Origins of Wednesday lxi: Navigating 2018

Judging by the books that have 

landed here lately in the hor-

izontal state, I have my work

cut out for me in remedying a

protracted supineness of one's

own. I still very much prefer

to read in printed volumes, by

the way, despite embracing the

sudden cheapness of digital

facsimiles. Having launched

this blog some years ago, how-

ever, I find the digital stor-

age of information to impose a

terrible handicap on recollec-

tion, and I had thought this

was supposed to work the other

way. From this desk, I am un-

interruptedly reminded of com-

prehensive reading lists in the

spines of books arrayed about

me, their verticality confirm-

ing no longer their mass, but

their conditional absorption 

in the past, augmented some-

times by new peers and revi-

sions, gladly. Say what I may,

flicking a finger on a tablet

strikes me as a very primitive

way of traveling through the

contexts and relationships of

reflective assimilation. Yes,

a fashionable child could set

one straight, but I couldn't

spare the time. A speech, for

example, in Shakespeare, might

come to mind in assessing the

new American government, but

why lose track of its illumin-

ation in the commentaries, of

the alert delectation of years?

My college professor on the

revolution in France, Mr Darn-

ton, has given himself such a

second life in the apostleship

of digital libraries, that I

half feel the breeze of a mech-

anical axe against my neck, to

offer this distinction. But at

least I can look up to a shelf

on that revolution, not far at

all from that of Beethoven's,

Bukharin's, and Balanchine's, 

too, and feel I might begin to

revisit what I'd like to grasp.

Beyond all measure, it's the

writers whose perspectives em-

brace a cultivated syllabus,

who account for a place in

print. Probably the leading

exemplar of this is history's

greatest victim of exception's

proof of the rule, Hugh Trevor-

Roper, once fooled by forgery,

but never by shabby argument.

In himself he's a shining city,

besmirched by one phony tweet.

Trevor-Roper was gorgeously good

to his mind, for which the famous

companionship of his Letters is

generally accepted in evidence;

but they are no less infused 

than his Essays by a concert

of information in phenomenally

harmonious orchestration. One

is better off, conditioning

oneself for 2018, to read one

of his essays on the 17th Cen-

tury, than by following contem-

porary hysteria down its well-

bored rabbit hole. In him we

break not merely tautology; we

break its mold, and dine grate-

fully on his civet de lapin.

More than supported, his

style is inspired by the dili-

gent exercise of lifting fine

titles off the tabletop, even-

tually as upright companions -

enablers, yes, but also inter-

locutors of wit one can trust.

The real curse of the nitwit

is his genius for hauling down.

Anyone may denounce him, 

loosed in corridors of power.

To survive his stain is good,

to salvage followers, better.

Letters of love from our lib-

rary, to share in plain sight.

        The fact that Whig resistance broke Stuart despotism

        does not mean either that the Whig theories of the

        constitution and liberty were intellectually right or

        even, in themselves, progressive. Nor does it mean

        that such theories, of themselves, entailed the con-

        sequences which followed the victory of the party 

        professing them. Similarly, the fact that Calvinist

        resistance was necessary to the continuation and de-

        velopment of the intellectual tradition does not en-

        tail any direct or logical connection between them.

        A philosopher, in a time of crisis, may have to put

        on a suit of armour .. but that does not make the ar-

        mour the source of his philosophy.

Hugh Trevor-Roper

The Crisis of the Seventeenth

  Century: Religion, Reformation,

  and Social Change

    The Religious Origins of the Enlightenment

Harper & Row, 1967©

An artichoke, alone

There is something pleasantly sensual

and mindful about eating an artichoke

all alone, dunking each leaf in a tart,

buttery sauce and scraping off that

little bit of flesh, then getting to 

the bottom and carefully removing the

prickly thistles to the heart .. I re-

member always asking for an artichoke

when I knew I would be home alone and

could relish each bite.

Judith Jones was lost to us last year

and I didn't make note of it because

I almost couldn't believe it. She ac-

counted for many wonderful meals for

countless people, as an editor and al-

so as a writer, and for one pure treas-

ure of companionship, ironically titled,

The Pleasures of Cooking for One. If we

hear talk of food porn, it's because of

dining for pleasure, instead of with it.

Then I remembered the photographer,

Valéry Lorenzo, and for proving one

could show that gorgeous difference.

Who is dining alone, and is so fed?

Judith Jones

The Pleasures of

  Cooking for One

Alfred A. Knopf, 2013©

Valéry Lorenzo

Roquefort

2014©

  

Not since Uncle Toby muddled cause and effect

No, that can't be fair; Uncle Toby might have been a little wearying to Laurence Sterne, continually refighting the battle of Namur, to the incidental disruption of the household. But he wasn't what you'd think of as a snark. He didn't need to be imagined.
Now what seems to have to be imagined, or could not be taking place, is a tireless reënactment of the last presidential election. One of the leading offenders continues to envision triumph sullied only by bad histories; and the other, bad histories refuted by de facto triumph. This is, of course, what one would call, bad enough, as discourse to bring into the new year. Yet here, and possibly to your little muse, it isn't all.

Oh, my, no. Possibly you also receive anonymous junk mail diatribes from one or the other, and equally possibly both of the principal two sides to that interesting outcome, on the theme of your own blame for it. This is not Sterne country, it's pure Lewis Carrroll - or rather, as pure as that inventor might have been, on his milder days. I've mastered the temptation to experience guilt for that election, but considering how little thrill could be derived from it, I might have reveled in my allocation of guilt already, without even noticing. Were one to be blamed for one's history or for the loser's sour experience, would the flavor be the same, or could it vary with the filter of the plaintiff?

                 The opening of an entire other year,

                 on the one hand, and all this revi-
                 sionism of old events, on the other,
                 would almost call into question the
                 right of 2018 to be called new. But
                 we have read our Laurence Sterne e-
                 nough to settle for a history buff
                 we have, and banish snarks for con-
                 fusing their dismay with any talent,
                 against our Uncle Toby's to a mews.

Jack Hurrell x Lucas Fonseca

A year, untuning just one string

Pandarus. You have no judgment, niece. Helen herself
          swore th'other day that Troilus, for a brown
          favour - for so 'tis, I must confess - not brown
          neither -

Cressida. No, but brown.

Pandarus. Faith, to say truth, brown and not brown.

Cressida. To say truth, true and not true.

A year of desperate misdirection in resistance to rampant, ruthless treachery in American high office found commentator after commentator promising that the next infraction would clarify one's purpose, not to say the plain obligations of words. What began as a universal revulsion with leering denunciation of a female for being female, reaches now a peak in dithering conjecture on what to say about a multi-front war on fact, its institutions, and their survival in the shakiest society this continent has ever known. What is more galling than a privileged voice that will not speak, for fear of what is plain, if not the falseness of objection, gaudily ornamented? Shame now wrings its perfect emulation, as our schoolboy mourns the half-eclipse of his curriculum, just not its tireless prince. He comes.

         The specialty of rule hath been neglected.

         And look how many Grecian tents do stand

         Hollow upon this plain, so many hollow factions.

         When that the general is not like the hive

         To whom the foragers all repair,

         What honey is expected? Degree being vizarded,

         The unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask.

         The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre

         Observe degree, priority, and place,

         Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,

         Office, and custom, in all line of order.

         And therefore is the glorious planet Sol

         In noble eminence enthron'd and spher'd

         Amidst the other; whose med'cinable eye

         Corrects the influence of evil planets,

         And posts like the commandment of a king,

         Sans check, to good and bad. 

                                    But when the planets

         In evil mixture to disorder wander,

         What plagues and what portents, what mutiny,

         What raging of the sea, shaking of earth,

         Commotion in the winds, frights, changes, horrors,

         Divert and crack, rend and deracinate

         The unity and married calm of states

         Quite from their fixture! 

                                 O, when degree is shak'd

         Which is the ladder of all high designs,

         The enterprise is sick. How could communities,

         Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,

         Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,

         The primogenity and due of birth,

         Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,

         But by degree stand in authentic place?

         Take but degree away, untune that string,

         And hark what discord follows. Each thing melts

         In mere oppugnancy; the bounded waters

         Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores,

         And make a sop of all this solid globe;

         Strength should be lord of imbecility,

         And the rude son should strike his father dead;

         Force should be right - or rather, right and wrong,

         Between whose endless jar justice resides,

         Should lose their names, and so should justice too.

         Then everything includes itself in power,

         Power into will, will into appetite,

         And appetite, an universal wolf,

         So doubly seconded with will and power,

         Must make perforce an universal prey,

         And last eat up himself.

William Shakespeare

Troilus and Cressida

  I, iii, 78 - 123

ca 1608

Kenneth Palmer

  editor

The Arden Shakespeare

Methuen, 1982©

René Girard

A Theatre of Envy

  William Shakespeare

Oxford University Press, 1991©

i   Michael Verheyden

     bowl

ii  Christopher Thompson

    Oil on canvas

    2017©

iv  Constantine Manos

     Photograph, untitled

     Northern Peloponnese

     1964

                  

Saturday commute cxlix: Pursuit and the genial element

 2017 has given cause to reconsider

 the vulnerabilities of the elements,

 as much as their inherent integrity,

 fickle as well as constant, which can

 deflect as well as temper one's way

 in them. They seem to constitute such

 a system, of their own, as to tempt

 understanding to treat them as predict-

 able. Affections, for example - of ex-

 perience as ancient as a bath, if not

 of sustenance, itself - are even less

 the unvolatile flux of our way in them 

 than their system is inviolate. They

 are subject to other systems, as much

 as reflections of them, in their way.

i, ii  Salvatore Scaglione

        2016

Suppose it were Friday cxlv: With you all the way

                

                                 
                                      British Legation
                                      Belgrade
                                      15 February [1951]

               Dear Anne,

               A brief line to let you know that Eve

               is coming to London for a fortnight in

               order to scout around and see what she

               thinks about having the baby there; I've

               told her to drop you a line and perhaps

               when she comes to Oxford you'd be good

               enough to give her tea and tell her 

               roughly what the form is ..

               There is no news to give you much that

               you don't see in the papers; ah yes! I

               have struck a great blow for poetry. 

               While in Trieste I found, hiding in a

               garage, too big to be used, a perfectly

               gigantic car - a Horch: the German Rolls-

               Royce. Eight cylinder, forty horse power.

               It used to belong to Goering and then to

               the general commanding the area. I bought

               it for a song and brought it back. It is

               lovely, silver-grey, sleek and with a fun-

               ny old-fashioned look. It makes you feel

               like a film star of the twenties. We call

               it Hermann and are planning one mad summer

               of plutocracy in it before the war breaks

               out [rumored, with the USSR]. As a matter

               of fact you have often seen Hermann in the

               newsreels - do you remember the entry into

               Prague etc with one of the big shots stand-

               ing up in the front and giving the boys the

               salute. That's how I go to the office now.

               Everyone is speechless with rage, and few

               will speak to me these days. But the Bel-

               grade police force is deeply respectful.

               There are two horns on the car, bass and

               tenor. I say that I've struck a blow for

               poetry because it is an ideal poet's car:

               too large for any purpose except triumphal

               entries, and so expensive to run that only

               a lunatic would buy such a thing. I shall

               sell it to Tito when I leave. He already

               has one but not as nice as mine. Wish you

               could come out and admire it.

               

                               Love 

                                    

                                    Larry

                                    

Lawrence Durrell

Spirit of Place

  Letters and Essays

  on Travel

Alan G. Thomas, editor

Leete's Island Books, 1969©

New Haven, Connecticut