la matière de mon livre

slightly modified version from the original

 

D'où Venons Nous / Que Sommes Nous / Où Allons Nous;¹
Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?
Created in Tahiti, it is currently housed at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston,

Paul Gauguin 1897
Image Source - Public Domain

"Paul Gaugin left France for Tahiti in 1891.  He was "looking for a society more elemental and simplistic than that of his native [land]."ⁱ  Twelve years later, in 1903, Gauguin was dead, weakened by alcohol and rife with syphilis.  He was 54 years old. 

 Three hundred years earlier, another Frenchman, Michel de Montaigne, published the first edition of his voluminous Essais (Essays): "a collection of a large number of short subjective treatments of various topics [first] published² in 1580."ⁱⁱ  Twelve years later, in 1592, Montaigne was dead.  He was 59 years old.³

I have been thinking a good bit lately of these two Frenchmen... and of my own life and inevitable death.  I am 41 years old. 

-

 Deux Tahitiennes,⁴
Two Tahitian Women
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Paul Gauguin 1899
Image Source - Public Domain

 Montaigne's stated goal was "to describe man, and especially himself, with utter frankness."ⁱⁱⁱ   He opened his work with a "To the Reader" section wherein he wrote:

"Je veux qu'on me voit en ma façon simple, naturelle, et ordinaire, sans étude et artifice; car c'est moi que je peins... Je suis moi-même la matière de mon livre."

"I want to be seen here in my simple, natural, ordinary fashion, without straining or artifice; for it is myself that I portray...I am myself the matter of my book."
        Book I (1580), To the Reader

 I am myself the matter of my book.⁵  But what am I?  Qui suis-je?

There is a fondness in me for old Montaigne.

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Manao tupapau
 The "tupapau" is Spirit of the Dead
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York

Paul Gauguin 1892
Image Source - Public Domain

 In 1891, Gauguin "sailed to the tropics to escape European civilization and "everything that is artificial and conventional."^iv  He sailed third class on the ship Océanien and "spent the never-ending hours sitting on the deck, looking to the horizon."^v  Within the year he'd painted "Manao tupapau."  It startles me.

I've seen this translated several ways: "The Spirit of the Dead Keep Watch" or "Watched by the Spirit of the Dead" or "Spirit of the Dead Watching" or "Watching the Spirit of the Dead."  I don't know what is best.  But I can look at the image and see what I see (whether it is there or in my own head).

In a letter to his wife, Gauguin wrote:

 "I have made a nude of a young girl... who is a Māori.  These people traditionally fear the spirits of the dead... I must explain this fear with as few of the time-honoured literary devices as possible... there are a few flowers in the background but... as they only exist in the girl's imagination... I make them like sparks... finally I have made the ghost just a plain little woman, for this girl... can only picture the spirits of the dead as looking like the person who has died."^vi

 It is an interesting idea... and execution.  "The title has two meanings, either she [the girl] thinks of the spirit; or, the spirit thinks of her."^vii  To me, this is an image (and idea) that is more about fear than death.  1892.

I choose to be unafraid.

-

Skrik
"The Scream" or "The Shreik" or "The Cry"
National Gallery, Oslo
Edvard Munch 1892
Image Source - Public Domain in the US

 "In a page in [Edvard Munch's] diary headed Nice 22.01.1892, Munch described his inspiration for the image thus:

"I was walking along a path with two friends — the sun was setting — suddenly the sky turned blood red⁶ — I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence — there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city — my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety — and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.""^viii

Several thousand years ago I was watching some show with my (then) wife and dog within the comfortable and safe confines of my home.  It was a particularly comfortable place situated within a neighborhood of privilege in south Texas.  We were in a room deep within the house.  We heard a noise from the direction of the backyard and so I investigated.  I turned the corner to the kitchen to find myself nose-to-nose with a lunatic, naked and drugged-to-a-frenzy.  He was angry, confused and bloody from the plate glass door he'd just destroyed to get inside.  He informed me that he was going to kill me. 

Obviously — somehow — I prevented that from happening. 

(I like old houses and this one was no different.  Turns out the lunatic grew up in the house.  Having messed himself-up quite effectively on who-knows-what, he "came home" to me and mine.  A grown child of privilege, cocained and dangerous.)

I am still hazy as to the details but aside from some damaged furniture and a broken-up couple of rooms, everything turned out fine... for me.  But it could have gone the other way. 

Afterward, I was frightened for a time.  But then one day I decided not be frightened anymore, of anything, ever.  And I'm not.  Fear has nothing to do with that which inspires it.  I'll take what comes.

In Helen Keller's unusual Let Us Have Faith (1940) she wrote something that I came across in my own way, and have come to regard as my own:

"Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold." 

In fact, we all get caught.  Count on it.  But don't give it a second thought.  It doesn't matter.

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Te tamari no atua
"The Birth of the Child" or "The Nativity" or "The Child of God"
a clever thing: Tahiti, not Bethlehem
Neue Pinakothek, Munich, Germany

Paul Gauguin 1896
Image Source - Public Domain

Montaigne's 13^th Essay (Chapter 13, Volume 2) is entitled:

"De Juger de la Mort d'Autruy"

"Of judging of the death of another." 

The Charles Cotton translation (1877) of Montaigne's Essays touches me for some unexamined reason.  In fairness, this is the translation from which I have read the most.  There may be even better options, though I am unqualified to say.  The essay begins with Virgil:

"Provehimur portu, terraeque urbesque recedunt:"

"We sail out of port, and cities and lands recede."

Æneid, iii. 72. 

It is quite an essay.  And while the subject is inherently morbid, the execution is lively and thought provoking.

 Montaigne mentions Titus Pomponius Atticus, Cicero's closest and truest friend.  In fact, Pomponius Atticus was Cicero's "publisher" and it was to Pomponius Atticus that Cicero dedicated his treatise on friendship, De Amicitia.^ix  (Google Books has Cicero's Letters to Atticus online, if you care to read them.)  Incidentally, it was to Pomponius Atticus that Harper Lee looked when she chose the name of the character in To Kill a Mockingbird: Atticus Finch.^x

Montaigne's subject (and reason for mentioning Atticus) was, to quote the essays: "death, which, without doubt, is the most remarkable action of human life."  In this regard especially, Pomponius Atticus was noteworthy.   Atticus fell "terminally ill" and resolved to kill himself through starvation.  But something surprising happened, and then something even more surprising.  It was the resolution of Atticus that Montaigne explored:

"That Pomponius Atticus, to whom Cicero writes so often, being sick, caused Agrippa, his son-in-law, and two or three more of his friends, to be called to him, and told them, that having found all means practiced upon him for his recovery to be in vain, and that all he did to prolong his life also prolonged and augmented his pain, he was resolved to put an end both to the one and the other, desiring them to approve of his determination, or at least not to lose their labour in endeavouring to dissuade him."

And so Atticus set his mind to dying and then set about making it happen.

"Now, having chosen to destroy himself by abstinence, his disease was thereby cured: the remedy that he had made use of to kill himself restored him to health.  His physicians and friends, rejoicing at so happy an event, and coming to congratulate him, found themselves very much deceived, it being impossible for them to make him alter his purpose, he telling them, that as he must one day die, and was now so far on his way, he would save himself the labour of beginning another time.  This man, having surveyed death at leisure, was not only not discouraged at its approach, but eagerly sought it; for being content that he had engaged in the combat, he made it a point of bravery to see the end; 'tis far beyond not fearing death to taste and relish it." 

Quite a tale. 

I am not certain what to make of it.

-

 Hina tefatou⁷
The Moon and the Earth
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Paul Gauguin 1893
Image Source - Public Domain

 The problem I face as I write this thing - if it can legitimately considered a problem - is simply that I find my pages empty.  I am not certain what to make of most of what I encounter these days.  It is as Pliny the Elder⁸ observed (and Montaigne quoted in his brief 14^th "essay"):

"Solum certum nihil esse certi"

"It is only certain that there is nothing certain."

So I think of Montaigne: I am myself the matter of my book.  Clearly nothing is here at the moment (if ever something was).  "It is myself that I portray" here... and so I have written nothing at all.

 When I search in the places where I ought to find seeds of essays and ideas, all I can find is language and history (and nothing of gardens or dogs or such).  In truth, I spend most of my waking hours these days looking for words and phrases, cutting them up and peering inside... to the past. And since I am only too aware of how tedious I can be when I begin to share these apparantly meaningless bits, I have resisted doing so.⁹

I miss my garden.

D'où Venons Nous / Que Sommes Nous / Où Allons Nous;
Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?

Paul Gauguin 1897

When Gauguin began the painting above, D'où Venons Nous / Que Sommes Nous / Où Allons Nous, he vowed that he would commit suicide upon its completion.  I suppose he felt his work would be done.  Of course, he didn't do it.  It is as Montaigne observed hundreds of years before:

"In plain truth, it is no such great matter for a man in health and in a temperate state of mind to resolve to kill himself; it is very easy to play the villain before one comes to the point."

My inclinations are not so dramatic.  I'm just cold.

 

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Montaigne's Essays in French (English Language site, with the French text):  The Montaigne Project

The Essays in English (Project Gutenberg: Montaigne )

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NOTES

¹ Gauguin's " D'où Venons Nous / Que Sommes Nous / Où Allons Nous;" is really something different, and deserves a bit more attention.

D'où Venons Nous / Que Sommes Nous / Où Allons Nous;
Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?

Take a good look at this image.

"Gauguin [sic] indicated that the painting should be read from right to left, with the three major figure groups illustrating the questions posed in the title. The three women with a child represent the beginning of life; the middle group symbolizes the daily existence of young adulthood; and in the final group, according to the artist, "an old woman approaching death appears reconciled and resigned to her thoughts;" at her feet, "a strange white bird...represents the futility of words."  The blue idol in the background apparently represents what Gauguin described as "the Beyond."  Of its entirety he said, "I believe that this canvas not only surpasses all my preceding ones, but that I shall never do anything better—or even like it."^xi

A strange white bird representing the futility of words... This is, of course, not a new thought.

On another note, notice that all the figures are women.  -  Back to Text

²"Montaigne heavily edited Essays at various points in his life. Sometimes he would insert just one word, while at other times he would insert whole passages. Many editions mark this with letters as follows:

1. A: passages written 1571-1580, published 1580
2. B: passages written 1580-1588, published 1588
3. C: passages written 1588-1592, published 1595 (posthumously)"^xxxv

Back to Text

³ Perhaps interestingly, Michel de Montaignes heart is preserved in the parish church of Saint-Michel-de-Montaigne  (named after him - obviously). I am not at all sure what to make of this piece of information.  -  Back to Text

⁴ Deaux Tahitiennes... Two Tahitian Women... what a thing this is.

I wish that I might have a more cerebral reaction to it, but the truth is that I simply enjoy the beauty of the women, Eve figures or not. 

While it is true that Gauguin made a big thing about how these Tahitiennes could walk about naked without shame (he identified a certain nobility in this), the truth is that Gauguin was a heterosexual male.  He left a long string of children behind him (from various women) and died of a sexually transmitted disease.

(By the way, for many years my "standard" for evaluating the quality of French painters and poets and playwrights from a certain timeframe was to see whether or not they died of syphilis.  If they did, well, that speaks to a certain artistic jen e sais pas, no?  Of course, the "greats" not only died of syphilis, but also penniless and ruined.  What can we make of that?  In truth, as crazy as I am, I probably created this "standard" as some kind of intellectual insurance policy for my own existence.  While I hope I do not die in agony from a terrible disease like syphilis... and I hope that I am not penniless (not for my own sake, but for the sake of those whom I hope might benefit from my demise), I suspect that it could happen.  I am impulsive and irrational enough.)

The older I get, the more appreciation I have for all the variation of creation.  I feel that I would be selling a dishonesty here if I did not, if even in a footnote, write that I think naked female bodies are generally wonderful, and so I like Gauguin for that, if nothing else. 

I mean, look at these women... wow.  -  Back to Text

⁵  By 1603, Montaigne's work was translated into English by John Florio (1553-1625) (in Italian Giovanni Florio)...

Engraving by William Hole, 1611
Image Source- Public Domain

 Florio was a "Britalian" (an Italian-Briton)... a London born Englishman of Italian ancestry.  I mention this because there was (apparently) a small but influential community of Italians arriving in England at the time.  The Inquisition was heating up in Southern Europe and England represented a safe-haven for "free thinkers" and Protestants.  Florio's father was one of these: an Italian protestant minister.  He had to get out of town.  (Remember that the Tuscan Galileo Galilei got into his troubles with the Inquisition in 1616)¹⁰

 John Florio himself was an important man.  In addition to translating Montaigne, Florio was "an accomplished linguist and lexicographer, a royal language tutor at the Court of James I, a probable close friend and influence on William Shakespeare."^xxiv 

Imagine such a life. 

And what times those were!   The Golden Age of English literature.  A veil of darkness descends upon one corner, a blaze of light ignites in another.

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I, myself, was born too late.  I do not belong here.

-

But our times are good ones too.  For example, Florio's complete translation of Montaigne's essays are available online!  Imagine what Florio (or Montaigne) would have made of that!

-

At any rate, Florio's translation is a bit different.  Instead of:

"I want to be seen here in my simple, natural, ordinary fashion, without straining or artifice; for it is myself that I portray...I am myself the matter of my book."

Florio wrote:

"Thus, gentle Reader, myselfe am the groundworke of my booke: "

Back to Text 

⁶ 1892 was an interesting year.  Gauguin painted the Manao tupapau and, on the other side of the world, Edvard Munch painted his Skrik.  The Skrik intrigues me, as it almost certain must intrigue everyone, especially when one considers what Munch may have been thinking at the time.  "the sun was setting [sic] suddenly the sky turned blood red [sic] and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature."  

The red sky at sunset is interesting to me.

Red Sky at Night by fangleman

Flickr Photo Taken on February 14, 2006, uploaded October 12, 2008

Taken in Churchville, Pennsylvania
Creative Commons License

Of course we've all probably heard a culturally relevant version of the "Red Sky at Night" and "Red Sky in the Morning" thing... there are MANY versions and the lore is ancient.  (Such things are even mentioned in the Bible.) 

I did a little unscientific survey around my office to find out what people thought of the red sky thing... what do people know?.. what do they believe? 

Red sky at night, sailor's delight.

Red sky in the morning, sailor take warning.

I was somewhat surprised to learn that (in my survey anyway) most people didn't have a clue why this adage is true.

First of all, the significance of a red sky in either morning or evening is not the thing.  Rather, the implication is not, for example, that a red sky at noon means something altogether different (though it most certainly would, were that the case).  There are only two times a day when we would expect the sky to turn red: morning and evening: sunrise and sunset.  And only when there are clouds.

 "Red clouds result when the sun shines on their undersides at either sunrise or sunset.   At these two times of day, the sun's light is passing at a very low angle through a great thickness of atmosphere, the result of which is the scattering out of most of the shorter wavelengths — the greens, blues, and violets — of the visible spectrum, and so sunlight is heavy at the red end of the spectrum"^xxv

When the sun is high in sky, the shorter wavelength light is usually present too.

So.  The sun rises in the east. The sun sets in the west.

The Latin word oriens means, quite literally, "rising." However as a matter a practical usage over thousands of years, it has come to mean "east."  The Orient.  The East. 

 "The use of the word for "rising" to refer to the east (where the sun rises) has analogs from many languages: compare the terms "Levant" (< French levant "rising"), "Anatolia" (< Greek anatole), "mizrahi" in Hebrew ("zriha" meaning sunrise), "sharq" Arabic: شرق‎ (< Arabic yashroq Arabic: يشرق‎ "rise", shrooq Arabic: شروق‎ "rising") and "The Land of the Rising Sun" to refer to Japan."^xxvi

Conversely, the Latin word occidens is literally "setting" ("occido" "fall/set").  And so the Occident is the West, the land where the sun sets.

So.  The sun rises in the east. The sun sets in the west.

(It is, coincidentally for this very reason that the Ancient Egyptians viewed the west as the afterlife.  All cities were built on the east side of the Nile.  All burial grounds to the west.) 

Consider then that a red sunset is sunlight shining low from the west shining (like a flashlight) onto the eastern sky... thus illuminating it.  A red sunrise is the opposite: weather shining low from the east onto the western sky.

The final piece of the puzzle is a bit of observational knowledge: weather systems typically move (as the lore goes) from the west to the east (although I cannot fully grasp why hurricanes behave the way they do, Coriolis effect ect.).

So... a red sky in the morning is really just a glimpse at what is coming at you: the undersides of moisture laden clouds.  Storms, maybe.  A red sky in the evening is glimpse of something that probably won't come your way, and so isn't a problem for you (but may well be causing problems for others).

Red sky at night, sailor's delight.

Red sky in the morning, sailor take warning.

So Edvard Munch looked up at a setting sun, saw the sky turn red and sensed doom. But not for himself maybe... for humanity? 

I don't know.  -  Back to Text

⁷ I recently came across an article by Thomas Buser in an old Art Journal (Vol. 27, No. 4 (Summer, 1968), pp. 375-380) entitled "Gauguin's Religion."  Buser wrote, "In a loose sense, every Tahitian woman whom Gauguin painted is an Eve and the Paradise story from Genesis is his central image."  I can see that, though he was quite free with his theology... mixing what we saw with what he believed.

This particular painting, Hina Tefatou, shows what could be an Adam and an Eve... of sorts... with some other ideas mixed in.  (After all, Hina is the Maori goddess of the moon.) Hina Tefatou.  The Moon and the Earth.  I need to stare at this a bit longer.  -  Back to Text

⁸ I have written about the Roman soldier, author and natural philosopher, Pliny the Elder, (Gaius Plinius Secundus) (another link here) and his landmark Naturalis Historia before... in the context of my gardens (Pliny the Elder (Broccoli I)),  but there is no gardening now.   -  Back to Text 

⁹ Living alone with my interests, follow my fancies and they strike.  I have converted all available horizontal space to growing botanical curiosities.  I have destroyed my home (and am rebuilding it to suit my various "hobbies"). I spend inordinate moneys on books and seeds and things.  I use my kitchen drawers to file papers I download.  I open food jars with wrenches and have paint-brushes sitting in boiled linseed oil everywhere I look. 

And, just maybe, there could be a MONUMENTAL great-wall of beer cans that I just might be building in my study... filled with water... with some thermometers attached... perhaps an experiment in passive solar radiation for a future greenhouse... though I admit nothing. 

I hadn't thought of these things as problems.

But I spend time with a very tolerant and beautiful woman now, and she has a brilliant and impressionable young son.  All is well.  But I have to be careful.  There are examples to be set.  There are ways of living that are far less extreme than the world I have made for myself.  And there are practical subjects that must be addressed... with patience and interest.

Every now and again I mention that I am working on an essay about something... and there is usually a pause.  And then they ask why... and they ask in such a way that I think they are really asking, "Why would you waste your time on that?"  Or more to the point: "Why would you waste your time on that when we have other things we'd rather you do."

And since I have neither the inclination to defend myself (I'm not bothering anyone) nor a strong desire to change, I have learned to guard my thoughts (in my day-to-day life).  Apparently, no one cares about the etymology of every word they come across. 

Of course, it is more difficult to filter myself in this format.  A fact with which I must come to terms is this: I am prone to tedium.  I offer my apologies.  -  Back to Text

¹⁰ Galileo's troubles (some of 'em anyway) stemmed from the age-old debate of heliocentrism (the theory that the Sun is at the center of the Solar System → Helios = sun + kentron = center) versus geocentrism (with the earth at the center). 

Geocentric Concept of the Universe
Image Source - Public Domain

Nowadays we know that our solar system orbits a central star (heliocentric), and we wonder how our forebears could not have known what is so obvious to us.  But the truth isn't actually obvious at all.

 "Both Aristotle and [Claudius Ptolemaeus] Ptolemy, and most Ancient Greek philosophers assumed that the Sun, Moon, stars, and naked eye planets circle the Earth. Similar ideas were held in ancient China."^xii

Aristotle?  Ptolemy?  All wrong!  Why? 

Two reasons:

• Observation
• "Common Sense"

 In terms of direct observation, "the stars, sun, and planets appear to revolve around the Earth each day, with the stars circling around the pole and those stars nearer the equator rising and setting each day and circling back to their rising point." ^xiii

 In fact, in the late first century of the Common Era (and early second century), the "Greek"¹¹ Claudius Ptolemaeus "Ptolemy" wrote an incredible "astronomical treatise now known as the Almagest (in Greek, Η Μεγάλη Σύνταξις, "The Great Treatise", originally Μαθηματική Σύνταξις, "Mathematical Treatise")."^xiv  This is a miraculous series of tables and calculations that explained and predicted celestial behaviors rather well.  Eclipses.  When this or than planet would appear.  Like that.  It worked (more or less).  And Ptolemy believed that the earth was at the center of things.

You see, when we look out, what we see seems to indicate that we are at the center of things.  This is true with more than astronomy.  This is true in life. 

I am reasonably sure, based upon what I experience, that I am the center of creation.

I mean, I must be.  It is just as Montaigne referenced in his "Of judging of the death of another":

 "Tot circa unum caput tumultuantes dens"

 "All the gods to agitation about one man."

Seneca the Elder, Suasor¹², i. 4.

-

Except it isn't true.

(Sometimes I am not even certain I exist at all.)

-

And this brings me to the second causal situation that supports geocentrism:  "Common Sense."

The notion of "common sense" frightens the hell out me.  Whenever I hear it used, I brace myself for something unknown, and frightening.  But what is common sense?

 "Some people (such as the authors of Merriam-Webster Online) use the phrase to refer to beliefs or propositions that — in their opinion — most people would consider prudent and of sound judgment, without reliance on esoteric knowledge or study or research, but based upon what they see as knowledge held by people "in common"."^xv

 But the definition above applies equally well to the idea of "common knowledge" as it does "common sense."  And there are reasons for language.  The notion of common "sense" (sensus communis) has to do with our physical senses.  The idea of "ordinary understanding" is, in fact, the idea of mentally uniting "the impressions conveyed by the five physical senses."^xvi  I suppose that the assumption is that if we use all of our senses we can make better decisions.

I have no idea.  Actually, I doubt it.  We sense what we want to sense.

If history (and my own life) has taught me anything, it is that most of us have no clue about what is actually going on around us.  I rarely do.  I am not particularly interested in learning "common" truths.  I want to know "actual" truths.  As for the notion that "common sense" is sensible in any way, the truth is, I fear, as Voltaire wrote in his Dictionary of Philosophy (Dictionnaire philosophique): 

 "Le sens commun est fort rare."

 "Common sense is quite rare."¹³

What I have experienced is closer to Albert Einstein's observation:

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."

Indeed.

And it was "common sense" that placed the earth at the center of creation.  After all, "the Earth is solid and stable; it is not moving but is at rest."^xvii  And that is crux of it.  Galileo's troubles, of course, had less to do with what was central as it did with what was fixed.

Cristiano Banti's 1857 painting Galileo facing the Roman Inquisition

Image Source - Public Domain

The book of Ecclesiastes — that beautiful book perhaps written by Solomon himself (although probably not) — begins with a chapter that is astonishing to me.  The fifth verse of that chapter is as follows:

"The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to his place where he arose."  -  Authorized King James Version

This is precisely the kind of thing that causes problems for astronomers in the time of the inquisition.  Based upon this line of poetry, it is clearly the sun, which moves (and not the earth)!  Narrow interpretations of scripture (such as this one) set into motion a long chain of actions, which ended with the trial, and imprisonment (house arrest) of Galileo. 

 The irony of course is that the entire point of the first chapter of Ecclesiastes (and maybe the whole book) is that all the actions of man are "inherently "vain", "futile", "empty", "meaningless", "temporary", "transitory", or "fleeting," depending on translation, as the lives of both wise and foolish men end in death."^xviii

Everything is meaningless.  (If only I could believe it!)

It is from this chapter (verse 4) that we get the first line in Hemmingway's first major novel... and from the very next line we get his title (The Sun Also Rises).  The original literature is beautiful.

²Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
³What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?
⁴One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.
⁵The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.
⁶The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.
⁷All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.

And then, a few lines later:

¹⁸For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

Beautiful.

Yet, for this, Galileo was prosecuted.  "For in much wisdom is much grief."  Irony.

But the problem wasn't just Ecclesiastes.  There wer other problems for Galileo in the work of Solomon's father, David: the Book of Praises: Psalms.

"The LORD reigneth, he is clothed with majesty; the LORD is clothed with strength, wherewith he hath girded himself: the world also is established, that it cannot be moved."  Psalms 93:1

"Say among the heathen that the LORD reigneth: the world also shall be established that it shall not be moved: he shall judge the people righteously. " Psalms 96:10

"Who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed for ever." Psalms 104:5

And so we see the problem: it wasn't so much the idea of the earth not being central, it was that the earth moves.

Heliocentric Concept of the Universe
Image Source - Public Domain

Movement, not position.

 Of course, none of these "troubling" ideas were Galileo's.  It was Nicolaus Copernicus in Poland, who knocked the wheels off the wagon with his De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres), which is often regarded as the "starting point of modern astronomy and the defining epiphany that began the Scientific Revolution."^xix

 (And Copernicus wasn't the first to think of this either.  "Greek, Indian and Muslim savants had published heliocentric hypotheses centuries before Copernicus."^xx  But Copernicus' publication of a scientific theory demonstrating that the "motions of celestial objects can be explained without putting the Earth at rest in the center of the universe, stimulated further scientific investigations and became a landmark in the history of modern science that is known as the Copernican Revolution."^xxi)

Hmmmnn.  Galileo simply stood up... as he should have.  And so we remember his name... not that it means anything.  (Everything is meaningless, right?)

"All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again."

  -  Back to Text

¹¹ When I was younger I assumed that the adjective "Greek" (when describing a person or a culture) applied to the geographic land that we know today as Greece.

Map of Greece
Image Source - Public Domain

It seemed obvious enough.  "Greek" must mean from "Greece."  Right?  But what does that really mean? 

After all, I look at my own situation.  I am from Texas.  Therefore I am a "Texan."   I have cousins who are from other places.  They are not Texans.  But... sadly perhaps... I no longer live in my homeland (and probably never will again).  Am I no longer a Texan?  And more to the point, are my cultural habits and perceptions no longer Texan?  My nowadays-neighbors certainly don't identify me as one of them.  Nor do I.  I carry my culture with me.  And yet I acculturate - I exchange parts of my culture with whomever I meet.  Those around me become a little Texan... and I become a little of wherever I am.

So does everyone.

So did the Greeks.

Now, consider that the Greeks were a maritime people with a particularly robust (contagious?) culture of their own.  The Greek world was not the peninsula of Greece but all of the lands adjacent to the waters that touched that peninsula.  The Greeks were everywhere that the sea could take them.  Take a look at this map of Greek colonies in the sixth century B.C.

The Mediterranean in the 6th century BC. Phoenician cities are labeled in yellow, Greek cities in red, and other cities in grey.
Image Source - Public Domain

Read Homer's Iliad and you will read a story of Ileum... of Troy... of the Trojan War... of a war ostensibly begun over a beautiful woman named Helen: Helen of Sparta, later Helen of Troy, daughter of Zeus and Leda (or Nemesis), wife of King Menelaus, lover of the Trojan prince, Paris, "the face that launched a thousand ships." 

Helen
 detail from an Attic red-figure krater, ca. 450–440 BC, Louvre
Image Source - Public Domain

The Iliad is a spectacular (and in many ways timeless) tale.  But upon reading it, no one could conclude that the "Trojans" were particularly different from the "Greeks."  The same Gods.  The same ways of making war.  The same (or similar) language.  The same culture. 

The Trojans were Greeks.  It was a war between "Greek" city-states.  Aegean city-states.  Yet Troy was in what we would, today, call Turkey... not Greece.

Map of Trojan War
Image Source - Public Domain

And then, a thousand years or so later, another "Greek" (Alexander III of Macedon or Alexander the Great) conquered the known world (or most of it anyway).  He carried his culture with him too.  Of course, Alexander himself didn't do such a great job of creating stable larger "Greek" world and his death resulted in decades of wars and destruction and waste as his successors battled one another for supremacy.  (I've written a little about this before Lysimachus' Dog & Nisæan Horses).  But the result was the same... a world acculturated by Greeks... a Greek world... or more properly, a Hellenistic world. 

(Check out the Etymology and the origin of the term "Hellenes" if you like... it is mixed bag of beautiful magic in my opinion... but then again, our word origins usually are.)

Map of the Hellenistic World (Hellenistic Kingdoms)
Image Source - Public Domain

So... the "Greek" world is not just Greece at all.  In fact, "Greece" is but a small part of it.  The Hellenistic word is Persia and the whole of the eastern Mediterranean.  Eventually the Roman's came and militarily dominated the Greek world, but only militarily.  Roman culture never superceded the Greek.  In fact, it can be said that the Romans became Greek... after a fashion.  As the Roman poet Horace wrote in the time of Augustus:

"Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes intulit agresti Latio"

"Conquered Greece has conquered the brute victor and brought her arts into rustic Latium"

And more than that.  Much more.

 I am interested in language of course.  And "the study of prestige in language use is an important part of sociolinguistics."^xxii  Perhaps interestingly, the Greek language was the prestige dialect of the Roman Empire.  No kidding. 

Morte di Giulio Cesare (Death of Julius Caesar) by Vincenzo Camuccini
Image Source - Public Domain

We all know the dying words that Shakespeare put into Julius Caesar's mouth (as the dictator was stabbed by the young-ish Marcus Junius Brutus).  Caesar says in a heartbroken way, in Latin:

"Et tu, Brute?"

"And you, Brutus?" or "Even you, Brutus?"

Latin: the Language of Rome.

 But, as both Caesar and Brutus were members of the Roman elite, Greek and not Latin would have been the language they most probably would have used.  If Caesar said anything of the sort (and he may not have) it almost certainly would have been in Greek.¹⁴

"The dictator's last words are not known with certainty, and are a contested subject among scholars and historians alike.  Suetonius reports that others have said Caesar's last words were the Greek phrase "καὶ σύ, τέκνον "  (transliterated as "Kai su, teknon?": "You too, child?" in English).  However, Suetonius himself says Caesar said nothing."

Greek. 

What is my point with all of this?  Simply that modern labels can be difficult when describing things that are not modern.

I referred to Claudius Ptolemaeus "Ptolemy" as Greek, but he was not FROM Greece.   He was from Egypt, therefore he was Egyptian.  But Egypt was very Greek at the time because it was ruled by the Ptolemaic dynasty (no relation)... which was controlled by Rome, therefore he was Roman.  But the truth is this: he was Greek!  - Back to Text

¹² It is unusual in my limited and decidedly un-academic experience to see Seneca the Elder quoted.  (This, of course, means nothing as I have become, in-line with all efforts but contrary to all intentions, a mediocre businessman and nothing more.) 

Seneca the Elder
Image Source - Public Domain

Seneca the Elder was a statesman and what is essentially a lawyer on the periphery (Hispania) in the time of giants (Cicero, Julius Caesar, Pompey Magnus, Augustus, etc).  It was one of his sons who seems (to me) to have achieved enduring "quotable" fame: Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca).  In fact, I keep a quip from Seneca the Younger on my office desk to remind me that humanity rarely changes despite my foolish and optimistic hopes.  (You see, I am an optimist... if only because it makes life more pleasant.)

Every morning and afternoon I review my interactions in my head - both those for which I was the driver and those wherein I was the passenger.  And then I ponder the younger Seneca's observation:

"Quos laeserunt et oderunt."

"Whom they have injured they also hate."

De Ira - On Anger (bk. II, ch. 33)

The sentiment explains so much that I see (and do) in the day-to-day blood-sport of my business... and my former marriage... and everything. 

It is safe to say that my regrets, if granite, could form an un-scalable mountain.  And maybe they do.

Whatever.

Of course, I have the quote written in Latin... and not because I conversant in it, or particularly well educated in it (though I did fail Introductory Latin twice before moving on to other levels of Latin where I could under-achieve) but because I am a silly aging man who wishes he were classically educated... and chips away here and there with neither discipline nor scholarship.  (Am I showing myself in my "simple, natural, ordinary fashion" yet?)

But enough.  That is the younger Senceca: his writings overflow with pithy truths that sting me.

Montaigne quoted the Elder in this case.  And the source from which Montaigne quoted is something quite remarkable indeed: the Controversiae and the Suasoriae (Montaigne refers to it as "Sausor").  So what?  Just another bunch of Latin works right?  Wrong.

The Controversiae and the Suasoriae are remarkable.  To explain why, I'll ask you to think of your own aging father, if you are so blessed as to have such a situation.  And since writing is no real dialogue (and I am all alone here, in the dark, with a cocktail (as is not unusual)) I will substitute my own father, whom I love and respect with a violent fury... though I'm not so good at the "honor" part... though I wish I were.

My father is growing old.  It would be more polite to write "growing older", but even he would laugh at such soft-shoe dancing around the obvious.  He approaches 80: a widower who never looked again for female comforts.

I may have mentioned before (in fact, I'm sure that I have but do not presume that anyone reading this should recall) that mine is a family with a Navy tradition.  It is unspoken, but we all go do out bits and then, officially men in the eyes of one another, move on to mess up our civilian lives as we see fit (with very little intervention, thank heavens).  This, of course, means that my father was Navy man (like me) in a time of desperate war (unlike me).  As a young scholar and musician from nowhere in Texas, he went to war in a time of thermonuclear Hydrogen bomb tests and un-celebrated battles in frozen seas.  He has a sketchy diary and numerous photographs of some monumental events he survived. 

I grew up sneaking into his study, when he was not around, so that I might stare at a particular framed photo about which I've never heard more than a paragraph... the same paragraph over and over again.

 Bikini.¹⁵

-

Operation Castle
This image is Castle-ROMEO, Castle-BRAVO was the big one

Enewetak.  Bikini Atoll.
Image Source - Public Domain

The photo above is something I suppose.  But the photograph over my father's desk is a panoramic thing.  Wide.  And there are ships in it... in the skirt of the beast.  Scores of ships.  His ship in fact.  I'd like to have that photograph someday.

Sometimes, late at the kitchen table when I can convince him to have a sip or two of "something civilized" he will begin to speak.  No one - not brother nor sister nor married relation - sleeps until my father tires of his own tales.  But it doesn't happen often.  Maybe thrice... and maybe even then I imagine that which never happened at all.  (The "old man" does not have the same "taste" or "thirst" for civilized distillations as have his children.)

"The fallout was so heavy that we worried the ship might founder, so we went out with steel hats and brooms.  Most are dead now, of course.  But I'm still alive, so don't worry about all this frightening talk about radiation."

"On of the guys had a tattoo of a rooster in a noose.  The tattoo was on his ankle.  He'd get liquored up and bet some poor unsuspecting fool that his cock hung lower than theirs did.  He won every time.  Say... do you think your mother heard that?  I hope not."

"Let me tell you about the island where we offloaded our beer, beforehand, thinking it would be safe... cases of it... a fleet's worth... damn what a waste.  That beer is still there, buried under a mountain of small chunks of radioactive coral... I guess."

"Those clouds churn and boil for days, my son.  They just... uh... they boil.  The clouds boil.  Watching them... well... no one could come up with anything to say.  It was very quiet."

"Look son, none of us were stupid.  We just weren't so worried about ourselves then.  We'd just fought a war.  Some of us had fought a couple of 'em.  It could be that your generation worries too much, I'm not sure.  But worrying gets you nowhere."

And of course, I volunteered for the Nuclear Navy.  Though it wasn't the same thing.  At all.  (Or maybe I am not the same kind of man.)  Montaigne comes to my mind again as he quoted Lucretius from De rerum natura ii. 1165., (On the Nature of Things):

"Jamque caput quassans, grandis suspirat arator.
Et cum tempora temporibus praesentia confert
Praeteritis, laudat fortunas saepe parentis,
Et crepat antiquum genus ut pietate repletum."

"Now the old ploughman, shaking his head, sighs, and compares present times with past, often praises his parents' happiness, and talks of the old race as full of piety."

I shake my head... an old ploughman.

And I laugh.

Anyway.

 Recently I asked my father, in an overly frank way and with some pressure, not to allow his history to be lost to me, damn it!  (I may have used somewhat stronger language as I've not lived with the moderating influences of womanhood in quite some time, and neither has he.)  He has agreed to put something of those days down for me... in a "permanent" form (though we laugh because nothing is permanent).¹⁶  There is a generosity in this action of his and something else too... something human... something Montaigne would describe (or maybe he has...  but  I am not confident that I have read all of it). And so I think of Seneca the Elder and the Controversiae and the Suasoriae.

One cannot fully understand the Suasoriae without the Controversiae.  At least, I cannot.  So...

 "At an advanced age, at the request of his sons, [Seneca the Elder] prepared, it is said from memory, a collection of various school themes and their treatment by Greek and Roman orators.  These he arranged in ten books of Controversiae (imaginary legal cases) in which seventy-four themes were discussed, the opinions of the rhetoricians upon each case being given from different points of view, then their division of the case into different single questions (divisio), and, finally, the devices for making black appear white and extenuating injustice (colores)."^xxiii

I look in the mirror.  My antecedents were Southern.   Some were Southern businessmen-scholars and businessmen-not-scholars. There was a hotel with my name on it I seem to recall (through sepia photographs).   My own father worried at the same nonsense as I worry, in his own way.  A factory caught fire in my youth, his factory (except for the investors, of course).  Devastation... though I had no clue.  To me, a boy, it just seemed like we had to move... and people move, don't they?  We did.  If we go back far enough (not very far by European historical standards) we have road builders, mule-men, sharecroppers and all manner of manhood.  And there is, almost always, the Navy. 

Think of Seneca the Younger.  He did not have the good fortune of being a son-of-Texas of variably comfortable means.  His daddy was of an equestrian family of Cordoba, a lawyer-scholar-statesman.  And so, while the guy may never have had the pleasures of a lovely Texas springtime (with all the comely Texas daughters around him (whether they liked him or not)) the son asked of his father exactly what I asked of mine: Tell me what you learned!  Tell me what you know!  And so the Elder wrote of law and theory: his thing. 

 "Each book was introduced by a preface, in which the characteristics of individual rhetoricians were discussed in a 'lively' manner. The work is incomplete, but the gaps can be to a certain extent 'filled up', with the aid of an epitome made in the 4th or 5th century for the use of schools.  The romantic elements were utilized in the collection of anecdotes and tales called Gesta Romanorum."^xxix

But the old man lived longer... and he had more ideas.

 "The Controversiae were supplemented by the Suasoriae (exercises in hortatory or deliberative oratory), in which the question is discussed whether certain things 'should, or should not be done'. The whole forms the most important authority for the history of contemporary oratory."^xxx

A father's wisdom... to a son.  That is something, I think. -  Back to Text

¹⁰ I often see Voltaire quoted as "Common sense is not common." 

François-Marie Arouet  - also known as Voltaire
Image Source - Public Domain

But this isn't what he wrote.  He wrote: 

Le sens commun est fort rare.

Common sense is quite rare.

I am struck by the word "Common" as it means several different (but related) things.  It can mean "Shared" or something like "Usual / Ordinary."  These are different ideas to me.  Curious.  I wonder how this word took on its flavors?  Perhaps it indicates something about the origins of society itself (Proto-Indo-European and before)?  I wonder.

I recently heard a lecture delivered by historian Gwynne Dyer wherein he discussed the "natural" state of man's governance over himself.  It was fascinating.  And a large subject. 

One idea that was discussed was the notion that direct democracy (and not anarchy) has been the form of human government for most of the time that human beings have been around... which is a long, long time before the rise of civilization (which only happened but a mere moment ago, relatively speaking).

 I've written a little about this before (in an incidental way) back when I had actual ideas as to things about which I wanted to write (as opposed to this lengthy essay about nothing¹⁷)... back when I wrote important things... like the history of booze, which is the history of civilization: uisge beatha - the Water of Life .

At the time, I was reading Daniel Lord Smail's book On Deep History and the Brain. Smail looking at history in a different way... deep history.  He wrote:

"As Mott Greene has noted, prehistory is a term that modern historians have been reluctant to let drop.  "To abandon prehistory," he says, "would be to postulate continuity between the biological descent of hominids and the 'ascent of civilization' of the abstract 'mankind' of humanistic historical writing.  Prehistory is a buffer zone."  A deep history of humankind is any history that straddles this buffer zone, bundling the Paleolithic and the Neolithic together with the Postlithic..." (p 2)

The part that is relevant here is the notion of the long Paleolithic:

"Nosce te ipsum.  If humanity is the proper subject of history, as Linnæus might well have counseled, then it stands to reason that the Paleolithic era, that long stretch of the Stone Age before the turn to agriculture, is part of our history." 

And it was a LONG stretch.  LOOOOONG.  The Paleolithic - that long part of our history before we farmed.  It was really most of our history.

I mentioned before that, in another book (The Age of Everything: How Science Explores the Past by Matthew Hedman, on page 5) there are some "rules of thumb."  One of them is that "Humans have been around about forty times as long as recorded history."  If the Neolithic period began about 10,000 BC and recorded history at about 5,000 BC, then that is one long Paleolithic period.  Here is what that looks like:

(from the same source, just re-drawn by me)

By FAR, most of our history was before the farm.

So... how did we govern ourselves then?  Bottom line, we aren't sure.  But we have some ideas.  For a long time, we believed it was anarchy, but now we are coming to think differently.

 And I think of the word we know today as "common" ("Shared" or something like "Usual / Ordinary") and wonder what it tells us about our distant past back beyond what Conrad Roth described as "the unutterable and terrifying gulf of time extending ever backwards."¹⁸

 So... how was it then?

"For many thousands of years when people were hunter-gatherers [sic] humans lived in small, "relatively non-hierarchical" and mostly self-sufficient communities."^xxxvi

No one was "in-charge" per se.  Everyone had a voice.  It could be said that this is the natural way of things.

Things began to change about 10,000 years ago with the he Neolithic Revolution... the beginning of farming and the first few steps on the road to civilization.  As we learned to farm (and could transition from an exclusively hunter-gatherer condition) we could stay in the same place... and we could grow communities larger than was ever possible before.

 "...the human ability to precisely communicate abstract, learned information allowed humans to become ever more effective at agriculture, and that allowed for ever increasing population densities."^xxxvii

As communities grew larger the ways in which they governed themselves had to change... and (as the theory goes) other forms of governments were innovated:

• Despotism,
• Oligarchy,
• Plutocracy,
• Theocracy,
• and eventually Representative Democracy,
• Dictatorship,
• Monarchy and Constitutional Monarchy

Historian David Christian explains this better than I can:

 "As farming populations gathered in larger and denser communities, interactions between different groups increased and the social pressure rose until, in a striking parallel with star formation, new structures suddenly appeared, together with a new level of complexity. Like stars, cities and states reorganize and energize the smaller objects within their gravitational field."^xxxviii

—David Christian, p. 245, Maps of Time 

 Now all of that is interesting of course, but it is just merely so.  The good stuff happens if you take a trip of three steps¹⁹ with me.  Come along now:

Let's start with the supposition that our natural human way of being is directly democratic: we all communicated directly (and more or less equally) within the tribe.

1. Consider that it was theoretically our human ability to communicate precisely that led to our ability to transition from hunter-gatherers to farmers.
2. Our ability to farm may have led us to grow our societies into entities that became too large to accommodate direct communication (and therefore direct democracy), and so we invented other forms of governments that are, essentially, the story of civilization.
3. Oddly enough, we are NOW entering a maturity phase (?) of a communications revolution that began in 1832 with Baron Schilling's electromagnetic telegraph.  The Internet.  Wireless.  Satellite phones.  We are rapidly becoming able to communicate better than we ever have.  And oddly enough, we are beginning to see democracies pop-up where we never expected them.  It is a big topic.  But could it be that we, as a people, are approaching a time of fundamental change?

Maybe so.

Isn't history fascinating?  -  Back to Text

¹⁴ While it is true that "Et tu, Brute?" has no basis in historical fact... in language or content...  "Shakespeare's use of Latin here is not from any assumption that Caesar would have been using the language, but because the phrase was already popular at the time the play was written."^xxxi  Shakespeare's Julius Caesar was probably written in 1599 and it seems there are several references to the spurious "Et tu, Brute?" line in other works from right around the same time (but before Shakespeare wrote his play).

More interesting to me is what Caesar may have meant when and if he said something like this.  It seems obvious enough in our current understanding (colored by Shakespeare of course) that it means one thing.  But it may have meant something else entirely.  Check this out if you care to do so: Et tu, Brute? .  -  Back to Text

¹⁵ While I am certain that for most of the world, the word "Bikini" means beautiful female bodies, for me it will always conjure thoughts of Bikini Atoll and the massive uncontrollable power of atomic energy unleashed.

 "Bikini Atoll an atoll in one of the Micronesian Islands in the Pacific Ocean, part of Republic of the Marshall Islands.  It consists of 36 islands surrounding a 229.4-square-mile (594.1 km²) lagoon.  As part of the Pacific Proving Grounds it was the site of more than 20 nuclear weapons tests between 1946 and 1958."^xxvii

Marshall Islands Map showing Bikini

Image Source - Public Domain + Image Source - Public Domain

However, as any who has seen any woman in a bikini already knows, "women" and "the unleashing of uncontrollable power" are related concepts.  In fact, I believe my next post will be about exactly that subject.  -  Back to Text

¹⁶ Nothing is permanent.  In fact, Buddhists teach that "impermanence is one of the Three Marks of Existence."^xxxii   They believe that "all compounded or conditioned phenomena (things and experiences) are inconstant, unsteady, and impermanent. [sic] Everything is in constant flux, and so conditions and the thing itself are constantly changing. Things are constantly coming into being, and ceasing to be.  Nothing lasts."^xxxiii  I can see the truth in this.  But what really matters about this observation is what it means. "Because things are impermanent, attachment to them is futile and leads to suffering (dukkha)."^xxxiv

Suffering comes from trying to wrest permanence from an impermanent world.

Now that is worth some contemplation, no?  -  Back to Text

¹⁷ I know this particular essay isn't actually about anything.  For that I apologize.  I've started several dozen essays over the past months that were about things... but I couldn't seem to get into them... or through them.  And I wanted to write something... you know?  So this time, I just started writing without even a vague plan... to see where I might take myself.

What always seems to happen is that I wind up with several different documents (as MSWord won't support footnotes within footnotes) and I have to stitch them together in the end.  I am never quite sure if I'll be able to do it.  I can't wait to actually read it as I am hoping there is something here worth reading.  -  Back to Text

¹⁸ Conrad Roth is the author of the magnificent Varieties of Unreligious Experience blog. There are three essays that are particularly meaningful: "The Unknown Object" parts: I, II, III.  The essays humanize history for me in a way I'd never before experienced.  They ostensibly deal with an agricultural practice: separating grain from chaff.  The essays go on to analyze the changing role of a winnowing fan / winnowing oar over time.  In fact, the essays are (to my way of thinking) writings about the nature of humanity.  And they are very beautiful. He concluded the essays with the following paragraph.   

"This is how we learn to cope with the unutterable and terrifying gulf of time extending ever backwards — how we make sense of a past increasingly remote, and increasingly unknown.  With our objects we preserve some fragile sense that such a past was, after all, much the same as our familiar present, only rearranged a little, like our words, and like the atoms of our bodies.  We retain, at the same time, the hope that we will not be lost to the future: that whatever progress the world might make, the forms of our objects and ourselves will always prevail."

Language takes us into into the darkness - the seemingly infinite darkness of the open sea of prehistory.  -  Back to Text

¹⁹ It may come as a surprise to those who know me now (though it is no news to any who have known me for any long years) but I was once a very unserious person: the very definition of fatuousness (and I aspire to be so again before my time is done).

At any rate, at one time I was inclined to memorize provocative books (or at least parts of them) so that I might, when thoroughly lubricated late at night in some sophisticated cocktail lounge or other, recite what I had learned... with the hopes of impressing ladies.  These were my salad days, after I got out of the service but before I started working in earnest. 

One such evening I began an entanglement with a somewhat older professional woman.  She was a serious woman, a lawyer engrossed in the practice of law... and for a time, in me. 

I recall, through a particularly pungent miasma of bourbon, that this woman suggested a book for my repertoire: Nabokov's Lolita.  As I was interested in her, I promptly went about learning it.  And now, a hundred thousand years later, I cannot remember what she looked like, but I can still remember the book.  Crazy.

Anyway... the book begins with the most amazing paragraph and it often appears in my periphery.  Just now (prompting the footnote), I mentioned three steps: three steps of an argument.  A trip of three steps.

And this how Nabokov began his tale:

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.  My sin.  My soul.  Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, upon three, the teeth.  Lo. Lee.  Ta.  She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock.  She was Lola in slacks.  She was Dolly at school.  She was Dolores on the dotted line.  But in my arms she was always Lolita."

To tap, upon three, the teeth.

Amazing how some things stick.  -  Back to Text

Deux Tahitiennes,
I thought I'd throw this one back up... just because it is so damned beautiful.

 

---

SOURCES

ⁱ SOURCE: Wikipedia: Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? -  Back to Text

ⁱⁱ SOURCE: Wikipedia: Michel de Montaigne  -  Back to Text

ⁱⁱⁱ SOURCE: Wikipedia: Michel de Montaigne  -  Back to Text

^iv SOURCE: Wikipedia: Paul Gauguin  -  Back to Text

^v SOURCE: http://www.theartwolf.com/gauguin_tropics.htm  -  Back to Text

^vi SOURCE: The British Museum -  here  -  Back to Text

^vii SOURCE: http://gauguin-art.blogspot.com/2007/09/manao-tupapau.html  -  Back to Text

^viii SOURCE: Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scream  -  Back to Text

^ix SOURCE: Wikipedia: Titus Pomponius Atticus  -  Back to Text

^x SOURCE: Wikipedia: Titus Pomponius Atticus  -  Back to Text

^xi SOURCE: Wikipedia: Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?  -  Back to Text

^xii SOURCE: Wikipedia: Geocentric Model  -  Back to Text

^xiii SOURCE: Wikipedia: Geocentric Model  -  Back to Text

^xiv SOURCE: Wikipedia: Ptolemy  -  Back to Text

^xv SOURCE: Wikipedia: Common Sense  -  Back to Text

^xvi SOURCE: Etymology Online: Common  -  Back to Text

^xvii SOURCE: Wikipedia: Geocentric Model  -  Back to Text

^xviii SOURCE: Wikipedia: Ecclesiastes  -  Back to Text

^xxiv SOURCE: Wikipedia: John Florio  -  Back to Text

^xxv SOURCE: Wikipedia: Weather Lore  -  Back to Text

^xxvi SOURCE: Wikipedia: Orient  -  Back to Text 

^xxvii SOURCE: Wikipedia: Bikini Atoll  -  Back to Text

^xix SOURCE: Wikipedia: Nicolaus Copernicus  -  Back to Text

^xx SOURCE: Wikipedia: Nicolaus Copernicus  -  Back to Text

^xxi SOURCE: Wikipedia: Nicolaus Copernicus  -  Back to Text

^xxii SOURCE: Wikipedia prestige dialect  -  Back to Text

^xxiii SOURCE: Wikipedia: Seneca the Elder  -  Back to Text

^xxix SOURCE: Wikipedia: Seneca the Elder  -  Back to Text

^xxx SOURCE: Wikipedia: Seneca the Elder  -  Back to Text

^xxxi SOURCE: Wikipedia: Julius Caesar  -  Back to Text

^xxxii SOURCE: Wikipedia: Buddhism  -  Back to Text

^xxxiii SOURCE: Wikipedia: Buddhism  -  Back to Text

^xxxiv SOURCE: Wikipedia: Buddhism  -  Back to Text

^xxxv SOURCE: Wikipedia: Essais  -  Back to Text

^xxxvi SOURCE: Wikipedia: Government  -  Back to Text

^xxxvii SOURCE: Wikipedia: Government  -  Back to Text

^xxxviii SOURCE: Wikipedia: Government  -  Back to Text

Comments

[Marcel Cairo]

This is a big beautiful tapestry of ideas and thoughts, but perhaps too big.

Indeed, I admired its craftsmanship, but quietly wished I could find its corners to grab and hold.

[Bruce Moore]

Random thoughts

"I am a silly aging man who wishes he were classically educated... and chips away here and there with neither discipline nor scholarship."

I'm not so sure about this. Well, except for the "silly" part.

"Am I showing myself in my "simple, natural, ordinary fashion" yet?"

Not so much.

"And there is, almost always, the Navy."

Prepare to snorkel, prepare to snorkel.

"I can't wait to actually read it as I am hoping there is something here worth reading."

As always. Especially if you read to the end.

Oh yea... what Marcel said.

[Craig @ Ellis Hollow]

Oh boy. Weekend reading. I will note that -- if memory serves -- Sydney Eddison often designed her plantings based on Gauguin color combinations.

[Christopher C NC]

I read the whole thing...because I am cold.

[Lisa]

I thoroughly enjoyed this post...the whole thing...ditto Christopher (and because I enjoy your writing). I hope that if you ever quit this blog, you'll at least leave it up so we can re-read it. I want to re-read this.

[Dad]

Keep writing . . . I'm listening.

[Wendy]

Ummm...have you read Nabokov and the Art of Painting? He liked Gaugin among others. You can Google Books it. I have only read excerpts and I haven't taught Lolita in several years. You left off my fave pic--had a framed copy for ages--Are You Jealous? Had fun reading this...esp. your read on Shakespeare's JC. I know a little about that play.

[Amy S.]

Thank you....this was a joy to read.