Integral intelligence

What catches your attention here is the floor, the light illuminating it like a swaying cornfield. The truth, then, is not in the artist's face or posture; but nor is it the painting on the canvas itself. What do we look for and where? Another way of being reflective: thought and imagination are endless, but they must touch the world, brighten it.

You take a step back. What do you see in the mirror? A man, an unimpressive man in the shadows who will be unknown, who wants to be unknown. What kind of narrative is that, what kind of story remains inward, hidden?

The floorboards-for whatever reason-suggest a way of life.

Eventually, whatever we say, whatever we write may or may not cease to exist; but we shall not be around to see this vanishing act. All will float effortlessly away from us, or we from it all. When will the light return to our faces, to our representations?

~~~

Again one comes across what appears to a self-evident truth to our ears: look at the work, not the woman (or man). To think of the personal or the biographical is to miss the point and, worse, to engage in all sorts of useless speculation. The truth is impersonal and great works can be produced by awful people.

I've always remained uneasy about that. If one takes an extreme case-the Nazis-then it's fairly uncontroversial to say that whatever intelligence some individuals may have had, it didn't count for much. Someone can be spectacularly clever in one area (mathematics, say) but still be a terrible person who lacks any real understanding of life (which is a different meaning of the word intelligence). Nash was, it appears, a brilliant mind, but at the same time would-it is alleged-throw his wife to the floor and put his foot on her to show everyone that she was his slave.

Frithjof Schuon, integral intelligence:

"To the question of knowing whether it is better to have intelligence or a good character, we reply: a good character. Why? Because, when this question is asked, one is never thinking of integral intelligence, which essentially implies self-knowledge; conversely, a good character always implies an element of intelligence,
obviously on condition that the virtue be real and not compromised by an underlying pride, as is the case in the “zeal of bitterness.” Good character is open to the truth exactly as intelligence faithful to its substance opens onto virtue; we could also say that moral perfection coincides with faith, and thus could not be a social perfectionism devoid of spiritual content."

To continue with this morbid theme: didn't Celan stab his wife? Norman Mailer, too?

And then what is one to make of these lines, apparently uttered by Freud:

"He talked about everything. One night we had a long conversation about anal sex. He said unless you’ve had anal sex with a girl she hasn’t really submitted to you."

(cited in Julian Barnes, LRB).

~~~

What would it be like to be an ordinary human being? What would it be like to start our philosophy with the proposition that we are social beings? Other people would not, then, be mere obstacles to my self-fulfillment or people that need to be made into 'subjects' by one form of domination or the other.

The most difficult word in the English language: good.

~~~

Women in fiction were either bimbos or bitches.' She recalls a talk she once attended by George Steiner. 'I stood up and asked about women writers and he said there weren't any from the 20th century. He could think of a couple from the 19th but that was that. It's all so dispiriting. I went to another talk by Martin Amis and pretty much the same thing occurred.
---Carol Shields.