whining. Socrates, while continuing to rub his ankles, spoke to those gathered somewhat brusquely: “Take her home, will you?” Someone indeed got up and took her and the children away. Only when the men were left alone in the Athenian prison cell could they begin serious conversation.

Simmias thought to himself, full of admiration, what a faithful friend Plato was. In one of his earlier dialogues he had written that it was Simmias and Cebes, also a Theban, who’d offered a great sum of money to save Socrates from execution. But just a few months ago Plato sent Simmias his new dialogue, Phaedo, representing the Athenian wise man’s last moments. Simmias noted that in this dialogue Plato assigned him a very noble role: he has him, immediately upon Xanthippe’s departure, go right to the heart of the matter and ask why Socrates was so eager to depart from this world. This question then begins a great discussion of the final things: what is death; is there such a thing as the soul; what happens to us when it parts from the body? Only sporadically is this conversation interrupted by the shy requests from the guard: would Socrates please try not to get too excited, or his body will warm and he will have to take the bitter poison two or three times more. But the old man has but one response to all these pleas: he waves his hand and orders that a great deal of poison should be prepared in advance. And then, with great interest, he launches upon the philosophical discussion, his last. He defends the view that death is a liberation, a passing into a better world. And who is his main opponent in this great debate? Who is trying to deprive the dying man of hope? Why, Simmias and his friend Cebes.

Simmias admired the subtlety of this idea very greatly, because he understood perfectly Plato’s intentions. After all – this is mentioned right in the first pages of the dialogue – both Simmias and Cebes had once been students of Philolaus, and Philolaus had played a leading role in the Pythagorean brotherhood. The existence of the soul, and her transmigration from one body to another following death, were among the brotherhood’s central tenets, which set out to link up various trends of mysticism with advances in mathematics.

But Philolaus was not an orthodox Pythagorean; he claimed that the soul was a kind of harmony. But the harmony of what? Of the various parts of the body? If so, then the soul would cease to exist the moment the body’s various elements were destroyed. A well tuned lyre is the necessary condition for the existence of an invisible, disembodied, beautiful, divine harmony of music. But if one breaks the lyre, and rips or cuts her strings, then this harmony dies, even though she is not herself material. It would be pure nonsense to claim that the harmony still exists into eternity, all of its own powers, only because she is so beautiful. Our body is like the lyre: it is made of various parts, and they remain in a state of certain mutual tension, or tuning, just like the lyre’s strings. When this tension changes, or weakens, such as, for example, when we are ill, its effect is immediately reflected in the state of the soul; and, though she be so very beautiful, and so different from tangible matter, she is irretrievably lost when the body’s constituting parts come apart.

Simmias read an argument like this in Phaedo – and it was supposedly his own! He smiled when he first read it; and he smiled now as he remembered it because Plato was being wittily contrary: everything he wrote was of course god’s own truth, everything that is except one detail: for Philolaus had never claimed that the soul was a harmony of the various parts of the body. So what was it a harmony of? This Philolaus revealed only to the select few, and Plato knew this well; and now, by compelling Simmias to make the argument, supposedly the argument of Philolaus, while in fact not at all, he paid homage to their shared secret.

It was in any case an excellent thought to take as Socrates’ opponents these two young men who’d become famous in their day for their own mystical inclinations.

Socrates died in May 399 B.C. It was then that this great debate about the immortality of the soul took place. Their teacher’s death scattered his friends and students. Their lives took different paths and they developed different kinds of philosophical views because their teacher had not presented them with ready-made solutions, but inculcated in them that which is most important in one’s intellectual life: how to search, how to ask questions, how to doubt.

During the twenty years which have passed since his death, Simmias traveled a great deal, saw many lands, learned many things, met many people. He also wrote a great deal. As if competing with Plato, he, too, composed philosophical dialogues. There were twenty three of them, but they were all short, each took up only one slim volume. (And all are now lost). You will recall that Simmias returned home to Thebes at the time when the plot against the tyrants and the foreign garrison, was ripening. The old man hosted the plotters in his house; they awaited the arrival of the plotters from Athens, but he -- the arrival of a guest from far away. Could that Pythagorean, who had sacrificed at the tomb of Lysis, be that man? he now asked himself.

But for the moment, Simmias did not occupy himself with thoughts of the mysterious foreigner. The Plato’s dialogue which he had just remembered would not let him rest. The wise man thought:

That meeting in Socrates’ cell has become a myth. It was no longer important what really happened. All future generations will see Socrates’ last hours with the eyes of Plato. Even I myself begin to believe that I said then what I am made to say in Phaedo. But, in fact, it was me who was the true eye-witness of the event because I was there while Plato – was not because he was sick! It was me who cried when Socrates lifted to his lips and drained the cup of poison. Apollodorus wailed then out-loud, but Socrates strode back and forth across the cell (so as to distribute the poison through the body more quickly) and spoke with a note of criticism:

“What sort of men are you? Did I not order the woman sent away so that we would not have to see such scenes? Besides, does not the moment of death deserve the dignity of respectful silence? Come on, then, calm down! Control yourselves a little!”

"So writes Plato, who only knows the story second-hand. Yet, I, thought Simmias to himself, seem ready to swear that this is how things happened and that such were indeed Socrates’ last words! But then what is truth – and what fantasy and poetry? And, in any case, what is needed more: faithful recording of facts? Or their presentation in a manner which makes them most memorable and which thereby gives them their own immortal life? I would dearly wish for such a fate for these meetings at my own bedside! Well, I may not measure up to Socrates, I suppose; nor am I yet awaiting my death. Yet, the fate of a large city, and of thousands of its citizens is being decided here, so perhaps these conversations of ours will rise one day to the stature of legend?

"Are there perhaps distinct degrees by which reality transforms itself into poetry and rises to immortality? Here is Plato who presented the last hours of Socrates somewhat faithfully, and yet – more beautifully. Then, long after all of Socrates’ students have died, someone else will take up the subject again and give it yet more color and more drama. Eventually, dramatists and poets will sing it – how much of the original events will be left by then? Perhaps no more than our names? Perhaps a thousand years from now Socrates will be worshiped as a demigod? One thing seems certain: scholars will argue as to the sort of person Socrates really was; what his true teaching was; and what were our actual arguments on the last day of his life. And no one will ever know for sure.

"In just this manner we worship the heroes of the Heroic Age; and yet, I am certain, they were once ordinary men; their only virtue may have been agility, or strength of arm; they became heroes only because of the passage of time – and the work of poets. For let us see it the other way around: just as the figure and death of Socrates seem to be gaining by degrees a certain strange glow right in front of our eyes, so it must have happened in the past, many centuries ago, when legends began to accrue around the works of some mortal men, until, in time, both they and their times became what they are to most of us today: part of a great epoch of superhuman beings.

"Someone whispered in my ear a moment ago that seven of our friends are already waiting in the wilds of Kithaiorn. We know that they are men no different from many of us: brave, yes, but subject to all the same laws of nature, and their success or failure depend entirely on the vagaries of fate, on accident. But the participants of the first expedition of seven against Thebes seem in our imagination god-like. And all of this merely because we are separated from them by the gulf of time, dozens and dozens of generations, of which each reverently received the stories from the one before, added a little more color to them, and passed them on to the one after. After all, that first expedition against Thebes predated even that against Troy! How many heroes of the Trojan War are praised as sons of the heroes of that earlier war!"

Simmias was right. The first expedition of seven against Thebes is mentioned several times in the Illiad as a great and important war in which the most important princes of their time participated. If one accepts that Troy was destroyed somewhat before the year 1200 B.C., then the first expedition would have had to take place around the year 1300 B.C. or even earlier, since it often happens in myths that distant events are pushed close together. And this is understandable: all those years in which nothing memorable happened seem to dissolve into thin air.

Simmias was also right in assuming that those distant times were not different from his: the same sort of ordinary men, ordinary concerns, ordinary works. Our decipherment of Linear B script showed this very plainly.

Commentary

In the 18th century the French have painted a great number of paintings representing Socrates' death. They are all uniformly awful, including the famous Davide: pompous, rhetorical, and stiff. Too much reverence for a subject can be very bad for the art.

Seven Against Thebes (10)

2010-01-04T17:32:00.000-08:00

BOOK TWO:
Auguries and Fate

The Theban poet Pindar, dignified and enigmatic, begins his Sixth Nemean Ode:

There is but one, one tribe of gods and men! Both we and they take our breath from the same mother. But the relative powers of our two branches of our single tribe are very different and they divide us. One is as nothing, while the other owns the bronze house of heaven, which lasts forever. Though on occasion we approach the immortals by the dint of great thought or strength of body, we never know to what end our fate drives us – drives us day and night.¹

ON FORETELLING THE FUTURE
FROM DREAMS AND SNEEZINGS

Suddenly, the conversation at the house of Simmias (the one on the topic of Alcmene’s tomb) was interrupted by the a new arrival. It was the father of Caphisias and Epaminondas. An older man already, his name was Polymnis. He greeted the host and sat down next to him, on the bed, because the room was already very crowded. Then he turned to his son and their companions:

“I bring a request from Epaminondas; it is meant for you, Caphisias, but also all you present here. He wishes to ask you, that, unless you have some other urgent business, you may wait for him here because he wishes to introduce to you a certain foreigner. The foreigner is a worthy man and has arrived here with a noble mission. He was sent here by Italian Pythagoreans to offer sacrifices at the tomb of Lysis. He says that his journey here was occasioned by dreams and visions reported by many members of the confraternity. He has brought with him a considerable quantity of gold and he wishes to pay Epaminondas for all the costs which he incurred while supporting Lysis in his old age. But we neither wish nor ask to be aided in our poverty.”

Simmias’ face lit up and he cried:

“You speak of a worthy man and one who deservedly carries the name of a philosopher! But why did he not come to us directly himself?”

Polymnis explained:

“It seems that he spent the night at the tomb of Lysis. Then Epaminondas took him to bathe at the stream of Ismenos. Only now are they coming here, to your house. He’d spent the night by the tomb because he hopes to take the dead man’s remains with him to Italy and he wanted to see whether some deity might not appear to him and order him otherwise.”

Barely did Polymnis finish, when Galaxidorus, seated in the back of the room, piped up. He spoke with great passion:

“By Heracles! How difficult it is to find a man free from stupidity and superstition! Some fall prey to these diseases as a result of inexperience or weakness; while others wish to appear to be extraordinary men, favored by gods. This is why they wrap their lives in a nimbus of divinity, a cloud of mystery, and put dreams, visions, and other such nonsense above rational thought! One could, I suppose, forgive politicians when they do this sort of thing, appealing to auguries or oracles or omens, because they deal with the stupid, vulgar crowd; so they use superstition as a rein, to lead the masses where they please. But it is not worthy of philosophers to behave in this manner; why, it is against their very calling! After all, what is the promise of philosophy? That she will teach us that which is good and that which is useful; and that she will teach them rationally. But now, here, it would seem, philosophy, by turning to omens and dreams, looks to gods as the origin of all action and thereby disrespects reason. Here, she no longer values a well made logical argument, which is supposed to be her distinguishing characteristic, but interprets soothsayings and nightmares. Well, anyone at all can claim to be an expert in this sort of baloney, and more expert than a truly wise person, too. But if your Socrates had valued philosophical education, it was because he thought that simplicity and common sense were the noblest and the closest to the truth.”

Theocritus (a soothsayer, after all) interrupted him excitedly:

“How comes it, Galaxidorus? Have you, too, been convinced by Meletus that Socrates despised belief in gods? You know, perhaps, that this is precisely what he was accused of! Twenty years have passed since the court case of Socrates, and his lamentable death, but, surely, this business is still well remembered?”

Galaxidorus went on the defensive:

“Well, of course Socrates did not disregard gods altogether. The problem lay elsewhere: Pythagoras and his students have filled philosophy with visions, myths, and superstitions; then Empedocles blew it up full of some sort of Bacchic hysteria. It took Socrates to teach philosophy again how to look rationally at reality and to search for truth through logical analysis.”

“Very well”, Theocritus agreed, “but in such case, my dear, what do we make of the daemon, which Socrates considered his protective spirit? Is it a lie, then? One hears a lot about Pythagoras’s skill at soothsaying; but to me nothing seems quite so mysterious as the daemon of Socrates. Homer gives to Odysseus the goddess Athena as his companion in all his travels and adventures; in this same manner Divinity equipped Socrates, from his earliest youth, with the ability to foresee the future. It was his unfailing guide in life; it seemed to walk ahead of him and light the way in all difficult matters, which were beyond ordinary mind’s ability to conceive. But ask his companions, like Simmias here, about it and they will tell you more and better. I can only aver what has happened in my own presence. It happened in Athens, when I was visiting the soothsayer Euthyphron. One day – you, Simmias will remember this – Socrates was walking uphill, towards the house of Andocides, all along the way asking questions and jokingly perplexing Euthyphron. Then, suddenly, he stopped and became lost in thought. Then, he turned round and walked straight down the Trunkmakers’ Street and to those who’d gone ahead of him he cried: Follow me, I had a divine omen! Most followed him, myself included, since I always kept close to Euthyphron. But a few young men went on, ignoring Socrates’ warning, as if wanting to test the daemon’s warning. (The flautist Charillus was among them). When they arrived in the Graver’s Row, near the courthouse, their path was blocked by a huge flock of filthy pigs. There was no way to go on, and the pigs pushed on like mad. And it all ended with some of the men being knocked over by the pigs and others splattered by dirt. Charillus arrived home – we roomed together – covered in filth head to toe. Since then we always laughed whenever someone mentioned Socrates’ daemon, but we were quite impressed that the deity never left him and that she tried to warn him even in such trivial matters.”

Polymnis, the father of Caphisias, broke in:

“As for me, Galaxidorus, I have heard somewhere that the famous daemon of Socrates was no more than a sneeze, whether his or someone else’s. Now, if someone sneezed on his right, no matter whether it was forward or behind, he considered it a good omen and proceeded with whatever it was that he had intended. But a sneeze on the left would stop him from carrying out his original intention. His own sneeze, whenever he was about to commence some action, always encouraged him, but stopped him if he was already in its middle, since he considered it a warning... But... this seems odd to me. Because, if he really let himself be guided by sneezing, then why did he tell his friends that it was some sort of protective spirit which ordered him to do this or not to do that? This sort of boasting would have been alright with some young show-off, but not a worthy man who’d risen above the common rank thanks to his simplicity and honesty. It seems really odd that he should let himself be guided by some sort of a voice overheard accidentally or by someone’s sneezing. After all, Socrates showed great determination and energy because he based his actions on firm principles. For example, he remained in utter poverty his entire life out of principle – since so many would gladly have helped him out with greatest readiness. And he did not abandon his love of wisdom though so many tried to prevent or dissuade him. He did not yield to the pleas of his friends, who had so eagerly and handily prepared his escape. Truly, I do not believe that a man guided by mysterious voices and sneezing would have been capable of such principled life!”

¹ Did you know? (1) Pindar's odes were intended to be performed by a choir and danced. (This is the origin of the term "foot" for a measure of poetry). Pindar is said to have composed both the music and the choreography as well as directed the performances. (2) Pindar's poetry earned him divine fame: nine hundred years after his death, the priest of Apollo at Delphi still intoned every night as he closed the temple doors: Let Pindar the poet go unto the supper of the gods.

Commentary

The magical procedures (sleeping by the tomb in expectation of a prophetic dream, bathing in a sacred stream, etc.) and the reasoning (what is the difference between a daemon and a sneezing?) are readily familiar to anyone who has spent any time in India. The classical Greek milieu reminds me of no other place on earth more.

Betrayed by our paladins, or, why there is (nearly) nothing worth reading these days

2010-01-02T01:57:00.000-08:00

Here is a fragment taken from an introduction to Joseph Roth's Radetzky March penned (maybe) by Nadine Gordimer, a South African writer, political activist and -- get this -- Nobel laureate:

Roth's petite phrase in the single great work into which all this transforms is not a Strauss waltz but the elder Strauss's Radetzky March, in honor of the Austrian field marshal who was victorious against Sardinia. Its tempo beats from the tavern through Vienna and all the villages and cities of Franz Joseph's empire, to Berlin in those novels where the other imperial eagle has only one head. For Roth's is the frontier of history. It is not recreated from accounts of the past, as War and Peace was, but recounted contemporaneously by one who lived there, in every sense, himself. This is not an impudent literary value judgment; it is, again, the work that provides a reading of the author's life. Here was a writer obsessed with and possessed by his own time. From within it he could hear the drum rolls of the past resounding to the future.

Pretty impressive, huh? Nadine can keep this going, too: this goobledy-gook is sustained for full thirteen pages plus footnotes.

What does it mean? Not much: as far as I can figure it out, the editor should probably have suggested to replace the above with something like:

Throughout Roth's work, the motif of the Radetzky March repeats; it must be important, I guess.

Now, such resolute editing would have cut the introduction's thirteen pages to less than one, but what remained would still not have been worth saying -- or writing, or reading. Certainly not worth paying for: really, the publisher's online division should sell the book with Gordimer's introduction as an optional add-on. ("Would you like Nadine Gordimer's introduction to the book for an additional $1.59?" Check: "No.")

How does a person like Gordimer come to write this sort of trash? The genesis of the paper is easy enough to unravel, if you know how publishing works:

1. The publisher thought Roth was a long shot and decided to invest a little money in a credibility-building introduction by Someone Famous.

2. An agent-friend happened to know that Nadine was a bit short of cash (the Nobel prize's 1.3 million bucks being such a small sum, poor us) and suggested to the publisher that a Nobel Laureate would do nicely as an intro -- not for the sales of Roth, certainly- Roth is dead in the water anyway -- but for the publisher's profile, at least. ("Think, you'd be a Nobelist's publisher!")

3. Nadine, seeing the publisher's low standing on the industry's totem-pole (who the heck is Overlook Press? Nice logo, though), demanded a far stiffer fee than either the publisher or the agent had reckoned with.

4. As she figured, they gasped and -- accepted (in the, oh, so predictable hope of further "cooperation" between the Illustrious Laureate and the humble publisher thus honored by her).

5. But, having stiffed them for the fee, the Laureate ended up be feeling a little bad, and turned in a few extra pages of copy to mollify them -- and avoid any rows. She didn't exactly feel obliged to do any real work, though: a sufficient quantity of words alone would suffice, she felt. (Has not Gordimer's favorite philosopher said that quantity eventually passes into quality?)

So you see how the essay came about -- in the form in which it did.

Now, for the other question: how about authorship? Did Nadine really write those pages herself? Or did she, Dali-like, subcontract the introduction to her driver (or was it her masseur)?¹

The question is not outrageous: the introduction makes it plain that Nadine is not above a spot of misrepresentation: she has most certainly not read any of those Roth books she claims therein she has.

This truly is a shameful thing. It is a shame, of course, if Nadine thinks her essay is good (she can't possibly, but if she does, then she obviously does not deserve her literary awards); but it is a double shame if she does not because that means that she is prepared to produce dreck and put her name to it; I say a double shame because by doing so she shames old Alfred N. After all, the Nobel Prize's whole point was to make it unnecessary for the elect to do such blameworthy hack work.

And yet, here is a Nobel Prize Laureate, vandalizing literature, offending us with substandard production. This introduction is somewhat as if, if walking into Versailles ca. 1750, a grand duke, or a peer of the realm, let out a loud fart.

Nadine, Nadine, does not Noblesse oblige anymore?

So, dear reader, if you are looking for the causes of our cultural decline, look no further. Our cultural Paladins have betrayed our cause. Our Nobelists and Manbookers and Pulitzers are selling it down the river for a fee. Blase, they pollute our books and journals with trash, feed us substitute food -- cornflakes made out of recycled cardboard and polyurethane packing -- saying to us haughtily: "I wrote it, eat it", and do not even feel ashamed by their own betrayal.

And we do not protest?

¹ It is widely suspected in the art world that many of Dali's lithographies were made, with his full knowledge, by his secretary but then signed by him. The medieval masters often used their students to fill in the less important bits of their works, of course, but -- note -- they did not sign their paintings.

An auspicious conjunction

2010-01-01T14:56:00.000-08:00

Last night I went to a party next door. Well, "next door" is about 700 meters, but the full moon made the night as bright as broad daylight and I decided to go there on foot.

I left before the countdown -- the party was like all the parties always are -- but coming back home, among the rice fields and banana groves (the shaggy leaves were edged silver by the moon), along the dirt country road (which gleamed before me as white as snow) was very beautiful: occasionally, there were by the roadside broad leafless trees -- it is the dry season here and many trees are naked -- and then the road was covered with the spiderweb of their shadow in the moonlight.

I recalled a letter a Chinese scholar¹ wrote in the eleventh century describing just such a moment: walking in the spider-web shadow of naked trees under the beaming moonlight; and here was I, a thousand years on, experiencing the same thing. The moment felt as magical to me last night as it had to him full ten centuries back.

The natives have a beautiful custom of celebrating holidays by sending into the sky flying lamps -- small hot-air balloons: a jar of cloth turned topsy-turvy with an glowing oil lamp attached underneath; and every way I looked last night there were a dozen such lamps, glowing orange in the sky, climbing up and turning left, east, with the prevailing wind: new constellations in the sky, brighter than the old stars, and constantly shifting: the Ink Brush, the Bolt of Cloth (which then morphed to become the Suckling Waterbuffalo), the Three Working Girls Each With Drink In Hand, the Very Ancient Bronze Vessel.

Su Shih would surely have said it was a very auspicious way to ring in the new year.

¹ Su Shih (1037-1101 A.D.), scholar, poet, essayist, lover, administrator, politician, political dissident, exile, and -- a terrible calligrapher. "Snakes hanging from trees", said Mifu; "tadpole traces", said Huang Tingjian.

Seven Against Thebes (9)

2009-12-30T16:28:00.000-08:00

MYCENAE AND CADMEA

The Heroic Age ended abruptly, as we already noted, in the twelfth century B.C. Ancient scholars calculated this on the basis of the genealogies of ancient clans, and modern scholars arrive at a similar date, though they use different data and methods to make their calculations. Both ancient and modern scholars agree also that the cause of the fall of that age was not a natural cataclysm, but an invasion of tribes which in the twelfth century moved from the north of Greece all the way to the extreme south of the Peloponnesus, from where they even reached the island of Crete; and all along the way they destroyed all centers of civilization. These were Doric tribes. In Greek mythology, as we already mentioned, the invasion is known as the Return of the Heraclids, since Doric rulers claimed descent from Heracles. (This is why the king of Doric Spartans had the ashes of Alcmene, mother of Heracles, moved to his country).

But here the question which we had asked already returns: Greeks believed firmly that a great Heroic Age once took place; but what basis do we have to claim that it was the twelfth century which saw its destruction?

We owe an answer to this question to just one man: Heinrich Schliemann. In love with ancient Greek myths, especially those which had been immortalized by Homer, he devoted his life to proving that they weren’t a fantasy, but a reflection of actual facts. Beginning in 1870, over the course of thirty years, Schliemann conducted great excavations in places famed by great myths. He showed that in all those places there had once existed great palaces, full of treasures and objects of art, populated by rich and powerful men; the lifestyle of those times was totally different from that of the classical Greeks; and it all came abruptly to an end in the twelfth century.

The largest and most impressive palace of those times was in Mycenae. It is located in Peloponnesus, in a country known as Argolis. The rulers of Mycenae, the myths tell us, ruled over many surrounding countries; this is why we now call the Heroic Age "the Mycenaean Period". But besides Mycenae, many other centers flourished at the time; many are mentioned later in this book, but for now three must be named: Tiryns, in Argolis, clearly visible from Mycenae; then Pylos, on the Western coast of Peloponnesus; and Knossos, on Crete. True, magnificent palaces had been built in Knossos in earlier times, also, but it remained an important center in the Mycenaean period as well. Schliemann’s excavations – and those of his successors, since work has continued down to present time – allow us to propose the following rule: every locality in Greece which plays a role in mythology also preserves remains of a flourishing cultural center from the Mycenaean period.

The arriving Dorians destroyed Mycenaeans. All castles fell – even though the walls of many had been built of rocks so large that the succeeding generations refused to believe that they had been built by the hand of man; stories were told that they were built by Cyclops instead. The Mycenaean states collapsed. All major tombs were plundered by the raiders. All life in Greece returned to primitive, barbarian norms. No one built large palaces or castles anymore. The tradition of mural painting was broken off. The art of making fine gold, silver and bronze jewelry was lost. Several centuries of darkness had to pass before there arose the first stirrings of a new high culture, which in time we have come to call The Classical.

But the Dorians have not destroyed everything. Some remains of the Mycenaean glory have survived, both on the surface and underground; and the simple folk who’d lived in the simple huts at the feet of the grand castles, too, has survived. It is these people who have preserved from generation to generation the memory of the notable events of the ruling Mycenaean houses, which had fought each other for land, power and women. And the songs which had once been sung in the halls of the kings also proved more durable than stone or bronze; passed from mouth to mouth, they traveled down the centuries. Heroes grew to match gods, and fragments of Mycenaean history, wrapped in myth and poetry, became immortal, like pre-historical petrified plants.

In Thebes also the memory of the past remained alive – both thanks to legends and the castle’s remains. Walking towards the house of Simmias, the plotters passed the foot of the Cadmean hill. At that time there stood upon Cadmea many large new buildings, but people still pointed out fragments of some ancient walls and associated them with stories of the great events of the Heroic Age. Nowadays, it’s the other way around. Thebes is only a small town and its houses are packed closely on the entire top of the Cadmean hill. It’s difficult to excavate here: one would have to knock down half the town in order to get to the layers beneath. Only from time to time, when some digging work must be done, can one excavate a bit of the ancient ruins which run deep below the present street level.

Despite these difficulties, the Greek archeologist Antonios Keramopoulos, by digging whenever an opportunity presented itself, managed to excavate many-thousand-year old remains in the center of the city. Gradually, between 1906 and 1921 he uncovered a network of rooms, corridors and courtyards which had once been part of a large palace complex. The biggest of these rooms may have been a kind of throne room, while others, smaller, may have served as the apartments of the court ladies, as many small feminine decorations found throughout seem to suggest. There even remained small fragments of wall painting; it had portrayed women in long dresses advancing in a ceremonial procession, perhaps to offer a sacrifice to a deity. Similar paintings – in content and technique – had been found in the ruins of Mycenae and Tiryns. This alone suggests that the palace on Cadmea dates to the same period and that it is therefore Mycenaean. It’s also clear that the palace had been destroyed by a violent fire: there is a very thick layer of ashes on the palace floors.

At first, it was difficult to determine how large an area the complex had occupied. Keramoupulos himself suspected that all other traces of the palace had been wiped out from other sections of the hill by the subsequent construction, but, in 1937, another Greek archeologist, Spiridon Marinatos, determined on the basis of a series of small findings that the Mycenaean palace had once occupied the whole hilltop and even descended down its slope in a series of terraces. It was, in other words, in its time an impressive complex, one of the largest in the Greece of Heroic Age. Who built it? Who ruled here? Was the terrible fire the work of the same Dorians who destroyed other Mycenaean palaces of the time?

In connection with the last question, some doubts quickly arose. Certain evidence seemed to suggest that the fire predated the destruction of the Mycenaean world by some two hundred years. It seems to follow that, unless the great fire was an accident, then Cadmea was destroyed in one of the wars between Mycenaean princes. Did the ancient myths preserve tales of a war against Thebes? Yes: the myths tell the stories of two famous expeditions of seven princes against Thebes; of these, the second culminated in a capture of Cadmea. But we also find in the myths a story that the palace on Cadmea was once destroyed by the lightning of Zeus. In any case, both archeological data and the ancient myths told us that a great catastrophe touched Thebes at the peak of the Mycenaean age.

In 1921, the last year of his excavations, Keramopulos found, in one of the corridors, great amphorae, which had once been used to preserve oil and wine. Pottery is the most common object found in archeological excavations, but these amphorae became a cause of great excitement: over twenty of them featured inscriptions in some kind of a script. It was a strange script, quite unlike anything ever seen in later Greece, and no one was able to decipher it. But it was soon recalled that as early as 1900 the English archeologist Evans had found on Crete, in the palace of Knossos, hundreds of clay tablets covered with short inscriptions; their letters looked just like the letters now found in Thebes!

Since remains of this script had been found in two distant centers of the same civilization, the suspicion arose that the script was shared by all Mycenaeans; and since it was the Heroic Age, if we could only decipher the script would we not be able to learn the truth about the world in which the great myths had been born? Not everyone agreed. Some claimed that the script was really only known on Crete and that the Mycenaeans of the mainland did not know it at all; and the amphorae prove nothing because they had been brought to Thebes from Crete.

Was it possible to reject this claim? Yes, by quoting the story of the tablet from Alcmene’s tomb. The grave certainly dated to Mycenaean times and the bronze tablet was covered with a script which no one in Classical Greece could read; its letters appeared similar to Egyptian, which is why it was then dispatched for decipherment to Memphis. Now, looking at the clay tablets from Knossos, and the inscriptions on the amphorae of Thebes, it was easy to see how an unpracticed eye could mistake some of the letters for Egyptian hieroglyphs; after all some of the signs are really no more than drawings of objects: it is easy to make out heads of horses, pots of various shapes, an ear of wheat, the silhouette of a man, another of a woman, the horns of a goat, an arrow, a sword, a spear, a tripod, a chariot, a wheel – and many others. Of course, even their similarity to their Egyptian counterparts is only superficial; and most letters from Knossos and Thebes are either lines or combinations of lines; there are about eighty of them, and it is thanks to them that the script is called, somewhat prosaically, “linear B”. (The name “linear B” comes from the fact that on Crete there had once existed a similar script, older and more primitive; it is called “linear A”).

At any rate, it is easy to understand and forgive the Spartans, who, at a loss, turned for help to Egypt. But for us the tablet from Alcmene’s tomb is proof – an indirect proof, of course – that linear B was used during the Mycenaean period not only on Crete, but also on the mainland. Haliartus, where the supposed tomb of Alcmene had been located, was in the Mycenaean period a rich settlement, just like several other localities on the plane surrounding Lake Copais. It is not surprising that the memory of the tomb survived so many centuries following the fall of the Mycenaean world. In the whole of Greece ancient Mycenaean cults survived and many Mycenaean tombs were thought to be the burial places of famous heroes.

Several score years have passed since 1921, when Keramopulos discovered in Cadmea the famous amphorae with mysterious inscriptions. Today no one doubts that Mycenaeans had their own script because many fragments of it have since been discovered on the Greek mainland. What is more, we can now read linear B. The heroes have spoken. Are the texts of these ancient inscriptions in any way similar to what the Egyptian priest Chonouphis read in the tablet from Alcmene’s tomb?

Seven Against Thebes (8)

2009-12-28T16:27:00.000-08:00

ATLANTIS

Simmias claimed to have gone to Egypt with Plato. Was this true, or did Simmias only say so in order to add bronze to his studies by claiming to have shared them with a very famous man? There are scholars who claim that Plato in fact never went to Egypt, even though the ancients took this for a fact. But it is certain that Plato was under a great impression of the great antiquity and durability of the Egyptian civilization; he often and openly expressed this humble admiration for it. But he did not believe that the most ancient civilization, the mother of them all, had its origin on the banks of the Nile. His views in this matter were far more interesting. He believed that great civilizations had arisen in other lands also, but that they then collapsed and disappeared without a trace as a result of natural disasters. Then, in their place, new civilizations arose, but without any connection to, or even awareness of what had gone before. According to him the greatness of the Egyptian civilization lay in its durability: in the fact that she has outlasted the rises and falls of all the others, herself remaining unchanged and untouched, like a rock in the middle of stormy sea.

Plato expressed this view, as was his habit, not directly, but through a dialogue which, he claimed, the Athenian Solon had had in the sixth century B.C. with a certain Egyptian priest. During his travels, Solon arrived at an Egyptian city in the Nile delta; it was called Sais and it was the site of worship of the goddess Neith. Local priests claimed that this goddess was known to the Greeks under the name of Athena; both were virgin goddesses, warlike, and represented with weapons in their hands: Athena had a helmet, a shield, and a spear while Neith held a spear and arrows. It’s pointless to argue whether these similarities were accidental: all that matters is that Athens had for centuries maintained close commercial relations with Sais; and for this reason alone, if none other, local priests gladly received Athenian guests and claimed common religious affiliation.

Solon took great interest in the antiquities of Egypt. He held many conversations with the priests, asking them about the origins of mankind; and he narrated to them ancient Greek myths. In the course of telling one, he mentioned that there had once been a great flood and that only two people survived it: Deucalion and Pyrrha; that all men alive today descend from those two; and that counting back the generations one could estimate when that great natural disaster took place. But these stories only elicited patronizing smiles from the Egyptian priests and someone said:

“Oh, Solon, Solon! You Greeks are such kids! There are no old men among you!”

Surprised, the Athenian asked:

“How must I understand your words?”

“You all have young souls because your souls do not contain any ancient views, grown out of a prehistorical tradition; nor do they contain any true knowledge hoary with great age. And why is this? Destruction has descended upon mankind many times before, and in many different ways. The greatest catastrophes came of water and fire, but there were thousands of other causes, too, less permanent in nature. Do you not tell the story of Phaeton, son of Helios, how he once drove his father’s chariot, but, unable to hold it in its proper path, set the whole earth on fire and was himself killed by Zeus’s lighting? So is the story told, as a myth, but the myth contains a kernel of truth, for only a small change in the trajectories of heavenly bodies is needed for fire to singe the surface of the earth; and such small changes of trajectories do happen, though eons apart. At such times, the residents of mountains and plateaus are more at risk than those who sit by the rivers and the sea. And for us, the Nile is then our salvation, as it is in other cases, too. But when gods purify the earth by flooding it with sea waters, then mountain shepherds have a chance to survive, while people in your coastal cities are carried off by rising rivers into the sea. In our own land, divine water never descends from heaven, but rises gradually and calmly from below; and this gives us time to protect ourselves. This is why in our land ancient institutions are preserved and all sorts of things of greatest antiquity.

“And thus whatever happens – with you, or with us, or with some other land known to us – whatever happens that is beautiful, or important, or lofty on some other account – all of that is recorded and preserved in our temples. As for your history, barely has one had the time to write it down when suddenly a flood descends from heavens, or some other natural disaster, like an ever-recurring disease – and what does it leave behind? Yes, at all times some small group of men survives, but these are invariably the least educated ones, unable to read. And so, your civilization is forever reborn; and you are like youth; you know nothing about the past of others, or even your own, because, well, you do not have it. All those myths of yours, Solon, and all your genealogies, well, they aren’t really much different from children’s fairy-tales.”

Then the priest began to tell Solon that that great flood, from which only Deucalion and Pyrrha escaped, was only the latest one and that before it waters have often flooded the earth. He then said that some ten thousand years ago the great goddess Athena-Neith created a great state with an ideal constitution and located it precisely where Solon called his home; only a thousand years later was the Egyptian state conceived by the will of the same goddess and based on the same political principles. That ancient Athenian state bravely resisted a great power which then, thousands of years ago, advanced upon Europe and Asia from the West, from the Atlantic. For there existed at that time, in the Atlantic, a great island, populated by a numerous and rich people. The ancient Athenians have pushed back their attacks and saved the peoples of the Mediterranean from Atlantid slavery. Later, a great natural disaster came, earthquakes and flooding. In the course of just one day and one night, the sea swallowed up Atlantis and the great armies of ancient Athenians disappeared in the bowels of the earth. A new epoch began and the memory of what happened had only survived in Egypt.

That story, which Solon was supposed to have heard from an Egyptian priest, served Plato as an introduction to a treatise on the creation of the universe; it was entitled Timaeus. Later, Plato returned to the subject once more, in his treatise Critias, in which he presented his ideas regarding the constitution of the ideal state using the examples of Atlantis and Athens before the flood.

All of this was of course only a poetic setting for a learned treatise. Yet, the myth of Atlantis, was not entirely free invention: it sprang up on the basis of certain facts. Greek sailors returning from the West reported with amazement the riches of the Atlantic provinces. Certain details of the story of Atlantis allow us to guess that news of the city of Tartessos, in southern Spain, had reached Greece; the city flourished between the years 1100 and 500 B.C. and then died out, perhaps due to a natural disaster; or perhaps some political catastrophe. Already Plato’s predecessors had magnified the story of Tartessos and had pushed it back in time.

Much has been written on this matter, much more perhaps than it deserves. But there is something in Plato’s myth of Atlantis which does deserve our attention: it reveals a very specific notion of human history, perhaps common to all Greeks of the time. We moderns tend to see history as a kind of straight line which constantly rises, every higher and steeper – despite temporary set backs – from the period of animal primitivism to ever fuller human command over the universe. But according to Plato, history should be seen as an oscillating wave, now rising, now falling in accordance with a certain ancient rhythm of changes in the universe: there have once been periods of greater civilization; times of downfall will certainly come; and then, in their wake, there will be new rebirths.

What kind of experiences could have given rise to this kind of view of history? To understand it, we must remember that one of the basic elements of all Greek education was ancient mythology, which recounted the story of the great Heroic Age. We already spoke about this: the present could not rise to the glory of that time: the people of that age had been more courageous, buildings, judging by their ruins, had been more impressive, and gods interacted with men nearly like equals. But that world collapsed, leaving no written record but only myths passed by word of mouth. Whole generations had lived in the wake of the fall like utter barbarians. The question naturally arose: perhaps before the Heroic Age there had once been another glorious period which had been ended by natural disasters of its own, whose only echoes are stories of floods and fires?

Kangxi, again

2009-12-27T15:54:00.000-08:00

On the Ordos, where there were many hares

Hunting on the Ordos, the Hares were many

Open country, flat sand,
Sky beyond the river.
Over a thousand hares daily
Trapped in the hunters' ring.

Checking the borders,
I'm going to stretch my limbs;
And keep on shooting the curved bow,
Now with my left hand, now with my right.

Kangxi's literary output isn't Nobel Prize material, but let us give the man a break: even the Nobel Prize material is often not Nobel Prize material. Unlike much Nobel Prize material, though, Kangxi's writing is, at least, always worth reading.

Spence's Emperor of China: Self Portrait of Kang-hsi is as close to an autobiography of any Chinese emperor as we will ever get. Culled from his various edicts, rescripts, and letters, all of which Kangxi wrote personally, and in which he famously, and unusually for a Chinese ruler, maintained a very personal note, the various fragments have been assembled here into chapters with titles like Traveling, Ruling, and Aging, and Sons.

Out of the book there emerges a very likable figure: a sensible and practical man, unceremonious, and forthright; one taking great pleasure (and, with age, pride) in physical activity -- during the Galdan campaign in Outer Mongolia he writes "I travel strenuously 30 or 40 li each day, eat no more than once a day, sometimes once every two, and the cold is very bitter, but I have never been happier in my life" -- and in simple food -- in Ningxia, he writes, the noodles are delicious, better than any ever served at court, and cheap, too; wise, unprejudiced, and fair. The Manchu's are braver than the Chinese, he writes, and often unruly, but they can make good scholars; the Fujianese, he writes, are turbulent and love acts of daring, but surely one cannot say that they are all worthless. To rule men, one must be neither too soft, or they will get cheeky, nor too hard, or they will be paralyzed with fear; it is OK to demote and exile men for a trifle, but death penalty should be dealt most carefully because it is irreversible; when evaluating men, look into their eyes: often a cloud in the pupil can give you a warning; and it is good policy to try to look for the good in them and to discount the bad.

The San-fan war, or Rebellion of The Three Feudatories, came close to overthrowing Kangxi's rule. I have caused it, he says in one of his edicts, no one but me bears the blame. In my decision to demote the three generals and to move them to Manchuria, I have failed to foresee that they may resist, and I have failed to listen to my ministers' advice. If I did, the whole disaster would never have happened.

At one point there is a lengthy description of his personal ministrations at the death bed of his grandmother, the Empress Dowager. For forty days he slept on the floor, by her bedside, preparing her medications, keeping her favorite foods at the ready. It may sound like a typical account of a Chinese confucian extolling his own filial piety, except that he mentions his grandmother in passing on many occasions: orphaned in his childhood, emperor at eight, Kangxi was raised by his grandmother. At fifty-seven, dreams of her will still seem significant and prophetic to him.

Unlike most men of his time, Kangxi is not superstitious; when governors report to him the appearance of the magical zhi fungus on a mountaintop under a purple cloud, a sure proof of the Emperor's virtue and promise of long life, he replies that history books are full of all kinds of magical omens, but such omens are of no use at ruling the country, and the only good omens are good harvests and contented people. Cut it out, he says in so many words.

All his life he was a student of the Tao, reading, mediating on, and discussing the Tao Te Ching (Dao De Jing) with his tutors. But his remarks on Taoist sages are acerbic; they are all either fools or charlatans (like the Archpriest Chonouphis who said he translated the tablet from Alcemene's grave), he says, none has attained immortality, how could anyone ever believe such a thing?

But at one point, perhaps the most tragic point of his life, he came near to believing in magic. His beloved son, Yinreng (Yinjeng) -- every parent, he writes, has sons whom he loves deeply and sons whom he loves not deeply -- his fourth son, whom, unlike all the others, he educated personally, grooming him for succession from the first, had to be deposed. There were various accusations against him: that he bought children for sexual pleasure, that he compromised palace security by admitting all sorts of undesirables, that he had people -- some of them ranking officials -- beaten, that he spoke wildly of his father's death and plotted his father's overthrow, etc., but the real cause for his removal was not legal, but practical: Yinreng proved emotionally unstable, wild, unpredictable and dangerous; his wives feared him and his servants fled from him; no one of his personal retinue would lament his fall, writes Kangxi. We read the subtext: as an emperor, Yinreng would not last a year. He could not be trusted with the job.

After Yinreng was deposed, a charge of magic was brought against another imperial prince, the first son, that he had employed a Mongolian witch-doctor to cast a spell on Yinreng. An investigation discovered a malignant fetish buried under Yinreng's threshold; on the day on which it was dug up, Yinreng suffered an epileptic attack, but recovered soon after and began to give the impression of having suddenly improved. Then Kangxi fell sick and Yinreng ministered by his side the way Kangxi had once ministered by his grandmother. Then the Empress Dowager came to Kangxi in his dream and she was strangely aloof, refusing to speak to him, as if she were upset with something he had done. To me, this is the moment of supreme tragedy in the emperor's life, a moment of such pain as drives men into witlessness: out of love for his beloved son, Kangxi was prepared to believe in magic and dreams. He reinstated Yinreng to Heir Apparency.

But that did not last. Soon Yinreng began to show signs of mental instability again -- mental disease often manifests itself in cycles, creating false hopes of recovery; an accusation of a coup d'etat plot was brought against the prince. Yinreng was again deposed and placed under house arrest. Until his dying day Kangxi refused to name another Heir Apparent; perhaps out of fear that he may have to depose that one, too; but perhaps because he had loved Yinreng too much. "Every parent has sons whom he loves deeply", he writes; "too deeply" we are inclined to read between the lines.

Kangxi died in 1722, after 60 years' reign. In his valedictory edict he wrote the following words, words which exemplify the simple, personal tone of all of his writings:

Over 4,350 years have passed since the first year of the Yellow Emperor to the present, and over 300 emperors are listed as having reigned, though the data from the Three Dynasties -- that is, for the period before the Qin burning of books are not wholly credible. In the 1,960 years from the first year of Qin Shihuang to the present there have been 211 people who have been named emperor and who have taken era names. What man am I, that among all those who have reigned long since the Qin and Han dynasties, it should be I who have reigned the longest?

Seven Against Thebes (7)

2009-12-26T16:26:00.000-08:00

.

THE ARCHPRIEST CHONOUPHIS DECIPHERS THE TABLET

Theocritus and his friends chatted about Alcmene’s tomb and waited for Leontiades and his men the leave the house of Simmias the philosopher – it was that very Leontiades who three years earlier had invited the Spartan garrison. Only after he'd gone did the plotters enter the house.

Simmias the philosopher sat upon his bed, lost in somber thought. It was unnecessary to ask: everyone could guess the answer: the pleas have had no result; Amphiteos was going to be executed. At length, after a long silence, Simmias shook off his thoughts. He looked at his guests and sighed:

“By gods, what sort of people were these who’d been here just before you arrived! They are wild beasts, not men! The old saying is right: there is nothing more odd or more disgusting than an old man in power. Even if one experienced no injustice directly himself, it is enough to see the intransigence to come to hate the regime, a regime which breaks the law, feels no responsibility before anyone, and does not even try to hear out rational arguments. Of course, young men often are like this, too, but age adds to it that special ossified inflexibility.”

One could say, in defense of Leontiades, that in his eyes Amphiteos was especially guilty. He was thought to have been the ring-leader of a previous attempt to overthrow the tyrants and their Spartan allies in Cadmea. In fact, the mastermind and animator of that plot had been young Pelopidas, long active in exile in Athens and now leading the seven plotters through the wilds of the Kithairon towards Thebes. But Leontiades did not know any of this.

Meanwhile, Simmias livened up, and, like a true philosopher, set aside oppressive thoughts. He said:

“Well, we must entrust this matter to the gods. Meanwhile, my dear Caphisias, what sort of a stranger was this who’d arrived in your house today?”

Simmias was of course part of the plot, but Caphisias preferred to remain circumspect:

“Who do you mean?”

“Why, Leontiades himself has just told me about it. He’d heard reports that a stranger had been seen at the tomb of Lysis; that he and his retinue had spent the night there; and that he slept on the ground, on a bed of tamarisk and willow. There were also, apparently, traces of some sacrifice of milk, by the remains of the fire. And at dawn he was seen asking people where he might find you, Caphisias, and your brother Epaminondas.”

Caphisias grew alarmed. He had heard no such thing himself; but he had left his house especially early in order to rush to the house of Charon to inquire there how matters stood with the plot, and with the seven coming over from Athens. He began to think aloud:

“Who could it be, that stranger? Surely, a great lord to travel with retinue. Has no one asked him where he was from?”

But Pheidolaos interrupted him impatiently because he was very curious about the story of the funeral tablet and eager to learn more in the matter. He said:

“Yes, yes, he is surely a great lord. We will welcome him worthily when he finally finds us. But now, Simmias, would you tell us how things went with that tablet which king Agesilaus had removed from Alcmene’s tomb? Were the Egyptian priests able to decipher it?”

Simmias remembered the story well and gladly told it; he liked to talk about his travels and about the unusual contacts which he’d made in distant lands.

“To tell the truth, I did not see the tablet itself. But a messenger of Agesilaus did indeed arrive in Memphis, in Egypt. I know because I was there at the time, for my studies, together with Plato. We often met a priest there, one Chonouphis. It was to him the Spartan ambassador was directed by the pharaoh. Chonouphis spent three days reading in some ancient books in which all sorts of mysterious systems of writing are explained. Then he wrote to the king, explaining everything in great detail. He told us, too, everything concerning the time period from which the tablet came and the text of the inscription. According to Chonouphis, the style of the script indicates the times of king Proteus, who ruled in Egypt at the time of the Trojan War, or just before it. It is said that Heracles, son of Alcmene, learned this type of script when he was in Egypt and that he brought it back with him to Greece. The text of the tablet was a set of commandments, ordering Greeks to hold games in honor of the Muses, and to live in harmony and peace with each other, competing only in love of wisdom and seeking justice through rational argument rather than not arms. This is what Chonouphis reported and we were thoroughly convinced.”

The commandments which Chonouphis deciphered were lofty, exemplary and edifying. It is therefore not surprising that the philosophers Simmias and Plato enthusiastically endorsed them and accepted the inscription as deciphered. Greeks respected very greatly the wisdom of Egyptian priests and there was a widely held belief that all important skills and all religion originated in the land of the pyramids. Besides, how could one prove to Chonouphis that he was making it all up and that in fact he had not the first clue as to the contents of the tablet? After all, the symbols did appear, at first glance, to be similar to Egyptian hieroglyphs.

But the truth was quite different from the way the Egyptian priest presented it. The script had nothing to do with Egypt. It had a different origin, unknown to anyone at the time, and wrapped in a dark and ancient mystery. The Spartans dug up Alcmene’s tomb after they occupied Thebes and Haliartus, that is to say, not earlier than 382 B.C.; but by then the script on the tablet had been forgotten for eight centuries. It had been lost around the twelfth century B.C. along with the great civilization which had created it.

___________
Commentary:

Today's commentary consists of just one sentence:
What else could one ever expect of a priest?

In the sala

2009-12-25T16:19:00.000-08:00

A day so happy (to get the erudite allusion out of the way right off). I spent it in my sala, which is a steep tiled roof on four massive trunks and stands perched up on top of a small hillock, my garden's highest point. It has views towards distant mountains and a nearly constant easterly breeze. There I lay on my couch, sprawled oriental and decadent fashion, facing west, towards the hills, reading and listening to audio books by turns, dozing off, and staring at the flowering trees and the distant views and listening to the birds. I listened to Le Temps' first chapter some half a dozen times, falling asleep each time, and then waking and falling asleep again, until from the various bits heard and remembered, or sort-of remembered, I got a pretty good impression of what it is about, which is, of course, dozing off. Then I read in Kangxi's autobiography, so cleverly put together from fragments of his edicts by Spence, and was, as always, deeply moved by it: I have known and liked the man for so many years now and, always, the more I learned about him, the more I liked and admired him. Interesting, cultured and decent, men do on occasion arise within our species; odds are, of course, that we will never meet one in the flesh; but the invention of writing allows us to meet them in their words, at least; and when we read them, we know that such men are possible; and therefore that the species is not entirely a waste. There is a warm feeling about the heart. As I lay there on my couch, gradually the day's heat wore off, it leaned towards the evening, the sun set behind the hills without much ado, and darkness began to gather in the air. I lay there absolutely still, waiting for the night. At length the world turned black; a strange bird began to caw; and then I saw a flickering light approaching through the trees: it was my servant coming to collect me and take me home.

Seven Against Thebes (6)

2009-12-24T16:23:00.000-08:00

Alcmene on the pyre.
From a crateros of Paestum (c.a. 350-325 B.C.), British Museum

THE TOMB OF ALCMENE

The Spartans were still only looking for the tomb of Dirce, but they had not only found, but also dug up the grave of Alcmene, or so Pheidolaos had told the plotters while they stood before the gates of Simmias’ house. But there was no agreement regaring that tomb: whether it was the real tomb of Alcmene, or whether even Alcmene herself had been buried anywhere at all. Thebans themselves told her story as follows:

"Alcmene spent two different periods of her life in our town. She lived here as the wife of Amphitryon, in a house whose ruins still remain near one of the gates. Here she’d been seduced by Zeus, wearing the form of Amphitryon himself, and here she gave birth to her famous son, Heracles. Later, she returned to Thebes following her son's martyrdom and his ascent to Olympus. She died here at very senior age. On the day of her death, Zeus dispatched Hermes who placed in her tomb a heavy rock, raised the dead woman, and carried her off to the far West. There, in the Blissful Isles where there is no snow, no tempest, and where it does not even rain, and only a delicate breeze off the ocean stimulates the residents, Alcmene married Radamanthes; he had once ruled justly over Crete but now rules over the land of the dead. This is how Zeus rewarded the woman whom he had seduced all those years back, and whose son had saved the world from so many terrible trials. Meanwhile, the descendants of Alcmene, the Heraclids, came to her funeral from the distant Peloponnesus which they then ruled. They took her casket upon their shoulders, but as it seemed unusually heavy to them, they opened it and saw only a rock. They set it up in a grove, behind the city, and since that day we worship it as if it were divine."

But many Greeks denied this legend. They claimed that Zeus raised Alcmene to Olympus and that there she resided along with her demi-god son, Heracles.

The residents of Haliartus presented the matter yet differently. This town lies some three hours to the east of Thebes, on the shores of Lake Copais. The Haliartians claimed:

"Alcmene spent her old age in our town. It was here that Radamanthes married her. Exiled from his native Crete he lived among us under the assumed name of Aleus. We have a proof of these ancient connections with the distant island: both here and there the precious bush named styrax blooms. It yields a beautifully scented resin. It was Radamanthes who had brought it here. After many years’ of harmonious life with Alcmene, he reposed here, in a tomb near our city walls."

There was no way to reconcile all these tales; or to decide which one was true. But no one was surprised at it, since yet other localities claimed to possess the tomb of Alcmene. Besides, who would waste his time trying to determine the precise truth content of local tales? The business became important only thanks to certain political and military developments.

As you recall, the conversations of our plotters took place in December 379 B.C. Sixteen years earlier, in the autumn of 396 B.C., Spartans had suffered a painful defeat in a battle against Thebans at the foot of… Haliartus. There they left behind hundreds of their dead. In Sparta investigations began whose purpose was to establish the causes of the defeat: after all, until now it was Spartans who were the greatest military power of all Greece! Pride did not allow Spartans to admit that their defeat may have been brought on by the stupidity of their generals and their foolhardy certainty of their own invincibility. Surely, they argued, the cause of their defeat must lie deeper! It is simply unthinkable that it may have been caused by human hand! Finally, after much research, they have found this:

"Gods and heroes have been displeased by Sparta, because her kings, though they trace their descent from Heracles, failed, over all these centuries, to bring to the fatherland the ashes of the venerable mother of Heracles. This is why they have been dealt a painful defeat precisely at the foot of Haliartus, in the vicinity of Alcmene’s grave."

The Spartans decided to cure their century-old failure as soon as they seized control of the lands of Thebes and Haliartus.

In the year 382 B.C. two mutually-hateful men became the rulers of Thebes: Ismenias, who sided with democrats and Athens; and Leontiades, an oligarch and a conservative. Soon the latter found himself on the defensive. To save himself, he made a secret pact with a Spartan army which passed nearby, on its way north. There was a holiday in Thebes at the time in honor of Demeter; it was called Tesmophoria. Per ancient custom, on that day women ascended the castle hill, Cadmea, in order to perform rites at the goddess’ hilltop shrine while men left the castle so as not to interfere with the rites. Thus, all officers left Cadmea for a day, and even the guards on the walls and at the gates were removed. The Spartans entered the city at noon, when everyone took cover from the merciless midday sun and the streets were practically deserted. They marched calmly right through the middle of the city and seized the castle hill without opposition. As soon as this happened, Leontiades entered the council building at the main city square, where the terrified council members were already assembling. He said:

“The occupation of Cadmea by Spartans should be no cause for concern for anyone. Spartans arrive as friends. They have no hostile intentions towards anyone. Only the warmongers among us need to fear. As for me, I shall act according to the ancient precepts of our holy laws. They allow the polemarchos to arrest without court order any citizen accused of a crime for which the law demands the penalty of death. Rabble-rousing and inciting dangerous wars certainly belong to such crimes. This is why I hereby arrest Ismenias as an enemy of law and order!”

There were many among the councilmen, who – supposedly out of rational calculation, but in fact out of fear – immediately seconded Leontiades. Later, Ismenias was sent to Sparta and there sentenced to death while in Thebes, tyrants and Spartans began to rule. Archias took the place of Ismenias as polemarchos. All opposition was terrorized: who did not manage to flee, was imprisoned, sometimes killed. The largest number of exiles went to Athens.

Once Spartans fortified themselves in Thebes and Haliartus, they dug up Alcmene’s tomb. Its contents revealed that it did date to prehistorical times; the amphorae filled with petrified earth had probably contained ashes of the dead, or perhaps of sacrificial animals; but the true mystery lay in a bronze tablet covered with strange script whose signs looked to some to be Egyptian. This is why the Spartan king Agesilaus sent a copy of it for decipherment to Egypt. The two countries were at that time on good terms and often exchanged embassies.

__________
Commentary:

The book's Polish readers in 1968 would have had no doubt how to interpret this story: Athens -- a democracy, was the US, the exiles -- the Polish government in London, Sparta was Russia and Leontiades and his ilk-- the Polish communist party.

A vignette written to celebrate my commencement of reading Le Temps Perdu

2009-12-23T18:42:00.000-08:00

At daybreak I woke up remembering the rain.

It had woken me in the middle of the night: the patter on the roof, the murmur in the bamboo outside. Delighted and confused -- was I dreaming? -- I got up and walked out naked onto the terrace. It does not rain here in December. Ever. When God made the world, he had declared that there should be no rain in these parts until May. Yet, there it was, the rain: the surface of my pond, black, oily and glistening in the dim light of a single yellow lantern among the bamboos on the other side sprang growing circles where individual drops of rain fell upon it: here, there, here.

At daybreak I woke up remembering the rain. I walked out onto the terrace again, trying to ascertain whether I had dreamt it: there was dew on the trees, the ground was wet. Did it rain last night, or did I dream it?

I looked around. The sky was overcast and the air was humid. It's never humid this time of the year. There are not supposed to be any clouds in the sky. Have I woken up in a different part of the world from that in which I had gone to sleep? Was I dreaming still? I felt displaced. The experience was confusing but it was pleasant to be confused: I had been tired with my old reality, I had grown desperate thinking that it would never change. An unexpected tectonic shift in it would have been welcome; falling into a time-space anomaly like this would have been an answer to my prayers.

I search for clues to the mystery of where it is I had woken, I began to wonder through my garden, looking at the flowers and the trees, until I came upon my neighbor's hut. He was on his porch, making coffee.

Theo, I asked him, did it, or did it not rain last night? Nope, he said definitively.

By the pool I met Annette. Annette, I said, did it rain last night? Most certainly not, she said and dove in the pool.

Then, suddenly, I remembered something. Doubling back by Theo's house, I asked him: Theo, do you think it is possible that there might have been a dog drowning in my pond last night?

Wouldn't know anything about that, said Theo. But would you like some coffee?

I walked back home slowly.

There most definitely had been a drowning dog in my pond last night. I remembered it now. Her yelping disturbed my reading several times, until at last, taking my torch in hand, I headed out to see what the matter was. After some searching I discovered her, her eyes squinting in the beam of my flashlight, in the bushes on the other side of my pond. She lay exhausted half-way on the ground and half-way in the water. She must have come down to drink, slipped and fallen in; but as the bank is very steep and slippery here, she couldn't scramble out. She struggled and struggled and at last collapsed breathless, slowly slipping back into the water where she was going to drown. And now she lay there, yelping, resigned to death by water.

Laying my torch on the ground, I stripped, wrapped my arms in my jeans in case she should scratch or bite, stepped in the pond up to my waist, and lifted her up. She offered no resistance. She was as motionless as dead. I carried her to the garden gate and gently put her outside, on the road, in the moonlight shining through an opening in the clouds. She looked miserable, wet and trembling, and had the world's stupidest expression on her snout. Have you ever seen an embarrassed dog? As I locked the gate behind her, she looked at me, confused.

Yes, I now remembered that. It had happened last night. And then I went to sleep. And then I woke in the middle of the night: the patter of the rain on the roof had woken me, and its murmur in the bamboo. And then I went to sleep again. And then I woke uncertain whether any of that had happened or not.

Seven Against Thebes (5)

2009-12-22T18:08:00.000-08:00

The Farnese Bull, Naples

SCULPTURE AND ELEGY

In the year 1546, when Paul III, from the noble family of the Farnese, was Pope, accidentally a great discovery was made in Rome. In the vicinity of the Great Thermae (they had been built by Emperor Caracalla) a great sculpture was dug up from the ground, composed of several pieces of marble, broken up and scattered here and there, and much damaged. At one point, when the Thermae of Caracalla stood at the zenith of their glory, the sculpture had decorated one of the halls of the Thermae; or perhaps a nearby park. Though many fragments of it were missing, it was easy to guess what the great work represented:

Two young men, standing upon a rock, hold by the horns a great bull; at their feet a terrified woman sits, stretching out her arms in a gesture of supplication; a tiny shepherd who squats in the foreground, among some rocky crags, symbolizes that everything happens in the mountains, and, at the same time, through his tiny size, emphasizes, as it were, the terrifying power of all the main figures.

Scholars of ancient mythology had no doubt and declared immediately that the group represented Amphion and Zethus, tying, by the tips of her hair, the prosecutoress of their mother, Dirce, to the horns of the bull. Amphion is immediately recognized by the lyre at his feet. The vine and basket by the feet of Dirce represent the cult of Dionysius.

Soon after its discovery, Renaissance artists set out to restore the group. The results of their work must surely be recognized as overall successful, though it is possible that in some details the antique original looked somewhat different. And so Zethus, who towers above Dirce, pulls with both hands upon a rope tied to the horns of the bull; the ancient sculpture may have been more drastic: the young man’s left hand may have held the woman by the hair. After the missing details have been filled in, the statue graced for many years the Roman palace of the Farnese; hence has come its name, the Farnese Bull. Today, it is to be found in the Archeological Museum in Naples.

One antique author reports that just such a statue, though that one carved in single block of marble, was in the days of Emperor Augustus in the possession of a certain rich and famous aristocrat. His name was Asinius Pollio, and he was known for his historical interests. The same author informs us that the sculptural group was carved by two Greek sculptors living in Rhodes in the first century A.D., Apollonion and Tauriscos. The sculpture, discovered near the Thermae of Caracalla almost certainly is not the original work – it is made up of several blocks of marble; it is therefore no more than a copy, made in Rome, in the first century AD.

But the sculptors of Rhodes were not entirely original. We know that representations of the punishment of Dirce belonged to the favorite genres of painting and sculpture; this was all because of the popularity of Antiope of Euripides. Apollonius and Tauriscus created their work upon commission: someone very rich had wanted to glorify his estate by placing among his trees and artificial rocks that very group, full of primitive energy. But this billionaire did not enjoy his mythical Kithairon in the seclusion of his villa for long: Romans who loved nothing better than to pillage the treasures of Greek art, moved the sculpture to the capital of their state, where it fell in the possession of Asinius Pollio.

He showed this Rhodian creation with great pride to all visitors to his house. Among these visitors was a well known poet of his times, Propertius. It was this sculpture which suggested to him a subject for one of his great love poems. Propertius was in love with a great lady whom he called in his poems by the invented name of Cynthia. But – the poet admits it right off the bat in his poem – when he was but a mere sapling, someone else inducted him into the mysteries of physical love: Cynthia’s servant, Licinna. She did it out of pure sympathy; she didn’t even accept a gift! The poet says:

“Since that time, nearly three years have passed, and I have not exchanged with her more than ten words. Everything that connected me with Licinna, dear Cynthia, has been buried once and for all by my love for you! Since I have fallen in love with you, no woman has embraced my neck with her sweet embrace!”

But knowing well the hearts of women, Propertius immediately passes to the following warnings:

“Remember, Cynthia, the fate of Dirce! She cruelly punished the poor Antiope, suspecting – as groundlessly as you suspect me and Licinna – who was her friend! But what terrible fate has Dirce met at the hands of Antiope’s sons! Likewise, you, too, should not torment the poor Licinna, who – honestly – has not deserved her fate!”

Propertius himself did not seem to place much hope in the efficacy of these arguments, for he ends:

“Yet, there appears to be no way to calm a woman’s anger…”

Commentary on Seven Against Thebes (4)

2009-12-20T18:44:00.000-08:00

(For those of you hungry for my wisdom and too impatient to read Krawczuk, I will from now on break out my commentary as a separate post following the chapter on which I am commenting).

CONCERNING THE QUARREL BETWEEN THE IDLE AND THE PRODUCTIVE

Virtues of simplicity. Why scholars are boring. Hostility between
the productive and the idle. The importance of idleness for art.

When I told people that I was translating this book, explaining to them that it is a kind of miscellany of loose leaves -- almost Ming-style vignettes, if you will -- safety-pinned together by the story of Seven Against Thebes, some have suggested The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony by Roberto Calasso as a comparable work.

It isn't.

There is something about Calasso which makes it, to my mind, unreadable. It is, for one thing, too dense. The style is certainly beautiful, but simply too ornate for discussion of weighty topics. Weighty topics are best discussed plainly, lest one lose his thread in the jungle of erudite oratory. Ornate style is best for simple things: love, for example; texts wherein the message is simple enough ("I love you, baby, yeah yeah yeah") not to get lost in the labyrinth of verbal pyrotechnics; indeed, so embarrassingly simple that rhetorical devices are necessary to obscure its simplicity. Krawczuk's style is simple, conversational; this allows him to address difficult points with ease. But Calasso's style is most of the time to beautiful for ease.

And, second, Calasso's book is -- well -- trivial: the points he makes -- I do not hesitate calling them philosophical, as any serious reflection seems to me philosophical, philosophy, being after all, the love of wisdom -- are cute enough but without any reference at all to the pressing questions of life: love, friendship, betrayal, death. Weird, this: his subject being the Greeks, for crying out-loud, with their famously big themes, I did not find a single sentence in Calasso's book which made me ponder life. All his points seemed -- well, irrelevant to life.

Calasso's work seems to me in this regard of a kind with a very great deal -- indeed, nearly all -- of acclaimed Anglosaxon scholarly writing -- and most of the ambitious best Anglo-Saxon blogging: erudite, well turned, witty, and -- eminently not worth reading; an intelligent man's equivalent of that great English virtue: small talk. I suppose Calasso's work is the sort Joe Campbell referred to as typical of all scholarly work: much verbiage and evidence building up and up and up to -- nothing. To a kind of mouse flitting furtively out one's lips: a small, trivial pseudo-point.

Why scholars should write this way is not clear. It could be that they are shackled by some sort of professional prejudice against saying something important; perhaps doing so is considered crass: a kind of making waves, or worse, an attempt to court cheap popularity. Or perhaps scholars think their job is not to tackle the big questions, for which there are no immediate answers, but little ones which can be answered -- perhaps in the false belief that a myriad small answers thrown up together on a big pile will eventually reach the big questions, like ten million tiny bricks piled up in a kind of epistemological tower of Babel eventually meant to reach heaven.

Or it could be that scholars are simply dull people. After all, it is a matter of temperament, is it not: it takes a certain kind of man to be able to live one's life entirely as an intellectual adventure, in libraries, books, debates and lectures -- no life-threatening situations, no ambitions of love or power, no disreputable gambles -- certainly no gun smuggling, God forbid -- no hunger for distant lands or unattainable women; indeed, talking to many scholars one gets the idea: apparently, no hunger of any kind at all. To us they seem to have... low levels of hunger for life in their blood. They are -- colorless, gray.

Having ripped into Calasso, I now need to slap Krawczuk, too. He, too, is a scholar (poor fellow can't help it) and suffers as a result from a professional perversion: he sees everything in the light of his own discipline. Not being a classicist, I do not understand -- though will henceforth try to find out -- the precise nature of the historical debate between bios practicos and bios theoreticos; but that debate, as Krawczuk presents it, seems to me to be between men of action on the one hand ("men of action" defined as "sweaty brawn") and effete brains -- in other words, scholars -- on the other.

But the original argument between Amphion and Zethus, as it is presented in the myth, is different from the one Krawczuk presents. It is the argument between men of action on the one hand -- by which a broader category is meant here, one including scholars, who, after all, do practical stuff -- teach, write books and opinion pieces, consult; and, on the other hand, good for nothing idlers. After all, there is nothing theoretical about wondering about the hills with one's lyre (or was it luth?). Amphion is not an intellectual, Monsieur Krawczuk, he is a lazy bone.

Perhaps it takes a lazy bone like me to recognize one, and perhaps it is my professional perversion to see the world in the light of my line of work. It is entirely possible that Aleksander Krawczuk, a teacher and an author of numerous books, has never experienced what I experience with great frequency, and thus cannot speak to it: the accusation that he is doing nothing, that he is wasting his gifts, denying them to the human race, not carrying his weight, not making a contribution. People who tell me this are irked that I spend my days reading books, visiting museums or attending performances, viewing my collection, thinking, and writing for my own consumption. They are full of suggestions as to what I could do instead: teach Polish several hours a week, says one; write a book, says another; sail around the world, says the third. (My friends are not racked by an excess of imagination).

This is how I see the debate between Zethus and Amphion. From where I sit (usually with a book in my lap), the debate seems irreconcilable because it arises out of basic misunderstanding: Zethus cannot imagine that anyone might be happy not working; Amphion simply cannot see what the big deal about working is.

Now, the interesting thing here is that Zethus tells Amphion to work, while Amphion is happy to leave Zethus alone. Why should this be? Is it possible that Zethus is not really happy in his productive life and views Amphion's with envy? Is it possible that he secretly wishes he could live such a life, but knows full well he can't, and therefore does the next best thing: tries to deny it to others?

It isn't a matter of economic necessity: after all Zethus could also not bother with the damn wall and live quite well (he did for years on the mountain, even though he also worked and worked). Equally, many of those who urge me to do something -- anything -- do not need to do a damn thing in their lives: either because they have independent means, or well-earning husbands who wouldn't mind them being idle, or are already retired; yet they work, sometimes for pithy wages, often stupid, unremarkable jobs. Why?

Partly, perhaps it is the matter of moral unease, as most would suggest: the bourgeois ethos united with the biblical notion that God has condemned us to work in the sweat of our brow and we better do as God says; partly, perhaps lack of autotelic imagination; but partly it is a quarrel between the hunter-gatherers and the agriculturalists. Switching from hunting and gathering to agriculture may well have been attended by a behavioral mutation; hunter-gatherers are glad to stop when they have obtained the day's food; but agriculturalists can't stop working as long as the sun is up. (It doesn't mean they actually like the work, only that they just can't stop). Now, an old tale says that my people are descended from Central Asian nomads who conquered (and then herded) a Central European settled folk. Certainly my ancestors had no problem doing nothing productive at all -- unless you consider an annual pillaging expedition into Crimea or Moldavia -- "work". So perhaps it is the nomad gene in me that makes me so easily content doing nothing productive at all?

But it isn't like us idle folk are of no value. For one thing -- the main thing, really -- we are the main driving force of culture: not only does an amazing amount of really good literature come out of us: from Tsurezuregusa to Gattopardo; but also no one but us has the time to consume art, to become expert connoisseurs and to guide, with our finely trained senses, those who laboriously produce for our pleasure. The qualitative change in artistic production in the twentieth century is perhaps best accounted for by the disappearance of a true leisure class. Just look at who buys the stuff at the auctions today: they are all working people. From the point of view of the art, it makes no difference whether the buyer is paid thirty-six thousand a year or thirty-six million a year; what matters is that he labors 70 hour weeks and as a result, has no time to look at art, and therefore, when it comes to evaluating it, is basically illiterate.

So, dear friends, the idle us, like the drone-bees, have a noble calling in life: we make it more interesting. Remember that before you tell any one of us to do something. We are doing something even when it seems we aren't.

Seven Against Thebes (4)

2009-12-20T17:52:00.000-08:00

Antiope, Queen of Thebes, with her twins Amphion and Zethus
1535-45, Vincent Sellaer (1500-1589), The Louvre
(Thanks to Brian)

THE QUARREL OF ZETHUS AND AMPHION

All the members of the Theban plot were educated men. They knew not only the myth of Dirce and Antiope, but also the famous play by Euripides concerning the fates of the two women. This play, entitled Antiope, was first staged in Athens about thirty years earlier, around the year 410 B.C. It immediately gained great admiration and henceforth it belonged to the best-read. It did not come down to our times in its entirety, but we know its plot quite well since various ancient authors took great pleasure in quoting from it; and besides, more recently a few fragments had been discovered among the papyri of Egypt.

To what did this play owe its tremendous success? Clearly, not the plot alone, since the ancient reader, perfectly familiar with the myth, knew in advance the course events would take. Rather, people praised the way the action was developed, and, above all its main intellectual motif, threading, as it was, through all the scenes: it was the great quarrel between Amphion and Zethus – a quarrel between the man of thought and the man of action concerning their ideas as to what was in life most valuable, and as to the most worthy, most appropriate attitude to life a worthy man should choose. Of course, putting in the mouths of his heroes long speeches concerning these things, Euripides was touching upon subjects which appealed not to the mythical times, but the times in which he himself lived. In Athens of his day one often heard arguments between those who recommended the life of intellectual speculation and artistic production and those who claimed that for the state and the society the only thing that mattered was practical works – that is, mainly – political and military action.

Here is the accusation which, in the play, Zethus lays before his brother:

“You take great care of immaterial things, but you ignore those things which should be the main object of all our efforts. Nature had given you man’s muscles, but you ignore them most unworthily. In this you act like a woman. Would you know how to carry a shield? Or how to throw a spear at its target? If a great danger threatens you and your beloved ones, you will find yourself lacking in courage and in the strength of your shoulder! Do not praise here all those skills which in the end only lead to this that a capable and brave person becomes weak and worthless. A man who takes pleasure only in singing, and who makes composing pretty verses his main object, will be of no use to his family and his state! I hate people who show no energy in their action and who are only wise in words. Hear out my good counsel, brother: cast away your useless lyre! Take a spear into your hand! If you wish to be known as a wise man, you must know how to drive the plough, how to drive the chariot, and how to win in combat. Leave these smart games to others, games which will never fill your barn, or the treasure house of our state!”

But Amphion answered him:

“You accuse me of weakness. You are mistaken because a nimble mind has a greater strength than the most muscular arm. It is the mind of man which rules cities; and that enriches its houses. And once war begins, it is the mind which brings victory. Thousands of powerful arms will not achieve that which one capable and cunning head will do. The crowd’s greatest misfortune is its stupidity. Look at athletes who only care for their bodies: how incapable they are of resisting true misfortune, how useless they are to the society! They are no more than slaves of a particular diet and a particular exercise regime! And the rich man, who rejects everything which might make his life more pleasant, does not deserve, in my opinion, to be considered fortunate; he is no more than a janitor, a mere guardian of his temporal goods. But such is the fate of the mortals: Neithher good fortune, nor bad, rule them entirely, but they mutually and restlessly yield to each other. And since happiness is so temporary, why should I not enjoy its gifts while pain still spares me? I like singing, and I like philosophizing, but the sort which does not touch upon the touchy business of politics. What sort of madness is this, to concern oneself, without any obvious need to, with this wild confusion of dark intrigue and dirty self-interest while one can live in peace and sweet pleasure? He who appreciates peace is a good friend, a worthy citizen; one can always rely on him. Do not praise a life full of adventure! I loathe as much a thoughtless guide as I do a leader of a state who is all too willing to tempt unknowable fate!”

The brothers exchanged such arguments, and the chorus, which listened in, dared side neither with Amphion nor with Zethus. It only went so far as to say that every topic, as long as smart and well-spoken men seize upon it, can be presented in two opposite but equally interesting ways. The poet himself, on the other hand, following the myth, gave the final victory to Amphion because the sound of his lyre moved even the stones in the end.

As we already said, it was not really the argument of Amphion and Zethus, but, through their mouths, of two young men living in the fifth century, in any of the cities of Greece: in Athens, Thebes, or Corinth. This argument about attitudes to life was in fact fought within the educational systems of the moment which had, as its object, to nurture both the student’s physical and mental capabilities. The palestra and the gymnasion were places for physical exercise, while the teachers of music and grammar inculcated the abilities of playing musical instruments, singing, and the knowledge of poetry and rhetoric. But this balance between the two goals of education remained only an unattained ideal. For most, physical abilities and the simple art of reading, writing and arithmetic were enough, and only as far as these last were needed for everyday life. These not-so-bright physical types looked with disdain upon their physically unfit colleagues, who, with the enthusiasm of fools, committed all their time to matters completely useless: they got excited by novelties of poetry, disputed various absurd ideas of philosophers, quite seriously debated the influence of music upon the intellect, and, instead of training upon the sands of the gymnasion, drew upon it weird geometrical figures!

And so, the myth of Antiope served Euripides only as a background, or perhaps we should say, a pretext, to show matters which in fact touched upon his own times. He was one of the first to touch this subject, a subject which in the subsequent centuries, philosophers, writers and poets would often take up: the conflict between two life ideals, the great quarrel between, as the Greeks said it, bios theoreticos and bios practicos.

When we read the charge and the defense today, twenty five centuries later, the arguments of both sides appear to us superficial and naïve. But we should take a gracious bow before this very beautiful scene of Antiope: it is the first clearly stated program of intellectual rebellion against the earthly, practical, narrow-minded horizons. It is from that moment on that the sacred worship of theory, though sometimes suppressed and sometimes ridiculed, begins to spread on our continent. We owe to her the glory and the tragedy of science of modern times.

One must observe here, by the way, with shame and sadness, that Zethus, the sworn enemy of bios theoreticos, would find numerous followers even today… But perhaps the future does not belong to them?

Seven Against Thebes (3)

2009-12-19T22:07:00.000-08:00

Dirce's punishment - Roman wall painting in House of the Vettii, Pompeii.

THE MYTH OF ANTIOPE AND DIRCE

When Antiope realized that she was pregnant, she fled from home. Even though she’d been impregnated by Zeus himself, she knew that her father, a ruthless, cruel man, would never forgive her. She was right: when her story broke out, he committed suicide. But prior to his death he had extracted from his brother, Lycus – who was at the time the ruler of Thebes – the promise that he would find and punish the girl.

Antiope sought refuge in Sicyon, a city on the shores of the Peloponnesus. The local king offered her protection, but Lycus broke into the city along with his men and carried her off. As they crossed the Kithairon on their way back, the girl was ceased by contractions; and there she gave birth to two boys, twins. But Lycus kept the promise given to this brother; he had the children abandoned in the mountain as food for wild animals.

Lycus had no mercy, but his wife, Dirce, treated the girl with great cruelty. The girl’s great beauty drove the queen to wild feats of envy. Dirce even suspected her husband of disloyalty; and he, so as not to give rise to any suspicion with any ill-considered act of generosity, allowed his wife to do whatever she liked. For many years Antiope was imprisoned in the dungeons of the Theban castle. She eventually managed to escape by miracle: one night, the chains slipped off her wrists and the doors of the dungeon opened by themselves. She ran off into the Kithairon and there found a poor hut and in it an old shepherd and his two sons.

The boys were twins, but of very different disposition. Amphion seemed calm and carefree while Zethus was secretive and introverted and worked ceaselessly: he hunted, ploughed the fields, chopped wood, gathered rocks with which to hold up the walls of the hut. The two brothers were attached to each other, but quarreled constantly. It was difficult for them to understand each other because both were happy – one running around in the mountains with song on his lips, the other content to see how well his work progressed. They also disagreed in the matter of the woman who sought refuge in their hut: Zethus would most gladly have chased her away, suspecting, as he was, that she was merely a runaway slave and that hiding her would only lead to trouble.

Then the Dionysian holidays came. At the time, Theban women celebrated them in a rather strange manner. They headed into Kithairon in a great throng and there, in the meadows, they danced to the mad beat of tympani and the piercing wailing of flutes. The night was filled with orgiastic yelling and singing, all over the mountain there wound processions with torches. Dirce was a passionate devotee of Dionysius. She, too, danced in the dark wilderness of Kithairon, singing and waving a burning tree branch. And when the night of divine madness passed, the queen descended from the mountain and stopped at a mountain hut to take rest. Here she came upon Antiope. In a sudden rush of hatred, she decided to murder the girl. She ordered the shepherd’s sons:

“This woman is my slave. She has committed many improprieties and that is why, to flee a just punishment, she ran away from the palace. But gods are just! Dionysius himself gave her into my hands. And you, too, are not entirely blameless. By what right are you hiding this criminal? I will beg the king for forgiveness on your behalf, but you must first mend your error. You must kill her right now, before my eyes!”

Shocked, the two brothers did not object, ready to fulfill the order they’d been given. But then the old shepherd spoke up. Slowly, over many days he’d put together everything Antiope had told him and compared it with everything he had earlier heard from the city folk. Now, the anger of Dirce, and the preparations for the murder of the defenseless woman revealed to him the horror of what was about to happen. He understood whose children the twins were, the twins whom he had found in the forest so many years ago.

Amphion and Zethus tied their mother’s persecutoress by her hair to the horns of a bull, and they drove the animal into a field of rocks. This is what Dirce had envisioned as a death for Antiope; now her own howling could be heard in the wild ravines where the mad animal dragged her bloody carcass.

The brothers then ambushed Lycus and either killed him, or forced him to flee (the story was told in several versions) and then they became the new rulers of Thebes. Zethus immediately spotted a golden opportunity for heavy labor: the city still had no walls! He immediately went to work. He carried huge boulders himself, in the sweat of his brow but also with great pleasure. But he constantly upbraided Amphion; for Amphion, instead of helping, spent whole days singing and playing a strange lyre, a gift which he had received from a mysterious stranger (it was later said that the stranger was Hermes, the messenger of gods). When eventually Amphion became fed up with his brother’s chiding, he went to the place where Zethus was piling up his rocks. But instead of helping him to lift the rocks, he struck the lyre and – a miracle took place, a miracle which Thebans were to tell for the rest of their history with pride: the rocks, like shepherded animals, moved and submissively followed the sound of the music. They rolled in a long line, slowly and heavily, but unceasingly: Amphion led them the way a shepherd leads his sheep. Ruled by him, the rocks laid themselves into a great wall, leaving only seven openings: in those openings seven gates took shape. This is how the great, massive walls of the city were formed, walls which could not be torn down by the hand of man because they were not built by the hand of man, but by divine music.

That was the version of the myth of Antiope and Dirce which was told most often. It might seem strange at first, but it is enough to think of its main motifs to see it in a different light:

A girl gives birth to twins, whose father is a god. The children are threatened by death, but they are saved by a shepherd who raises them. A cruel, jealous woman persecutes another, more pretty than herself. Estranged mother and children meet and recognize each other in the face of great danger.

How many myths of how many different peoples contain these very same elements! They are the favorite motifs of all fairy tales; they have been in circulation in near and far lands for millennia, sometimes borrowed, but sometimes arising spontaneously. So perhaps we should consider this Theban myth of twins a fairy-tale. Hardly anyone would seek a reflection of real historical events in it.

Yet, and this is different business altogether, there are in this myth other elements, strikingly original and unique to it: above all, the method of Dirce’s punishment. This figure seems especially tied up with Thebes. Somewhere near the city there was her tomb, though it was only known to the commanders of the cavalry. As we know from the conversation of the plotters of 379 B.C., the Spartans were eager to find it.

But did the tomb of Dirce actually exist? Many denied it. They said:

Because Dirce was a passionate follower of Dionysius, following her terrible death, gods sent Hermes to the city. He ordered the two brothers to collect the fragments of her body and to cremate them properly on a funeral pyre. It was then that Amphion received his magical lyre from Hermes. But the brothers did not bury her ashes, but threw them instead into a spring which runs at the western foot of the castle hill. Its water cascades down towards a stream in a gorge below; and this is why both the spring and the gorge are named after Dirce.

The stream had other sources, too. They lay somewhat to the south of the city, in a lovely, shady grove. There were three springs here, with crystal-clear water, very delicious to drink. Perhaps there, in that grove, we should seek the queen’s tomb? Or perhaps Dirce was simply the name of the water nymph, the protectress of the spring, and the stream, to whom, per ancient custom, sacrifices had once been made here?

Seven Against Thebes (2)

2009-12-17T21:49:00.000-08:00

The oath of the original seven, Flaxman

DESCENDING INTO THE PAST

These conversations took place on an overcast December day in the year – according to our calendar – 379 B.C. How have such lively echoes of their conversations managed to reach our ears?

The conversations given in the preceding chapter are based on the opening chapters of a story entitled On the Protective Spirit of Socrates (Περί του Σωκράτους δαιμονίου in Greek, De genio Socratis in Latin, sometimes rendered in English as On the Sign of Socrates). It was written by the Greek writer Plutarch around the year 100 A.D.

Of course, one immediately asks: A great deal of time passed between the year 379 B.C. and the year 100 A.D. – nearly five hundred years! How could Plutarch know in such great detail about the events of that day?

Well, Plutarch, it turns out, could have known a good deal about it. He was born, and he lived almost all of his life, in the small town of Cheronea. This town is only several hours’ journey away from Thebes and lies in the same country, Beotia. Plutarch was a great lover of history, and he researched the history of his own country, Beotia, especially well. He collected and studied ancient artifacts and had in his hands various documents, records and memoirs now lost. He found among them many relating to the events of 379 B.C. because what happened in Thebes that month had a big impact on the subsequent history of all Greece.

We must admit, however, that Plutarch took great liberties with his sources because his interests lay not so much in establishing what really happened but in presenting his own philosophical, religious and ethical views. This is how it was with The Protective Spirit of Socrates. There he put in the mouths of various characters certain secret, mystical teachings; the actual historical events were for him only a kind stage-set for his philosophical divagations. On the other hand, nearly all the persons mentioned in the story are historical and known to us from other sources. So perhaps their conversations are only partly fiction but partly based on some old materials? We shall never know.

Whenever we return in these pages to the day on which the Theban plotters awaited the arrival of the seven, our guide shall be Plutarch. Our guide but not our oracle: we shall treat his story with some liberty ourselves, taking care only to preserve the main outline of the plot and the conversations – we shall treat Plutarch just as he had treated his sources. Besides, Plutarch was not omniscient: we shall have to correct and round out some of his statements.

We have in fact already made a small correction when we said that there were seven plotters in the forest of Kithairon; because Plutarch says that there were not seven but twelve. But the historian Xenophon, a contemporary of the events, states with some emphasis that the number of the young men who had set out from Athens across the Kithairon against the city of Thebes was – indeed – seven.

Perhaps you will smile: it might seem but a small thing, an irrelevant little detail. But in truth matters stand differently. For if there were indeed seven of them, then, in the eyes of the contemporaries the matter took on a deeper meaning, a deeply symbolic significance. For it would not have been the first expedition of seven against Thebes, but – the third! True, the first two belonged to a very distant past; they had taken place a dozen centuries earlier; but they were famous all across Greece, and were to remain so for centuries, especially the first. They were told and retold by poets. The figures and actions of the seven leaders were acted out on stage. Sculptors and painters represented their various episodes in magnificent works of art. Moreover, some of the heroes of the first group of seven attained glory equal to gods: they had their own temples and their own priests, they revealed the future through oracles and received bloody sacrifices. At one time, only the Trojan War was more famous than the first expedition of seven against Thebes. Who knows, then? Perhaps Plutarch intentionally changed the number of the members of the expedition from seven to twelve in order not to remind his countrymen of the old, famous myths, so as to free himself to dedicate his time to other, different themes, which interested him more?

Someone might well say:

“It is all true. But the first expedition owed its fame, undying throughout classical antiquity, precisely to the fact that it was merely a myth! Its story, and its heroes, are no more than fiction; or at most a poetic transformation of ancient beliefs, symbols or rituals. So why compare it with the later one, of 379 B.C., which was historical and concrete?"

Yet, in antiquity, people thought otherwise. The first two expeditions against Thebes were considered historical facts; just as were the Trojan War, the expedition of the Argonauts, the somber fate of the ruling house of Mycenae, and the labors of Heracles who’d freed the world of monsters. Yes, people did admit that myths have added color to the stories; and they did argue as to the reliability of many details of the stories, since they were often told in different versions. But no one in antiquity doubted that in earlier times there had lived men who have performed miraculous works and who’d risen in stature way above their succeeding generations; men who had been close to gods.

Those times were called the Heroic Age. People pointed out castles which these heroes had built, meadows and mountains where they had fought, and tombs where they had been buried. And in elaborate genealogies, people named their descendants – children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren – down to the times well illumined by recorded history.

And thus, when, on a December day of the year 379 B.C. our group of plotters advanced towards the house of Simmias the philosopher, knowing that, in the forest of Kithairon their seven companions were already waiting, all would have realized that this was the third expedition of seven against Thebes; and all would have thought about the times of the two earlier ones, casting back their minds towards the Heroic Age.

What was it to them, that Heroic Age, and how did they feel about it?

They thought about it like all Greeks – with great respect. Their attitude to it was much like ours to antiquity: it was in their eyes a great, closed period, closed, but still alive thanks to literature, art and religion. And just as between us and the period of antiquity there lies a long period of darkness, known as the Middle Ages, so were the Greeks of antiquity cut off from their Heroic Age by a stretch of many centuries about which no one could say very much at all for certain because in it men had lived in poverty and stupidity following the fall of the heroes.

Yes, the Heroic Age had fallen; in fact, it had been destroyed. This happened – all Greeks agreed on this – as a result of a great migration of peoples known as the Return of the Heraclides. Later, Greek scholars calculated when that happened: by our reckoning it would have been the twelfth century B.C. Again, a similarity to the end of the period of antiquity suggests itself: a migration of peoples destroys centers of high civilization in Western Europe, dark clouds envelop the continent, but a memory of a brilliant past remains, like glowing coals in ashes, out of which a renaissance will one day take place.

But what shall we say about the Age of Heroes? Did it really occur? Are the myths really a reflection of great events, adventures, struggles of men of flesh and blood? Can we accept the first and second expeditions of seven against Thebes as the same kind of historical fact as the events of 379 B.C.? How do we find an answer to these questions?

We shall have to return to these questions time and again. For the moment, let us remember that we have left our plotters in front of the house of Simmias the philosopher, chatting about Alcmene, whose grave the Spartans had dug up, and Dirce, whose tomb they wanted to find. Both these women had lived during the Age of Heroes, at a minimum ten centuries earlier. Yet, when Theocritus mentioned their names, his interlocutors did not need any explanations, because the stories of the lives and deaths of these women belonged to the best known in Thebes, and, indeed, in the whole of Greece.

__________

Commentary

Perhaps the book's chief theme is this: our relationship to the glorious, mythical past: why we keep retelling same old stories over and over again, and what their antiquity means to us. I am not sufficiently cultural-anthropologically minded to think it matters what ancient stories we tell (presumably the replacement of Seven Against Thebes with, say, Star Wars, makes no real difference); and believe that all human groups tell some sort of ancient stories (certainly all groups which we have studied do) -- and always will. What interests me is the idea that if a group shares a story, that story enables a symbolic form of communication, such as took place in this case when the exiles heading for Thebes recruited the seventh volunteer in order to make their number exactly seven.

Another theme of the book is the loss of the past, the preservation of its memory, and the attempts to revive it: it is interesting, for example, to note certain repeating patterns: to note that the history of the Greek civilization presents us with two different Heroic Ages and two different Renaissances, for example, separated from each other by periods of downfall and forgetting. Histories of Mesopotamia and China present striking similarities: periods of war and chaos followed by painstaking attempts to dig up, catalog and revive the past. It is not our past, of course, and we have nothing to do with the men who went before us, but perhaps it gives us the illusion of immortality to pretend otherwise.

___________

Footnotes:

1. You may read the full text of the Plutarch essay here.

Seven Against Thebes (1)

2009-12-16T21:26:00.000-08:00

Kithairon today

Odysseus reports what he has seen in the land of the dead:

While we exchanged such words, women began to approach, commanded by noble Persephone: all of them wives and daughters of heroes. A great crowd of them edged towards the black blood and I considered how best to speak to them. And in my heart I thought this way best: I drew my sword, which I had had at my side, and with it I prevented them from drinking all at once. Thus they had to approach one by one, and one by one each told me her story. This is how I got to know them all.

The first to arrive was Tyro…

Then I saw Antiope, daughter of Asopus, who had boasted that Zeus had had her in his arms, and who had born two sons, Amphion and Zethus. These were the first to found their capital in seven-gated Thebes. They ringed her with fortifications, for otherwise, though brave, they could not have defended her in the middle of the Theban plain.

Then I saw Alcmene, the wife of Amphitryon, who had given birth to brave Heracles, the lion-hearted, having conceived him in Zeus’s arms…

The Odyssey, Book Nine

APPROACHING THE HOUSE OF SIMMIAS

There were several men in the room, but the messenger turned towards Charon, the host, because he knew him personally:

“They left Athens yesterday, as if going on a hunt. They even took hunting dogs with them. There are only seven of them, but they are the youngest. Now they are in the forest of Kithairon, near the border. They can’t stay in the mountains because it’s winter and bitterly cold. They will be here tonight. But they must know on which door to knock, at whose house. They can’t wander around the city.”

There was a moment of embarrassing silence. It was clear that no one was in a hurry to receive the seven men now trembling with cold among the crags of the mountain. All those gathered in the house of Charon had joined the plot of their own, free will, but it seemed that they realized only now that it was not child’s play, but serious business: life and death.

At length Charon broke the silence saying simply:

“Let them come to me.”

The messenger left the house at once and headed back for the mountain.

The range of Kithairon rises to the south of Thebes and is clearly visible from the city. The peak of the mountain is bare, but her steep, undulating slopes are covered with thick fir. Even walking without any particular haste one can reach its protective shadow in no more than three hours.

Charon and his guests also walked out into the street. Theocritus squeezed the hand of Caphisias and pointed with his gaze towards Charon, who walked in front of them. He said in a low voice:

“Just think: Charon is not a philosopher! He was certainly not as well educated as my brother Epaminondas. And yet he is willing to take all kinds of risks for the sake of our fatherland! This is how matters stand with Epaminondas: you’d think he has possessed all virtues and that he is head and shoulders above all common men; but our plot does not interest him at all and he is unwilling to risk his head. Perhaps he is waiting for an easier opportunity to show his mettle and to impress us with his learned courage!”

Caphisias was upset to hear this:

“You are all too eager, my dear Theocritus. We are acting as we have decided was best but Epaminondas was opposed to our plans from the first, and even now he repeats constantly: I would go with you only if you could find a way to free our fatherland without spilling the blood of our fellow countrymen. This he considers the central point: that no one has the right to kill anyone without a court decision, not even in the name of freedom. And there is some logic to this, no doubt. After all, we fight against tyrants because they violate the law, imprison their citizens at will, and persecute anyone who dares express his own opinion. They belittle laws and the public opinion; or, what is even more revolting, claim to be acting in their defense, using the good of the state as their excuse. Supposedly they know it best and only defend the society against the anarchy which must surely flow from any excess of personal freedom. Shall we then, we, the defenders of freedom, begin our work with the crime of resorting to the tyrants’ methods: violence, murder and lawlessness?

“Yet, most of us believe that nothing can be done without resorting to violence. And this is certain: after all it would be naïve in the extreme to think that the tyrant government will give up without a fight merely through philosophical argument! This is why Epaminondas is patiently awaiting that moment at which he will be able to aid us effectively but without violating his principles regarding the correct rules of political struggle.

“I have to admit, I myself have my doubts as to how matters will now develop. When things come to a head, we won’t be able to control our people. Yes, some will only attack our oppressors, but others? They are all hotheads! They won’t rest until they have bathed the whole city in blood and, while at it, they will probably deal with a few personal enemies, too!”

Speaking in this manner, they walked quickly through the winding streets towards the house of Simmias.

Simmias had only recently returned to his native Thebes, but he did not go out because he had gravely cut his thigh and was still bed-ridden. Instead, the young often gathered in his house to discuss philosophy: Simmias had once been the student of Socrates and Philolaus, had visited many countries, and had learned the customs and beliefs of many nations. He could talk about all these things most engagingly.

But the true purpose of these frequent and well-attended visits was altogether different. In order to disguise that purpose, members of the government were also sometimes invited, especially Archias himself. And so it sometimes happened that the arch-tyrant sat among the youth without realizing that he was in fact surrounded by plotters thirsting for his blood: he sat there very pleased to think that the young men around him seemed more fascinated by the subtle problems of philosophy than current political events.

As the walkers arrived at the foot of the castle hill -- Cadmea -- they noticed a few men descending down its slope towards them. Archias himself was among them; so was Lisandridas, the commander of the Spartan garrison; and Phillidas, the government secretary.

Abruptly, all conversations died.

Archias gestured to Theocritus and led him towards the Spartan commander. The three walked some way towards a small hill on which the temple of Amphion stood; there they stopped and began to discuss something with great animation. Meanwhile, the hearts of the others froze: has someone betrayed the plot? Perhaps Theocritus has betrayed them? Perhaps he is even now reporting that the seven have left Athens and are already in Kithairon?

Phillidias approached Caphisias and began to tease him:

“And how goes it with your gymnastics? Are you still practicing with the same enthusiasm?”

Then he pulled him aside and whispered:

“What’s with our friends? Will they keep their promise? Will they come?”

Phillidas, though he was very close to the government, was also part of the plot. For some time, early on, he even acted as a messenger between the Theban group and the Theban exiles in Athens, because on account of his office he was able to travel to Athens freely and meet all sorts of people without causing undue suspicion. This was important: the Theban government had its informers everywhere, even abroad. And it was in Athens, after all, that one of the most active members of the exiled opposition was murdered. Everyone guessed this was done on secret instructions of the Theban government, which had sent the killers in order to intimidate the other exiles.

Caphisias reported the truth as he knew it:

“Yes, they will soon be here.”

Phillidas was pleased:

“Which means that tonight's party at my house has been timed perfectly. Archias is supposed to attend. I’ll get him drunk and all will go smoothly.”

Caphisias beamed:

“Excellent! But you must also make sure that some other members of the government are present.”

Phillidas opened his arms in a gesture of helplessness:

“I’m afraid this will be difficult; maybe even impossible. Archias hopes (and I have been feeding this hope) that he will meet at my house a certain lady from a good home. This is why he does not want too many witnesses around – he wishes to hide the affair even from his own lieutenants. With those who do not come, we shall have to deal separately. We will surely find some way. After all, there is at most a dozen of them: all the others, even the most eager supporters and spies, will either flee or else keep mum, happy to be left alive.”

Caphisias sighed, because he expected many complications.Why , if Archias expected to meet a certain lady at the party, then it is will surely not be possible to stage a manly boozing party at Phillidas’s house. He said:

“Well, let it be, then, since we cannot do it otherwise. By the way, any idea what those two are chatting to Theocritus about?”

“Apparently there have been lately some evil omens... some inauspicious auguries touching upon Sparta... And since Theocritus is considered a great authority on auguries, I think they are consulting him.”

Meanwhile, the others parted and Theocritus rejoined his friends. Before he was able to reassure them with as much as a word, Pheidolaos approached. He greeted them and said:

“Simmias asks that you wait a little in front of his house before going in. He is talking to Leontiades. He’s hoping to change Amphiteos’ death penalty into exile. Personally, I have no hope: Leontiades is as ruthless as Archias himself; but we must try.”

Theocritus was pleased to see Pheidolaos. And, as the group walked slowly towards the philosopher’s house, he asked about something which seemed to interest him a great deal:

“Pheidolaos, you arrive in the nick of time, as if by appointment! You see, I was just thinking how much I’d like to hear about whatever it is that you have found in Alcmene’s tomb in Haliartus. I believe you were present when the tomb was opened and Alcmene’s remains moved to Sparta on the instructions of Agesilaus?”

But Pheidolaos denied it energetically:

“Of course I was not! And I was furious at my compatriots for having so readily, and so submissively, agreed to relinquish to the Spartans the remains of Alcmene! After all, Alcmene was the mother of Heracles! But my advice was ignored, of course. All the same, I do know what was found in the grave. Besides various stones, there were a small copper armband and two clay amphorae filled with what seemed to be earth petrified over the centuries. There was also a bronze tablet inscribed with many strange runes. They were totally indecipherable, though, once the tablet was cleaned, they stood out very clearly. They were odd in shape, foreign, as if Egyptian or some such. This is why King Agesilaus of Sparta had a copy made and sent to Egypt for decipherment. He asked the pharaoh to show it to his priests – thinking that maybe they could read it. But I think that Simmias could tell you more about it than I, since he was in Egypt at the time and he was in contact with various Egyptian priests. As for the opening of the grave itself, I’ll only add: I was right to oppose those unlawful Spartan demands. The residents of Haliartus bewail their former decision now after two great natural disasters befell them this year: first, crops failed; then Lake Copais, on whose shores the city stands, flooded over. These are most certainly not coincidences, but visible divine punishment for having allowed the tomb of Heracles’ mother to be dug up.”

Theocritus meditated for some moments and then said:

“But the Spartans themselves will not avoid divine retribution. They will be met with some great misfortune, this much follows clearly from the auguries. I have just heard about it from the commander of the garrison, Lisandridas. He is leaving for Haliartus just now. He will ritually close up the tomb of Alcmene and offer propitiatory sacrifices to her and to Aleus. Such were the orders of the Delphic oracle; we shall see whether that has any effect. (In fact, we do not know who this Aleus was, whose tomb was dug up along with Alcmene’s. Some say he came from Crete and that his real name was something else).

“Then, according to the same oracle, when he returns here, Lisandridas will have another task: he must find the tomb of Dirce. I do not think he will find it... No one in Thebes knows where it is. The place was known only to those holding the office of the commander of cavalry, since an ancient custom requires the hipparch to take his successor to Dirce’s tomb at night. They make sacrifices there, then cover up their tracks and walk off in different directions... But today, practically all those who had once held that office are abroad, having either been exiled, or fled of their own volition, wisely expecting that to happen which is inevitable with governments resting not on the confidence of their citizens but on the strength of foreign garrisons. Only two former commanders of cavalry remain in the city, but our rulers will not dare ask them, knowing full well what kind of reply they will get if they do. Thus, the present Theban government can be seen not to know Theban traditions... Some dozen men sit on Cadmea, guarded by the Spartan garrison, and pass amongst themselves the ancient insignia of power, the seal and the spear, but none of them have the least inkling about the true nature of the customary rituals which attend their investiture! Let us not even mention the tomb of Dirce!”

__________

Commentary

This book, published in early 1960's exemplifies much Polish writing on the antique, and as such lies in the ancient European tradition of illocution: not speaking about the current political situation directly, this being too risky, and sometimes outright verbotten; but writing ostensibly about the very ancient past, the glorious past of the antique -- a government approved topic for research and publishing because, apparently, it was so far removed from the current realities. But it was not: fourth century Thebes, ruled by a small clique of ruthless tyrants installed by a foreign power and supported by a foreign military contingent, seemed to any Polish reader a lot like post-war Poland. Few readers would have missed the parallels or failed to wonder whether, for example, Epaminondas' reservations about the permitted forms of opposition to tyranny were pertinent. Perhaps this explains Polish post-war preoccupation with the antique -- not merely the human capital invested in the research, but also the general popularity of the topic, the great number of non-fiction and fiction published on the topic, etc. and perhaps also explains why the interest in the antique has waned dramatically since independence.

Woolley stuff

2009-12-11T18:29:00.000-08:00

Ohara Koson (1877-1945), 1910s,
Two Gallinules in shallow water between reeds, woodcut
(Thanks to Will)

What museums often don't let you see online -- and often -- at all -- the auction houses will -- sort of. Here is another one with (fairly) generous images: Woolley and Wallis. Their last Asian sale had several wonderful gems: just look at this, this, this, this and this. Interestingly, none of these pieces were very expensive -- one paid most for the Chinese cloisonne birds (4,800 GBP) and the horse painting (2,600), everything else was triple digits.

You too can own authentic Asian art.

W&W were made notorious by their recent sale of the Pelham Water Buffalo. This was bought in 1938 by Earl of Yarborough for GBP300, wrapped in newspaper and stored in a bank vault, while he went off to war and promptly died. There is a report that the heirs took it out of the vault only in 2005 and committed it to their art dealer for sale sight-unseen, without even unwrapping it. The piece occasioned fierce bidding and eventually went for GBP3.4 million, which is a 14.5% annualized compound return. (It cost the buyer GBP4.16 million, though, after fees and taxes. Why don't they run these auctions in Bermuda, for crying out-loud?) It will probably disappear into another bank vault now.

Despite the dramatically rising prices for Chinese art, much still remains affordable (even if inflation can be felt even at the lower reaches: 19th century Canton enamels which went for $20 in 2008, sell for $240 now: the Chinese are out, buying back in force). Japanese on the other hand are no longer buying back and their art is now significantly cheaper -- so cheap in fact that it is often cheaper to buy the antique than to buy comparable modern work.

Arbitrage?

The whacky Dr Khalili

2009-12-09T18:52:00.000-08:00

Alexander at the Waq-waq tree, 14 cm x 5.8 cm,
painting on paper from an unidentified historical work,
Shiraz, Iran, ca. 1440, Khalili Family Trust.

In the book three of The Adventures of Amir Hamza (a.ka. Hamzanama), Hamza encounters the Waqwaq tree:

Amir and his companions proceeded on their way and passed by the mountain range, plucking and sharing the fruit from the trees around it. As he stood under a mountain, looking for some place to spend the night, Amir heard a voice call out to him, "Peace be with you!" Amir heard these words without seeing who uttered them, and looking around he could not find anyone and saw no trace of the one who addressed him. Suddenly, his eyes caught sight of a tree that stood before him. He saw that the fruits of that tree were shaped liked human heads and that it was from that tree that the greeting had come, for God's will had arranged it thus. Amir marvelled to the limits of marveling at the work of God and returned the greeting, answering in the manner of the followers of the True Faith. Then the voice called out, "O Sahibqiran¹, my name is Waq and once upon a time Sikander² himself rested in my shade for the night. Just as I hosted him once, I will host you for this day and it will be a pleasure for me to arrange a feast for you. Pray stay here for the length of the night and enjoy the sights and sounds of this place."

After this conversation, a fruit fell into Amir's lap, which Amir carved and shared with Zehra Misri and the boys. He found the fruit tastier than any other fruit he had eaten in the past and it fully sated him. Amir then lay down under the tree. The whole night the tree and Amir conversed together and the tree regaled Amir with his sweet speech. [...]

[...] Amir asked the tree, "O tree, tell me when I will die." The tree answered, "When Ashqar's³ hooves lose all their shoes, you should recognize that it is time for you to leave the world. Know then that your cup of life has become full up and that twilight is nigh. But a long time lies between now and that day!" In that manner Waq the tree and Amir Hamza conversed together the whole night.

The Waq-waq tree, sometimes said to grow on Waq-waq Island, is an ancient motif in Arabic and Iranian art and literature. It appears in many texts as well as in miniature paintings, tapestries, vases, and carved wooden boxes; many can be seen in a publication from the Louvre museum called L'Etrange et le Merveilleux en terres d'Islam. In Arabic, Waq-waq has become a common saying: "He's from Waqwaq land" stands for "He's mighty weird".

Reports someone on a forum:

There is 6-page entry on Waqwaq in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, mainly a debate amongst oriental scholars as to whether Waqwaq referred to a real island, say, Madagascar or Japan, or whether it was purely imaginary: 'Waqwaq referred to a country just beyond one's reach in the general direction of the east' or 'some island a little off the usual path of Arab traders'. In Arabian Nights, Hasan al-Basri is told by his guide, 'You could not gain access to the Islands of Waqwaq even if the Flying Jinn and the wandering stars assisted you, since between you and those islands are seven valleys, seven seas and seven mountains of vast magnitude'.

(...)

There are many groups of stories relating to the Waqwaq tree, for example it appears in a Chinese text, the T'ung-tien of Tu Huan, written between AD 766 and 801 and based on an earlier Arabic text in the K.al-Bad' wa 'l-ta'rikh of al-Mutahhar al-Makdisi. In the story given by Tu Huan the tree bears a crown of small children instead of fruit with human faces. In some versions the fruit of the Waqwaq tree ripens into shapely human females hanging by their hair; eventually these fruit fall to the ground, crying 'Waqwaq'; this gives the tree its name. The women can never leave the shadow of the tree. The talking Waqwaq tree with human heads also appears in the Alexander Romance as 'the transformed oracular Tree of the Sun and Moon which is reputed to have told Alexander of his approaching death'.

The Khalili Family Trust has a rather stingy slide-show (why oh why do they all do this?) of their many truly marvelous pieces here. Their (pricey) books, which apparently cover the whole collection may be much more worth looking at. There is currently a show of Khalili's enamel collection at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg; but it's website has pictures which are only marginally larger, like this:

Two vases, Circa 1910, Attributed by Kawade Shibataro, Nagoya

Copper, silver wire cloisonne enamel with some silver foil, silver mounts

No wonder the modern world dwells in the darkness of ugliness, "edgy design" and conceptual art: it pretty much never gets the chance to see anything pretty; as soon as something pretty surfaces, it is snatched by a collector and locked up.

It's a conspiracy.

¹ Sahibqiran - A title of Hamza's meaning "Lord of the Auspicious Planetary Conjunction."
² Alexander the Great.
³ Ashqar - Hamza's enchanted horse.

This guy named Fred

2009-12-08T21:58:00.000-08:00

.

Not all contemporary art is -- well, Contemporary; some of it is even pretty, like this work of Fred Rich, here. Nor is all jewelry made today in the west ugly, machine-bent platinum shlock relying on brand name for generating sales. My only gripe about dear Fred is -- he's damned pricey.

Reading Mourad with trepidation

2009-12-07T15:44:00.000-08:00

Cover art: John Frederick Lewis (1805-1876)¹, Lilium Auratium;
the vase is an Iznik (?) Imari²

Kenize Mourad, granddaughter of one of the last Sultans of Turkey (Murad V), and daughter of the former Raja of Kotdwara (in Uttarkhand), comments early in her book³, while describing her father's obsequies in the old family seat somewhere "near" Lucknow (near by Indian standards, of course):

De compassion, aucun de ces paysants n'aurait l'idee d'en eprouver pour cette homme qui fut leur maitre mais sut aussi les proteger, les aider dans l'infortune et accompagner leur vie non sans bonte, les exploitant moins qu'il n'est coutume. Car ceux qui exercent le pouvoir ne sont plus consideres comme des humains, de par leur puissance ils appartiennent a l'univers des dieux. Et qui aurait pitie des dieux?

Suddenly I am seized by fear and foreboding: what does Kenize Mourad, raised and educated in France-egalite, know about divine kingship of the feudal society? In her first chapter she discusses frankly her emotions: anger at the family for not having notified her earlier of her father's critical condition, grudges at her brothers for having been brothers (and thus more important in her father's eyes), at her father for -- as yet we do not know what.

But do we -- do I -- want to know?

Mme Mourad sounds like a modern French woman: confident, proud, and prepared to bare her emotional entrails which she is convinced are important and deserving of universal knowing. (Georges Sand comes to mind). Modern French women are no doubt interesting in their own right; but there seems to be just one way of being a modern French woman, and we already know what that is... More importantly, can one expect them to tell us anything truly insightful about the lives and minds of real kings and princes of another time and place, even if they should be their own flesh and blood?

I will read on Kenize Mourad, but gingerly and with trepidation. I have already heard everything westerners -- especially women westerners -- have had to say about Indian divine kingship, religion, love and family relationships, and I am sure I do not want to read it yet again.

This is just the gist of my misunderstanding with Angelica, too. I had told her that the emotions and the inner states of knights are a closed book to pretty much everyone knights ever meet in the modern world. She did not believe me: "If you behave in a certain way, she says, people will always understand it". But then -- how could she possibly know?

Akhila has known me longer and closer; she is also older and more perceptive: "I don't get you", she says with a winning smile. That, of course, is what one aims to achieve: since to be known is to be available: to be scrutable is to be common.

¹ Lewis was a so-called Orientalist, and long dead and forgotten before that term was thrown into opprobrium. In fact, the fortunes of his art revived suddenly in the 1970's, just about the time when the infamous essay by Edward Said was being hatched; from nothing his works quite suddenly began to command seven figure prices. (Indeed, was Said perhaps responding to Lewis's reviving fame?) I'd like to read more about how Lewis was revived. Anyone can recommend a book?

² To this day the most popular style of pottery decoration in Morocco is a kind of homw-grown variation on Imari. Is this the case across the Arab world?

³ Le Jardin de Badalpour, not, apparently, available in English, though, like the Kawabata-Mishima letters, you could read it in half a dozen other European languages any day of the week.

A very poor Ming-style vignette in honor of Grandmaster Zhang Dai

2009-12-04T20:00:00.000-08:00

.
Three years ago I lived near this place. Frequently, of an evening, when the sunlight turned golden and the air became brisk, I came here by motorcycle to race on this isolated road along this high mountain ridge. Both sides of the road here are deep valleys, filled with dark, cool, silent forest, and, higher up, the mountains roll away towards the horizon in rows and rows of ever fainter blue -- until they merge with sky and clouds at infinity.

Every time I came here, a sparrowhawk would join me and fly by my side for several miles, staying constantly some 30 meters away, on my right, which was also the eastern side of me, where the sky grew dark. The sunlight reflected off him; against the darkening sky he burnt like a precious ruby.

I don't know why he followed me: perhaps he liked the color of my bike, or mistook the logo on my helmet for a bird. Or perhaps it was just his regular time to fly along the ridge to enjoy the sunset and it was me who followed him instead. Or perhaps he simply wanted to take a closer look who it was that intruded on his territory.

Or perhaps he was not an sparrowhawk at all, but an omen¹, or a ghost of someone who had died here, or an incarnation of the genius loci. But he was here every time I came to race my bike on this isolated road along the top of the mountain ridge.

Today I returned here to see if he was still there, but, no, he wasn't. I raced my bike alone and no one followed me.

Footnotes:

¹ A bird of evil omen: one appears about half way (6'20") through this video.

The Word and The Flesh (9)

2009-12-03T06:48:00.000-08:00

Parthian archer, Palazzo Madama, Turin.

I know: you'll say that this is not our main theme for you; that you ordered me to take the quill into my hand so that I may justify myself, not so that I may instruct others. It's an old Roman trick, that, well known to us, Parthians: "It is meet to bury the battle dead"! Well, let us bury them, then. But can we for a moment leave the corpses of my relations with Rachela Eratona, with Samgila, and with the gods and anti-gods who in turn blessed these unions or frowned upon them -- leave these corpses, I say, lying in peace upon the bier? After all, the very involvement of beings of divine nature in the progress and dissolution of these unions will prevent their corpses from rotting too quickly. But nothing divine permeates, or even shines its light upon the most curious case of Alexandra's marriage to Achilles, son of Kornelios. You'll say -- both of you will -- that its corpse has been buried. Has it? Really? It's strange, most strange. When, would you say, the burial took place? In the first decade of Apelaios, which month here is called Atyros? That is to say nearly two weeks ago? My dear Markia, do not believe it. The interment has not taken place. The stench of the corpse can still be smelled, though, I must confess, its smell is most unusual for a dead body. You know this stench -- I believe that ten years ago you compared it to the smell of dried up apple rinds soaked in cedar resin and sprinkled with spicy wine. At this very moment I can smell this mixture of scents very clearly because I have leaned my ruby-flamed inkwell against that can which you had once received from me along with the shoes of princess Kaliope and those six beards which at that time so much amused you.

I had never guessed that the can might return to me in any other way but along with all your earthly possessions (which had been your father's before you). Yet, it returned to me alone. Empty. For six days now I have believed that on the night which the Romans call New Year's Eve, you gave poison to Komodos Kaisar; and if so, then it follows that everything else which Klaudia of Britain and Alexandra, especially Alexandra, have told me about that night, and what is confirmed by the official protocol prepared from the meeting of the senatus in the wee hours of that night at the turning point of old and new year, must be true...

You did not put the entire content of that can into Kaisar's celebration goblet. What happened to the rest? It had to remain -- for years and years -- where you had left it; or else there would not now rise from that empty can towards my nostrils that scent of dried-up apple-rinds, soaked in cedar resin and sprinkled with spicy wine.

But Klaudios Iulianos did not find as much as a smidgen of the poison-weed in the can when he lifted it from the night-stand, upon which Achilles the Hermopolitan used to rest his toy-ship-making tools before going to sleep. And he found the can that very morning when Alexandra -- having spent a day, a night, and a day again with me -- revealed to me that you are nearby, that she's seeing you, but that I may not see you until the day we make our escape together. As she said those words, her husband was already dead. But he had been alive the night before when, in order to celebrate Alexandra's visit, I gave a feast for nine guests.

Six Romans had awaited that feast for a long time; indeed, they kept inviting themselves in. We Parthians are famous for our hospitality, which makes this a bit of a shame, does it not?, that I forced these would be guests to invite themselves in, or, indeed, even as much as made them wait. But they did not take offense; nor did they complain; because clearly they understood that if Alexandra was delaying her visit to her brother (a brother she had not seen for ten years), then obviously she really could not leave the side of her handicapped husband.

Yet, she left his side; and more: she left him without attendants, alone, for a whole night, the whole following day, and the whole following night again! And during this entire time she was the most extra-ordinarily tender sister to me: as tender as she'd never been before my parting from her in India. So tender, in fact, that even the Karen's daughter -- o wonder of wonders! -- began to act as if she were jealous; not to mention Samgila and Samasariston's niece!

What is more: Asmodeos, the Median demon feared and respected by the Jews, who lives in the ruby-flaming glove, and who did not yet at the time suspect that his dwelling place will be soon and unceremoniously turned into an ink well, rebelled in the name of her who had enslaved him -- my former wife, Rachela -- and in the name of defending her rights to me, rights which, at her father's command she had then renounced: he rebelled, I say, and -- the glove fell off the wall and onto the stone floor with a racket so great, as if the glove had had to its account slapped faces of Antiochoses, Tituses and Hadrians, and not just those of a few humble merchants.

What a total lack of logic on my part! I just wrote a moment ago: at her father's command, Rachela Erato divorced me and married, in Babylon, a wise man of Israel, whom she'd already born as many Symeons, Jacobs, Joanneses, Judahs, Naathaniels and Matheuses as have broken off from Israel two centuries ago in order to follow him, who has caused it that also west of the Hind walking on water becomes accessible to human-kind. And she bore those twelve -- as says Samasariston -- in great joy; whence thus comes this appeal to her rights, by way of the rebellion by her demon-servant, rights which she'd laid at the booted feet of a caravan robber? Has she loved me, after all? Poor creature! She'd always so wanted for good fortune and long life -- or so, at least, says Alexandra. What will happen now? There is but one hope: that the demons of Media take their oaths of loyalty as seriously as the sons of the grand priests of Persis. Ardashir hates me, but serves me faithfully, and until I grant him his freedom, will not betray any of my secrets even to his own father. May Asmodeos, subdued by Rachela, be as loyal to her as Ardashir is to me! If she -- after all -- does love me, and he knows about that love, he'd be a scoundrel, not a knight, to reveal this fact to any of his incorporeal friends.

Do not rejoice too early, my tender sister: the mounted archer only seemingly pointed his far-ranging weapon towards the auxiliary unit recruited in the ravines of the borderland desert; in fact, he still aims straight into the Roman quadrangle: Klaudios Iulian says that, without slightest doubt at all, he believes the murderer of Achilles to be -- you, Alexandra!

(Which ends Khesroes to Markia letter the first, earning you stars for such faithful reading, and me -- a well deserved break).