Angelica tells the truth

Why don´t you write a book? asks X.

(And Y. And Z. And T. And, most recently, my Angelica. And three days after her, someone else).

The answer is, of course, that as long as The Leopard remains in print, another book is hardly ever needed -- because anyone tempted to pick up and read a book of mine (or of anyone, indeed) is simply better off picking up The Leopard and re-reading it for the 57th (or whatever the case may be) time.

Really: as long as The Leopard remains in print, no other book is ever needed.

*

Every time I reread the book (a mere 147 pages!), a new aspect of it strikes me.

Last night it was Angelica´s praise for the Prince:

You are so handsome, so manly, so sexy, she says (not her words, but certainly her message). Old? Bah! -- she exclaims -- who could ever be interested in these inconsequential pretty young shrip?

If you have not understood Angelica, she appears to be saying to him you are the man. (And her (young) fiance plays along, feigning one wicked jealousy).

And then she invites Don Fabrizio to dance the mazurka.

Oh no, replies the prince, going along with the game, not the mazurka, I beg you. I am not so old, he says, that I cannot remember. Not the mazurka. The waltz will do. (He means also: I am not so young that I do not understand the ways of the world. Give me a staid boring dance, the sort one may safely dance with her grand-father).

(The prince, you see, is old but wise; and yes, I do mean to say "but" -- unlike in speech, in life "old and wise" is not a common combination at all).

*

The fact is, of course -- the inexorable fact -- that she invites him to dance as a way of thanking him for having helped to arrange her marriage with Tancredi, who is his nephew: young, dashing... and a shrimp of a man.

(The prospect had been bedevilled by the usual social issues: Tancredi was a poor nobleman, even if he descended from the peers of Charlemagne; while Angelica´s father was a country-bumpkin nouveau-riche with ties to the mafia and no title of any sort at all; this was a difficulty which only a prince could overcome; and overcome it Don Fabrizzio did: for his nephew, whom he loved (how could one not); but also, importantly, for Angelica, whom, had it been another time, another age, he would have loved gladly).

And now Angelica says to him now, you are neither too old, nor too fat, nor too flabby, nor too dull for a young woman to love madly.

But she means -- obviously -- "for another young woman" -- ("not me").

Which is exactly how one needs to read this every time.

*

In the novel -- believe it or not -- the prince (one too old for a romance with Angelica) is forty-five. Forty five! A requiem for those of us who are today forty-six!

Antal Szerb

The vagaries of sexual attraction -- writes Antal Szerb -- can be analyzed in terms of sociological type. There are some people who can love only those of lower standing than themselves -- gentlemen of birth who pursue female servants, and ladies of rank who adore coachmen. There are those whose passions are strictly confined to members of their own stratum, and those who can only love those from a bracket higher than their own -- people in whose minds sex and ambition are inseparably fused.

Etc.

Szerb teaches and delights. Above all, delights.

The proof of the honey

This review of Salwa al Neimi's The Proof of the Honey is typical of them all: they all say that the book is good but its central story is weak: the sex isn't all that titillating and the romantic relationship of which it is part is shallow, three and a half stars.

I can't help feeling that the reviewers miss something here -- namely, the book's central point, which is that, indeed, the sex between the lovers wasn't anything nobody else hadn't done before (duh); and their relationship, for the author at least, wasn't about anything much else (blah); and yet -- and this is the point the reviewers miss -- and yet.

Perhaps to understand Salwa's story one has to have experienced what she has and perhaps the experience is simply too rare; but I think I understand her; indeed, while reading her I felt that for the first time in my life I heard someone else describe -- in what could be my own words -- my own experience.

In brief: it sometimes happens that we come across a lover who is especially sexually suitable for us; the word for it, I suppose, could be chemistry -- and no doubt this is what it is. The experience, when it happens, surprises by its power: we suddenly realize that right up to that point we had simply not understood what sex was supposed to be about, however experienced and well read on the subject we may have been; we suddenly know how incredibly satisfying the least, most ordinary things can be. The amazing thing -- which is precisely Salwa's central point, and, I think, the point missed by the reviewers -- is that such sex is certainly ordinary sex as far as the act itself, and yet with that particular partner it does to us something which it never does to us with anyone else, ever. As a result, as if in a flash, we suddenly understand all sorts of things which we had not understood before: the physical world around us changes its meaning.

Until then we had not known it could be this good. Until then we had felt like most adults do -- well, we had thought, sex certainly has its place, but, hey, there are other things in life.

And now, suddenly, we have caught sight of a kind of Dionysian mystery.

As result and henceforth, the world appears to us very clearly divided between the before and the after: before and after we understood, before and after our initiation: not initiation into sex, much of which is perfectly run-of-the-mill ordinary; but initiation to that goodness -- for which there seems to be no word.

A great sexual passion of this sort, when it happens, if it happens, not only changes us forever -- we will never see sex, or the opposite sex -- or ourselves -- in the same light again -- but it also puzzles -- puzzles? no, mystifies -- us: that special partner, sleeping with whom is unlike sleeping with anyone else on earth, is often an ordinary person: neither especially intelligent nor particularly beautiful; there is nothing romantic about the engagement: it does not grow into the hallowed relationship thing; indeed, there is no familiarity or liking or comfort; the whole thing remains uncertain, dangerous and adversarial (which is perhaps one element that keeps it so fresh, unless, that is, the arrow of causality points in the opposite direction).

Indeed, the thing that binds us -- the sex -- being so completely accidental -- by the off chance of the lottery of life we have wondered into someone who perfectly suits us physically, what is the chance of that! -- she is often not good for us in other ways: perhaps we can't respect her aspirations, or her values shock us, or she has a serious character flaw; all we ever want is more of her body -- like Salwa wanted her Penseur's -- but on account of all that strangeness, she may well -- she usually does -- turn out to be impossible to keep.

Indeed, inured as we are to have slight intellectual regard for the importance of sex; and pre-occupied by concerns of life management -- income, savings, family duties, national, political and religious obligations -- we often find that we cannot afford her and choose our life partners on some other qualifications. Not a single person I know has married his or her spouse because the sex was so very good; usually, they say, when you can get them to speak about it, the sex with him/her has never been all that great; and then they add: marriage is about other things. (And so it is).

And when the day comes on which the special she then passes out of our life, as she usually does, we are left, like Salwa, puzzling over the experience more or less incoherently, certainly incoherently to those who have not experienced the same thing: we are, on the one hand, tragically deprived -- because she is gone and her being gone no one seems to match her, and no one matching her we begin to hesitate before taking on new lovers -- why be disappointed, why have less than the very best? and, on the other hand, we are also richer for we have seen a mystery, something otherwise hidden, we know something about ourselves and the world we had not known and most people probably do not. For it is something rare: by the looks of it, the experience is perhaps in parts per million; certainly the reviewer quoted here has no clue about it or he would not say "we all like a dip of honey" -- it is a slighting vulgarism which I can't help feeling really goes to say that, in the words of another slighting vulgarism, when you turn out the light, all women are the same.

And that's just Salwa's point: they aren't. It's not a dip of honey that's great; it is the proof of that honey -- as in proof of armor, or proof of a metal alloy, or proof of a distillate; not proof meaning trial, but proof meaning strength -- which is.

Salwa's is therefore a book of esoteric knowledge, written in a kind of code, by the initiated for the initiated; and for all others, impenetrable.

(A philosopher once said: let him who has ears, hear).

Un conte de Noel or The wretched tiresomeness of the anglos

There are numerous films with this title, both French and English.

Invariably, the English movies are about the same things as the French ones: betrayal, disloyalty, sexual dalliance, parents’ failure to love their children (and the reverse), failure to live up to standards of friendship; and so forth. In short: moral failure all along the line; which is to say, well, life.

But – and this is my point here -- also invariably, the English language films are dark, sick, depressing – Scandinavian – while the French films – though they can be profound – manage to be lighthearted and – well, generally quite funny.

(Profundity, it turns out, contra my anglo friends, has no need of moral reproach).

The anglo productions are invariably steeped in the five thousand year old sauce of divine moralization: even the famous sexual revolution has not cured the anglos of their leviticus moralizing zeal: the rules remain, they have merely been tweaked (“dally all you want before you’re married, but once you marry, well, then have eyes only for daddy” – how does one who has dallied all her life do that?); while the French – well, the French seem to make do – with all the heartache it entails but without the divine retribution and without the moral disgust.

Here is to the French. (Herdade grande, red, 2006; and well before noon, too; but, hey, it's afternoon somewhere in the world, no?)

*

BBC7 is mostly lower-middle-brow. But it sometimes rises above itself to produce something quite good. Last month it was Wharton’s Reef. Good, excellent, wonderful, insightful, wise – well written and well acted, too boot. But, oh, so bloody Anglo-Saxon, so damn – well – sick.

My reaction to this literature is like my reaction to Dostoevsky: instant, deeply felt, uncontrollable revulsion.

(I am a Crime and Punishment tosser, i.e. one of those who have pitched it out the window with disgust… in fact, I suppose, I am a serial-tosser since I repeated the same – Heimlich? -- maneuver with Brothers Karamazov twenty years later. It is a kind of monoethlon: how far anf fast can you pitch your Dosoevsky?)

Yet, surprisingly – or not surprisingly, if you know their literature – the anglos love Dostoevsky.

There is something about the feelings of moral disgust that stimulates the anglos; they appear like that madman who having accidentally stepped into a piece of dog poop in the street, turned round, retraced his steps and, re-locating the poopismo, trod it again; and again; and again.

One assumes – with delight.

(Not my kind of party).

Love in middle age orSame Old Same Old, part 1orthe main reason to love art

.

I do not much like being grown up and wise, Akhila said to me over a glass of something in the deep shade of the great Bo tree: a Bo tree as huge and as silent as a Gothic church.

(A Bo tree, just think!)

"For, although my mother, now 57, says to me 'I wish I had known at your age what you know at yours', the truth is that this knowledge is -- a burden. The truth is, my old friend, that premature wisdom is... bitter.

"Yes, it is useful to know with perfect 20/20 clarity just what motivates everyone around me, and thus how to press their buttons... and thus how to manipulate them efficiently into doing what I want. It makes one effective at business... look at this house all paid off at 32, and another one... And yes, it is good to know not to expect from people anything beyond that -- one saves herself so much disappointment by not entertaining silly expectations...

"And yet, it is -- disappointing, after all, I suppose -- tiresome -- dull -- to know that people are such simple creatures; that everything in life is so -- predictable; so -- unromantic; so -- mechanical; so -- mercenary... all of it... That everyone is just like everyone else... that they are all after the same things... and that one can trust no one at all, and never ever hope for anyone to surprise us...

"When I think about it now, I realize just how much I do not like it: there is a part of me which wishes I did not know; a part of me that wishes to be mystified, wide-eyed, amazed. I want to believe life is a mystery. I want to be in love -- yes, I suppose I do want to be in love -- which is, to my mind, a feeling of giving oneself to something bigger and better than oneself... of believing in goodness and friendship and -- well -- love.

"But, of course, it is impossible; at our age we know better; we have the perfect knowledge; the 20/20 vision. Zero illusion."

*

My lady Akhila's words do not surprise me.

They, too, are predictable: it is the voice of the middle age.

I once heard Joe Campbell saying the very same thing: by the time you are forty, you know what a person is going to say before they open their mouth; you know everything; everyone you meet you have met already in a different guise... everything someone else says you have heard... you are ready for -- a whole new movie.

And, of course, this has been my experience, too: same old, same old.

And, like Akhila, I am tired and bored of it.

The difference is that Joe Campbell was 52 when he pronounced those words; and I was forty when I understood them; but Akhila is... thirty-two. How terrifying it must be to be disillusioned at her age.

At her age I was still stupid enough to fall in love -- for what will be, I certainly hope, the last time.

*

There are, I say to her, two ways to cope.

The first is not to become cynical.

Cynical, think my friends, means not believing anyone we meet; assuming absolutely the worst about them; and then merely waiting to see how right we were in our initial estimation; waiting for them to prove themselves to be just what we thought they were in the first place. At which they do not usually disappoint.

But that is not correct; that is not the true meaning of being cynical. That is merely being realistic, practical, true to the our middle-age knowledge of people and the world. The species is ugly; its members are by and large a worthless waste of time.

This is god's own truth.

It is a fact of life.

But being cynical is not about knowing it, but about agreeing to be like them.

And this we must not do. Merely because x is a louse, why should I be the same? If x fails me as a friend, why should I fail him? The world is lousy, surely; but that does not mean I should be lousy myself, too, does it now?

So my friends can count on me even if I cannot -- and do not -- count on them. They are oftentimes lice, perhaps; sometimes lice squared, even; but I -- I shall be a reliable and trustworthy friend to them.

No one will ever catch me being a louse.

*

But the second way to cope is probably the better one -- fewer concerns with interpersonal relationships and character in it, certainly fewer disappointments -- it is to take an interest in art.

Every artistic technique -- whether it is weaving, or pottery, or painting, or metalworking -- is a kind of struggle with the technological limitations of the medium; within each there are numerous histories of multigenerational research projects each directed at the attainment of a particular result. In painting this may be the struggle to represent three dimensional space on a flat surface; or to represent texture -- glistening glass, fluffy fur, stubble; in Chinese pottery such projects included the quest for the color of sangue de boeuf; or for the perfect celadon crackle. Following these research projects is intellectually fascinating; but their ends are always fresh and new: they are far removed from the usual same old same old; which is why the artists followed them in the first place, I suppose. They, too, found the endless cycle of seduction and betrayal painful and -- dull. They, too, tried to get away -- and thanks to them now we can, too -- by following them down their paths.