Exceptions

When the art of perspective was rediscovered in the 14th century, multidimensionality of representation was lost, and religious art, like the doctrine that was its cultural context, ceased to have the transparency and multivalence of icons, and took on the opacity of image that arises from the illusion of control over three dimensions. 

--Maggie Ross.

'Notable exceptions..Rembrandt's..'

Without title..still thinking of one.

Look carefully. A pathway in the grass, its faint outlines just visible. How old and ancient it looks in the bright sunshine! Or is it in the process of being formed, my very steps and footmarks adding to its definition? Now, at this very moment there is no answer, only a question mark. Who walked here before and what was spoken; who comes after and what is remembered? (Here was a unique soul, just like everyone else.)

The first day of Spring. The warmth on our backs, the eyes narrowing to make out faces in the distance. Winter fades, warm clothes are placed back in the closet. Open summer days lie ahead. But perhaps all that is an illusion? You remember summer days past and think fondly of the dark days of winter ahead.

When memory is of the future, then we shall talk about love.

~~~

"To live without questions."

"There is no direction from which He could not come and from which He had to come; there is no block of wood in which he may not take up His dwelling, and no psalm of David that always reaches his ear."

--Rosenzweig.

Moral change and moral achievement are slow; we are not free in the sense of being able suddenly to alter ourselves since we cannot suddenly alter what we can see and ergo what we desire and are compelled by. In a way, explicit choice seems now less important: less decisive (since much of the ‘decision’ lies elsewhere) and less obviously something to be ‘cultivated’. If I attend properly I will have no choices and this is the ultimate condition to be aimed at. This is in a way the reverse of Hampshire’s picture, where our efforts are supposed to be directed to increasing our freedom by conceptualizing as many different possibilities of action as possible: having as many goods as possible in the shop. The ideal situation, on the contrary, is rather to be represented as a kind of ‘necessity’. This is something of which saints speak and which any artist will readily understand. The idea of a patient, loving regard, directed upon a person, a thing, a situation, presents the will not as unimpeded movement but as something very much more like ‘obedience’ 

---Iris M.

Finnis(hed)?

The knives are out. Not many, but some students at Oxford want to out him unless he outs himself. Are his views about homosexuality reprehensible? And mass immigration? I don't know and these aren't issues that I really think about too much to be honest. I really don't care what other people do in their own bedrooms and I find it hard to believe that homosexuals can't be good people, involved in loving relationships.

I did read two chapters of his book, Natural Law, and I find him to be an outstanding thinker. Even if he wasn't, even if he was just a plain old thinker, does he have the right to express his views or should he be silenced because they are discriminatory?

Well, from what I understand of the sound and the fury (which isn't much, admittedly) I think it's outrageous that he's being asked to leave by these students. What other views should be silenced or effectively banned? A Christian who (privately) thinks Muslims are heretics or an atheist who teaches that religion is merely a construct, an illusion..what about them? And what does one do about the uncomfortable fact -I think it's a fact- that most people of a religious persuasion (Christians, Jews, and Muslims, say) think that homosexuality is morally wrong? Should they be barred from teaching as well? 

I don't know where this could go. All sorts of people have all sorts of (abhorrent) views. What might we end up with? You can think what you like as long as you only loosely or vaguely believe it and as long as it doesn't hurt me (personally, emotionally)? You must (the irony here!) sign up to the idea that everything is a construct and be willing to give up what you formerly believed/thought..nothing is sacred, everything is up for analysis, ridicule, rigorous questioning; there is no such thing as human nature or essences; there is only sovereign becoming, radical doubt. You have to accept that! Confess, damn you! Well, you can doubt doubt itself but then if you want to then please get out of academia (some might say). That orthodoxy (and economic orthodoxy, more particularly) can't really be questioned (sorry Newman, sorry Macintyre, take your feckin' Aristotle and your curs-ed religion and shove them up your *!^*). 

Should Marxists be allowed to teach economics? Why are only academics who subscribe to the tenets and methodology of neo-classical economics allowed to teach? I think the Finnis controversy is going to run and run. It will move beyond him or even this specific issue. Maybe trans. discussions will be next. Let's see.    

So, two questions, as I see it;

One, a question of academic freedom. Two, is that view of homosexuality reprehensible, backward, medieval? Of course, just because a view has been widely held by large swathes of humanity doesn't in itself make that view correct. But it does make me wonder. Are the rights of religious groups/individuals to express their views legitimate (or only legitimate if they correspond to liberal standards)? 'Liberal standards' here seems to me to suggest particular views rather than a process of inquiry.    

Thinking together.

Herbert McCabe writes with great simplicity (like Thomas Merton), which suggests to me that he's actually lived a religious (Christian) life. There's an arresting line in one of his books: the social is spiritual (more or less). Goes against the grain of modern thought which holds that the private or individual realm is what distinguishes us a thinking and spiritual beings. But what of Blake's: "He who sees ratio sees only himself"? 

I don't know if I'll get round to reading his book on Aquinas (but this is, perhaps, what I should have been reading in an alternative life). That sounds all wrong, too modern, because there's something to be said for accepting the life that has been dealt out to one (I say that not as a generalization because I know people have gone through terrible things; merely stating my own case and why I have so many grounds to be grateful).

What is true is true and not true because the individual mind thinks it. The individual mind can "latch on to" what is true: the meeting of subjectivity with objectivity. 

Stokowski once said-and I really like this line- a musical score is just a "text"; it only becomes music once the human hand gets involved.

For some academics, perhaps a large number, abstract models or theory, the text ripped out of its context is the thing itself. How does it make contact with life? At one level it's all very clever but it is often really just a form of idiocy.  

No-one compares

I really like John Milbank's work. The little I can understand, that is. A philosopher and a theologian who writes about the importance for religious thought of 'the social' and relationality. So, it was surprising and disappointing to see him write this about Sinead O'Connor's conversion to Islam:

"Sinead O'Connor's conversion suggests that Houillebecq has it right. Liberals will embrace an authoritarianism to escape their own contradictions if it is respectably other and non-Western. She is a civilisational traitress. And has no taste." 

Pretty strong stuff! Ultimately, I wonder if this goes back to something R.W. Southern wrote in an intriguing small book many years ago. Islam has always been inexplicable. The real trauma was not just the violence (actual and alleged) nor was it some kind of 'civilisational' conflict. The deep rooted hostility has always stemmed from the question: If there is only one true path how could God allow another religion to emerge? The only answer to that must be a kind of repression: it is, and has to be, a false religion. No-one and nothing compares. 

Yes, we might on occasion recognize the beauty of its art, the personal piety of some of its followers, and its contribution to medieval scholasticism but, ultimately, it's a deception because even though it recognizes one God it doesn't do so in the right way and is therefore a distortion! (A question to yourself: can a culture that produces so much beauty actually be at root a perversion of the Truth?).        

Onward and Upward ?

"Above the skies, he looks around and tells us what he can see, or rather what he can not see: Boga Nyet!: There is no God! Below him are the toppling towers and domes of churches and mosques, left behind and condemned to imminent collapse by the soaring achievements of Soviet science. The old religions are withering away. Reason and research have raised humanity to a new idea of heaven – we can now all join Gagarin in an achievable paradise, empty of divine beings, and full instead of starry promise."
--The Guardian.

Levinas sees it differently. This is a moment of claustrophobia, nihilism. There is no escape, no transcendental dimension to our lives and therefore no more "height". From now on we're all flat-earthers.

"To take this seriously, we may hear in it a
very important assertion: the new condition
of existence in the weightlessness of a
space 'without place1 is still experienced
by the first man sent there as a here, as
the same, without genuine otherness. The
marvels of technology do not open up the
beyond where science, their mother, was
born. In spite of all these movements,
there is no outside here! What immanence!
What a wretched infinite! "

--Levinas.

And Arendt (1958) writes about the incredible paradox: just as we come to see ourselves only as finite creatures, inextricably earth-bound, we come to hate the earth (our greatest dreams are to escape from it). But also [she doesn't say this, or use the word 'hate'] our hatred is expressed in environmental destruction. Maybe this also explains the hatred for peasants or anything that is related to the land? (Lesley Chamberlain's Motherland' is excellent on this).

~~~

Dear C, 

Apologies for the very late reply. Yes, the book is out. Rumour has it that 3 copies have been sold!  

'The human heart sometimes follows the hand'.

I liked this Sufi saying for many reasons. The idea that we don't always know beforehand; that we're not in control but in the midst of wonder. And if it simply follows, what then of free will?!

Of course, the hand is also 'the self-revealing gesture of the soul (K. Clark). But to talk of beginning and end, or of causality, is to miss the point...the 'point' that is in-between...

Or: we act now, moved by habits of the heart which reason does not and can never fully know. What we know is not distinguishable from *how* we know. What is an education but an awareness of this unknowingness?

We see through a glass darkly, dimly perceiving something before we comprehend it (faith opening up paths and directions before reason..'fides et ratio'). What is 'and' here?

'God wills to exercise the 'abundance' of his glory-to create as many reflections as possible of his own being. But if the point of the world is the abounding plurality of such reflections, each must exist within limits, since God alone is infinite.'

'Compatible variety means the harmony of genuinely distinct subjects.'

Rowan Williams on Richard Hooker

Haven't read Achebe but did come across this:

“Wherever something stands, something else will stand beside it.” Achebe often used this proverb in discussing his work, and he explained its significance once in an interview: “It means there is no one way to anything….If there is one God, fine, there will be others as well…. If there is one point of view, fine. There will be a second point of view.”

Immersion

The other day I was sitting with some friends when the discussion turned to, "It's us versus them". This was not about the East versus the west; not about the religious versus the secularists but something that I hadn't thought about too much.

There is much talk about the battle within Islam, between the open-minded, tolerant, and/or Sufi version on the one hand and on the other the fanatics, fundamentalists, and extremists who have distorted the religion (in some sense this wasn't really a conflict from within because the latter group are really heretics, outsiders). 

Now, there's obviously a lot of truth to that claim. But as someone who is not that religious and who is, to use a loaded word in this country, a secularist, I can't get too enthused by the shrine culture (eclectic and pluralistic though it be). Of course, that is not to deny that some people might find the devotional songs, the rituals, the dances, the personification of holiness deeply appealing and, to dispel the notion that I'm arguing that the attraction is little else but a subjective feeling, that it is a legitimate approach. But, but...we're entering Gellner territory here...

On the 'them' side are also people like me and my family. Somewhat like the Puritans (at least that's what I imagine, from my very limited reading). To use the word 'wahabi' in this day and age is to bring the scorn of the 'liberals' and the sufi-oriented brigade crashing down on one. 

So, I just sat there quietly and listened to the three friends talk about attitudes and practices that I don't subscribe to. How the Prophet is still alive, for example. About how the holy person continues the presence of the divine (in some sense that is perhaps beyond the symbolic); about the system of dependencies on the holy man and his lineage. His cloak, his staff. Fine, but sober by nature and temperament, I can't get immersed in all that. 

~~~

In some sense the same applies to book reading. I love fiction and poetry but, at the end of the day, there's something a bit odd to giving one's life to fictions, to becoming so deeply engrossed in the lives of other people (and in the minute details of their feelings and thoughts). In a time when religion's hold is on the wane is it the case that we seek some kind of deep attachment elsewhere? If one is non-religious does this "devotion" invariably come in the form of culture (art, books, music)? Better that than getting hooked to cheap entertainments and the pursuit of money and power to fill the void.

Here, then, is the question of the balance between subjective interest/attraction and objective value. Someone who immerses themselves in useless research or in the construction of a model city using matchsticks is, no doubt, very skilled and accomplished in some sense. And one might even admire their patience, dedication, unswerving attentiveness, concentration, single-mindedness, persistence etc., etc. But can one speak of virtues without looking at the ends of action, the object of thought? Theoria, in the old sense of the word, was a knowledge of "higher things" (Hans Jonas).

So, some people swear by the loose, baggy 19th c. novels as if that was the final form that literature should take. One must wade through the accumulated debris of useless materials and observations before one gets to the "wheat". In fact, a bland and stand-alone statement of the "wheat" would defeat the whole purpose. Real life isn't like that. Time flows and carries with it lots of unspectacular moments. High times coalesce with ordinary times. To tear out the nuggets of wisdom/insight is to break up the narrative, destroy the object itself. The book, like the soul, consists of lots of higher and lower elements; is a medley of disparate characteristics and is the whole thing, take it or leave it.

Except, wasn't the novel supposed to be about experimentation and contemporary relevance? Wasn't the baggy form simply contemporaneous with a bourgeois culture (Morretti) that demanded so many diversions, escapes, entertainments, thrills? And now?

~~~

M. Robinson and the Puritans: 

  

Hasidic Tales: lost and found

I read this tale somewhere and then wondered where, in fact, I'd come across it. Much searching amidst the piled up books, notes and journal articles but it had disappeared! If only I could remember what I was reading last...Lewis Hyde, Wendell Berry? Hadn't I jotted something down? You could clearly see the word written down in your own handwriting: journey. And then, as you look at the window, the startling fact: it doesn't matter where you saw it! Why do you think you can possess it...

A Rabbi has a dream in which God tells him to travel to Prague because there, under a bridge, he will find some treasure. But when he gets there he sees that the bridge is heavily guarded. He waits patiently by the bridge, hoping the guard will fall asleep or be distracted by something. But three days pass like this; him just silently observing the guard. On the third day the guard speaks to him: What are you doing there in the shadows? I've noticed you there for the last three days".

The rabbi tells him about the dream and how he traveled all the way from Krakow just to find this treasure. The guard laughed at him: "You fool! I had a dream as well in which God told me go to Krakow where I'd find some treasure buried under the stove of a rabbi's house but I'm not so silly! I do my job here to the best of my duty".

On hearing this the rabbi returns home and, sure enough, finds the treasure under his stove.

~~~

1. The importance of trust (tawaakul).
2. What comes to fruition sometimes comes about indirectly.
3. Duty, loyalty, fidelity to what, or who?
4. What is of importance is sometimes close at hand, under one's very nose but also:
5. One has to make the journey to find home. 

Lost and found.    


~~~

Update, Horatio:

I found an old book by Buber in the library. Although locked up because it was in a "fragile condition" I managed to liberate it for a few hours. D took some photos of the small book (44 pages) and then transferred them to me (yes, technology does have some advantages!). After printing them I briefly flicked through the pages to check if the operation had been successful and noticed that all was okay except for one page. Half of the top line had been chopped off. So, I wrote the missing words out by hand:

..had never shaken his faith in God. 

Was then astounded to find that this was in fact the very same story I'd been looking for! 

A certain amount of confusion and incomprehension is to be expected. If you inhabit a monotheistic worldview then mythological perspectives are almost certainly bound to strike one as odd, mystifying. Over the weekend you heard a number of people saying, "Hinduism..is that really a religion..does come across as wildly at odds with any sensible approach to divine matters". I didn't want to argue with that. What would be the point. We have no entry point into another's faith (this is not simply a question of scriptures and languages but of a mentality (or, more accurately, mentalities) that is shaped by a monotheistic outlook.

Of course, that is a gross exaggeration for in reality it seems to me that monotheism is never anything but a rare phenomenon. It is either distorted beyond recognition by the zealots (think: Taleban and ISIS and how infinitely distant they are from a genuine religious sensibility); or it is mixed up with ideas, attachments, and styles of thinking that are more to do with the local culture (land and language, one might say). 

So, we often look to the religions of the east and their "strangeness" as a way of reaffirming our own "pure" approach to religion. So, our lack of understanding is not simply the result of a natural (providential?) barrier, as if to say: after all, no human being can inhabit every possible perspective; it is, rather, that in addition the barrier is a psychological and political limit we construct. 

But if language and thought do not get us across the barrier then what does? To get across does not necessarily mean inhabiting the other 'realm' but it can, at the very least, be a recognition that there is some kind of inexplicable mystery across the border and that one's own position or understanding is not a sealed-off space, as it were. A certain amount of undermining, confusion and incomprehension is to be expected. Don't take one's unbelief too seriously; but do not ignore it either.

Bob would be able to say something about this image. My vague intuition is this: compassion, at the highest state of being, is universal. Nothing goes unnoticed. There is a looking back, not a looking after the self (in the final analysis is the latter only a delusion anyway?). The self is a barrier. Look and look out. The gestures of the hands. What do they mean?  

"Everyone who has to contend with unbelief should be advised that he ought not to take his own unbelief too seriously. Only faith is to be taken seriously."
--K. Barth.

~~

Haven't read Achebe but did come across this:

“Wherever something stands, something else will stand beside it.” Achebe often used this proverb in discussing his work, and he explained its significance once in an interview: “It means there is no one way to anything….If there is one God, fine, there will be others as well…. If there is one point of view, fine. There will be a second point of view.”

Faith

Awakenings

One day we’ll look back on it ... the time of the sun
when light fell on the smallest twig
on the old woman the astonished girl
when it washed with colour everything it touched
Followed the galloping horse and eased when he did

that unforgettable time on earth
when if we dropped something it made a noise
and like connoisseurs we took in the world
our ears caught every nuance of air
and we knew our friends by their footsteps

time we walked out to gather flowers or stones
that time we could never catch hold of a cloud

and it’s all our hands can master now.

(“Le regret de la terre”, version by Peter Sirr)

~~~

The rain falls and collects in pools and makes
Our grave old planet shine. 

I love that line by Supervielle.

And this by Anselm Hollo (not read):

Carried by silver and star and reflection.

The blessings of the sun

I sit for at least two hours out in the sun, usually under a tree, the natural light warm on my skin, my hands darkening with time...

I usually have something to read but am constantly interrupted by colleagues who see me on the bench and immediately come to sit down next to me and chat. I don't mind that at all..I'm only drifting anyway, and it is interesting to listen to what's on people's minds. It's usually frivolous and so that helps put things into context for you. Your own trivial consternation, for example. 

It is hard not to think of how everything is really floating, despite the apparent solidity. The sun, the trees, the ancient cycle that brings the late afternoon breeze back this way at this time of the year. And about how what preoccupies us is really very often of no account, of little relevance, that is, to what is most enduring in our being. Which 'I' do you talk about? 

I can't remember much of what I've read. There are a few standout lines, though, that seem to mean more than I can incorporate into my own life (Gillian Rose, Paradiso, Rosenzweig). It is an effort but, truly, knowledge and books are not everything. I see it now as clear as a face before me.Whose? Yours or mine? 

Is this a kind of fatalism, a letting go, an acceptance, at root, of your own frailty and limitations? 

You continue to think, one of the most radical of positions, stances (not "gestures" as the post-moderns would have it) is tawakuul. A trust in the goodness of the world, in the continuing good. But it is, obviously, not just that: a kind of resting in mystery that only God can grant. Is this dependent on an awareness of one's own finitude (Ricoeur)?   

You ask me why I smile
But I do not answer,
for my thoughts are carried downstream.
Far away from the world.
(from memory)
--Li Po.

First and Last Things

The main elements-stresses, sorrows, pleasures, challenges-in our lives do not change.
--R. Hoggart.

Or do not change that much. This is still the tent of scattered stars that love made, is it not? This old story, of joy and sorrow, is old, not only yours. The wounds we think ours alone have scarred others before us (though there's no solace in that). There is no need to insist upon it. If someone wants to maintain that faith is a story, then that's fine. There are no proofs here, no philosophical arguments. Get over it. Reason without faith can circle around itself and, quite evidently, lead to barbarism (Goya: "The sleep of reason..."). Instrumental reason that knows nothing of first things, final ends, can and has served bureaucracies that sent people to the gas chambers.

To talk of faith seriously in these times is, it is claimed, to border on contempt-a contempt of the most obvious of realities: that religion is a handmaiden (or perhaps even inextricably bound with) the most atrocious violence and nihilism in the modern world. 

'The sense of constant unfinishedness' might, for some, point to despair and meaningless; for others it might necessitate the belief in progress and a striving for human perfection. I like to think, though, that it points to the divine. Ahad and 'm', as the Muslims would say. 

The pattern of our belief composes our sense of the self.

For centuries now we have believed the polar opposite. The self, if it can be said to exist in any enduring sense, is a moving tissue of desires and fragmentary self-awareness, a mirage or phantom, as insubstantial as the morning mist that is dispelled as soon as the sun rises. the unreality of the self mirrors the unreality of the world. I don't know if that's Buddhist...

But what pattern the self has is composed of its material desires. When you look at the commodities around you, the material possessions you've surrounded yourself with, you're supposed to say: that's me! And in a sense, a depleted one, that's quite true. Men and women cannot live without images. What image or picture (Iris M) of the self do we have of ourselves today? What image do we grow into (are allowed to grow into)? 

The radical nature of religion: to reject false images. To negate the idols of the day. But that can never be enough since it is, sure enough, often accompanied with a zeal and a fanatical spirit devoid of all humility and charity. What, then, do we turn to? Which qibla? 

Who is willing to destroy a piece of their own heart?
--Solzhenitsyn 

Perhaps more reasonably, and less dramatically we may aim to tame those aspects of the self we find disagreeable. Does opposition, resistance to the world have to be so one-sided? (Render unto Caesar..?). 

We are surrounded by vast areas of self-deceit. In many ways we haven't really grown up, preferring denial and childish outbursts to an understanding of what we really are. Who, today, can bear to look themselves in the mirror? Under what light?

The moral courage not to be swayed by the opinions of others, the dominant way of thinking. A certain amount of obstinacy is required to stand against the times. 

Losing my religion

The need to press on and ignore F.R.'s view that Islam is a pagan religion (there is a whole history to this, the idea that Islam is nothing more than a corruption of the true faith, a set of borrowings). This hostility is not altogether surprising when you think of Islam's traditional aversion to the idea that any one people or religion has an exclusive claim to the truth: no eternally fixed "chosen people" and no salvation through Christ alone. 

If one has been brought up to believe that you have a monopoly on the truth (and in practice Muslims are as guilty of this as anyone else) then the orthodox Islamic view that every people, community or "civilization" had its prophet can jar and be profoundly psychologically disturbing. 

Let's leave the last word to Putnam:

"The most unfortunate aspects of the Star of Redemption  are, in fact, its polemical remarks about religions other than these two [Christianity and Judaism]...I find this aspect of the Star depressing..."

But no, let's press on or the day will never start...

_______________

It is a sad fact to contemplate the losing of one's religion (if one still takes religion seriously, that is). Over the years a number of good friends have-understandably-felt themselves increasingly ill at ease with their faith (or, more accurately, with the way it is expressed all around them in its political, cultural and social guise). Understandably, I say, because when one sees all the pettiness, hatred, ignorance and violence associated with religion in its current manifestation any sensitive soul and any reflective person would recoil, in good faith, at the horror that is unfolding before him or her.

And yet, if we move beyond current events and probe a bit deeper there is another source of unease and I think it's this: much of the modern world has grown from roots that have little to do with Islam (this is a view that is in stark contrast to the Allama's lectures). The political and economic systems, for instance, do not seem to bear much resemblance to the religious world-view. And, the disjunction between an unbridled capitalism and disdain for the environment and a religious sensibility (in general) over the last century stands as an even more glaring example of the specific incompatibility between Islam and modernity.

I mention all of this in relation to F.R. because I want to ask: are the Muslims the new Jews? The point of this question is not to neglect the continued existence of anti-semitism or to draw any firm  historical parallels, and even less is it to harp on about victim-hood. Instead, can we ask this question in the light of the Rohingya and the long history of Islamophobia, in light of what is seen as the pressing problem of "assimilation" and integration, the radical 'othering' of Muslims, the strangers in our midst whose values are "not like ours".

__________________

"If there were five seconds of love, understanding, and truth, what would the rest of the day be like?"

"The Middle Ages are the East's revenge on antiquity for Alexander's conquests."

"For what is the use of the most perfect organization of Jews if there are now Jews left to be "organized"?"

"I make excerpts, collate, I experience commas, make tracings..."

"An entire train of thought was concluded with a gesture." 

~~~~

In the light of experience.
In light of. 
In. Light. Of.

Our love of, the necessity of, life lived in darkness. Our life is just as much structured by the light of what we do not and cannot experience.

~~~~~

"I too am now anxious for a furlough (bath, carpet, sofa, chair, Beethoven variations, old manuscripts, which again interest me."    

"I detest sets and love the single book."

~~~~
 F.R., growing up with the usual antisemitism, the pressures (however subtle or gross they may have been) to conform to "Germany" or "Christianity" turns to what? What resources does he draw upon? 

There is something utterly fascinating about Rosenzweig. His Understanding the Sick and the Healthy has some lovely writing. But his face is too harsh. I don't know why I set such great store by the looks of a person. 

At Herr Lukas's place for dinner over the weekend. He recalled to me, with some glee (perhaps pride would be a better word) that he had told the students in his class that Abraham didn't actually exist. Learn to be critical (by which he really means: stop believing). It seems as if there are some people hell-bent on making sure the kids lose their religion, just as there are other forces at work trying to convince them to adopt the harshest, sternest and most unforgiving version of it. 

Sifting...

Sifting through my old books and notes I finally find my old copy of Rosenzweig's biography (how many times do you find things when you're not looking for them!). As usual, only dipped into and lightly marked in a place or two. In short, like the books on anarchism under which it had been resting all this time -C. Ward..what a juxtaposition!- it had largely been unread. The temptation, as always, to start from the beginning or to draw parallels (in this case: individualism?) 

Opened the book at random (I suppose the way an illiterate person would, looking for a message, a primitive belief in the magic of words still embedded in his heart):

"He who lives on possibilities is a coward; there's always one you can run to for shelter. A decent person lives not on the ninety-seven and a half possibilities but on the one reality he has experienced. Since he has experienced it, some provision will be made for his being sustained by it."

--Franz Rosenzweig. 

It occurs to you that you will never read this book. 

It gives you great pleasure to read this diary entry:

September 6, 1906

Missed the first movement of Beethoven's Op. 127 

[As chance would have it, I was listening to the late quartets when I found the book].

There is nothing mysterious about the line itself but I revel in the fact that a fragment of thought from over a hundred years could be preserved like this. Not some great moment for sure, but one that is in some sense as ordinary and insignificant as a person having a sip of coffee at a bar and for that very reason wonderfully strange and familiar since it reminds you of how our own lives are little but a series of such instants, perhaps not amounting to a lot more. 

The levels of 'removal' are intriguing: Beethoven actually conceptualizing the music, perhaps drumming his fingers on a solid wood table as he does so and then, later, committing it to a score: breath-ink-space. The years that intervene before F.R. listens to what was then a live performance (think of how much history is made and unmade in that period, grandfathers, loved ones, vagabonds and generals slipping in and out of existence, appearing and then vanishing against the relatively more stable bourgeois world). The time that elapses-perhaps a few days, perhaps a few hours-before he jots down what he remembers of the experience. A calm afterthought. Then more time passes before the notes/diaries are published. I find the book, lose it, find it again, stumble across these words that catch my eye. Another eight hours pass before I then write down these words, here, and so that simple sentence has a whole history to it, implicating many different people in its construction and extension across space and time. 

[In your own book of life what will the angels write?] 

~

You write like this, even more removed from the text and the life of the text, because you do not read properly. And yet, you always wish to read like this, away from reality.

~

A friend, the most Jewish of your friends, to whom I sent this quote replied: "One reality is that it is always possible to be honest with yourself...".

I read that, oddly, as suggesting that the future is open and that it contains the possibility of being sincere and yet, I wonder, was he alluding to the here and now? I read it against F.R. but maybe..

Possibilities as a source of delusion, fantasy, yes, but also worth noting that a shelter can be a refuge, a concrete sign of hope. An escape from reality, from what one has experienced or can experience, is a deep individual impulse. In the image of God, men and women say: "Not this, not that". If one must find oneself where one is, keep pace with your foot, then one also longs (note the disappearance of the "must" since we are in the realm of freedom)..one also longs for a disappearance, other lands (the shadow of the Garden is always with us, even as we know: But famished field and blackened tree/Bear flowers in Eden never known).   


~

C, I bring your comment here, out into the open, where there's more space/light.

"Do I need to read this?"

I love the urgency in that question. Only someone who takes reading as seriously as yourself could use the word "need" (I imagine the dougal or anton expressing similar sentiments, though there would be no question of their asking me). 

What do we need to read? Gosh, that's a tough one. To what end, one might ask? Is F.R. vital? I'm not sure, I've only read around him (via H. Putnam's wonderful little book on Jewish thought). If I did have to name a writer it would be Alfred Hayes. Devastatingly good. However, I have no way of saying why that's the case. Unlike Cheever's work, I don't think it was the tone that struck me. Cheever is sad; Alfred Hayes seems to have passed to the other side of sadness and is broken (putting it like that does make it sound like a typically male hang-up).

I suppose someone with a more serious inclination toward religion than either of us might devote more time to F.R. Like an illiterate peasant who believes in the magic of words I'm tempted to say that fate arranges things so that I only dip into his works, finding, then losing, then finding his book over cycles of time.  

Only read as much as you can live. Not sure who said that (Goethe?) but it's always sounded like a sound thought. I don't know, perhaps religion offers a channel to live a unified, self-contained life (or at least it used to). Steadfastness (from the previous post) and being sustained by an experience. Part of me is drawn to that deeply civilizing impulse but, putting my other Jewish hat on, there is always the idea that the fragmentary, partial and exiled life is more in line with your scattered thoughts, wayward sensibilities and personal history: 

Wandering tribes have such looks, the bones of one tribe, the skin of another.
--Bellow.

~~

The one thing not mentioned, the thing that may attract a certain kind of reader, is that F.R. suffered from Lou Gehrig's disease for a number of years (I forget this biographical detail as if it is somehow incidental but the tremendous sense of fortitude that he displayed throughout makes you very sympathetic to him-despite his awful views about Islam).

His response to being made aware of the disease appears to have been: life is entering another stage. That sounds truly remarkable.