Mr Lamb shed some light on the rejection of the face

for our auguress

Some don't come here so much as they used to; you remember how they were frightened, that they could be accused of looking at what they like, on the one hand, or felt excluded by the persistence of youth, on the other. Guilt and abandonment can make for a dicey strait in blogwriting, and yet we were blithe enough to risk it. But you were here back then; you remember, we talked about a city of coffee, adopting our literal experience as a metaphor to allay these impressions. We still desire that city, and after some 400 posts, we can give more credit to desire than we had expected. 




But we did disturb nice people, all pursuing a driving interest in expenditures, being misdirected here by lapse of judgment. All their urgent, exquisite passions had been invented to escape this page, until some whiff of our seeming acquisitive then set an unintended trap.


We unintendingly portray this flight to a possession of the exquisite, or to its idolatry, as to a Faustian barricade against the face. We've discussed this, in our comment bars; and so, famously, did Charles Lamb in one of his last essays. But the face is always there, as a dynamic marker of experience.







When I married, I gave my bride a picture of a face: an Ansel Adams original of a farm woman behind a worn screen door. It cost an approp-riate lot, then, and today it would be priceless. We, too, believed in fine things, but she very much did not like this portrait. She feared it was about her. We should have been so lucky; and I should have understood her better.

Competence to age is supplementary youth; a sorry supplement indeed, but I fear the best that is to be had .. And now do just look at that merry little Chinese waiter holding an umbrella, big enough for a bed-tester, over the head of that pretty insipid half-Madonna-ish chit of a lady in that very blue summer-house. 

I have always known, it would be difficult to stake a position for the cultivated life through the presentation of picture after picture of a seemingly privileged countenance. But these are not undeserving visages, for not having been painted on porcelain. Their existence, moreover, is contingent; its quality is contingent; its longevity is contingent. Those contingencies, to say the least, are exciting and morally compelling. 
Yes, I would hold the face with the care I might extend to a tea-cup; yes, I would celebrate its expression; yes, I would drink from it. Four hundred postings, still under development.

   








Bob Dylan
Most of the Time
1989
  Rare and unreleased
  1989-2006
Columbia Records/Sony, 2008©




Charles Lamb
Old China
  The Last Essays of Elia
1833
Jonathan Bate, editor
Oxford University Press, 1987©

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.

"As long as you're up, bring me a sunset"

As a single man, I have spent a good deal of my time in noting down the infirmities of Married People, to console myself for those sup-erior pleasures, which they tell me I have lost by remaining as I am.
                                         Charles Lamb

I don't know that their conjugal liber-ation is going to be remembered as the worst thing about co-tenancies in the emerging era of equal protection. Such an anti-climactic concession works a mere fillip of unfairness, when the guilty perks of combination, per se, already oppress the single man in more intimate ways - the loss of soci-ety of not one but two amatory pros-pects; the overweening inflationary effects of the two-income garçonnier; the preferential absorption of every-thing requiring reservations; the wage-free availability of a sympathetic servant; the motivated drawer, indeed, of one's bath; the keeper of a spare wardrobe; the pourer of one's Sherry.

Only in blogging does the direst reach of conjugal inequality make itself known. You may thrash about in your moleskine, for any legible notation of your walk through the rain in Rome, only to suffer the eradicating effect of humidity -
unless, be it said, you have a side-Celt with a camera, to cover your embarrassment. 

Again, however, without even having to dwell on that handicap of bach-elorhood, which exposes an honest blog to disdain for its pictures, the discrepancy becomes even more invidious when the subject of the household trash is taken up, in blithe exemption from protest. At what point does one's gender so shear itself of fellow feeling, as to flout Mother Nature's own Anti-trust Division, on the fair competition of guyblogs? Mind you, one's own Context list is awash with Brahmins of the fair sex, but it's more than needling, for the unfair to pile on in this way. Even Nixon got credit for his spaniel.

And do you hear them, allowing more than a footnote of confession? It would be one thing, if there were so much as an ampersand in their titles, to warn of collective blogging; a cluster of avatars and a full-blown Almanach of profiles would scarcely go too far. Not even washing their hands of their exploitations, these blogs will regale us with their exploits with only the most radiant and rare of all imagery, thanks to their unsung photographers. It's hard enough, that there's an Ivan, a Claude, a Valéry out there to take a picture, fair and square. That there's a Celt, and a Boy Fenwick, would call for fury, if they were not so generous to our reading. They could move here!

by kind permission of ~

Boy Fenwick, i, iv, v
The Celt, ii, iii, vi


Charles Lamb
A Bachelor's Complaint
  of the Behaviour of Married People
1823
Elia & The Last Essays of Elia
Jonathan Bate, editor
Oxford University Press, 1987©

Not anyone we know

               

  

         

His youth was fiery, glowing, tempestuous - and in age he discovereth no symptom of cool-ing. This is that which I ad-mire in him. I hate people who meet Time half-way.

Lamb was talking about his cousin, JE. Not any-one we know, probably.

Charles Lamb

Elia and The Last Essays

  of Elia

  My Relations, 1821

Jonathan Bate, editor

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

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