I’m in London. I was supposed to move into Northumberland House on 26 September, but they had overbooked, and hence I am staying at High Holborn until 29. It’s a hole. The single room is an acceptable size, but the bed and furnishings are old and creaky. The chair I am sitting on at the moment is torn in a way I didn’t know was possible. I have to share a toilet and shower (which are located in different rooms halfway across the hall) with approximately 15 other people. The shower is so small there’s no room to swing a kneazle. I remember writing the same about the bus traveling to Pine Bluff when I was 14. I suppose most literature is self-referential.
I have met many new people, none of whose names I remember. I must congratulate myself on how friendly a guy I seem to be, but then again freshers’ is a time to be overly friendly no matter one’s real personality. I intended to go to the Prince Charles Cinema yesterday, but I was unlucky enough not to be allocated a free ticket. It was just as well though, for I fell asleep at about nine o’ clock.
Today, 27 September, was the parents’ orientation. I attended a lecture by Martin Lewis, a money-saving guru. Although the lecture itself was rather boring (it was an hour long – I’m beginning to think I’m not suited for lectures, and better suited for smaller classes) it was pretty informative. The key ideas were: that companies’ only aim is to make money from you (the consumer); and that one should budget according to the amount of money available, as opposed to one’s wants and desires. Next was a panel discussion on globalization and how it affects students. Danny Quah, who hopefully will be my teacher at some point of my career at the LSE, was very interesting. I am unfortunately unable to recollect what exactly it was that he said that was interesting; that shows the toll that my 5-month summer has taken on my brain. I must get up to scratch for my first classes, which start on 8 October.
Before that, however, is freshers’ fortnight, which begins officially on 1 October. I will not be going to the first event because on the evening of 1 October, Alan Greenspan will be giving a lecture about his new book called The Age of Turbulence. I have always been slightly uncomfortable about choosing to attend the LSE over the other American universities I could have gone to, but seeing the number of famous people coming to give public lectures here I think I have made the correct choice.
That is not to say, however, that the UK is without faults. Being the critic that I am, here are the few things that I’ve noticed in the past 24 hours that are not to my satisfaction: the trolleys in the airport were unstrollable; the taxi driver knew English and thus kept up a steady stream of nonsensical babble for over 20 minutes; the sandwich shop I wanted to eat at last night was shut at 7 o’ clock; the trains are unreliable; and the weather is, although I hate to say it, terrible.
Now I must away to make some friends.
Sunday 30 September 2007
Thursday 30 August 2007
Hot authors write hot novels – generally
The days shuffled by like bland schoolgirls.
-- Marisha Pessl; Special Topics in Calamity Physics
Marisha Pessl is hot (fit; I’m practising my English slang). Proof:
Do hot (fit) authors tend to produce hot (fit?) novels? This is an ancient metaphysical (and indeed, existential) question pondered by all philosophers from the pre-Socratics to the post-postmodernists (popomos) (see Introduction, Philosophy: the Basics, Warburton, 2004, p. 1).
Let us use the inductive principle to tackle this problem. In the first case, Pessl’s Special Topics in Calamity Physics seems to confirm the above statement.
An extraordinarily erudite novel – Pessl references most of the Western canon in literature and history, plenty of Hitchcock and film noir, and makes up some funny references too – Special Topics amazingly doesn’t collapse under the staggering weight of its erudition. If you have mentioned 38 author’s or playwrights’ names in the contents page alone, you need to make sure that the ensuing novel has enough steam to not sink under the heavy weight of association. Pessl hardly falters in her 500-page novel, and makes proud Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Kafka, and Ovid, as well as introducing something of her own to modern fiction.
The characterization is superb: Gareth van Meer is a brilliant political science professor who knows a lot more than a little bit about everything. He and his daughter, Blue, live at a different university town every semester. They drive around America from one town to the next reciting poetry and learning philosophy: “Driving with Dad wasn’t cathartic, mind-freeing driving (see On the Road, Kerouac, 1957). It was mind-taxing driving. It was Sonnet-a-thons. It was One Hundred Miles of Solitude: Attempting to Memorize The Waste Land.” Gareth so impresses his daughter that Special Topics, presented as Blue’s autobiography, contains witty (to the reader) aphorisms of Dad (Dad with the capital D) such as “a person must have a magnificent reason for writing out his or her Life Story and expecting anyone to read it” and “[Americans] know God – many of them attest to daily chats with the man. And the idea that none of us can truly know anything at all […] is a though they’d rather be shot in the arm with their own semi-automatic rifle than face head on. Personally, I think there’s something terrific about not knowing, relinquishing man’s feeble attempt to control. When you throw up your hands and say, ‘Who knows?’ you can get on with the sheer gift of being alive”. Although Blue is certainly a character in her own light, her character is inescapably molded by Gareth’s own exuberant one. That Gareth himself is only seen through Blue’s own words firmly situates the novel in the realm of postmodernism. (Curiously enough, I never read the word postmodern in Special Topics. Choice vocabulary from Pessl includes: “outré”, “obsequious”, and “nuts”.)
Pessl’s writing style is superb (see “Why Use One Metaphor When You Can Use Two, Three, or Even Fifteen?”, The Basic Elements of Style, Drummer, 2001, p. 133). At times the 500 pages can get tedious – I found the couple of chapters on the Nightwatchmen rather boring – and a few of Pessl’s turns of phrase spice up the narrative. For example, Zach Soderberg’s voice is “stiff as new shoes” and the days trudged by like “bland schoolgirls”. Another pleasing aspect of Special Topics is that it doesn’t answer the text’s most pressing questions (we never know who killed Hannah Schneider and what happened to Gareth); it instead uses an unreliable narrator who herself does not know what has happened. So although the novel has “the sort of ellipsis ending most American audiences would rather undergo a root canal than be left with” (so says Dad on Michelangelo Antonioni’s black-and-white film L’Avventura), Special Topics is ultimately more pleasurable on a more sophisticated, higher plane.
(But personally, I found the last chapter, “Final Exam” to be a bit of a letdown. [What does that say about me … ?] Gareth says that the semester course structure provides “order”; yes it does, but there is no romantic orgasmic climax to end the novel at its zenith.)
We thus have one case of one hot author writing a hot novel. Let us consider another author, Emily Brontë:
She’s not hot. And her only novel, Wuthering Heights, sucks (badly too). So the general case does not hold, I think ... ?
-- Marisha Pessl; Special Topics in Calamity Physics
Marisha Pessl is hot (fit; I’m practising my English slang). Proof:
Do hot (fit) authors tend to produce hot (fit?) novels? This is an ancient metaphysical (and indeed, existential) question pondered by all philosophers from the pre-Socratics to the post-postmodernists (popomos) (see Introduction, Philosophy: the Basics, Warburton, 2004, p. 1).
Let us use the inductive principle to tackle this problem. In the first case, Pessl’s Special Topics in Calamity Physics seems to confirm the above statement.
An extraordinarily erudite novel – Pessl references most of the Western canon in literature and history, plenty of Hitchcock and film noir, and makes up some funny references too – Special Topics amazingly doesn’t collapse under the staggering weight of its erudition. If you have mentioned 38 author’s or playwrights’ names in the contents page alone, you need to make sure that the ensuing novel has enough steam to not sink under the heavy weight of association. Pessl hardly falters in her 500-page novel, and makes proud Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Kafka, and Ovid, as well as introducing something of her own to modern fiction.
The characterization is superb: Gareth van Meer is a brilliant political science professor who knows a lot more than a little bit about everything. He and his daughter, Blue, live at a different university town every semester. They drive around America from one town to the next reciting poetry and learning philosophy: “Driving with Dad wasn’t cathartic, mind-freeing driving (see On the Road, Kerouac, 1957). It was mind-taxing driving. It was Sonnet-a-thons. It was One Hundred Miles of Solitude: Attempting to Memorize The Waste Land.” Gareth so impresses his daughter that Special Topics, presented as Blue’s autobiography, contains witty (to the reader) aphorisms of Dad (Dad with the capital D) such as “a person must have a magnificent reason for writing out his or her Life Story and expecting anyone to read it” and “[Americans] know God – many of them attest to daily chats with the man. And the idea that none of us can truly know anything at all […] is a though they’d rather be shot in the arm with their own semi-automatic rifle than face head on. Personally, I think there’s something terrific about not knowing, relinquishing man’s feeble attempt to control. When you throw up your hands and say, ‘Who knows?’ you can get on with the sheer gift of being alive”. Although Blue is certainly a character in her own light, her character is inescapably molded by Gareth’s own exuberant one. That Gareth himself is only seen through Blue’s own words firmly situates the novel in the realm of postmodernism. (Curiously enough, I never read the word postmodern in Special Topics. Choice vocabulary from Pessl includes: “outré”, “obsequious”, and “nuts”.)
Pessl’s writing style is superb (see “Why Use One Metaphor When You Can Use Two, Three, or Even Fifteen?”, The Basic Elements of Style, Drummer, 2001, p. 133). At times the 500 pages can get tedious – I found the couple of chapters on the Nightwatchmen rather boring – and a few of Pessl’s turns of phrase spice up the narrative. For example, Zach Soderberg’s voice is “stiff as new shoes” and the days trudged by like “bland schoolgirls”. Another pleasing aspect of Special Topics is that it doesn’t answer the text’s most pressing questions (we never know who killed Hannah Schneider and what happened to Gareth); it instead uses an unreliable narrator who herself does not know what has happened. So although the novel has “the sort of ellipsis ending most American audiences would rather undergo a root canal than be left with” (so says Dad on Michelangelo Antonioni’s black-and-white film L’Avventura), Special Topics is ultimately more pleasurable on a more sophisticated, higher plane.
(But personally, I found the last chapter, “Final Exam” to be a bit of a letdown. [What does that say about me … ?] Gareth says that the semester course structure provides “order”; yes it does, but there is no romantic orgasmic climax to end the novel at its zenith.)
We thus have one case of one hot author writing a hot novel. Let us consider another author, Emily Brontë:
She’s not hot. And her only novel, Wuthering Heights, sucks (badly too). So the general case does not hold, I think ... ?
Juvenile comedy
It is necessary at some point for every family with a son to acquire a daughter-in-law. […] She should be fair-complexioned, but if she is dark the dowry should include at least one of the following items: a television set, a refrigerator, a Godrej steel cupboard and maybe even a scooter. […] This girl should have passed all her examinations in the first division but will listen respectfully when her prospective in-laws lecture her on various subjects they themselves failed in secondary school. […] Her mother should urge: ‘Eat something. Eat a laddoo. My daughter made these with her own hands.’ And these laddoos must not be recognizable as coming from the sweetmeat shop down the road.
-- Kiran Desai; Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard
Kiran Desai’s awareness to the intricacies and eccentricities of Indian people speaking English is remarkable. Her attention to detail in her dialogue (for example, “Arre” and the wonderfully onomatopoeic “Aiii, sir”) makes Hullabaloo worth reading for its Indianised English alone.
But I did not like Desai’s debut novel, and would not recommend it to any serious reader over the age of fourteen. While Desai’s dialogue is amazingly well-crafted, and there are some fine turns of phrase in her descriptions (for example, Sampath’s family “vibrated like giants” when they slept), Hullabaloo is undone by its childish and juvenile plot.
Sampath, a wayward youth, cannot hold a good job and is dissatisfied with his domestic life, so he climbs up a guava tree and stays there for almost one year. Various people attempt to get Sampath down, but to no avail. Suddenly, Sampath starts revealing the people’s innermost secrets, and the mob starts believing that he is a saint. (The truth is more mundane: Sampath used to work at the post office and used to read everyone’s mail.) He delivers The Sermon in the Guava Tree, which includes gems such as “Add lemons to milk and it will grow sour” and “Once my uncle had a rooster and an insect laid its eggs in the flesh of its rear end. It knew the young ones would have a warm place to live and plenty to eat”. Sampath’s father Mr. Chawla makes a healthy profit charging the devotees for seeing and offering blessings to the Monkey Baba. He is so called because of the band of monkeys that hang around in his guava tree.
The monkeys complicate Mr. Chawla’s business by stealing liquor, getting drunk and causing chaos. The Brigadier, the Chief Medical Officer, the Superintendent of Police, and the District Collector, and Mr. Verma each hatch their own plans to contain the crisis of the monkeys, and an apparently hilarious scene occurs when they all fail miserably. At the end of the novel the monkeys disappear into the forest at the edge of the orchard, and Sampath seemingly leaves with them.
Kiran Desai intends laugh-out-loud comedy, but the situation of the Cinema Monkey and his troupe drunk is merely juvenile. She means to portray the Chawla family as slightly unhinged, but her attempts go awry, especially when Kulfi plans to cook a monkey and when Pinky bites the Hungry Hop boy’s ear off. I cannot possibly relate to the actions of any of the characters, and Desai does not succeed in bridging the gap and making the characters less alienated. Furthermore Hullabaloo’s ending is unfulfilling, and it pretends to be deep and thought-provoking when in reality the novel as a whole is not.
-- Kiran Desai; Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard
Kiran Desai’s awareness to the intricacies and eccentricities of Indian people speaking English is remarkable. Her attention to detail in her dialogue (for example, “Arre” and the wonderfully onomatopoeic “Aiii, sir”) makes Hullabaloo worth reading for its Indianised English alone.
But I did not like Desai’s debut novel, and would not recommend it to any serious reader over the age of fourteen. While Desai’s dialogue is amazingly well-crafted, and there are some fine turns of phrase in her descriptions (for example, Sampath’s family “vibrated like giants” when they slept), Hullabaloo is undone by its childish and juvenile plot.
Sampath, a wayward youth, cannot hold a good job and is dissatisfied with his domestic life, so he climbs up a guava tree and stays there for almost one year. Various people attempt to get Sampath down, but to no avail. Suddenly, Sampath starts revealing the people’s innermost secrets, and the mob starts believing that he is a saint. (The truth is more mundane: Sampath used to work at the post office and used to read everyone’s mail.) He delivers The Sermon in the Guava Tree, which includes gems such as “Add lemons to milk and it will grow sour” and “Once my uncle had a rooster and an insect laid its eggs in the flesh of its rear end. It knew the young ones would have a warm place to live and plenty to eat”. Sampath’s father Mr. Chawla makes a healthy profit charging the devotees for seeing and offering blessings to the Monkey Baba. He is so called because of the band of monkeys that hang around in his guava tree.
The monkeys complicate Mr. Chawla’s business by stealing liquor, getting drunk and causing chaos. The Brigadier, the Chief Medical Officer, the Superintendent of Police, and the District Collector, and Mr. Verma each hatch their own plans to contain the crisis of the monkeys, and an apparently hilarious scene occurs when they all fail miserably. At the end of the novel the monkeys disappear into the forest at the edge of the orchard, and Sampath seemingly leaves with them.
Kiran Desai intends laugh-out-loud comedy, but the situation of the Cinema Monkey and his troupe drunk is merely juvenile. She means to portray the Chawla family as slightly unhinged, but her attempts go awry, especially when Kulfi plans to cook a monkey and when Pinky bites the Hungry Hop boy’s ear off. I cannot possibly relate to the actions of any of the characters, and Desai does not succeed in bridging the gap and making the characters less alienated. Furthermore Hullabaloo’s ending is unfulfilling, and it pretends to be deep and thought-provoking when in reality the novel as a whole is not.
Monday 20 August 2007
To be, or not to be, oneself
No one in this country can ever be himself. To live in an oppressed, defeated country is to be someone else. I am someone else, therefore I am! But what if this person I want to become is himself someone else? This is the crux, the heart of the deception!
-- Orhan Pamuk; The Black Book
How can a man be himself in Istanbul, a traditionally Eastern city in traditionally Eastern Turkey, after Atatürk’s modernising (read: Westernising) regime in 1923? How can a man be himself when the “garden of [his] memory” has been shorn and foreign plants have been implanted instead? How does an individual be himself when all those around him expect him to be someone else, and he almost is this person but not quite? These questions concerning identity are central to our existence, and Pamuk discusses answers in a very different type of mystery.
The plot is simple: Galip’s wife Rüya disappears, and for Galip this disappearance is linked inextricably with the disappearance of Celâl, his uncle and a famous journalist; Galip thus tries to find both the missing people. But we are told early in the novel that The Black Book is not your typical whodunit: “Galip had once told Rüya that the only detective book he’d ever want to read would be the one in which not even the author knew the murder’s identity. Instead […] the author would be forced to come to grips with his characters and his subject, and his characters would have a chance to become people in a book instead of just figments of their author’s imagination.” In other words Galip’s quest for Rüya (the word means dream in Turkish) and Celâl is the Sufi quest for “‘absolute union with God’ (or dissolving into the absolute)”.
The structure of Pamuk’s novel is fascinating. One chapter advances the plot and the next is one of Celâl’s columns from the newspaper Milliyet; The Black Book continues in this fashion alternating between the two. Galip thinks that in order to find Celâl’s whereabouts, he must try to understand the man. He does this by immersing himself in Celâl’s writings, and actually becoming his uncle. He gets the notion in the middle of the book that he can only be himself by becoming Celâl, and gradually begins to write his columns for him. At the beginning of the novel, the plot remains distinct from the columns, but as the text progresses the line blurs between them because the reader can no longer clearly distinguish between Galip and Celâl. The last column is especially enigmatic: we don’t know if Celâl wrote it or Galip did in his place; Pamuk leaves the point unanswered to show that the two are the same. Thus Pamuk’s use of structure complements the central theme of Galip’s identity.
Films are an important motif in The Black Book. Turkish people go into the cinema to watch actors act as other people, and the viewers get sucked into the story and feel as if they are actually the characters on the screen. In one memorable passage, a hyperbole of a socialist explains that this is an imperialist conspiracy. The issue of national identity is left hanging open as the novel ends with the death of Celâl (and Rüya too, tragically) and a vague notion of a bloody coup to follow. Furthermore, Celâl has influenced Turkey for over 30 years and the notion of his column left out in the Milliyet is a frightening prospect.
Personal identity is not solved either, but there is a moment of hope as Galip cries, “Yes, yes, I am myself!” Firstly Pamuk suggests that a man is himself only because he yearns to emulate another person. At the end the story of the Crown Prince shows that a man is himself only when he finds his own voice and tells stories. There is no easy answer to the complex issue of identity, Pamuk holds.
Some faults of The Black Book: there are too many middle pages, where the story drags and could have been condensed; some of the references in Celâl’s columns are too opaque for the Western reader; and some readers will undoubtedly be put off by the stories in stories in stories. But Pamuk always comes back with a twist even after a few boring pages (like that horrible six-pages long paragraph of Mehmet’s), and above all his style of writing (postmodern yet distinctively and mystically Eastern) makes The Black Book as one of the best books I’ve read ever.
-- Orhan Pamuk; The Black Book
How can a man be himself in Istanbul, a traditionally Eastern city in traditionally Eastern Turkey, after Atatürk’s modernising (read: Westernising) regime in 1923? How can a man be himself when the “garden of [his] memory” has been shorn and foreign plants have been implanted instead? How does an individual be himself when all those around him expect him to be someone else, and he almost is this person but not quite? These questions concerning identity are central to our existence, and Pamuk discusses answers in a very different type of mystery.
The plot is simple: Galip’s wife Rüya disappears, and for Galip this disappearance is linked inextricably with the disappearance of Celâl, his uncle and a famous journalist; Galip thus tries to find both the missing people. But we are told early in the novel that The Black Book is not your typical whodunit: “Galip had once told Rüya that the only detective book he’d ever want to read would be the one in which not even the author knew the murder’s identity. Instead […] the author would be forced to come to grips with his characters and his subject, and his characters would have a chance to become people in a book instead of just figments of their author’s imagination.” In other words Galip’s quest for Rüya (the word means dream in Turkish) and Celâl is the Sufi quest for “‘absolute union with God’ (or dissolving into the absolute)”.
The structure of Pamuk’s novel is fascinating. One chapter advances the plot and the next is one of Celâl’s columns from the newspaper Milliyet; The Black Book continues in this fashion alternating between the two. Galip thinks that in order to find Celâl’s whereabouts, he must try to understand the man. He does this by immersing himself in Celâl’s writings, and actually becoming his uncle. He gets the notion in the middle of the book that he can only be himself by becoming Celâl, and gradually begins to write his columns for him. At the beginning of the novel, the plot remains distinct from the columns, but as the text progresses the line blurs between them because the reader can no longer clearly distinguish between Galip and Celâl. The last column is especially enigmatic: we don’t know if Celâl wrote it or Galip did in his place; Pamuk leaves the point unanswered to show that the two are the same. Thus Pamuk’s use of structure complements the central theme of Galip’s identity.
Films are an important motif in The Black Book. Turkish people go into the cinema to watch actors act as other people, and the viewers get sucked into the story and feel as if they are actually the characters on the screen. In one memorable passage, a hyperbole of a socialist explains that this is an imperialist conspiracy. The issue of national identity is left hanging open as the novel ends with the death of Celâl (and Rüya too, tragically) and a vague notion of a bloody coup to follow. Furthermore, Celâl has influenced Turkey for over 30 years and the notion of his column left out in the Milliyet is a frightening prospect.
Personal identity is not solved either, but there is a moment of hope as Galip cries, “Yes, yes, I am myself!” Firstly Pamuk suggests that a man is himself only because he yearns to emulate another person. At the end the story of the Crown Prince shows that a man is himself only when he finds his own voice and tells stories. There is no easy answer to the complex issue of identity, Pamuk holds.
Some faults of The Black Book: there are too many middle pages, where the story drags and could have been condensed; some of the references in Celâl’s columns are too opaque for the Western reader; and some readers will undoubtedly be put off by the stories in stories in stories. But Pamuk always comes back with a twist even after a few boring pages (like that horrible six-pages long paragraph of Mehmet’s), and above all his style of writing (postmodern yet distinctively and mystically Eastern) makes The Black Book as one of the best books I’ve read ever.
The Man-eater of Malgudi
Every demon appears in the world with a special boon of indestructibility. Yet the universe has survived all the rakshasas that were ever born. Every demon carries within him, unknown to himself, a tiny seed of self-destruction, and goes up in thin air at the most unexpected moment. Otherwise what is to happen to humanity?
-- R. K. Narayan, The Man-eater of Malgudi
Good does not necessarily overcome evil, but it seems that way because evil always self-destructs in the end. Narayan’s novel echoes the story of the demon Bhasmasura, whose fingers scorched everything they touched. Bhasmasura made humanity suffer, but was tricked by God Vishnu (incarnated as the beautiful dancer Mohini) to touch his own temple and was at that moment reduced to ashes. The philosophical Sastri tells the protagonist Nataraj, “Every man can think that he is great and well live for ever, but no one can guess from which quarter his doom will come.”
Although Narayan’s work is not solely allegorical, Malgudi’s version of Bhasmasura is the tyrant Vasu. Vasu, a strongman-turned-taxidermist, arrives in Malgudi and takes possession of Nataraj’s attic. Poor Nataraj, a printer who can never “say ‘no’ to anyone”, succumbs to Vasu’s bullying and rents him the attic (for which he never pays a single paisa). Vasu makes Nataraj’s life hell: he sues Nataraj for attempting to evict him “illegally”, he stinks up Nataraj’s printing shop with carcasses of tigers, hyenas, and raccoons, and brings an assortment of women of disrepute, such as Rangi the lower-caste dancer, to the dignified Market Road shop. Vasu is bully physically – he can pulverise metal with his bare hands – and mentally – when he acts as a money-gatherer for Nataraj people say, “One will have to sell the vessels in the kitchen to find the money, just to be rid of him! What a specimen!” – and this earns him the metaphor of “man-eater”. Although my mind thinks that Vasu is not that detestable a character – for example I admire his strong mind and firm attitude as an antidote to India’s meekness – Narayan’s gift is in persuading my heart otherwise.
Man-eater contains a whole host of instantly likeable characters – Sastri, nominally Nataraj’s employee but in reality his master; the poet who speaks only in monosyllables (“Girls with girls did dance in trance”); the journalist Sen who rails against Congress and Nehru at every opportunity (“The journalist was frankly dumbfounded when he realised that there was no aspect of this particular problem which he could blame directly at the government”); Kumar, the lovable elephant; and Nataraj himself – who are themselves flawed, but the reader is forced to take their side against the asura Vasu. Sen comically rants against Nehru’s third Five-Year Plan, but when Vasu insults him with heavy sarcasm, the reader instantly sympathises with the former. When we hear of Vasu’s plan to shoot the elephant, Narayan creates knots in our stomachs; his characterisation makes us empathise with even an animal.
The climax of the novel is masterfully done. Neither is it a violent clash à la a Bollywood film, nor is it merely a subtle change in Vasu’s character. Rather, it is somewhere in the middle of these two: Nataraj creeps in Vasu’s bedroom, where the latter is sleeping, to take his gun to stop him shooting Kumar. Nataraj hears the alarm bell ring and in fright drops the gun and scrambles out of the door, fearing for his own life. There ends the chapter, with the tension at its zenith. The first words of the next chapter are wonderfully anticlimactic: “Life resumed its normal pace on the Market Road next morning”. We find that Vasu is dead: attempting to kill two mosquitoes on his head he strikes them with all his might and thus ends his own life too.
Narayan’s writing style is no less impressive than his content and plot. Although the novel is written in the English language, the vocabulary, syntax, and tone are very Indian. This gives an authenticity to the setting that is not found in other novels about India (I am thinking here of E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India). Furthermore, the human comedy in Man-eater is delightfully understated and sly; the sentences, “My wife, every Deepavali, gave herself a new silk sari, glittering with lace, not to mention the ones she bought for no particular reason at other times”, and “There was some vague movement of response [… and] I knew Sastri would not pay any attention to my call unless I called him again”, are prime examples. Reading this novel has given me a new meaning for the word wit.
-- R. K. Narayan, The Man-eater of Malgudi
Good does not necessarily overcome evil, but it seems that way because evil always self-destructs in the end. Narayan’s novel echoes the story of the demon Bhasmasura, whose fingers scorched everything they touched. Bhasmasura made humanity suffer, but was tricked by God Vishnu (incarnated as the beautiful dancer Mohini) to touch his own temple and was at that moment reduced to ashes. The philosophical Sastri tells the protagonist Nataraj, “Every man can think that he is great and well live for ever, but no one can guess from which quarter his doom will come.”
Although Narayan’s work is not solely allegorical, Malgudi’s version of Bhasmasura is the tyrant Vasu. Vasu, a strongman-turned-taxidermist, arrives in Malgudi and takes possession of Nataraj’s attic. Poor Nataraj, a printer who can never “say ‘no’ to anyone”, succumbs to Vasu’s bullying and rents him the attic (for which he never pays a single paisa). Vasu makes Nataraj’s life hell: he sues Nataraj for attempting to evict him “illegally”, he stinks up Nataraj’s printing shop with carcasses of tigers, hyenas, and raccoons, and brings an assortment of women of disrepute, such as Rangi the lower-caste dancer, to the dignified Market Road shop. Vasu is bully physically – he can pulverise metal with his bare hands – and mentally – when he acts as a money-gatherer for Nataraj people say, “One will have to sell the vessels in the kitchen to find the money, just to be rid of him! What a specimen!” – and this earns him the metaphor of “man-eater”. Although my mind thinks that Vasu is not that detestable a character – for example I admire his strong mind and firm attitude as an antidote to India’s meekness – Narayan’s gift is in persuading my heart otherwise.
Man-eater contains a whole host of instantly likeable characters – Sastri, nominally Nataraj’s employee but in reality his master; the poet who speaks only in monosyllables (“Girls with girls did dance in trance”); the journalist Sen who rails against Congress and Nehru at every opportunity (“The journalist was frankly dumbfounded when he realised that there was no aspect of this particular problem which he could blame directly at the government”); Kumar, the lovable elephant; and Nataraj himself – who are themselves flawed, but the reader is forced to take their side against the asura Vasu. Sen comically rants against Nehru’s third Five-Year Plan, but when Vasu insults him with heavy sarcasm, the reader instantly sympathises with the former. When we hear of Vasu’s plan to shoot the elephant, Narayan creates knots in our stomachs; his characterisation makes us empathise with even an animal.
The climax of the novel is masterfully done. Neither is it a violent clash à la a Bollywood film, nor is it merely a subtle change in Vasu’s character. Rather, it is somewhere in the middle of these two: Nataraj creeps in Vasu’s bedroom, where the latter is sleeping, to take his gun to stop him shooting Kumar. Nataraj hears the alarm bell ring and in fright drops the gun and scrambles out of the door, fearing for his own life. There ends the chapter, with the tension at its zenith. The first words of the next chapter are wonderfully anticlimactic: “Life resumed its normal pace on the Market Road next morning”. We find that Vasu is dead: attempting to kill two mosquitoes on his head he strikes them with all his might and thus ends his own life too.
Narayan’s writing style is no less impressive than his content and plot. Although the novel is written in the English language, the vocabulary, syntax, and tone are very Indian. This gives an authenticity to the setting that is not found in other novels about India (I am thinking here of E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India). Furthermore, the human comedy in Man-eater is delightfully understated and sly; the sentences, “My wife, every Deepavali, gave herself a new silk sari, glittering with lace, not to mention the ones she bought for no particular reason at other times”, and “There was some vague movement of response [… and] I knew Sastri would not pay any attention to my call unless I called him again”, are prime examples. Reading this novel has given me a new meaning for the word wit.
Monday 13 August 2007
Wuthering Heights sucks
That sounds as if I had been labouring the whole time, only to exhibit a fine trait of magnanimity. It is far from the case – I have lost the faculty of enjoying their destruction, and I am too idle to destroy for nothing.
-- Heathcliff; Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
I am Heathcliff!
-- Catherine; Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
The most evil character in literature is Shakespeare’s Iago; in history it is Karl Marx. The hype surrounding Wuthering Heights is that Heathcliff’s character approaches the evil of these two figures. The first quotation above shows that, at the end of the novel, Heathcliff wishes no longer to ensure the destruction of Cathy and Hareton because he cannot be bothered. Apparently, the tone of his dialogue is supposed to indicate his twisted nature, speaking as he is so casually about wrecking the lives of his enemies. But to me Heathcliff seems neither evil nor twisted; he is just boring.
Emily Brontë probably thought that her descriptions of Heathcliff were chilling and made him an extraordinarily twisted character. In fact, the strongest pejorative that I could find against Heathcliff was Isabella calling him a “devil”. Yes, in her letter to Nelly she writes that he tortures her inhumanely and has a cruel plan to get possession of Thrushcross Grange, but none of this is adds to Heathcliff’s characterisation as a symbol of evil.
Brontë’s readers would have been disgusted at Heathcliff exhuming Catherine’s corpse, but to me it just shows his lunacy. In fact, the whole plot of Wuthering Heights is illogical and boring because Heathcliff is not sufficiently evil, and the rest of the characters too morose to act.
In Victorian fiction, characterisation was deemed to be the most important part of the novel, and it is clear that Brontë failed in this respect. Why is the elder Catherine so obstinate in her supposed love for Heathcliff? (Don’t give me that nonsense about her psyche being as free as the moors and identical with Heathcliff’s soul – the second quotation sounds good perhaps but doesn’t give a proper motive for Catherine’s actions.) Why can’t Isabella Linton just run away? Why can’t Linton Heathcliff stop being such a pussy (for lack of other appropriate vocabulary) and face up to Heathcliff? And finally, why does Heathcliff just drop dead one day?
Critics have praised the presence of the thinly veiled ‘Gothic’ supernatural in Wuthering Heights, but all this does is to cover up Emily Brontë’s pathetic lack of skill. I need Heathcliff to drop dead now. But that doesn’t make sense. No matter, I shall write that he saw Catherine’s ghost. Aha yes! Everybody will buy that! Furthermore, the structure of the novel is annoying. Reading a novel requires the reader to suspend some belief, yes, but the manner in which the story comes to the reader third- or fourth-hand makes it seem completely implausible. But the fact remains that a simple third-person narrative wouldn’t work either, because the author presents so many fantastical stories. Thus the plot is ridiculous, and there is no good way to write it.
Wuthering Heights should never have been written.
-- Heathcliff; Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
I am Heathcliff!
-- Catherine; Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
The most evil character in literature is Shakespeare’s Iago; in history it is Karl Marx. The hype surrounding Wuthering Heights is that Heathcliff’s character approaches the evil of these two figures. The first quotation above shows that, at the end of the novel, Heathcliff wishes no longer to ensure the destruction of Cathy and Hareton because he cannot be bothered. Apparently, the tone of his dialogue is supposed to indicate his twisted nature, speaking as he is so casually about wrecking the lives of his enemies. But to me Heathcliff seems neither evil nor twisted; he is just boring.
Emily Brontë probably thought that her descriptions of Heathcliff were chilling and made him an extraordinarily twisted character. In fact, the strongest pejorative that I could find against Heathcliff was Isabella calling him a “devil”. Yes, in her letter to Nelly she writes that he tortures her inhumanely and has a cruel plan to get possession of Thrushcross Grange, but none of this is adds to Heathcliff’s characterisation as a symbol of evil.
Brontë’s readers would have been disgusted at Heathcliff exhuming Catherine’s corpse, but to me it just shows his lunacy. In fact, the whole plot of Wuthering Heights is illogical and boring because Heathcliff is not sufficiently evil, and the rest of the characters too morose to act.
In Victorian fiction, characterisation was deemed to be the most important part of the novel, and it is clear that Brontë failed in this respect. Why is the elder Catherine so obstinate in her supposed love for Heathcliff? (Don’t give me that nonsense about her psyche being as free as the moors and identical with Heathcliff’s soul – the second quotation sounds good perhaps but doesn’t give a proper motive for Catherine’s actions.) Why can’t Isabella Linton just run away? Why can’t Linton Heathcliff stop being such a pussy (for lack of other appropriate vocabulary) and face up to Heathcliff? And finally, why does Heathcliff just drop dead one day?
Critics have praised the presence of the thinly veiled ‘Gothic’ supernatural in Wuthering Heights, but all this does is to cover up Emily Brontë’s pathetic lack of skill. I need Heathcliff to drop dead now. But that doesn’t make sense. No matter, I shall write that he saw Catherine’s ghost. Aha yes! Everybody will buy that! Furthermore, the structure of the novel is annoying. Reading a novel requires the reader to suspend some belief, yes, but the manner in which the story comes to the reader third- or fourth-hand makes it seem completely implausible. But the fact remains that a simple third-person narrative wouldn’t work either, because the author presents so many fantastical stories. Thus the plot is ridiculous, and there is no good way to write it.
Wuthering Heights should never have been written.
Wednesday 1 August 2007
My Name is Red
Before the art of illumination there was blackness and afterward there will also be blackness. Through our colors, paints, art and love, we remember that Allah has commanded us to “See”! To know is to remember that you’ve seen. To see is to know without remembering. Thus, painting is remembering the blackness [… and] the act of seeking out Allah’s memories and seeing the world as He sees the world.
-- Orhan Pamuk, My Name is Red
In Western art, what makes a particular piece of artwork unique and appealing is the distinctive style of the artist. For example, we like Claude Monet’s impressionistic works because they show the essence of the subject rather than its details, emphasised by the visible brushstrokes. We like Pablo Picasso’s works because of his distinctive cubist style. In Islamic art, the word style is an anathema, synonymous with imperfection. This stems from the idea that human beings perceive the world imperfectly (that is, not as how Allah perceives it) and that when an artist adds his own perception to his art, it becomes flawed. Thus “‘signature’ and ‘style’ are but means of being brazenly and stupidly self-congratulatory about flawed work.”
This relates to the ancient philosophical view (derived from Plato, I believe) that all knowledge is ultimately innate, and that knowing simply means remembering. Islamic artists believe that the artist knows innately how Allah perceives the world, and that the artist’s mission is to depict this ‘view from blackness’ on paper. Any attempt to introduce individual style corrupts the perfect image, and is thus forbidden.
Perspective is another Western notion that is at loggerheads with Islamic art. Given that the task of the Islamic artist is to depict the world in colour as Allah sees it from His blackness, the only perspective that can be used is that of Allah’s. In Western art, a fly can be rendered the same size as a mosque if the mosque is far in the background of the painting. But clearly in Allah’s mind the mosque’s size far outstrips the fly’s; and therefore it is sacrilegious for the artist to depict the world from his own perspective and not that of Allah’s, thus usurping Allah’s claim to be the universe’s sole Creator.
For this reason portraiture is forbidden in Islamic art. To place a mere human being at the centre of a canvas is to confer upon him an importance and significance that is not rightly his. To paint a person with such realism that a viewer can pick the subject out of a crowd of 100 people is wrong because eventually the painting will achieve an idol-like status; idols are, of course, forbidden in Islam.
Pamuk’s novel My Name is Red is a brilliant symposium on the philosophy of Islamic art, and the author’s craft perfectly complements the weighty subject matter. The central irony of the novel is that each chapter is written from a different perspective (for example, one chapter is from the perspective of the protagonist Black, another is from the perspective of his lover Shekure, and another is from the viewpoint of red ink!) when in fact perspective is banned in Islamic art. Another source of irony is that Pamuk’s novel chronicles the importance of miniaturist painting to accompany manuscripts, when his own writing is so descriptive and evocative that it needs no painting to enhance its effect.
My Name is Red gave me an interest in miniature painting, and I went to Salar Jung Museum in Hyderabad, India to see real examples of 16th century miniature painting. I wanted to see a tree that was “meant to provide shade for Mejnun disguised as a shepherd as he visited Leyla in her tent” or “fading into the night, representing the darkness in the soul of a wretched and hopeless man” or “complementing the happiness of two lovers who fled from the whole world, traversing oceans to find solace on an island rich with birds and fruit or “shading Alexander during the final moments of his life” or “symbolising the strength and wisdom of a father offering advice on love and life to his son”. I never did see such trees at the museum, but that only shows that Pamuk’s writing is of far superior quality than his subject.
-- Orhan Pamuk, My Name is Red
In Western art, what makes a particular piece of artwork unique and appealing is the distinctive style of the artist. For example, we like Claude Monet’s impressionistic works because they show the essence of the subject rather than its details, emphasised by the visible brushstrokes. We like Pablo Picasso’s works because of his distinctive cubist style. In Islamic art, the word style is an anathema, synonymous with imperfection. This stems from the idea that human beings perceive the world imperfectly (that is, not as how Allah perceives it) and that when an artist adds his own perception to his art, it becomes flawed. Thus “‘signature’ and ‘style’ are but means of being brazenly and stupidly self-congratulatory about flawed work.”
This relates to the ancient philosophical view (derived from Plato, I believe) that all knowledge is ultimately innate, and that knowing simply means remembering. Islamic artists believe that the artist knows innately how Allah perceives the world, and that the artist’s mission is to depict this ‘view from blackness’ on paper. Any attempt to introduce individual style corrupts the perfect image, and is thus forbidden.
Perspective is another Western notion that is at loggerheads with Islamic art. Given that the task of the Islamic artist is to depict the world in colour as Allah sees it from His blackness, the only perspective that can be used is that of Allah’s. In Western art, a fly can be rendered the same size as a mosque if the mosque is far in the background of the painting. But clearly in Allah’s mind the mosque’s size far outstrips the fly’s; and therefore it is sacrilegious for the artist to depict the world from his own perspective and not that of Allah’s, thus usurping Allah’s claim to be the universe’s sole Creator.
For this reason portraiture is forbidden in Islamic art. To place a mere human being at the centre of a canvas is to confer upon him an importance and significance that is not rightly his. To paint a person with such realism that a viewer can pick the subject out of a crowd of 100 people is wrong because eventually the painting will achieve an idol-like status; idols are, of course, forbidden in Islam.
Pamuk’s novel My Name is Red is a brilliant symposium on the philosophy of Islamic art, and the author’s craft perfectly complements the weighty subject matter. The central irony of the novel is that each chapter is written from a different perspective (for example, one chapter is from the perspective of the protagonist Black, another is from the perspective of his lover Shekure, and another is from the viewpoint of red ink!) when in fact perspective is banned in Islamic art. Another source of irony is that Pamuk’s novel chronicles the importance of miniaturist painting to accompany manuscripts, when his own writing is so descriptive and evocative that it needs no painting to enhance its effect.
My Name is Red gave me an interest in miniature painting, and I went to Salar Jung Museum in Hyderabad, India to see real examples of 16th century miniature painting. I wanted to see a tree that was “meant to provide shade for Mejnun disguised as a shepherd as he visited Leyla in her tent” or “fading into the night, representing the darkness in the soul of a wretched and hopeless man” or “complementing the happiness of two lovers who fled from the whole world, traversing oceans to find solace on an island rich with birds and fruit or “shading Alexander during the final moments of his life” or “symbolising the strength and wisdom of a father offering advice on love and life to his son”. I never did see such trees at the museum, but that only shows that Pamuk’s writing is of far superior quality than his subject.
Saturday 23 June 2007
Drivers' Ten Commandments -- absurd
Pope Benny's Popemobile is admittedly very cool, but that doesn't mean the Pope knows anything about driving. And what did Jesus drive? What gives the Vatican the authority to publish Ten Commandments about driving? Surely the subject is wholly outside its writ ...
"Guidelines for the Pastoral Care of the Road", the name of the Vatican's publication, is supposed to be infallible because it is officially endorsed by the Pope. I haven't read the whole document, but it is clear from the Ten Commandments itself that the document contains many errors. Here are some of the following:
"4. Be charitable and help your neighbor in need, especially victims of accidents." This is particularly bad advice. If there's a car accident and someone is dying on the road, do not go and help him. You will get sued, one way or another.
"6. Charitably convince the young and not so young not to drive when they are not in a fitting condition to do so." Surely it would be better to not get hammered or high at all.
"8. Bring guilty motorists and their victims together, at the appropriate time, so that they can undergo the liberating experience of forgiveness [ie. settle out-of-court]."
Later on the document commands drivers to pray while driving. This is a bad idea. Crossing yourself on the highway could very well be your last act ...
"Guidelines for the Pastoral Care of the Road", the name of the Vatican's publication, is supposed to be infallible because it is officially endorsed by the Pope. I haven't read the whole document, but it is clear from the Ten Commandments itself that the document contains many errors. Here are some of the following:
"4. Be charitable and help your neighbor in need, especially victims of accidents." This is particularly bad advice. If there's a car accident and someone is dying on the road, do not go and help him. You will get sued, one way or another.
"6. Charitably convince the young and not so young not to drive when they are not in a fitting condition to do so." Surely it would be better to not get hammered or high at all.
"8. Bring guilty motorists and their victims together, at the appropriate time, so that they can undergo the liberating experience of forgiveness [ie. settle out-of-court]."
Later on the document commands drivers to pray while driving. This is a bad idea. Crossing yourself on the highway could very well be your last act ...
Monday 18 June 2007
The case against charity
Most people unthinkingly associate the word charity with good; indeed, charity has become a synonym for the word good. I disagree with this association. I will list the causes of this association between charity and good and will attempt to show that it is unfounded.
All people are equal
As much as we would like to believe that all people are somehow equal, the notion of equality is quite groundless. Plainly, everyone is different. Some people have white skin; others have black, brown, and yellow skin. Some people have amazing capacities of rumination; others are quite bovine. Since every human being is unique in body and mind, one wonders whence this tendency to impose an arbitrary, transcendental, metaphysical equality comes from. Applying Occam’s razor (that we must not make more assumptions than necessary to explain something) to this question shows that any notion of arbitrary equality is unsubstantiated. Since there is no scientific or philosophical evidence to prove that one human being is somehow worth the same as another, we must conclude that equality is a spurious and illegitimate claim.
All people deserve equal opportunities
Social mobility is not as high as we would like it to be; even in the United States, the land of the American dream, most of the wealth of the rich can be attributed to social factors that are outside the control of the wealthy. For example, the argument goes, Bill Gates would not be so wealthy if it were not for America’s relatively stable economy, its public schooling, and its universities. Proponents of charity argue that we thus have a debt to pay back to society, which must be done through voluntary donations to charitable organisations. But this argument is clearly a logical fallacy. The statement ‘social and economic factors beyond our control indirectly are the cause of much of rich people’s wealth’ is a descriptive one. To change it into a normative statement, that ‘we are in debt to society and must pay it back’, is groundless. There is no reason to suppose that just because we profit from society we must pay it back. To invent the notion of the inherent fairness of the universe is ruled out by, again, Occam’s razor.
Charity genuinely improves people’s lives
Many charities proclaim that we can save a starving child’s life in Africa if we donate but HKD 50. We must ask ourselves, to what extent is this true? The answer is: not at all. To dream, nay, fantasise that your pitiful and pathetic contribution can do anything to improve the world is stupidity to the point of lunacy. Tim Harford in Slate Magazine writes that most charity work is about feeling good about ourselves and not about solving the world’s problems. For example, if we have HKD 10,000, most people would give a little proportion of that money to several different charities. HKD 2000 for curing AIDS, HKD 2000 for Darfur, and so on. But surely HKD 2000 isn’t going to cure AIDS, and neither is it going to stop genocide. Another example: between working overtime (earning more money) and volunteer work, most people choose the latter. Why? – because volunteer work makes us feel warm and fuzzy inside. Actually going to Africa to shove food inside the mouths of thin African kids makes you feel good. Of course, the alternative (earning much more money and using this to combat poverty) is more effective, but far less ‘hand-on’.
So should we abandon charity?
The sooner that you get it into your head that you are worthless and must stop trying to be a hero the better. Instead of wasting your time volunteering or wasting your money donating, try the following: when you have HKD 10,000, for example, at the end of the year that you intended to give to charity, invest it to make more money. You will amass much more wealth in this way.
At the end of your life, when you actually have a sizable and not insignificant amount of money to give, then, and only then, perhaps contemplate donating it to charity.
Until then, charity cannot be associated with good; it can only be associated with stupidity.
All people are equal
As much as we would like to believe that all people are somehow equal, the notion of equality is quite groundless. Plainly, everyone is different. Some people have white skin; others have black, brown, and yellow skin. Some people have amazing capacities of rumination; others are quite bovine. Since every human being is unique in body and mind, one wonders whence this tendency to impose an arbitrary, transcendental, metaphysical equality comes from. Applying Occam’s razor (that we must not make more assumptions than necessary to explain something) to this question shows that any notion of arbitrary equality is unsubstantiated. Since there is no scientific or philosophical evidence to prove that one human being is somehow worth the same as another, we must conclude that equality is a spurious and illegitimate claim.
All people deserve equal opportunities
Social mobility is not as high as we would like it to be; even in the United States, the land of the American dream, most of the wealth of the rich can be attributed to social factors that are outside the control of the wealthy. For example, the argument goes, Bill Gates would not be so wealthy if it were not for America’s relatively stable economy, its public schooling, and its universities. Proponents of charity argue that we thus have a debt to pay back to society, which must be done through voluntary donations to charitable organisations. But this argument is clearly a logical fallacy. The statement ‘social and economic factors beyond our control indirectly are the cause of much of rich people’s wealth’ is a descriptive one. To change it into a normative statement, that ‘we are in debt to society and must pay it back’, is groundless. There is no reason to suppose that just because we profit from society we must pay it back. To invent the notion of the inherent fairness of the universe is ruled out by, again, Occam’s razor.
Charity genuinely improves people’s lives
Many charities proclaim that we can save a starving child’s life in Africa if we donate but HKD 50. We must ask ourselves, to what extent is this true? The answer is: not at all. To dream, nay, fantasise that your pitiful and pathetic contribution can do anything to improve the world is stupidity to the point of lunacy. Tim Harford in Slate Magazine writes that most charity work is about feeling good about ourselves and not about solving the world’s problems. For example, if we have HKD 10,000, most people would give a little proportion of that money to several different charities. HKD 2000 for curing AIDS, HKD 2000 for Darfur, and so on. But surely HKD 2000 isn’t going to cure AIDS, and neither is it going to stop genocide. Another example: between working overtime (earning more money) and volunteer work, most people choose the latter. Why? – because volunteer work makes us feel warm and fuzzy inside. Actually going to Africa to shove food inside the mouths of thin African kids makes you feel good. Of course, the alternative (earning much more money and using this to combat poverty) is more effective, but far less ‘hand-on’.
So should we abandon charity?
The sooner that you get it into your head that you are worthless and must stop trying to be a hero the better. Instead of wasting your time volunteering or wasting your money donating, try the following: when you have HKD 10,000, for example, at the end of the year that you intended to give to charity, invest it to make more money. You will amass much more wealth in this way.
At the end of your life, when you actually have a sizable and not insignificant amount of money to give, then, and only then, perhaps contemplate donating it to charity.
Until then, charity cannot be associated with good; it can only be associated with stupidity.
Friday 1 June 2007
Plato and eros
“To sum up then,” she said, “love is the desire to have the good forever. […] Love’s function is giving birth in beauty both in body and in mind.”
-- Diotima; Plato, The Symposium
The concept of the Divided Line is one of the most important in Plato’s works. In The Republic, the four stages of cognition, from lowest to highest, are:
-- Imagining – images in the world of appearances;
-- Belief – visible things in the world of appearances;
-- Thinking – mathematical objects in the intelligible world; and
-- Intelligence or knowledge – the world of Forms (the highest Form being the Good) in the intelligible world.
The Symposium, a work about eros (love), follows this division of the stages of cognition.
Phaedrus argues that love ennobles both the lover and the beloved. Pausanias holds that there are two kinds of love: the common kind and the heavenly kind. Erixymachus says that love is a biochemical balance that leads to peace of the mind. Aristophanes contends that each individual is only one half of a self, and thus that love is a primal urge for wholeness. Note that these notions of love are based only upon the world of appearances. Socrates, telling the others about his teacher Diotima, expands on these to arrive finally at the Form of Love.
Just as a father is always a father of someone (that is, either a son or daughter), Love is always love of something. Thus Love always desires or is in want of something. It follows that Love cannot want or desire something it already has in possession; Love is, therefore, love of something, of something that he currently needs and does not have in possession already.
If we admit that Love is love of good and beautiful things, Love is neither good nor beautiful. But this does not mean he is bad and ugly; he is something in between the two. Just as “right opinions” are in the mean between wisdom and ignorance, Love is in the mean between good and bad and between beautiful and ugly. Love is not a god. A god is, by definition, happy because he is in possession of good and beautiful things. But love is not a mortal either; he is a spirit who is intermediate between gods and men. Diotima explains that Love is the son of Resource (Plenty) and Poverty; he was conceived the same day that Aphrodite was born so he loves beauty. He shares both parents’ characteristics: he is poor in good and beautiful things, but able to make means to achieve them. He is amoral, and lives and dies. He is a philosopher because he always searches for wisdom (one of the most beautiful things).
But what is the use of Love to man? Love is a love of beautiful and good things, and is the desire to have possession of the good forever. The teleological aim is that possession of the good causes happiness.
What function does Love have? Diotima argues that if the object of Love is to have the good always, it follows that we desire immortality as well; the object of love is not merely beauty, but rather the reproduction and birth in beauty. Sex and reproduction are the ways “mortal things have a share in immortality”; this explains the enthusiasm many organisms have for love. There are two kinds of love, then. Firstly, one can be “pregnant in the body”, where one loves physical objects and people, and where one’s aim in Love is physical reproduction. The second kind of love is where one is “pregnant in the mind”, and achieves immortality with virtue and thoughts. Diotima provides the example of Achilles participating in war to achieve immortality – this is described as a form of Love.
In the first stages of life, one is attracted to physical beauty. Later, one is attracted to beauty of the mind. When it is realised that all kinds of beauty have something in common, the real philosopher can “gaze” at the Form of Beauty, which is absolute unchanging infinite beauty. This Form of Beauty, ultimately, is the real object of Love, which can then produce real virtue and thus achieve immortality.
So if a genie offered me the chance to either have the love of a hot girl or gaze upon the Form of Beauty both for my entire life, which one would I pick? A dilemma indeed.
-- Diotima; Plato, The Symposium
The concept of the Divided Line is one of the most important in Plato’s works. In The Republic, the four stages of cognition, from lowest to highest, are:
-- Imagining – images in the world of appearances;
-- Belief – visible things in the world of appearances;
-- Thinking – mathematical objects in the intelligible world; and
-- Intelligence or knowledge – the world of Forms (the highest Form being the Good) in the intelligible world.
The Symposium, a work about eros (love), follows this division of the stages of cognition.
Phaedrus argues that love ennobles both the lover and the beloved. Pausanias holds that there are two kinds of love: the common kind and the heavenly kind. Erixymachus says that love is a biochemical balance that leads to peace of the mind. Aristophanes contends that each individual is only one half of a self, and thus that love is a primal urge for wholeness. Note that these notions of love are based only upon the world of appearances. Socrates, telling the others about his teacher Diotima, expands on these to arrive finally at the Form of Love.
Just as a father is always a father of someone (that is, either a son or daughter), Love is always love of something. Thus Love always desires or is in want of something. It follows that Love cannot want or desire something it already has in possession; Love is, therefore, love of something, of something that he currently needs and does not have in possession already.
If we admit that Love is love of good and beautiful things, Love is neither good nor beautiful. But this does not mean he is bad and ugly; he is something in between the two. Just as “right opinions” are in the mean between wisdom and ignorance, Love is in the mean between good and bad and between beautiful and ugly. Love is not a god. A god is, by definition, happy because he is in possession of good and beautiful things. But love is not a mortal either; he is a spirit who is intermediate between gods and men. Diotima explains that Love is the son of Resource (Plenty) and Poverty; he was conceived the same day that Aphrodite was born so he loves beauty. He shares both parents’ characteristics: he is poor in good and beautiful things, but able to make means to achieve them. He is amoral, and lives and dies. He is a philosopher because he always searches for wisdom (one of the most beautiful things).
But what is the use of Love to man? Love is a love of beautiful and good things, and is the desire to have possession of the good forever. The teleological aim is that possession of the good causes happiness.
What function does Love have? Diotima argues that if the object of Love is to have the good always, it follows that we desire immortality as well; the object of love is not merely beauty, but rather the reproduction and birth in beauty. Sex and reproduction are the ways “mortal things have a share in immortality”; this explains the enthusiasm many organisms have for love. There are two kinds of love, then. Firstly, one can be “pregnant in the body”, where one loves physical objects and people, and where one’s aim in Love is physical reproduction. The second kind of love is where one is “pregnant in the mind”, and achieves immortality with virtue and thoughts. Diotima provides the example of Achilles participating in war to achieve immortality – this is described as a form of Love.
In the first stages of life, one is attracted to physical beauty. Later, one is attracted to beauty of the mind. When it is realised that all kinds of beauty have something in common, the real philosopher can “gaze” at the Form of Beauty, which is absolute unchanging infinite beauty. This Form of Beauty, ultimately, is the real object of Love, which can then produce real virtue and thus achieve immortality.
So if a genie offered me the chance to either have the love of a hot girl or gaze upon the Form of Beauty both for my entire life, which one would I pick? A dilemma indeed.
Wednesday 30 May 2007
Vivekananda and service
Brahman alone is real, the universe is ultimately unreal and the individual soul is no other than the Universal Soul.
-- Adi Shankara, summarizing the philosophy of the Vedanta
Jiva is Siva [each individual is divinity itself]
-- Vivekananda, emphasizing the second part of Adi Shankara’s summary
I cannot help feeling rather repulsed by the central message of Swami Swahananda’s essay Swami Vivekananda’s Concept of Service. According to Vivekananda, real worship consists in service to mankind. The philosophical basis for this notion of worship is as follows. The Vedas, Upanishads, and the Vedanta are monistic; they hold that the Ultimate Reality, called Brahman or God, is the Divine Ground of all things in the universe. This pantheistic doctrine argues asserts that all material and spiritual beings consist only of this infinite Brahman. Thus if each individual person is given the distinction of divinity, then Vivekananda is allowed to equate service to humanity as worship of God.
The argument is undoubtedly logical, but I disagree vehemently with several of its initial assumptions. Firstly, the assertion that Brahman is the sum total of all that there is, was, and will be is groundless. Common sense tells us that the universe is not monistic; indeed, dualism can be seen everywhere. There is the physical (all matter) and the metaphysical (soul, mind, etc.); there is simply no reason to suggest that Brahman is the only ‘substance’ that composes the universe. Secondly, there is no evidence to suppose that all human beings are equal; again, an appeal to common sense tells us that all human beings are different (and perhaps thus unequal). The notion that all human beings are somehow equal only stems from the argument that God is inherent in every being; if the latter argument is disputed (as above) the former is brought into question also.
One might argue that service to mankind is good even if it does not equate to worship of God. This argument is not without merit; I acknowledge that Vivekananda’s concept of service can be a practical way to live life. For example, his various practical proposals for the advancement of mankind (these include: education for the masses, uplifting of women’s living standards, patriotism, and socialism) are generally sound.
But once one removes the spiritual base of service, one is left with nothing of real value. Swahananda admits that without transcendental value for morality, all service becomes merely a secular exercise devoid of real value. Some philosophers argue that humanism (celebrating humanity’s intrinsic value without an appeal to God) is a valid basis for service, but Vivekananda’s concept of service is alien to humanism for the following reasons. Firstly, it must be noted that service is only food teleologically – it is only good insofar as it is worship to Brahman. If worship is the ideal of service, and if worship is impossible, it is necessary that service be meaningless also. Vivekananda argues that the individual must lay down his life for society. Undoubtedly, if there is an essential unity to the universe, this argument is sound; if there is no such unity, however, it is absurd that the individual would find any reason to live for the sake of society. Lastly, it might be argued that altruism improves human life as a whole; but I argue that egoism would be better.
Swahananda desperately wants Brahman to exist in reality, if only for the sake of morality. I admit it is an enticing thing to believe that such an entity exists, but sadly, the truth is often other than what one would wish.
-- Adi Shankara, summarizing the philosophy of the Vedanta
Jiva is Siva [each individual is divinity itself]
-- Vivekananda, emphasizing the second part of Adi Shankara’s summary
I cannot help feeling rather repulsed by the central message of Swami Swahananda’s essay Swami Vivekananda’s Concept of Service. According to Vivekananda, real worship consists in service to mankind. The philosophical basis for this notion of worship is as follows. The Vedas, Upanishads, and the Vedanta are monistic; they hold that the Ultimate Reality, called Brahman or God, is the Divine Ground of all things in the universe. This pantheistic doctrine argues asserts that all material and spiritual beings consist only of this infinite Brahman. Thus if each individual person is given the distinction of divinity, then Vivekananda is allowed to equate service to humanity as worship of God.
The argument is undoubtedly logical, but I disagree vehemently with several of its initial assumptions. Firstly, the assertion that Brahman is the sum total of all that there is, was, and will be is groundless. Common sense tells us that the universe is not monistic; indeed, dualism can be seen everywhere. There is the physical (all matter) and the metaphysical (soul, mind, etc.); there is simply no reason to suggest that Brahman is the only ‘substance’ that composes the universe. Secondly, there is no evidence to suppose that all human beings are equal; again, an appeal to common sense tells us that all human beings are different (and perhaps thus unequal). The notion that all human beings are somehow equal only stems from the argument that God is inherent in every being; if the latter argument is disputed (as above) the former is brought into question also.
One might argue that service to mankind is good even if it does not equate to worship of God. This argument is not without merit; I acknowledge that Vivekananda’s concept of service can be a practical way to live life. For example, his various practical proposals for the advancement of mankind (these include: education for the masses, uplifting of women’s living standards, patriotism, and socialism) are generally sound.
But once one removes the spiritual base of service, one is left with nothing of real value. Swahananda admits that without transcendental value for morality, all service becomes merely a secular exercise devoid of real value. Some philosophers argue that humanism (celebrating humanity’s intrinsic value without an appeal to God) is a valid basis for service, but Vivekananda’s concept of service is alien to humanism for the following reasons. Firstly, it must be noted that service is only food teleologically – it is only good insofar as it is worship to Brahman. If worship is the ideal of service, and if worship is impossible, it is necessary that service be meaningless also. Vivekananda argues that the individual must lay down his life for society. Undoubtedly, if there is an essential unity to the universe, this argument is sound; if there is no such unity, however, it is absurd that the individual would find any reason to live for the sake of society. Lastly, it might be argued that altruism improves human life as a whole; but I argue that egoism would be better.
Swahananda desperately wants Brahman to exist in reality, if only for the sake of morality. I admit it is an enticing thing to believe that such an entity exists, but sadly, the truth is often other than what one would wish.
Monday 28 May 2007
Genesis
Then was not non-existent nor existent: [...]
Who verily knows and who can here declare it, […] whence comes this creation?
The Gods are later than this world's production. Who knows then whence it first came into being?
He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it,
Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows not.
-- Rig Veda, X, 129
What a profound loss it is that most of my profound thoughts remain merely as thoughts! No longer.
I propose on this blog to articulate my daily stream of ideas, views, opinions, and feelings in such a manner as to be fully understood even by the mass of common (ie. stupid) people that exists on the internet. Much of my work represents my own opinion, but some pieces may appear in the form of a thought experiment.
Argue with me.
Welcome, dear reader!
Who verily knows and who can here declare it, […] whence comes this creation?
The Gods are later than this world's production. Who knows then whence it first came into being?
He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it,
Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows not.
-- Rig Veda, X, 129
What a profound loss it is that most of my profound thoughts remain merely as thoughts! No longer.
I propose on this blog to articulate my daily stream of ideas, views, opinions, and feelings in such a manner as to be fully understood even by the mass of common (ie. stupid) people that exists on the internet. Much of my work represents my own opinion, but some pieces may appear in the form of a thought experiment.
Argue with me.
Welcome, dear reader!
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