Perfection and Pity: Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake

Human history is full of examples of our desire to be perfect, to create, to enjoy, to exploit what we believe is perfection. In the “Western” arts, this is a well-known leitmotif: from the statues of Greek gods to fictional depictions of beauty, from Bach’s music to Leonardo Da Vinci’s paintings. Of course, morality, religion, societal mores, human relations all enter into the discussion of perfection and beauty. Margaret Atwood’s novel Oryx and Crake (Vintage, 2009, pp. 389) adds to these considerations also feelings, especially the feeling of pity, the pity that pervades the reader for the protagonist, Snowman (Jimmy).

As in most speculative fiction, this novel, too, hinges on the events that precede and follow an apocalyptic event. The life of the characters in the pre-cataclysmic event is already far from perfect: specifically, the protagonist in his youth is basically a lonely boy looking for some kind of affection from his parents whose (pre-)occupations do not include him. Later on, he is enrolls in less prestigious art school for those young people who do not cut it in the sciences. Since he is “good with words”, he finds a job as an advertising copy writer. His friendship with Crake goes back to their youth, when they as little boys watch porn movies, play chess and computer games, and generally shun the rest of the children around them. This friendship brings him a more remunerative job, as Crake is the mind behind a very special project. This project aims to create a different (more perfect) human beings, starting with reorganizing the prepared embryo cells, so parents can choose a being who does not get sick, who has perfect physique, who does not crave sex, who is a vegetarian, etc. The private company already houses a group of the new perfect beings (physically beautiful) who are intellectually not ready to fend for themselves. So they have a teacher, Oryx, a woman who is the image of love for Snowman/Jimmy, but who is also loved by Crake. To prepare the possible embryos, a new sex pill is created which is tested all over the world without approval of any agency (in fact, there is no mention of any government or regulating agency in the book). This pill turns out to be the spark of the apocalypse, as it makes the users bleed to death. In the aftermath of a general almost complete excruciatingly painful human extinction, Jimmy takes over the care of the group of the perfect but ignorant human beings. This is the nutshell of the novel, as usual, it is impossible to do justice in this short paragraph to the complexities of it.

Although there is the usual note saying that the book is a work of fiction, to remind the reader that this may not be completely true, Atwood begins her narration by quoting from Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. This quote ends by expressing the idea that “my principal design was to inform you, and not to amuse you”. In other words, by creating a fictional world, Atwood intends to inform us of what exactly is going on around us in this present point of history. My mention of pity at the beginning of this review points to the fact that each element of the novel, each move that Snowman/Jimmy makes, has equivalents in our present. And pity stems from the fact that neither we nor the protagonist can really do anything about the things that we know are done wrong. Jimmy/Snowman cannot fight against the system that separates people into have and have-nots (both economically and intellectually) – does this sound familiar? In the novel, private companies have all the power to do as they please – does this sound familiar? Even individuals act totally unscrupulously in the novel – does this sound familiar? especially as regards children bought from poor families and used in child porn films. What is there for the protagonist to do? How can he act against forces that are so entrenched in his environment but act within the confines of his world and try to survive by himself? The readers can only feel pity for him, as they also feel pity for themselves, for the pitiful world we live in, for all the injustices that are perpetrated by individuals and companies. The world has recently been through the Covid pandemic – what have we learned from it? Now there are wars, military conflicts, hate is compounded on top of hate ad infinitum. Atwood’s novel ends with the possibility that Snowman/Jimmy is not the only “normal” human alive in his world. Should we think of that possibility for us? And what happens when perfection – our version of what it should be – does not pan out to be really perfect? Must perfection and pity coexist?

More than ‘two solitudes’, or Cree (Canadian) and (Italian) Canadian fiction*

What adventures can a protagonist, self-identifying as a Cree, experience in the territory belonging to the Dakehl nation in Northern British Columbia as a school principal in the 2000s? Darrel J. McLeod’s character in A Season in Chezgh’un (Douglas&McIntyre 2013, pp. 320) undergoes a gamut of feelings, and a variety of expected and also unforeseen events. Although a fictional character, James not only gives the reader a really interesting and engaging look at the life stories of one of the First Nations people, but also provides numerous examples of emotions and events that closely resemble those of the characters in immigrant/Italian Canadian fiction.

James’s life story gives us examples of the atrocious history of abuse, maltreatment, neglect, discrimination of all First Nations peoples. Having experienced some of these, having lived without his father and with his alcoholic mother, having been caught in the web of sibling suicides and addiction, and suffering from sexual abuse by his white brother-in-law, James is, however, able to leave his Cree birthplace, study at the university, travel, enjoy varied cuisine, fashion, and music, live with his lover in a Vancouver apartment. All these experiences, however, not only make him insecure, but also extremely unhappy and he never feels that he belongs. He is aware of these negative pressures that his environment as well as himself put on him. And yet he does not give up: he compares himself to the sockeye salmon who leave fresh water to migrate great distances in the sea and then come back to their spawning grounds and die there. (p. 18) As an educator, he applies for, and receives, the position of a principal at a Dakehl school. His expectations (also muffled by his welcoming committee) soon make him realize that if he wants a real school, he has to build it himself. He is not undaunted as he joggles his ideas between the local/provincial school administrators and the elders of the community. He is truly happy when he sits at the shore of the lake and observes the wild life there or when he shares food with the Dakehl community, or when he participates in a ceremony with the tribe in a Mayan village. He is able to hire new, young staff, he promotes the cooperation with and experiential learning for the children and adults in his community. He observes the internal squabbles and the disagreements between and among the different tribes and is able to walk this tightrope with success, without making too strong enemies. His most successful projects are having the youth like the school, attend it and participate in all the activities, as well as having the elders take literacy classes that lead to participation in their political struggles. His feelings of being different in any and all circumstances are heightened because of his belonging to the gay community, with the concomitant fear of an HIV infection. He finds release from stress in sex. When he is offered to come and play the piano at the white neighbours, his answer illustrates not only his complex of inferiority but also his desperate need to be approved by others (p. 69):

“That’s generous, Louise. thank you.” James answered earnestly, although he knew he could never take her up on her offer. In addition to his shyness, his pride wouldn’t allow him to accept what felt like charity – the benevolence of someone in a position of privilege and wealth bestowed upon a lesser being. And then there was the optics of it all, if he were to be seen as being too cozy with the local gentrified white folks, what would the Native people he was working with think of him?

The novel concludes with James accepting another job and going to another post in Salmon Arm. On his way he swerves his car to avoid a beaver who nevertheless is injured; while James muses on the importance of this animal for his people, the animal jumps up and claws his thigh. The fact that beaver is also a national emblem of Canada, and this emblem injures him, is a clear metaphor for the impossibility for James to live in peace with his environment.

There is a metafictional element in A season in Chezgh’un when James reads Une saison dans la vie d’Emmanuel by Marie-Claire Blais (the use of the word “season” in Mcleod’s title is interesting). James notices that the novel “recounts a story of poverty and oppression in rural Quebec, and it comes as close as any mainstream piece of literature has to capturing the reality that James, his siblings and cousins grew up in.” (p. 31) Besides mixing reality and fiction, this metafictional detail in McLeod’s writing gives away one of the most troublesome perspectives that Canadian fiction can have for an author that does not deem himself to be a Canadian. The desire to become an author of “mainstream” fiction is great. In Native authors’ case, though, this is a struggle which they wrestle with more than any other “ethnic” Canadian author, since they do not identify with Canadian culture, whereas the “immigrant” authors have to.

Although a comparison between Native-Canadian and ethnic-Canadian writing requires a full treatment, I will concentrate here only on points of convergence between themes and tropes common to the Cree-Canadian and Italian-Canadian prose (the Cree-Canadian is represented by only one novel, though). Therefore there is no discussion of differences in topics such as sexual abuse of young children (in the Natives’ cases but not mentioned in the Italian Canadian case, although rape is present), or the abuse lived through in residential schools suffered by the Natives (Italians in Canadian schools, just like any other “ethic” pupils received other types of discrimination in schools). The following common themes in stand out:

1. grappling with history: protagonists both Cree and Italian struggle to come to terms with the fact that they “lost” or are in fact losing the cultural certainties (language, beliefs, ancestors’ way of life, naming practices, etc.) which their ancestors had held for millennia.
2. impossibility to belong to any group, “mainstream” or indeed to one’s own: blatant and covert discrimination makes this even more profound.
3. intense desire to belong to the mainstream group, to be accepted and included, even though this desire clashes with the innermost feelings of the individual.
4. ancient belief systems shattered, i.e. in the case of the First Nations the perpetrators are the Catholic nuns and priests, in the case of Italians, it is also the Catholic priests who do not allow or do not understand certain pre-Christian beliefs to be practiced.
5. comparison with nature: James compares himself with the sockeye salmon, the trope in the Italian Canadian culture of the immigrant generations was the fig tree: it can survive in Canada, but it has to be bent out of shape and protected, covered in the winter.

In conclusion, A season in Chezgh’un underscores the necessity to go beyond the received truths about an individual’s life and their history. This is the lesson also from (Italian) Canadian fiction. And as we are now (2024) at the cusp of an unprecedented general cultural upheaval – the use of AI becoming so much more than simple aid to human life – what can the slash between pre-history and modernity teach us about the division between modernity (humanity, anthropocene) and bio-techno-world? If these processes can indeed be compared, humanity does not have much to rely on for support from the past. The two solitudes, representing Canadians and Natives/immigrants are truly becoming many solitudes.

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*To be consistent, I should have written Molisan Canadian or Calabrian Canadian fiction to make it clear that the authors of Italian origin (or their ancestors) come from different parts of Italy, just like First Nations peoples come form different regions, and therefore have different cultures and languages. The Italian Canadian prose fiction which I base my comments on include Frank Paci’s Black Madonna, Nino Ricci’s Lives of the Saints, In a Glass House, Where she has gone. Poetry requires another post, but one can start here: https://www.tlnoriginals.com/title-item/invisible-voices/.

Mozart’s secrets

What new information can be gathered from yet another biography of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart that has not been said in the hundreds (some say more than two thousand) of this musician’s life stories? I am not an expert on Mozart, but some facts are relatively known by all those interested in music. Paul Johnson’s Mozart. A Life (Viking, 2013, pp. 164) is not an academic biography (the author does not cite where his quotations from others come from), nor a biography written for composers by a composer (like the Beethoven’s biography discussed in my post below (Beethoven’s tears). The book is a quick read, written by an obvious aficionado. There is an Epilogue/Appendix by Daniel Johnson entitled “Mozart in London” dealing with Mozart’s visit to that town; this appendix is more a panegyric to London than anything else. The book closes with a short section on Further Reading followed by an Index. My comments are based on what I knew about Mozart’s life and those I found in Johnson’s book.

Mozart and languages

It is part of Mozart’s lore that when he and his sister Nannerl were young, they invented a secret language. It would be interesting to find out what the form of this language was and whether they kept the knowledge of it. Johnson mentions that Mozart probably learnt how to read music notes before knowing how to read words. Not only that, but his facility with learning languages is also brought up: “His father taught him Latin without difficulty. But English he picked up for himself, and the following year he mastered a good deal of Italian. Years after, he is recorded as speaking English fluently and with a good accent.” (p. 14; source of information not indicated). The biography does not go deeper into this topic. One can surmise that as regards Latin, it was the language of the Catholic mass, and as regards Italian, it was the language of the opera, so Mozart had to be in contact with these languages weekly, if not daily. It would be an interesting research to delve into the process of learning languages in Mozart’s time, and especially by him.

Gaieties of life or complexity of character?

Johnson frequently underlines the fact that Mozart’s character leaned greatly towards cheerfulness. “The great thing about Mozart, one reason why people liked him so much, was that he added hugely to the gaieties of life. Gay himself by nature, he saw no reason why people should not enjoy a little innocent pleasure, or not-so-innocent pleasure, for that matter.” (p. 61) Dances, jokes, double-entendres, musical jokes, billiards, all contributed to this enjoyment of life.  He loved to dance, and he composed many dance pieces (minuets, gavottes, country dances, waltzes and others), and music for ballet. Family and friends gatherings offered the occasions for not only playing music, trying his new compositions, and discussing them, but also for exchanging new jokes and basically having fun. Mozart’s membership in the Freemasons is well known. It is less discussed (one example may be from the Catholic side https://www.ncronline.org/blogs/all-things-catholic/mozart-masonry-and-catholicism) how this membership, whose purpose is very far from having fun, added to the complexity of Mozart’s character, since gaiety and Masonry have very different rules and may have clashed in the composer’s mind. Add to this Mozart’s faith and his relationship to the Catholic church. Clearly, he was able to incorporate all this in his music, even though his joy, Catholicism and Freemasonry may have clashed, or maybe just because of this clash he was able to create such musical masterpieces.

Offending the ear

In a letter to his father, Mozart writes about the parts in his The Abduction from the Seraglio. There is an interesting thought which Johnson does not dwell on:

… passions, whether violent or not, must never be expressed to the point of disgust, and as music, even in the most terrible situations, must never offend the ear, but must please the listener, or in other words must never cease to be music… (pp. 84-85)

So many questions come to mind stemming from this sentence: What is disgust? How is it expressed in music? What does ‘offending the ear’ mean? Why does Mozart want to please the listener? Is it the composer’s duty to please the listener? Do we have here Mozart’s definition of music as something that does not offend the ear and pleases the listener? Is this definition applicable only to compositions written in the classical style or can/should it be generalized? This Mozart’s opinion perhaps explains why his compositions have been called ‘elegant’ (I don’t remember by whom).

Creating musical problems

Johnson writes, on p. 95, “Because of his early training and exceptional musical intelligence, Mozart found most things easy and loved creating problems for himself and so, invariably, for singers and players. As his letters to his father show again and again, he knew exactly when he made his work hard to play and harder still to get exactly right. It is not true to say that he invented hard passages entirely for their own sake – that would have been perverse and unmusical – but to get an effect, he was ready to make the orchestra “sweat,” as he put it, and the singers to give their utmost.”

Interestingly, Beethoven, too, was prone to compose hard sections and pieces, and he too, was not worried about how the members of the orchestra felt about it (he sent them home to practice!). My interest here stems from the fact that the idea of “difficulty” underpins the manner in which geniuses operate – i.e., they cause their aims to converge at any cost. But there are different levels of difficulty and different types of it. Each pianist has to decide how to approach the difficulties, for ex., found in he sonata K457. From a general perspective, the modern age shuns difficulties, learners are forced to “have fun” learning.

In conclusion, this biography opened up more questions and more topics to delve into, rather than providing answer and solutions to existing queries. It does, moreover, ask us to think slightly differently not about Mozart himself, but about the closest people to him, for ex., we should consider whether his father was really such a monster as he usually is portrayed, or whether Constance was really such a bad housewife as has been written about her. All in all, whether you love Mozart’s music, or not, this biography will not change your mind about this genial composer.

Beethoven’s tears

A good biography allows the readers to discover the person described as well as learn more about themselves and humanity in general. Jan Swafford’s Beethoven. Anguish and Triumph (Houghton Mifflin, Harcourt, 2014, pp. 1077)) is just such biography. Although written from the perspective of a writer who is also a composer, the book places Ludwig van Beethoven in his historical setting, describes his family life, and his composing process, and, above all, sheds some of the mythical encrustations that history has layered on this musical genius. After having read this biography, I have a much more nuanced and corrected view of the composer, and I appreciate his music so much more than before. Rather than attempting to analyze the book chapter by chapter, I chose to concentrate on three ideas that form sort of a background of how I understand Beethoven, humanity, and myself.

Beethoven’s tears

The book reports a visit to Beethoven’s family when he was very young, during which the visitor saw small Ludwig standing on a stool, playing the piano, and crying, with his father looming over the little child. This picture conjured many questions in my mind, least of which about how children have been and are “educated”. It is an idle and useless speculation to ask whether the composer would have been as great as he was without his early forced instruction in piano playing. But it is entirely possible that this experience molded Beethoven’s thought, often expressed in the biography, that “Difficult is good”. In other words, the composer put forward in his mind a challenge to himself: he made difficulty a driving force which helped him to overcome the obstacles that for us would seem insurmountable, such as his constant health crises, financial situation, sentimental problems, family troubles, etc. When a Scottish publisher asks Beethoven to make his original versions of Scottish songs easier for the young ladies to play them, Beethoven is recalcitrant. On other occasions, when orchestra members complained to him that his music is too difficult to play, he only says ‘go home and practice’. His attitude that ‘difficult is good’ is illustrated throughout his life. He does not complain excessively about anything: his health, his financial situation, his sentimental problems, his family troubles, and there were many of each almost constantly. It is more than Freudian “sublimation”, it is an attitude that the test one puts oneself in has a solution which comes from deep inside. It is a truly admirable stance, one that could help humanity to solve the problems we are facing, both at the individual and the general level.

Rossini’s tears

Gioacchino Rossini visited Beethoven in 1822. Swafford writes:

“Rossini was stunned by two things in that visit: the squalor of the rooms and the warmth with which Beethoven greeted this rival who he knew was eclipsing him. There was no conversation; Beethoven could not make out a word Rossini said. But Beethoven congratulated him for The Barber of Seville. … Rossini left in tears. That night he was the prize guest of a party at Prince Metternich’s. He pleaded with the assembled aristocrats, saying something must be done for the “greatest genius of the age.” They brushed him off. Beethoven is crazy, misanthropic, they said. His misery is his own doing.” (p. 751)

This episode plainly illustrates two things: one, that the compassion of an individual is not enough to be of any lasting consequence, and two, that the most contemptible answer to someone else’s difficulties is to blame solely the individual themselves. We don’t know if Rossini (or for that matter anyone else) provided some financial support to the composer. On the other hand, it is as if the aristocrats’ views provide us with connections to Beethoven’s political – quasi democratic/egalitarian – beliefs about the upper classes, their falseness, aloofness, and hypocrisy. Growing up in Bonn during the Enlightenment, reading German poetry, encountering other composers, taught Beethoven about political ideologies, about possible changes in the world, and about the power of some individuals to affect changes. Seeing this episode from a contemporary perspective and comparing it to prevailing attitudes today illustrates the fact that we still have to learn a lot about equality, both at the individual level, and at the general level. It’s enough to see how the majority of the US citizens and their political parties fear, dread, and are terrified by egalitarian thoughts. As I have written elsewhere, universal income could be the answer to most of the social and economic problems, but this solution is not acceptable nowadays.

“To keep the whole in view”

One of the three epigraphs that Swafford offers after the title page of her biography is by Beethoven. She does not indicate where it comes from. It reads

“My custom even when I am composing instrumental music is always to keep the whole in view”.

In composing, therefore, Beethoven had a firm theme which had to fit in the whole composition, and Swafford gives numerous examples how that pans out in his oeuvre. What I found interesting is the word even, because it indicates that Beethoven, when doing/thinking anything, kept “the whole in view”. My interpretation is that he took account of what nowadays can be called the context. It seems that he was not rash in his judgement of people (even though he was wrong about Napoleon); he was widely read and his ideas stemmed not exclusively from the Enlightenment. He held high ideals which he translated into music. It is clear that humanity needs lofty ideals, of which there is dearth at present. But more than that, we need to keep the whole in view, keep asking about the context in which certain events happen, whether they be individual or national or general. But for that we need an education that does not focus on jobs, perpetuating therefore the capitalist hegemony.

In conclusion, this biography provides ample opportunity to learn about Ludwig van Beethoven, about the political, economic, and historical context of his life. But it also offers a lot of possibilities to look at one individual’s life with a compassionate outlook that is not judgmental. Above all, it teaches us more about ourselves and out humanity.

Musings on my piano-playing

My piano teacher Sophia P. asked me to address the audience during her piano recital (17th June 2023), suggesting I share my reasons for taking piano lessons and my feelings about music before I performed Mozart’s Fantasia in D Minor. I gladly agreed because it gave me the chance to think deeper about my experience with piano practicing, playing, and listening to others play. Some points of what follows were prepared for that talk. Although the topic requires a lengthy treatment, only some defining moments scattered along my life are mentioned here.

The instrument

The beginning of the first defining moment in my musical story takes us back 55 years ago, when I was a happy 15-year old. I was living with my parents and brother in what was then called Czechoslovakia. I went to school, took piano lessons, had fun with my friends, played sports, and generally led a pleasant existence (despite life behind the iron curtain). There was always music on the radio in our house, and we had, what was in those days an illegal item, one of the Beatles’ album. As in every house that I remember going into in those days, just like in ours, there was a piano and ours was an old upright. I clearly remember my piano teacher (we called her Pani Lassuova), a sprightly, slender older lady who had big glasses, never became mad and who was always ready to smile. The best suggestion she had was for me and my brother to play four-hand pieces. We had loads of fun, laughing at every wrong note! Then suddenly, our life was turned upside down when on the 20^th of August 1968 Soviet troops invaded Czechoslovakia (sounds familiar?) and a few days after our family escaped to Canada becoming political refugees. At the beginning, adjusting to life in a new country was very hard, complicated, and sad, as every immigrant and refugee knows. However, after some time, we started to settle down, and my parents bought a house. It barely had a table and chairs. Some 50 years ago there were no computers, no devices, no social media. However, there was TV. One day, our parents asked me and my brother to choose whether we wanted to have a TV or a piano (which would you choose?). Without hesitation, without even looking at each other, we chose the piano. That decision was the first defining moment in my musical story. Without the instrument, there is no playing, practicing, and performing. And the manner in which one relates to the piano determines in many ways the attitude to playing and hearing music. The instrument itself for me is something very precious, amazingly complex, and infinitely inviting. It is not simply a piece of furniture. 

Ever since the day that used, upright, no-name-brand piano arrived, piano music has been a constant friendly presence in my life, and I played whenever I could. But there was no money to pay for lessons, and there was no space in my life for a serious commitment.

The teacher

Now fast forward many years, to the second defining moment in my musical story. In Canada, I finished my university studies, married, and had a daughter (who is a piano teacher), and in all these years there was always a piano around. Again, I played, but without any direction. Finally, after I retired, I decided to look for a piano teacher. Many people wondered why. Why did I need a teacher, when I already knew how to play, they said. When I played on my own, I felt like I was going nowhere, just noodling with some simple sheet music, basically floating in the middle of the musical ocean without a survival plan and without a life-jacket. My piano tuner suggested Sophia. Just over three years have passed, and Sophia changed my musical life. Her guidance, advice, and vast experience have made me mature musically. I have spent my career teaching others, and I always believed that being a teacher is a great privilege, but surely even a greater privilege is being a student of a wise, caring, natural teacher. My experience of music has now become so much more joyful, rich, enjoyable, and playful. I know now when and what I need to work on, I am more aware of my shortcomings and flaws. I play pieces which I would have never chosen on my own. In other words, the piano teacher help to draw up a plan for survival in the musical ocean and is instrument in providing a life-jacket.

The musical experience

I used to say that when I practice or play the piano, I fell like I am in another universe. But what does that mean, exactly? It means that while I am playing, the music is all around me and I am in the music, I feel a part of it and nothing else exists. There is no purpose to achieve, no goal to strive for, no good or evil, no judgements. Arthur Schopenhauer wrote* that “Music also answers it [the question What is life?], more profoundly indeed than do all the other arts, since in a language intelligible with absolute directness, yet not capable of translation into that of our faculty of reason, it expresses the innermost nature of all life and existence”. He also claimed that music delivers us from ourselves but offers us an understanding of ourselves. It is enormously exciting to feel this way. It brings me immense pleasure and joy to play and to practice. Furthermore, playing a musical instrument adds to the whole-body experience, since we have to use our arms, wrists, fingers, and feet (for pedals). The total absorption of movement and feelings makes the sound come deep within us and hopefully makes it communicate something to those who listen.

Being a linguist who studied history of languages and their rules, I would never say that music is a language, or indeed a communication system. Music has its own rules which may be described in words, which, however, cannot be applied to any other system, unlike sign language or, indeed any other communication system. It lives in its own compartment, and the only connection between music and the world is embodied in the musician, who promptly leaves the “world” for another, ethereal universe. Granted, there are tricks of the trade which make one piece more heart-wrenching than another, and these tricks are related to culture as well as to the sensibilities of the musician, but all in all, music is its own compact product. Hearing music everywhere renders it banal and commonplace, when in reality it is extraordinary, especially when one plays an instrument.

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• Arthur Schopenhauer, Key Selections from The World as Will and Representation and Other Writings. Edited by Wolfgang Schirmacher, Harper Perennial, 2010.

NPL 6: Ernest Hemingway

This is the sixth in the series of considerations about works of those authors who won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Ernest Hemingway won the prize in 1954. For this post, I have read The Old Man and the Sea (Scribner, 2003, pp. 127), The Sun Also Rises (Scribner, 1954, pp. 222) and Across the River And into the Trees (Scribner, 1998, pp. 269).

What can be said about Ernest Hemingway that has not been said before? Everyone knows that he popularized the quick, adjective-less sentences with few dependent clauses, that he wrote about the two world wars, and loved fishing, hunting and reading. But I believe that there is a hidden attitude, at least in the three books I have read, which is disconcerting. It is discussed below.

There is no doubt that The Old Man and the Sea is a masterpiece, not so much for the style (whose acceptance is in the eyes of the reader, so to speak), or for what is narrates, but in what the author does not reveal. There are only three characters: the old man (Santiago), the boy, and the fish. Two deep relationships are expressed by this triangle: the old man and the fish, and the boy and Santiago. The boy has a deep respect for Santiago and he is the only one who actually cares what happens to him, buys him drink and food, and brings a human presence into his life. This relationship, though, is based on the necessity of work – without it, there would be no connection between the two. As for the old man and the fish, catching a big fish is the old man’s dream, for various reasons: to demonstrate to himself that he can get the biggest fish of his life, to feed many people, to be admired by the other fishermen, etc. This struggle to catch the fish and the defeat of the fisherman can be made into countless possible metaphorical explanations: human life is a struggle (suffering) which we ourselves create by desires and all of this comes to nothing at the end (of course, this explanation has a Buddhist flavor). Furthermore, our dreams can come true, but with a price. In this book, there are deep echoes of Hemingway’s love of fishing, in the way he makes the readers understand every movement Santiago makes in order to catch and keep the fish. The reader sympathizes with the old man, and with the fish: there is no doubt about this; the style allows for this type of reaction. What is hidden from the readers, however, is Hemingway’s own feelings about the old man and about the fish: the narration, despite creating deep feelings on the part of the reader, does not allow for those of the author to shine through. Is he pitying the old man? Is he worried about him? Is he pitying the fish? Is he worried about it? There are no indications whatsoever about these matters, as there are no indications of Hemingway’s stance about the poverty in which the old man lives, about the cultural hegemony of baseball, or about the way in which the outside world treats the old man. Whose side is he on? Could it be that he himself is unsure?

Commentaries on The Sun Also Rises give pre-eminence to the manner in which the bull-fight is presented. But there is much more going on there: the lives of the members of the “lost generation” are analyzed in their pettiness, resort to alcohol, lack of any horizon, superficial relationships, and absence of willingness, on the part of the ex-pats, to consider the inhabitants of France or Spain. This is all good, and it smacks of a newspaper article. There is no evidence that the author, by taking a few steps back and observing this group of characters, no matter how scientific his observations are, has any ideological commitment. Perhaps this could be the main point of his writing: not to commit to any idea, not to allow himself the luxury and the curse of an allegiance to anything whatsoever. If it is true that he himself preferred to live in Europe because it gave him what the USA could not, he does not mention it in the narration, and he does not give any reasons. Could depression be the cause (or the result) of this sitting on the fence and not deciding one way or another about anything?

Across the River and into the Trees is a most telling example of a novel the protagonist of which has been so affected by the war he participated in that he cannot think of anything else, clearly especially because while fighting, he lost the use of his right hand. Hemingway has the Colonel almost revel in the descriptions of the actions of which he was a possible protagonist. Even though “[the Colonel] knew how boring any man’s war is to any other man”, the novel is full of descriptions of WWI actions. His attitude towards the enemy? “But he never hated them; nor could have any feeling about them.” The war for him is therefore a series of tactics and strategies, which may prove a “stupid butchery”, but remains as “technically…something to learn from” (p. 57). The protagonist, a 50 year old man, has a girlfriend who is 20 (isn’t this every man’s dream?), and he visits her in Venice, where she was born into a wealthy and important family. This novel expresses a clinical view, without giving the reader the way to participate psychologically in an active way. It is not an anti-war statement, because Hemingway does not open up and communicate his innermost ideology or at least an idea of some type of psychological, political, or cultural responsibility. It is as if he were loath to express allegiance to anything, or, maybe, as if he had not any allegiance to express.

There is no doubt that Hemingway is a great author. His narrative points to a very different affective engagement on the part of the readers, partly due to the clinical description of the characters’ actions and relationships. The truly troublesome result is that we really have no idea what allegiance (if any) Hemingway had towards any aspect of his novels. They resemble newspaper articles, and in fact these three novels do not energize the reader to anything. If that was his purpose, then he truly achieved it.

Addendum: After having read Farewell to Arms (Scribner 2003) my opinion as expounded above does not change much. The usual activities as in the other books are harped on (drinking, whoring, detached attitude). Even though the protagonist is in love, it is a disengaged love – he simply exists with the woman who basically makes all the decisions and he follows them. Even his job as an ambulance driver on the Italian Front during WWI is not really truly felt – obviously it must be numbing to see all the violence and the results of this violence – but his numbness to everything around him is unfathomable. The lost generation’s attitude of “is this all there is?” makes for an empty receptacle. There is a hint of the Cristian sense of retribution at the end of the book when his lover/to be wife is dying from miscarriage. He says that after having fun, that is what happens. Later on, as he muses on her dying, he concludes ” You never have time to learn. They threw you in and told you the rules and the first time they caught you off base they killed you. Or they killed you gratuitously like Aymo. Or gave you the syphilis like Rinaldi. But they killed you in the end. You could count on that.” It is not really clear who the “they” are in general. Maybe his uncertainty leads him to be so detached. Is this disengagement making the protagonist and the author fall apart?

The title is intriguing: Farewell to Arms may mean “goodbye weapons” and also “goodbye to the arms of the beloved”.

NPL 5: Pablo Neruda

This the fifth in the series of musings on books written by Nobel Prize winners in Literature. Pablo Neruda (Ricardo Eliecer Neftali Reyes Basoalto) won the prize in 1971. Although his inspirations show an extremely versatile gamut and his production is vast, I have decided to focus on his love poetry, especially the 100 Love Sonnets (translated and with an afterword by Gustavo Escobedo, published in 1959/2014; Exile Classics Series Number Six).

What are the means humans express the feelings that love brings? From a formal perspective, poetry, and in particular the sonnet, comes to mind readily (clearly, using other languages and other formal structures, love poetry has had an immensely long tradition: in Greek and in Latin, classical poets paved a clear path – Sappho and Catullus being the most popular; not to mention other languages and cultures). A sonnet is a poetic composition relying on rhythm, rhyme, and a set pattern of 8 + 6  lines of 14 syllables. Neruda, however, does not follow the syllable count very closely. Ever since the beginnings of the sonnet as a poetic form in the 13^th century, with its presumed inventor Giacomo da Lentini, this form is inextricably associated with love poetry. Each time and place have their magnificent creators: Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch), Michelangelo Buonarotti (https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001k10m), Rumi, Shakespeare, and many, many other inspired poets.

Love poetry often plays with contradictions, similes and metaphors, Neoplatonism, and may use the loved one as a vehicle for reaching to heavens/God. Since I know some of Petrarca’s love sonnets, it is instructive to compare the two poets with regards to a tiny selection of tropes, a comparison which would start answering the question “What new perspectives does Neruda bring to the ideas and feelings of love?”. Of course, there is a great difference in that it is assumed that Petrarca’s love for Laura was platonic, whereas Neruda’s love sings of Matilde who was his companion. Also, Laura/laurel in Petrarca makes the metaphor for poetry evident; while Neruda’s aim seems to be love as permanent and everlasting fixture in all generations and worlds. (All translations from the Spanish are by Gustavo Escobedo)

Contradictions within the feelings of love

Petrarca’s Sonnet CXXXIV paints one of the most vivid and heart-wrenching images of the contradictions love brings with it (Pace non trovo, et non ho da far guerra /e temo, et spero; et ardo, et son un ghiaccio / et volo sopra ‘l cielo, et giaccio in terra; / et nulla stringo et tutto ‘l mondo abbraccio…  / I don’t find peace yet I don’t have to wage war / and I fear and hope; and I burn and I am an ice-cube / and I fly above the sky, and I lie on the earth; and I hold nothing and embrace everything… transl. mine).  

Neruda echoes these feelings expressed by Petrarca and also by Catullus (Odi et amo) in Sonnet LXVI:

…

Te quiero sólo porque a ti te quiero,

te odio sin fin, y odiándote te ruego,

y la medida di mi amor viajero

es no verte y amarte como un ciego.

(I love you only because it is you I love. / I hate you without end, and hating you I beg you, / and the measure of my wandering love / is not to see you and to love you like a blind man.)

However, Neruda’s novel and unusual juxtaposition of dissimilar things makes these contradictions more harsh (Sonnet III):

Áspero amor, violeta coronada de espinas,

matorial entre tantas pasiones enrizado

lanza de los dolores, corola de la cólera

per que’ caminos y como te dirigiste a mi alma?

…

(Harsh love, violet crowned with thorns / a thicket made sharp between so many passions, / spear of pains, corolla of rage, / through what roads and how did you find my soul? …)

Similes and metaphors

Petrarca had at his disposal an already enormous gallery of similes and metaphors which the Provencal love poetry offered to medieval poets, not to mention his knowledge of the poets of the Sicilian School. Thus, golden hair, snow-white face, pearl-like sweet words, rosy lips, fire, ice, love (personified, talks to the poet), nature that reflects and/or is aware of the travail of the poet, and many, many others.

Neruda’s love, if personified, makes “from thorn things… the buildings of sweet firmness”, and defeats the malignant and jealous claws so that “today facing the world we are as one life”; …  “without you, without me, without light we will not be” (sonnet XXIII).

Bread (often associated with wheat) appears often as an image of description related to what the lover sees, or feels, for ex. Sonnet XXIII,

Fue luz el fuego y pan la luna rencorosa   

(Fire was light and the rancorous moon, bread)

Or Sonnet XCIX:

El pan será tal vez como tu eres:

tendrá tu voz, tu condición de trigo,

y hablarán otras cosas tu voz:

los caballos perdidos del otoño.

(Perhaps bread will be as you are: / it will have your voice, your wheat-like state, / and other things will speak with your voice: / the lost horses of autumn. )

Or Sonnet LXXVII:

…

Pero en tu corazón el tiempo echó su harina,

mi amor construyó un horno con barro de Temuco:

tu eres el pan de cada día para mi alma.

(…but into your heart time threw its flour, / my love built an oven of clay from Temuco: / you are the daily bread for my soul.)

Some critics see in the reference to bread a connection to Christianity.

Neoplatonism and/or road to God

It could be argued that most great love poetry dissects the feelings of love and therefore reflects both the reaction of the lover and the source of this reaction in the loved one, and thereby transcends the immediate situation, bringing into the picture Love as an ideal, as a Platonic form. Both Petrarca and Neruda seem to offer this interpretation. Neruda’s Matilde, however, does not give the impression of leading him to poetry (as Petrarca’s Laura does) or leading him to God (as Dante’s Beatrice does), but she facilitates for him the transcending idea of love whose power was, is, and will be felt in other ages, generations, worlds.

…

Porque el amor, mientras la vida nos acosa,

es simplemente una ola alta sobre las olas

…

(Because love, while life pursues us, / it is simply a tall wave above the waves…Sonnet XC)

…

Pero este amor, amor, no ha terminado,

y así como no tuvo nacimiento

no tiene muerte, es como un largo río,

solo cambia de tierras y labios.

(…But love, this love has not ended, / and just as it had no birth / it has no death, it is like a long river, / it only changes lands and lips.    Sonnet XCII)

Petrarca’s Laura constructs for him the edifice of poetry; Matilde’s sensual love sets Neruda’s life’s path for him, although we don’t know where that path is heading:

El amor supo entonces que se llamaba amor.

Y cuando levante’ mis ojos a tu nombre

tu corazón de pronto dispuso mi camino.

(Love knew then that it was called love./ and when I raised my eyes to your name / your heart suddenly set out my path. LXXIII)

In conclusion, a much more detailed and elaborated analysis would be needed to answer the question posed at the beginning: “What new perspectives does Neruda bring to the ideas and feelings of love?”. There is no doubt, nevertheless, that Neruda’s love sonnets are very beautiful. His unusual combinations of words (never oxymorons) always create interesting images. He does not shy from using other poet’s creations, but he elaborates them, expands on them, and makes them his own. All in all, Neruda’s poetry makes us think about the manner in which love is shedding light on our relationship, daily acts, and daily needs.

Founding a theist religion: Joseph Smith

After having visited Salt Lake City in June 2022, I became interested in the origins of Mormon beliefs. It was suggested that I read Joseph Smith. Rough Stone Rolling by Richard Lyman Bushman (Knopf, New York, 2006) and No man knows my history. The Life of Joseph Smith the Mormon Prophet by Fawn M. Brodie (Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged, Knopf, 1971). Bushman admits to being a practicing Mormon, and Brodie was excommunicated from the Mormon church after having published this book. She had identified herself for most of her adult life as a Mormon heretic. Therefore, the two books give us an interesting possibility of comparing biographies of Joseph Smith from two distinct and divergent perspectives. It is to be kept in mind, however, that Fawn Brodie’s biography precedes that of Richard Bushman by 45 years.

Both biographies rest on firm and deeply engaged historical scholarship, using as many primary sources as possible, as well as a wealth of secondary publications on the topic. There are apparent differences in the manner in which the authors treat Joseph Smith. From the outset, the titles suggests two implicit directions in handling Joseph Smith’s life. Even though both titles are taken from Joseph Smith’s own writings, Bushman’s Rough Stone Rolling conjures up images of an uncouth, unlearned, unpredictable, self-reliant man who becomes God’s mouthpiece. Brodie’s No man knows my history suggests that as much as we would like to have a clear picture, there are many unanswered questions about Joseph Smith’s life. However, the most obvious difference is the fact that Brodie never underestimates Joseph Smith’s knowledge, talent, and innate abilities, whereas Bushman sustains the Mormon Church’s line. Brodie writes: “Far from being the fruit of an obsession, the Book of Mormon is a useful key to Joseph’s complex and frequently baffling character. For it clearly reveals in him what both orthodox Mormon histories and unfriendly testimony deny him: a measure of learning and a fecund imagination. The Mormon Church has exaggerated the ignorance of its prophet, since the more meager his learning, the more divine must be the book.” (p. 69, the bold lettering is mine)

Notwithstanding Bushman’s ability to cover and describe the pro- and anti-Mormon opinions, for him, Joseph Smith is the Prophet and his revelations are unquestioned as to their provenance and meaning. Brodie, on the other hand, claims that Joseph Smith possessed great “talent that went into the creation of his revelations” (footnote, p. 123), making him a self-made and self-proclaimed prophet and visionary.

The authors agree in principle on the following points, but they treat their causes and consequences for the development of Joseph Smith’s life story differently:

1. The Book of Mormon is a fundamental, crucial publication for the Mormons. However, the authors give it very different role as far as the life of Joseph Smith is concerned. Bushman adheres to the orthodox stance, that is, the Book of Mormon is the Mormon Bible, and never questions its authenticity or content. On the other hand, as much as she is aware of the Book‘s importance to the religion, Brodie adds other layers of meaning to it. According to her, the Book of Mormon is literary fiction (“frontier fiction” p. 67) which reflects Joseph Smith’s struggle with competition he felt with his brothers (lots of fratricide – and patricide – in the Book). Moreover, the Book “provides tantalizing clues to the conflicts raging within Joseph Smith as to the truth or spuriousness of his magic powers and his visionary claims. But it serves only to suggest the intensity of the conflict, not to explain it. Why was this gifted young man compelled to transform his dreams into visions, to insist that his literary fantasies were authentic history engraved upon golden plates, to hold stoutly that the hieroglyphics on the Egyptian papyri he bought from Michael Chandler were actually words of the patriarch Abraham? Why did he feel compelled to resort to such obviously transparent devices as to write into both his Book of Mormon and his corrected version of the Bible prophecies of his own coming?” (p. 417) Brodie also looks at the scientific basis of some of the connections between the Mormon Bible and historical findings regarding the native tribes across America, findings which make questioning of the basis of the whole Book insistent and necessary.

2. Joseph Smith was wholly the product of his time. He absorbed, by osmosis if not by actual participation, the religious ferment, the earnestness of seers, the energy of the revivalist meetings, the pronouncements of visionaries, the spiritual hunger that marked the first decades of the 19th century. He must have also observed the schisms and splits of the Methodists, Baptists as well as the creation of the Shakers and other movements. The Bible (Old and New Testament) were read publicly at meetings, and at home. There is no doubt that Joseph Smith was used to reading and discussing the Bible at home and in public gatherings. But all this ferment must also have created a great perplexity in his mind which he needed to remove.

3. Not only was Joseph Smith steeped in the religious ferment of his time, he also succeeded in fulfilling the expectations of so many to embark on a new road toward salvation. According to Brodie, “The moment was auspicious in American history for the rise of a prophet of real stature. Although the authority and tradition of the Christian religion were decomposing in the New World’s freedom, there was a counter-desire to escape from disorder and chaos. The broken unity of Christianity was laboring at its own reconstruction.” (pp. 90-91)

4. Theistic and religious visions and revelations need to be structured around individuals who sustain them, elaborate on them, and are able and willing to teach and explain them. Whether it was by divine power as a prophet (Bushman) or by skillful manipulation of his knowledge of people and history (Brodie), his ability to sustain his “visions” and bolster them with an organization brought about the birth of a new off-shoot of the Christian church. According to Bushman, “Almost all of his [Joseph’s] major theological innovations involved the creation of institutions – the Church, the City of Zion, the School of the Prophets, the priesthood, the temple. Joseph thought institutionally more than any other visionary of his time, and the survival of his movement can largely be attributed to this gift”. Also, “Mormonism succeeded when other charismatic movements foundered on disputes and irreconcilable ill feelings partly because of the governing mechanisms Joseph put in place early in the church’s history.” (p.251) Brodie, too, gives specific examples of Joseph Smith’s need to organize his followers. For example, “By ordaining every male convert a member of his priesthood he used the popular and democratic sentiment that all who felt the impulse had the right to preach. Any man could proclaim the gospel provided that he subjected himself to the ultimate authority of the prophet.” (p.100)

5. The founder of the church has to rely on his converts’ support and belief that he truly speaks for God. One of the requirements of leadership is charisma: and many accounts of Joseph Smith’s person speak of him as a charismatic, handsome man (Bushman, p. 437). Regarding Joseph’s sense of himself, Bushman claims that “In public and private, he spoke and acted as if guided by God. All the doctrines, plans, programs, and claims were, in his mind, the mandates of heaven. They came to him as requirements, with a kind of irresistible certainty.” (p. 437) Brodie agrees, but instead of God, she gives credit to Joseph’s “intuitive understanding”: “A careful scrutiny of the Book of Mormon and the legendary paraphernalia obscuring its origin discloses not only Joseph’s inventive and eclectic nature but also his magnetic influence over his friends. … His natural talent as a leader included first of all an intuitive understanding of his followers, which led them to believe he was genuinely clairvoyant.”(p. 73) She mentions that everyone notices Joseph Smith’s “magnificent self-assurance” (294) People “build for him, preached for him, and made unbelievable sacrifices to carry out his orders, not only because they were convinced that he was God’s prophet, but also because they loved him as a man.” (p. 294) It helped that he had a sense of destiny (209).

6. Wherever the early Mormons went, they invited hate, suspicion, and antagonism. For example, Bushman states that “[in Nauvoo] anti-Mormons feared the charter, the legion, and the Prophet’s combination of religious and civil authority. …Mormon domination at the polls… Bringing God into the government created an alliance most Americans had rejected after the Revolution.” (pp. 500-501). Non-Mormons believed Mormons were abolitionists (p. 553). To critics, “the Church looked like an authoritarian regime with Joseph as the potentate….His was a religion for and by the people. It was not of the people – electoral democracy was absent – but if democracy means participation in government, no church was more democratic. Joseph was a plain man himself, and he let plain men run the councils and preside over the congregations. … In his theology, unexceptional people could aspire to the highest imaginable glory. In belated recognition of this populist side, Joseph Smith’s Mormonism came to be understood in the twentieth century as an American religion” (p.559). In a meeting it was declared that the Mormons are “a set of fanatics and impostors…a pest to the community at large” (p. 358) Brodie, in her deeper analysis, asks: “Was there something intrinsically alien in Mormonism that continually invited barbarity even in the land of the free? It could not have been the theology, which, however, challenging, was really a potpourri of American religious thinking spiced with the fundamental ideal of inevitable progress. Nor could it have been the economy, which had shifted from communism to free enterprise and then to autarchy. Wherever the Mormons went, the citizens resented their self-righteousness, their unwillingness to mingle with the crowd, their intense consciousness of superior destiny. But these were negligible factors in creating the ferocious antagonisms of Missouri and Illinois. Actually, each migration had risen out of a special set of circumstances. … opportunistic… apostate … slavery and Indian issues …political exploitation of Mormon numbers … [non-Mormons] hated Joseph Smith because thousands followed him blindly and slavishly.” (p. 380) Also, “anti-Mormonism in Illinois was much more dangerous than it had been in Missouri, because it had a rock-bound moral foundation in the American fear of despotism.” (p. 381)

7. Economical concerns were a priority for Joseph Smith, second only to theological considerations. Being always in debt (personally and collectively), and sometimes in exorbitant, tens-of-thousands of dollars debt, must have weighed heavily in Joseph Smith. Bushman mentions that “Joseph practiced capitalism without the spirit of capitalism” (p. 503), which seems to exonerate him from any moral criticism. But Joseph Smith had always looked for wealth, ever since his youth when he searched for gold and treasure with his magic seer-stone. Furthermore, as Brodie explains, “The poverty, sacrifice, and suffering that dogged the Saints resulted largely from clashes with their neighbors over social and economic issues. Though they may have gloried in their adversity, they certainly did not invite it. Wealth and power they considered basic among the blessings both of earth and of heaven, and if they were to be denied them in this life, then they must assuredly enjoy them in the next.” (pp. 187-188)

8. Polygamy. It was inevitable that the injunction to wed multiple wives would create dissent and cause the converts to struggle with the idea of multiple marriage, since it seemed like a breach of the moral law. This revelation was given as a commandment on account of two reasons: polygamy was allowed in the Bible and, according to the new dogma, it was the only path that leads to rising closer to God in eternity, i.e., through wide kinship. Bushman explains that “Joseph did not marry women to form a warm, human companionship, but to create a network of related wives, children, and kinsmen that would endure into the eternities. The revelation on marriage promised Joseph an “hundred fold in this world, of fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, houses and lands, wives and children, and crowns of eternal lives in the eternal worlds.” Like Abraham of old, Joseph yearned for familial plentitude. He did not lust for women so much as he lusted for kin.” (p. 440) Clearly, this is the Church’s position, which was later repealed by a law, the only time that general politics encroached on Mormon habits. Bushman never looks at plural marriage from the woman’s perspective. Not surprisingly, Brodie devotes many more pages to the discussion of polygamy, to naming and numbering Joseph Smith’s (48 known) wives and to analyzing the acceptance or denial of this injunction. She describes Joseph Smith as “gregarious, expansive, and genuinely fond of people … his theology …became an ingenuous blend of supernaturalism and materialism, which promised in heaven a continuation of all earthly pleasures – work, wealth, sex, and power.” (pp. 294-295). Inexorably, then, but only after numerous battles and indecision, one of the revelations commands Joseph Smith to make plural marriage a law. Brodie investigates the possible reasons for the acceptance or denial of this injunction by the Mormons. Even though Joseph Smith kept his plural marriages a secret before his congregation until 1842, his wife Emma knew about at least two of them. She was very much against this new custom. Brodie offers some practical justifications for multiple wives: “…the true measure of the magnetism of plural marriage can be seen best in the attitude of the Mormon women. They required very little more persuasion than the men, though the reasons are not so obvious. … Nauvoo was a town full of “church widows,” whose husbands were out proselyting…and who found polyandry to their liking. … Nauvoo was troubled by the old problem of the separated but undivorced female convert. Divorce was usually impossible, and so many women were pouring into the town eager to marry again that it was difficult for the church to maintain the discipline that would have been normal in a settled community. …It was easy, therefore, for many of the penniless and lonely women converts to slip into polygamy.” (p. 304) But there were also many women who did not need to resort to this expedient and who did not agree with this commandment.

To complete the brief summary of certain interesting points, here are a number of (for me) unanswered questions to which neither of the biographers dedicated a deep analysis.

The question of “revelation”. Bushman writes that “To Joseph’s mind, revelation functioned like law. The revelations came as “commandments,” the name he gave to all early revelations. They required obedience.” (p. 442) But no further analysis is devoted to how and when these revelations occur and how did Joseph Smith come to verbalize them. Brodie mentions the fact that Joseph Smith deprived the others “of the privileges he himself enjoyed (i.e. revelations) was the first step toward authoritarianism in his church.” (p. 92) She quotes Joseph Smith’s later description of the spirit of revelation as “pure intelligence” flowing into him. “It may give you sudden strokes of ideas, so that by noticing it, you may find it fulfilled the same day or soon.” … what he was describing was imply his own alert, intuitive understanding and creative spirit” (p, 57). About a revelation that had gone awry, Joseph Smith explained: “Some revelations are of God; some revelations are of man: and some revelations are of the devil. … When a man enquires of the Lord concerning a matter, if he is deceived by his own carnal desires, and is in error, he will receive an answer according to his erring heart, but it will not be a revelation from the Lord.” (p. 81) But there is no connection mentioned in either biography about the relationship between revelations, dreams, visions, and thoughts.

Transformations and changes in the theological directions. Bushman outlines the problems of contradictory revelations: “Contradictions in the revelations, and therefore keeping the commandments of God was difficult when God on the one hand commands “Thou shalt not kill” and on the other “Thou shalt utterly destroy.” What was a believer to do with conflicting injunctions? Joseph reached a terrifying answer: “that which is wrong under one circumstance, may be and often is, right under another.” This unnerving principle was the foundation of the government of God”. (p. 442) Brodie notes that the road to godhood was vastly increased by Joseph Smith’s teaching that “God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man.” (p. 300) Brodie adds: “It will be seen that the Mormon heaven was as changing, tumultuous, and infinitely varied as earth itself.” (p. 300) There were numerous additional thoughts and it is likely that Mormon beliefs would have changed even dramatically had not Joseph Smith been killed.

The question of language. The Book of Mormon was Joseph Smith’s translation from golden slates (taken up to heaven, so they are not available for scrutiny) engraved with what he called hieroglyphs of “reformed” Egyptian. This translation was achieved miraculously. Bushman does not dwell on the fact that Joseph Smith did not know Egyptian (in fact, it was only beginning to be deciphered by Champollion at that time). Brodie explains the translations as evidence of Joseph Smith’s imaginative creativity and conscious artifice. However, Bushman raises the question “Does God speak?” and this connects to the revelation problems taken up above, especially since Joseph Smith believed that words are a hindrance while experiencing visions, and that he was living in a world of “prison” in “crooked broken scattered imperfect language”.

There are many other significant topics which these two biographies present for scrutiny, but I shall stop here. Who was then Joseph Smith and how did he achieve such phenomenal success in founding a theist religion? Bushman’s answer conforms strictly to this plain, confident man’s function as a prophet, in his divine revelations and abilities which his followers gladly accepted. Brodie’s view is much more nuanced and empathetic. She writes: “It should not be forgotten…that for Joseph’s vigorous and completely undisciplined imagination the line between truth and fiction was always blurred.” (p.84) He was “not a false but fallen prophet” (p. 370) After Joseph Smith’s untimely and cruel death, “…it was the legend of Joseph Smith, from which all evidences of deception, ambition, and financial and marital excesses were gradually obliterated, that became the great cohesive force within the church.” (p. 397) “Joseph had a ranging fancy, a revolutionary vigor, and a genius for improvisation, and what he could mold with these he made well. With them he created a book and a religion, but he could not create a truly spiritual content for that religion.” (p. 403) Thus, as it often happens in the religious sphere, if the individual is inclined to believe faithfully without worrying about the nitty-gritty worldly facts, to this individual Joseph Smith was divinely appointed to found a religion, and magically endowed with abilities to lead others into this religion. If, on the other hand, the individual is inclined to ask questions, and not to believe on faith, but look for secular explanations, Joseph Smith was an “outrageously confident” troubled man equipped with blasphemous audacity and megalomania, able to lead an uncritical audience. This is a contest between two views that has no winners or losers, and yet either view reaffirms the reader’s expectations, experiences, and intellectual propensities.

NPL 4: J.M. Coetzee

This is the fourth in the series of reviews of books of those authors who have won the Nobel Prize in Literature. J.M. Coetzee received the prize in 2003.

I have read 5 books by J.M. Coetzee; two before he received the honor (In the Heart of the Country, Vintage books, 1977 and Waiting for the Barbarians, Vintage Books, 1980) and three after he was awarded the Nobel Prize (The Childhood of Jesus, Harvill Secker, 2013, The Schooldays of Jesus, Harvill Secker, 2016, and The Death of Jesus, Harvill Secker, 2019).

There is no doubt that J.M. Coetzee is a consummate narrator whose power of expression wins over any hesitation to continue reading. The themes in the novels embrace a vast array of specific topics, some of which are dealt with below. The characters themselves do not exhibit great resolve, but definitely a great strength in searching for the meaning in their lives. This search is expressed in very different ways in the 5 novels.

In the Heart of the Country is written in a first person narrative, from a perspective of a “melancholy spinster” (p.3) who lives on a farm far from other farms or indeed towns or cities, among “brown folk” she is the “black widow” in an undisclosed country, although the use of “veld” narrows it to South Africa. The story which this spinster offers us is very limiting, prompting her to ask, almost right at the outset, “Does an elementary life burn people down to elementary states, to pure anger, pure gluttony, pure sloth? Am I unfitted by my upbringing for a life of more complex feelings? Is that why I have never left the farm, foreign to townslife, preferring to immerse myself in a landscape of symbol where simple passions can spin and fume around their own centers, in limited space, in endless time, working out their own forms of damnation? (p. 13) The question of the utmost importance of upbringing for the development of a human being’s life is taken up in the “Jesus” series as well. In any case, the introspective narration of this utterly lonely woman contains at least one murder, lots of desire for human relationships of all kinds, and, above all, the need to understand oneself. Language, therefore, plays a crucial role, and there are a number of musings about especially words that the spinster presents to us. On the one hand, “Words are coin. Words alienate. Language is no medium for desire.” (p. 28), on the other hand, “Perhaps…if I stopped talking I would fall into panic, losing my hold on the world I know best.” (p. 85) She is “the poetess of interiority” (p. 38), and yet she wants to be noticed (yet another leitmotif in these novels). She feels she is like “a great emptiness…filled with a great absence…which is desire to be filled, to be fulfilled” (p. 125). She explains that she is “a sheath, a matrix, a protectrix of vacant space. I move through the world as a hole, … I am a hole crying to be whole.* I know that this is in one sense just a way of speaking, a way of thinking about myself, but if one cannot think of oneself in words, in pictures, then what is there to think of oneself in?” (44-45) But more than anything else, “I need people to talk to, brothers and sisters or fathers and mothers, I need a history and a culture, I need hopes and aspirations, I need a moral sense and a teleology before I will be happy, not to mention food and drink” (13-131). The main point of the novel, therefore, is an answer to the question “What happens to a person when her/his life experiences are lived through a language which is devoid of the connections between language and culture, language and politics, language and history, language and philosophy?” (The Jesus trilogy also brings up this theme.) The answer seems to point to a desperation of the blackest type because it looks like the language we have cannot be separated from other expressions of the human psyche. If this connection does not exist, the person is forever searching for answers that cannot be given and therefore desperation ensues. It seems we need what Lyotard called grand narratives to anchor us in time and space so that we can keep on living. Interestingly, the spinster does not mention religion nor philosophy nor music nor any arts, so clearly her language is disjointed from experiences of a different sort than the one she made for herself: carnal desire.

Waiting for the Barbarians made me remember Dino Buzzati’s Il deserto dei Tartari, since the setting is a military outpost of invaders representing the Empire surrounded by a desolate land. Life in this outpost is relatively calm, until a colonel of the Civil Guard comes in and stirs up the idea that the tribes (the barbarians) are likely to storm the outpost, so the military comes in to embark on an expedition to defeat these barbarians. However, no barbarian invasion happens, it is the military who return from the action, badly beaten, to this outpost whose peaceful existence they themselves destroyed. The story is told in the first person by the Magistrate of the outpost who sees all the injustices perpetrated by the invaders (of whom he is a part), of the physical, psychological, sexual tortures the tribespeople endure, and he himself becomes the victim of the colonel’s wrath. He is very much a man of honor, and he knows when his actions are those of an invader: “I do not want to see a parasite settlement grow up on the fringes of the town populated with beggars and vagrants enslaved to strong drink. It always pained me in the old days to see these people fall victim to the guile of shopkeepers, exchanging their goods for trinkets, lying drunk in the gutter, and confirming thereby the settlers’ litany of prejudice: that barbarians are lazy, immoral, filthy, stupid. Where civilization entailed the corruption of barbarian virtues and the creation of a dependent people, I decided, I was opposed to civilization: and upon this resolution I based the conduct of my administration. (I say this who now keep a barbarian girl for my bed!)” (p. 41)The Magistrate is not a hero, but “the lie that Empire tells itself when times are easy”, as opposed to the Colonel, who is “the truth that Empire tells when harsh winds blow” (p. 148). The colonizing effects (obviously negative for the tribespeople and for those invaders, like the Magistrate, who are aware of the consequences of substituting the old ways of the tribes with the new ways of the invaders) are powerfully spelled out in this novel.

The “Jesus” trilogy, on the surface, analyzes elements connected to childhood, schooling, and death. We look at the actions through the eyes of an omniscient author who takes the perspective of Simon, a 42-years old migrant. In the first volume, Simon leaves his old life behind and embarks on a new one. The old life comes with a five-year old boy whose mother disappears while many migrants cross the sea to their new land. In this way, Simon becomes the uncle, or godfather, to the boy, David, and it is his responsibility to take care of him until the real mother is found. The new land expects the newcomers to shed everything that was their past. This place, where transportation and public schooling, as well as certain meals are free, may be a spoof on Cuba – the newcomers have to learn Spanish, and criticizing matters is not tolerated. Language is again important: on many an occasion, Simon says he cannot express himself well since he is still learning Spanish, and yet David has no problem to express himself. Simon chooses a mother to David when they see Ines playing tennis in an exclusive residence. Ines agrees to take care of the child. David is an exceptional child and all his desires and wishes command Simon’s and Ines’ life. Since he has learnt to read by himself (using the novel Don Quixote for children), he is disruptive in class, and it is suggested that he attend a reformatory school. His parents disagree with this decision, so the three of them escape to another town where they start a new life. The second volume deals with this new setting. In this town, David is enrolled in a Dance Academy, where he hones his special skills of forming an unusual picture of his life, of the universe, of numbers, of music. There he befriends a strange person who will have an unusual hold over him but who is also a murderer. Since his desires are not met even in the Academy, he escapes to a School for Orphans, as he believes he is an orphan. He claims Simon does not understand him. He wants to be recognized – a recognition similar to the spinter’s in the novel In the Heart of the Country. In the third volume, a long and unpleasant agony of David’s illness is described. He loses the use of his legs, presumably due to a neuropathy. David dies alone, in the hospital, without ever telling Simon a special message that he apparently had for him. Clearly, the book is meant to be read as an allegory on many levels, starting from the name Jesus, which is probably the real name of David used in his old life (the biblical names are not used by chance). David never delivers the special message, however, due to his sense of being different than everyone else and due to his illness. The setting, too, depicts a country in which things function superficially, People are neither happy nor sad, there is no laughter, no music, no real abandon to passions. Simon tries his best to explain to David some intricacies of life, but he does so in a didactic and unimaginative manner. David is put off these explanations, and insists on his own views, especially the one that takes Don Quixote as a model to emulate. David wants to help people but he also wants to be recognized by people. He is recognized as someone special, particularly by Simon and Ines, but this recognition does not satisfy him.

In conclusion, there is no doubt that J.M. Coetzee’s literary output gives readers a lot of satisfaction. The language is rich, the actions interesting, the messages profound. But at the end, the feeling that remains is of our own detachment. This detachment, this lack of crucial understanding of the depth and function of our language, makes for a superficial life. The characters are searching, but searching perhaps in the wrong place. Overall, the female characters’ depiction is disappointing, showing the manner in which women are thought of as beings limited in their purpose for men, not as partners in this trip on which we are together.

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*Until this section, I wasn’t sure whether J.M. Coetzee was a man or a woman. These sentences clearly showed he is a man, because a woman, no matter how much debased, how much maligned, lonely, desperate, would never think of herself in these terms.

NPL 3: Patrick Modiano

This is the third in the series of reviews of books of those authors who received the Nobel Prize in Literature. Patrick Modiano won the 2014 prize.

I have read the following (originally published in French before having received the Nobel prize):

After the circus (originally published in 1992; translation by Mark Polizzotti Yale UP, 2015),

Little Jewel (originally published in 2001, translated by Penny Hueston, Yale UP, 2015),

In the café of lost youth (originally published in 2007, translated by Chris Clarke, The New York Review of Books, 2016),

The Black Notebook (originally published in 2012, translated by Mark Polizzotti, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016).

Let’s start with general impressions. While I was reading (and this is true for all the books), I was on the edge of my seat to find out and figure out what happens to the characters whose lives contain mysteries to be discovered. Furthermore, the prose is flowing, clear, fast, the narrative is deceivingly simple, and the books themselves are pretty short: I got through  After the Circus in one day. Interestingly, having finished reading, the characters and actions remain in a sort of haze, as if a slight mist enveloped them. If this was Modiano’s purpose, then he succeeded elegantly and marvelously.

Now the specifics. All the books have common elements, and here are only some which strike me as essential:

1. Intradiegetic (first person) narrative

All four books are written from the first person point of view. This person is a protagonist of sorts since he (male in the majority of cases) narrates what he is looking for, which displaces the protagonist role on to the person/event/place he is searching for. The search is done from the perspective of an older person, about 30 years after the facts happened to a youthful self. The narrator often complains about his inability to remember certain crucial details of the past post factum (i.e. when he knows what exactly occurred), as well as being sorry not to have noticed these details while life was going on. As the narrator says in After the Circus, “When you are young, you neglect certain details.” (p. 53) These four books, therefore, point to the fact that as much as we would like to, we really cannot grasp the full characteristics of events and persons, and, above all, of our own self while life is going on. We can only form a fleeting image (hence the fog?) which is forever engraved in a gesture, in a smell, and, above all, for Modiano, in a place. The main thrust of the novels is to attempt “to gather up the scattered pieces of a life” (After the Circus, p. 75).

• The role of topography

These four novels are also tours of Paris, its subway system, its bars and restaurants, its characteristics of right and left bank as well as of arrondissements, its hotels, parks, roads, avenues and dead ends. Not having visited Paris, the meaning of these topographic details is impenetrable to me. And yet, they have significance for they shed light on the characters’ movements, and the position of their living quarters with respect to those of the protagonist. In After the Circus, the narrator explains additional effects: “…topographical details have a strange effect on me: instead of clarifying and sharpening images from the past, they give me a harrowing sensation of emptiness and severed relationships.” (p. 44) . More often than not, the topographic details are either obscured by time or completely disappear on account of demolition, new construction, abandonment. This perhaps ties to the “eternal return” in 4. below.

• Reference point

The above point may have one obvious reason for being so frequent in the books: the narrator is often looking for a “reference point” which most of the time is topographical. This point would help him disentangle the mysteries he encounters in the lives of those characters who he associates with.

• Eternal return

Not only retracing his steps topographically, the narrator tries to return to people and circumstances which he lived through when young.

• Things are not as they are given, especially names

Generally, characters in the four books either do not have names or have given themselves various names or are called by nicknames given them by others.

• Relationship ties unclear

In most cases, the relationship between the narrator-protagonist and his female friend is not stated in an obvious fashion: they sleep, eat, walk, go to see movies together, but there is no attempt to describe the feelings and desires which characters may have for each other. When the female character dies or disappears, there is no drama or trauma expressed by anyone.

In conclusion, the narrators of these four novels give an impression of someone who forever endeavours to understand the relationship that exists between narrating his own life and narrating other people’s lives. Is there a connection between, on the one hand, the manner in which one narrates and, on the other, how one views one’s life? It seems that Modiano vacillates between what Strawson calls Diachronic and Episodic narration and he cannot, for the lack of details, settle on one or the other (see Gallen Strawson, “Against Narration” in
Ratio (new series) XVII 4 December 2004, pp. 428-451 https://filedn.eu/lSmbVOH8OJnh8q06rNwVmqS/public.library/2020-11/against_narrativity.pdf).

This, perhaps, is the greatest strength of Patrick Modiano’s novels.