Mobility

I think of this as a subject

for Charles Lamb, to whose es-

says from the 1820s I was com-

mended by my father, so that

as I encountered them under

scholastic compulsion, I was

ready to be unresisting. As

Elia, Lamb describes an uncle

who could have been a father,

and such men one knows, too.

.. and how he used to carry me on his back when I was a lame-footed boy - many a mile when I could not walk for pain; and how in after life he became lame-footed too, and I did not always (I fear) make allowances enough for him when he was impatient, and in pain, nor remember sufficiently how considerate he had been to me when I was lame-footed; and how when he died, though he had not been dead an hour, it seemed as if he had died a great while ago  .. yet I missed him all day long, and knew not till then how much I had loved him. I missed his kindness and I missed his crossness, and wished him to be alive again, and was as uneasy without him, as he must have been when the doctor took off his limb ..

Charles Lamb

Elia and The Last

  Essays of Elia

  Dream-Children

    A Reverie

Jonathan Bate

  editor

Oxford University Press, 1987©

op. cit.

Poverty's a little different from just not finding work

Poverty no longer rising 

but grips 46,000,000.

The New York Times 

yesterday's date

Even feudalism is doctrinally

predicated on the employment

of the employable. Not "right

to work" America. We have mas-

tered inefficiency in the name

of efficiency - as Bob Dylan

wrote for a track in Modern

Times, to "compete abroad."

Every exquisite element of this

injustice has been enshrined in

fiscal policy since Reagan. All

of it has been sold as a pipe-

dream of revenge on the under-

class, or the patronising in-
sult of healing it by example,
in a pentecostal fandango of 
greed. Where capital has en-

countered the threat of distri-

bution, we have enjoyed warfare.
Yes, what else is new?

46 million persons should not be

impoverished in the solar system.

For them to be suspended in that 

agony here, is a phenomenon which 

summons Lamb's A Dissertation upon

Roast Pig and his Complaint of the

Decay of Beggars in the Metropolis

to the same luncheon entertainment

at the Economic Club in Washington,

where just now the Secretary of the

Treasury opined, We are not where

we want to be. Jay Gould, himself,

could not have put it better. 

This was polite of him, given the

mystery that he is not behind bars.

I did not come to the internet to

sequester myself in a Speaker's

Corner in a leafy page. But I did

want to speak up for seeing, an

act which is directly affronted,

intimidated, and suppressed, by 

any brutality. I cannot accuse the

Steps Scene in Battleship Potemkin,

or its view of maggots on the sail-

ors' butchered meat, of agitprop,

and suffer a Treasury Secretary to
confide, he isn't happy. It ranks 
right up there, with infant mortal-
ity and malnutrition. Happiness: 
didn't Mr Jefferson aver, we might
all pursue it?

              Close the restaurants? Well, it'd

              be a start; but those people really

              can't find other work. Tithe the

              Koch brothers? God forbid. Why not

              just eliminate the innocents who

              see - which is, I assure myself,

              not actually, truly, really, and

              certainly the Right wing's program -

              and spare ourselves the remorse of

              their effrontery? I think of asking
              this of Stephen Crane, I think of 
              asking Melville, James and Faulkner.
              I think of any surfer, trusting in
              another wave. The literature of our
              people is of power without force.

              Who would betray a second chance?

Sergei Eisenstein
  director
Eduard Tisse
  cinematography
Battleship Potemkin
1925

Charles Lamb
Elia
1822
op. cit.

Timothy Egan
("Context" Sidebar)
New comment of note
September 19, 2013

This was sailing

   


   





   

   Look, now Excellence
   Honors Aeacus' island,
   Harbor of fame,
   And steers his town
   In the roads of Glory
   Glad for wreaths,
   And sound Order
   With solemn rites,
   Who wards in peace
   The cities of reverent men.

We are nothing; less than nothing,

and dreams. We are only what might

have been, and must wait upon the

tedious shores of Lethe millions

of ages before we have existence

and a name.

Bacchylides

Complete Poems

  Nemean Ode for Pytheas

  of Aegina (Pancratium)

  [fragment]

Robert Fagles, translation

450 BC

op. cit.

Charles Lamb

Elia

  Dream-Children:

  A Reverie

1822

op. cit.

  Intrepid, NYYC

  Defender of America's Cup

  1967 and 1970

An extreme lack of dignity in the conduct of the state

I could almost fancy my-

self ripening too, along 
with the oranges and the 
limes in that grateful 
warmth - or in watching 
the dace that darted to 
and fro in the fish-pond, 
at the bottom of the gar-
den, with here and there 
a great sulky pike hanging 
midway down the water in 
silent state, as if it 
mocked at their impertin-
ent friskings, - I had more 
pleasure in these busy-idle 
diversions than in all the 
sweet flavours of peaches, 
nectarines, oranges, and 
such like common baits of 

children.

Is this in the short list
of the brightest and most
humane prose writing this
language has heard? Ignor-
ing the intensity and del-
icacy of this writer's
bucolic similes, is there
not, when you hold your own
child close, praise for the
vision of his development?

Mr John Kerry attended the

St Paul's School. I hold a

Paulie, with several of whom

I rowed, and not a few with

whom I got drunk over cards

in those undergrad years, to

a reasonable standard of sob-

riety when introducing one to

a new war.

Now I hear, the sulky pike is

about to chastise the little

fish, for besmirching the vows

of a government which does not

reign over them. How used one

is, to this information!

Mad as it could be portrayed

to be, I feel an obligation 

to my readers to dissect this

tragic series of remarks, as

virtually a Virgilian ledger

of the corruption of a harvest.

The sensation - and we all do

know it - of ripening under a

struggle to learn and to mas-

ter - is such, in Lamb, that 

the catastrophe of any mis-

direction feels like a dis-

avowal of nature, itself.

At the moment, however, one

has to rely on the theory of

republican government: that

all are implicated by consent

in its conduct. If one can

consent to a war precipitated

on the basis of revolting pic-

tures; if one cannot contain

one's panic when the evidence

of rage's impotency is exposed; 

if one can honestly regard death

as an instrument of instruction,

then one may assert any umbrage
as a Cause. And cut the cards.

Charles Lamb

Elia
  Dream-Children,

  A Reverie

London Magazine

January, 1822

ibid.

Jonas Kloch

Theirs was a dignity springing

Theirs was a dignity springing

from the very depth of their

desolation; as to be naked is

to be so much nearer to the be-

ing a man, than to go in livery.

I wonder, that a lifetime of

listening to right-wing cal-

umnies against the human hand-

iwork of feudal oppression can

fail to inoculate one for their

refrain, every time demand for

justice gains a common cadence

in the street. Underneath all

the undoubtedly meretricious

manipulations of symbolism to

be expected in this week's re-

vival of 1963's mobilisation

at the Lincoln Memorial, in-

cluding yet another mockery

of commitment by the President,

there remains the unblinkable

fact of feudalism's enduring

fashion, and lower still, the

flippant phrases of its ideo-

logy. I remember when Summer

re-runs of our sitcoms could

draw us back to our devices

with more dramatic credibil-

ity. Suspense is not a strong

suit in our demagogues, and

human character is conspicu-

ous by its absence.

I've been spending the most

wonderful mid-August days

just now, thanks to my in-

dulgent Mayfair bookseller,

whose recommendation of a

philosophical new text has

filled some hours with the

tellingly distilled botan-

icals of pure Thatcherism.

John Gray's ruminations an-
ticipate so well Gerson's

and Will's, Krauthammer's

and Brooks' to befall us

this week, that I'm almost

ready to pay for them im-

mediately, instead of al-

lowing any implication of

Gray's being for hire to

mar his native villainy.

I have friends who make

the same excuse for these

four horsemen, emolument

exhibiting its gift for

redemption, yet again.

The catarrh of contumely

scarcely gathers specific

gravity of spittle, any-

more, clichés of contempt

cascading from the gorge

as the dessications of old

wind that they are. A few

dolorous misprisions of Con-

rad here, a putrefaction of

Pascal there, and we have a

text bought and paid for in

perpetuity, by the inculcated

prejudices of the lucky. The

gentlest essayist in this lan-
guage saw them coming by their
going, in satire struck from
Shakespeare - 

Age, thou hast lost thy breed.

Charles Lamb

Elia

  A Complaint of the Decay

  of Beggars in the Metropolis

London Magazine

June, 1822

Jonathan Bate, editor

Elia and The Last Essays

  of Elia

Oxford University Press, 1987©

Hermès, 2012

I was thinking of blowing off Bastille Day

I was thinking of blowing off Bastille Day this year, with deference to a friend who selected this radiant date, a year ago, to be locked into the kind of matrimony permit-ted even in Dixie. Honestly, I've rather had my fill of matrimony in recent days, and I have to say again that it is not the first of the Rights of Man to leap into one's heart, as one reflects upon our chronic fortress prisons of less cheer. Matrimony was a fun redoubt to take, but an easy one, and now I think the best thing to be said, is that it's behind us. 

Paraphrasing Bonaparte, If you wish to take Vienna, don't hang about Paris.

Has anyone ever written Charles Lamb's deathless Bachelor's Complaint, from the inside, out? Oh, millions upon millions, yes, have waxed (waned?) on matrimony's genius for stripping one of friends, exchanging them for alliances; but what of its talent for depriving one of Paris? One might as well be spoused in San Francisco, can you stand it, as immured in legal bonds of our forging by the Seine. Mind you, I don't refer to matrimony's reputed sexual limits, threadbare, porous, plastic and fantastic as they are, when I think of its disproportionate return on invest-ment. I think of overpaying, a pleasure we all can understand. It is almost impossible to squander any resource amenable to it. Now, that is rare.

So there. Matrimony's arrogant conservation of energy isn't sexual, anymore (and what would have made that enviable?); it's a gas guzzler of the spirit of in-vention, itself, a playground for the wit to make it work. Nobody was ever so sentimental for the Bastille, I must say. Even the Crown was satisfied, and all good men dreaded it as intended. And so, my dear reader, it very much was.

So love was crowned, but music won the cause. I'll give you Bastille Day for matrimony, to wear it inside out, and let the prisons fall about us.

John Dryden

Alexander's Feast,

  Or the Power of Music

1697

Georg Frideric Händel

1736

Harry Christophers, director

The Sixteen

Collins, 1990©

Drawing, Ivan Terestchenko