PassionTask Blog

RIP: Wisława Szymborska

chris — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 01:50:02 +0000

Given that she was 89, Wisława Szymborska‘s passing was not necessarily unexpected…but it’s still a sad event and a great loss to poetry.

I discovered Szymborska’s work just 10 years ago…five years after she was awarded the Nobel Prize. I was immediately captivated by the power in her deceptively simple poems, particularly those that delved into war and violence and the brutalities we are capable of inflicting on one another.

I’ve posted a few of Szymborska’s poems in the PassionTask Commonplace Book:

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Post tags: obit, poets, rip, Wislawa Szymborska

Reading Log: Much Ado About Nothing (Shakespeare)

chris — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 00:58:14 +0000

Having only read from Shakespeare’s tragedies and histories for more than a year, I’d forgotten how much I enjoy his comedies. In my memory they were slight creations, stop-gaps in between the solid granite of the “real thing.”

And they are slight creations in some respects…but the better to let the wit and wordplay loft over the simple plot, exposing a deep intelligence in characters without the requisite Wagnerian intensity of the tragedies and without the reflection to and from the real historical characters of the histories.

Of course, A Midsummer Night’s Dream was a good choice for returning to the comedies, being arguably the finest example of Shakespeare’s deft, witty touch. Is there any couple whose linguistic feints and jabs–and roundhouse clock-cleaners–rivals that of Beatrice and Benedick?

Like most good comedy, the conversations between Beatrice and Benedick bear a cutting edge of truth. What Leonato characterizes as a “merry war” stems from Beatrice’s bitterness at Benedick leaving her (presumably for another woman)…at least that’s how I read the end of their brilliant exchange in the first scene:

BEATRICE I wonder that you will still be talking, Signor Benedick; nobody marks you.

BENEDICK What, my dear Lady Disdain! Are you yet living?

BEATRICE Is it possible that Disdain should die, while she hath such meet food to feed it as Signor Benedick? Courtesy itself must convert to Disdain if you come in her presence.

BENEDICK Then is courtesy a turncoat. But it is certain I am loved of all ladies, only you excepted; and I would I could find in my heart that I had not a hard heart, for truly I love none.

BEATRICE A dear happiness to women–they would else have been troubled with a pernicious suitor. I think God and my cold blood, I am of your humor for that: I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me.

BENEDICK God keep your ladyship still in that mind, so some gentleman or other shall scape a predestinate scratched face.

BEATRICE Scratching could not make it worse, an ’twere such a face as yours.

BENEDICK Well, you are a rare parrot teacher.

BEATRICE A bird of my tongue is better than a beast of yours.

BENEDICK I would my horse had the speed of your tongue, and so good a continuer. But keep your way, o’God’s name; I have done.

BEATRICE You always end with a jade’s trick; I know you of old.

Not only is this a wonderful display of verbal precocity that bears re-reading both to enjoy the multiple extended metaphors and the quickness of wit on display, rendering this metaphor and a few meaty (ha!) puns along the way, but it points to something more than playfulness. A “jade” is a horse that bedevils its rider, finding all manner of ways to buck the rider off– obviously a rich sexual metaphor–that Beatrice has experienced, knowing Benedick “of old.”

Later in the play we see the barbs become sharper yet:

BEATRICE That I was disdainful, and that I had my good wit out of the ‘Hundred Merry Tales.’ Well, this was Signor Benedick that said so.

BENEDICK What’s he?

BEATRICE I am sure you know him well enough.

BENEDICK Not I, believe me.

BEATRICE Did he never make you laugh?

BENEDICK I pray you, what is he?

BEATRICE Why, he is the prince’s jester: a very dull fool; only his gift is in devising impossible slanders: none but libertines delight in him; and the commendation is not in his wit, but in his villany; for he both pleases men and angers them, and then they laugh at him and beat him. I am sure he is in the fleet: I would he had boarded me!

In fact, these accusations are razor sharp, products of the war of steel that lays beneath the “merry war.” What could be more hurtful to the once-jilted Beatrice than an attempt to steal from her the qualities most fundamental to her character–her wit and intellect–by attributing them to another source, rendering her a mere imitator?

That this blow has struck deep is evidenced by her characterization of Benedick as a jester and a fool. While the idea of the fool is now the stuff of distant history and fiction (setting aside the plausible contention that most politicians today are essentially jester and fools), in Shakespeare’s time they were real people. Beatrice’s naming of Benedick as a jester and a fool is not just a light, playful aspersion, but an accusation that cuts to his deepest character and agency, that he is fundamentally nothing more than someone only capable of seeking to please.

Compared to the relationship of Beatrice and Benedick, the other plots in the play feel relatively thin, even the false accusation against Hero that is (at least) metaphorical murder. Don John, the instigator of this second significant plot might as well be a silent film villain wearing a black hat, wreaking havoc and disappearing with few lines.

While most elements of Shakespeare’s plays are more compelling on stage than in print, the comedies seem to suffer most. This may be a personal quirk: I am a great fan of stand-up comedy, with somewhat of a reputation as being funny myself, but humorous writing rarely “does it” for me. In Much Ado About Nothing, this weakness of the printed word is epitomized by the tongue-stumbling of Dogberry and his little posse from the moment of their entrance:

DOGBERRY Are you good men and true?

VERGES Yea, or else it were pity but they should suffer salvation, body and soul.

DOGBERRY Nay, that were a punishment too good for them, if they should have any allegiance in them, being chosen for the prince’s watch.

VERGES Well, give them their charge, neighbour Dogberry.

DOGBERRY First, who think you the most desertless man to be constable?

Clearly, Dogberry is the master of the malapropism, at the opposite end of the linguistic spectrum of language in the play from the clever wordplay where Beatrice, Benedick, and others are to be found. But the wordplay comes off as rather flat in the page, a kind of humor I mostly admire in the abstract and in anticipation of how the dialogue might be staged.

In contrast to the dexterous wordplay, Much Ado About Nothing is also a play of silence and the unspoken. We repeatedly see the consequences of characters not speaking to one another when they most should, including the worst offense of one character allowing another to speak for him, as Claudio does when he allows Don Pedro, in disguise, to usurp his voices. Don John, the undisputed villain notes, in opposition to everyone else of importance in the play, that he is “a man of few words,” underscoring his villainy.

Hero is a particularly interesting case. She is not only unable to speak effectively for herself, but is also given relatively little opportunity to do so. Instead, to her great detriment–even death, metaphorically–others speak for her. Even the title of the play hints at silence and the unspoken or, as Wallace Stevens put it, “the nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.”

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Post tags: comedies, reading log, shakespeare

Book or Art?

chris — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 00:30:15 +0000

In the course of reviewing a new book of book art, Jules Siegel asks an interesting question: the pieces represented by the volume are art…but are they really books?

The idea of the book has always been one that is more complex than it seems even if the overwhelmingly popular conception remains the codex that people immediately think of when they hear the word “book.”

Ebooks, whether a misnomer or not, are an intensified interrogation of the idea of book form. I’m convinced that traditional books will neither last as long as optimistic book lovers hope or doomsayers predict. But no matter the time frame involved, books as works of art will continue to flourish and, I hope, continue to push the boundaries of our understanding of this essential idea and the various forms in which that idea can be expressed.

[Work: Birdbrain by Margaret Couch Cogswell, 2009. Photograph: Steve Mann]

Famous Photographers; Famous Images

chris — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 19:02:37 +0000

Retronaut recently posted a fascinating set of “Famous Photographers and Their Most Iconic Images”, each portraying a photographer holding his or her famous photo along with their thoughts on it.

Well worth a look or three.

Listography: Things I Say to Myself When I’m Depressed

chris — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:53:14 +0000

[Listed in Some Semblance of Order by Magnitude and Repetition]

“we are not yet friends enough”
Do you ever have an original thought?
What the fuck?
I can’t do this again.
It doesn’t really matter anyway.
Why can’t I believe in god?
I’ve served my time.
It would be so easy: just walk out into the woods and go to sleep.
You’re a fat disgusting fucking fuck.
“with every second collecting dust, I feel so bloated and weary”
Everyone is looking at you, thinking the same thing.
What would it do to my kids?
What do they think of me?
Why can’t I just get cancer? I’ll trade,
“Why do I alone breast the wronging tide?”
Look at them, all the pathetic apes strutting around in their
clothes.
None of this makes any sense–how could it ever be fixed?
I don’t know anything.
No one knows anything.
“Everything will be real to me in a moment”
Think of your wife.
Think of your kids.
Why don’t I have any friends?
Something up here, in my brain, is just broken.
Where did all the poems go?
You’ve never had an original thought, and you never will.
No one said life would be fair. But this?
I’m so weary
I’m so tired of pretending
I’m just so tired

Franzen Hates Ebooks…and they make baby Jesus cry

chris — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 03:33:44 +0000

Jonathan Franzen, in the course of slagging on users of current technology (“consumers had been conned into thinking that they need the latest technology”) and that “serious readers” aren’t conned by those dastardly ebooks, writes:

“The Great Gatsby was last updated in 1924. You don’t need it to be refreshed, do you?

“Maybe nobody will care about printed books 50 years from now, but I do. When I read a book, I’m handling a specific object in a specific time and place. The fact that when I take the book off the shelf it still says the same thing–that’s reassuring.

“Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper. A screen always feels like we could delete that, change that, move it around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it’s just not permanent enough.”

I don’t think it does printed book supporters’ cause (among whom I count myself) to implicitly suggest that they are engaged in a zero-sum debate with e-book supporters (among whom I also count myself).

The technical fluidity of digital text is, as far as practical concerns go, a rather distant outlier. I suppose it is possible in some cases to hack into and modify digital books in such a way that those who already own them are affected, but the same argument can be made against any digital information that either resides on or is distributed from, the “cloud” or on remote servers somewhere. So, by that token web sites and email are problematic in the same way ebooks are…i.e. not really problematic at all.

The (significant) exception is the ability for the vendors of a book to essentially delete the item you have purchased from your virtual library. Amazon has done this before in the case of (perhaps accidentally) pirated books put up for sale on its Kindle platform. When they became aware that Orwell’s Animal Farm and (ironically) 1984 had been made available, they not only made the books unavailable for purchase, but they reached out and deleted it from everyone’s Kindles. I believe they’ve done something similar a few times when a publisher has decided to retract a book. Everyone received a refund, but the potential hazard is obvious.

This really points to a much larger problem in our digital age–the issue of formats and longevity in a historical timeframe. It’s easy to copy digital materials, but ultimately that material needs to be stored somewhere–and existing on random peoples’ hard drives is not enough. And many work in ebook form isn’t portable…if a format dies with the device, whether for technological or business reasons, it will be a real problem if the works that have been encoded for it die with it.

But the feeling that something in digital form could be subject to change is, like the simple aesthetic affinity for words printed on paper, a wholly individual and–for the sake of argument at least–irrational quirk. Which doesn’t make either any less real: I love paper books and won’t give them up until, if I live long enough, I am forced to. But I recognize that this is my peccadillo and concerns the form, not the words.

I know this because I have also grown to love ebooks for reasons related to their form, particularly that they pack into a very small physical container and are searchable. This makes ebooks particularly suitable, for me, for reference and academic works, while their reader is also great for periodicals.

It’s no different than music. Through A/B testing I realized that I am not one of the exceedingly few with “golden ears,” so a decent compression in digital format is for me, like the vast majority of listeners, indistinguishable from the CD or DVD source (many more people believe they can hear the difference, but it is usually psychological). I still love music, but my love isn’t conditional based on their form–LP, cassette, CD, MP3–nor does it make any sense to me that “serious listeners” would eschew the modern form. If anything, most music enthusiasts I know are deeply into–and benefit from the expanded accessibility of–digital music formats.

The scroll to the codex to the ebook…it’s a sequence that will inevitably alienate some of those attached to the form of things, the way someone with an eye for design may love the form of a particular chair, but in neither case should the form be mistaken for the function and the information, whether plowing through a digital book or resting comfortably in an ugly recliner.

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Post tags: books, codex, ebooks, jonathan franzen, publishing, reading

12×12 Status: 2012-01-21 – On Motivation

chris — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 18:58:21 +0000

Three weeks into my 12×12 project seems like a good time to consider my progress (and lack of progress).

In terms of numbers, I am doing pretty well. I am on track in almost every category, the exceptions being:

Folding, where I am still practicing with models that will finally be to my satisfaction, and
Remembering…I haven’t even begun memorizing the first poem yet.

But this has been the easy part. The hard part is about to begin as the new semester of classes gets going in earnest and work travel and all the effort associated with that begins to kick in as well.

One thing that’s ever clearer as I pursue these projects each year is the very real value of extrinsic motivation. In educational circles, extrinsic rewards are spoken of dismissively if not disparagingly, as a relic of less-enlightened educational times.

I understand where those feelings come from…like any easy to understand but limited pedagogical method, using extrinsic motivators is accordingly easy to abuse. But our dismissal of them should be considered in light of two important factors:

They work for some people. There’s a reason such motivators have been used so regularly…they can work, at least for some people. They’ve always worked relatively well for me. Shallow behaviorism? Perhaps. But unknowingly learning while engaged in activities for other reasons–if not actively learning in spite of oneself–is a common way we learn.
It’s all relative. I’ve do doubt that intrinsic motivators are stronger and lead to better learning outcomes. But often our choice isn’t between the ideal or not, but about something that is simply, in context, better. I’m sure that every activity I engage in as part of my 12×12 project would be of higher quality if I loved every second of it for my own reasons. But the fact is, I don’t wake up every morning or sit at my desk at night thinking how great it is going to be to read when I’m tired or go to the gym when I’m sore or write in my journal when I could mindlessly surf the web. In those times–and for me they are a regular feature of life–the extrinsic motivation helps.

The fact is, there are times I can force myself to go to the gym or bring out the notebook only because I want to achieve that project goal or I don’t want my progress to slip. Maybe that seems a little ridiculous, but the effect is real and I’m not going to question the intrinsic motivation too much while I benefit from it. I’d rather dance when nobody is watching, but if sometimes knowing they are watching is what allows me to dance, I’ll take it. I know people who subscribe to the notion I used to, that tasks performed for reasons other than an inner-drive to complete them were suspect…and that in the arts they were a sure sign of one’s failure or lack of suitability for that art. It’s taken me a long time to figure out that the world is less black and white than that (or to rationalize my compromise).

And having some kind of overall plan/project is helpful for meaningfully filling in the little empty spaces of the day that I often end up wasting. It’s interesting that despite having an incredible number of things to do I am conveniently able to forget them at the moment…

12×12 in 2012

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Post tags: 12x12, 12x12-meta, motivation

Reading Log: Henry IV, Part 2 (William Shakespeare)

chris — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 16:39:47 +0000

Henry IV, Part 2 is a drama without a lot of obvious drama of the kind that occupies much of Part 1. Instead the highest drama comes from the transformation of Harry from Hal to King Henry V of England and the continued anarchic life and fall of Falstaff, who has more lines than anyone else in the play.

Following Falstaff’s raucous life as portrayed in the first part of the play, here he becomes a tragic figure, consumed with thoughts of death that pervade even his humorous monologues, and destined–it is clear early on–to be at least disappointed by his reunion with Hal. In his first appearance he is all vain, but good natured, bluster. He tells page that is “not only witty” himself, but “the cause that wit is in other men,” and that Page is “fitter to be worn in his cap than to wait at my heels.”

But Falstaff’s arrogance and confidence in his relationship with Hal foreshadows the trouble to come, assuming that he will be taken care of by his friend, the prince who is soon to be king:

“If the prince put thee into my service for any other reason than to set me off, why then I have no judgment.”

Further, he spars with the Chief Justice, a powerful figure, on the subject of his character and youth, accusing him of himself being old and thus “measuring the heat of my liver with the bitterness of your galls.” If Falstaff appears old, it is because:

“…I was born with a white head and something of a round belly. For my voice, I have lost it with halloing and singing of anthems. [...] The truth is, I am only old in judgment and understanding.”

Even in the face of arrest for the debt he owes Hostess Quickly, he can’t resist a few sexual puns (admittedly in response to Hostess Quickly’s amazing capacity for the same) while defending himself solely, it seems, on the premise that he is Falstaff and only acting as Falstaff does. But there is a first taste of pathos in the obvious fact that he is saved from arrest only by the call to arms and the muster of soldiers for the king’s defense.

Soon, lingering still at Hostess Quickly’s establishment, he continues to dig his own metaphorical (for now) grave deeper while in conversation with the disguised Hal and Poins. Of Poins he notes:

“His wit is as thick as Tewkesbury mustard. There is no more conceit in him than is in a mallet.”

Asked why the prince has such a high regard for Poins, he characterizes the prince by comparing him to Poins:

“Because their legs are both of a bigness [... and he] swears with good grace and wears his boot very smooth [...] and other such gambol facilties he hath, that show a weak mind and an able body, for which the prince admits him; for the prince himself is such another. The weight of an hair will turn the scales between their avoirdupois.”

Upon realizing he has been speaking to the Hal, Falstaff makes a pathetic defense of himself, repeating “No abuse” and trying to turn Hal’s accusation of that he has “vilely” spoken of him on its head:

“I dispraised him before the wicked, that the wicked might not fall in love with him–in which doing, I have done the part of a careful friend and a true subject.”

But Hal will have none of it and his curt dismissal of Falstaff–”I feel me much to blame, so idly to profane the precious time”–isn’t just a result of being interrupted with news that he must go at once to see the ill king, but a demonstration that he is in fact no longer Hal, but Prince Harry, no longer a consort of commoners now matter how much they may fancy themselves his friend.

The effective end of Falstaff comes after he hears the news that Prince Harry as ascended to the throne. “Master Robert Shallow,” he proclaims, “choose what office thou wilt in the land [...] I am fortune’s steward. [...] I know the young king is sick for me.” Rushing to meet the newly minted King Henry V, still believing that the old bonds that tied them together remained intact. What follows is one of the saddest moments in the Shakespearean canon:

FALSTAFF: Save thee, my sweet boy!

KING HENRY V: My Lord Chief Justice, speak to that vain man.

LORD CHIEF JUSTICE: Have you your wits? Know you what ’tis you speak?

FALSTAFF: My king, my Jove! I speak to thee, my heart!

KING HENRY V: I know thee not, old man. Fall to they prayers.
How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!
I have long dreamed of such a kind of man,
So surfeit swelled, so old and so profane.
But being awake, I do despise my dream.
Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace,
Leave gormandizing; know the grave doth gape
For thee thrice wider than for other men.

But merely insulting his former friend and companion isn’t enough for the king, whose character has been transformed along with his position. He goes on:

“Presume not that I am the thing I was
For heaven doth know–so shall the world perceive–
That I have turned away my former self,
So I will I those that kept me company.
When thou dost here I am as I have been,
Approach me, and thou shalt be as thou wast,
The tutor and feeder of my riots:
Til then, I banish thee, on pain of death.”

The ignominy! There are other worthy moments in the play, some of which will find their way into my Commonplace Book, but nothing approaches the story and character of Falstaff, who I find compelling in a way second only to Hamlet, and peer with Brutus, Lear, Mark Antony, Othello, and other great Shakespearean characters. Falstaff is so many things at once, his excesses capturing–through stark relief–the reality of the human condition. He is:

A father figure. Falstaff is practically a father to the younger Hal…and suffers, ultimately, the rejection so many fathers do. Perhaps King Henry would, after a time, come to a more moderate position as those rebellious sons often do, but Falstaff doesn’t appear poised to live long enough to enjoy such a change.
Anarchy personified. Falstaff blithely ignores the rules everyone else is subject to. Can we not envy him even if we would never admit it? But in this way he also represents freedom, man living in as natural a state as it is possible to imagine while still being any part of society.
A living dichotomy. Though he has come to be seen as an endearing figure in modern popular culture, we do Shakespeare’s character a great disservice not to recognize his contradictions. Falstaff is often jovial, quick-witted, an engaging storyteller…the kind of person who brings life to the party that he has often created himself. Yet while some of his actions can be portrayed as buffoonery, when one thinks about it, those same actions are often truly reprehensible. Falstaff feigns death while Hal fights Henry Hotspur, collects money for rounding up phantom troops and sends the rest to death without equipping or preparing them, practically ruins Hostess Quickly, and conceives of a plan for–and executes–a highway robbery. Most of these are serious crimes, if not downright evil.
Necessary. Most of all, Falstaff is necessary. He is an obvious foil to demonstrate Hal’s growth from reckless youth to perhaps overly-officious king, but he is more than: without his presence it is hard to imagine Hal being able to achieve the change that is demanded of him. A feckless Hal would be a Hal with nothing to work with and against, no one from whom to gain strength through his breaking free of their influence.

There are many more interesting aspects of King Henry IV I don’t have time to consider and write about right now: the importance of the play-within-the play acted out by Hal and Falstaff, the way Shakespeare uses high and low language styles to suit–and indicate–the changing inner-state and circumstances of Hal, the interesting mix of humor and drama, the constantly present, intertwined themes of death and decay, and (obviously) the significant parts of the plot I am eliding, most importantly those involving Northumberland and the dying king, who each deliver stunning soliloquies…to name just a few off the top of my head.

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Post tags: 12x12, drama, reading log, series, william shakespeare

Reading Montaigne 1.30: Of moderation

chris — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 20:53:47 +0000

“Of moderation” is a strange little essay. In part, Montaigne is praising the virtues of what I consider common sense. In arguing that excessive zeal and pursuit of power are just as harmful as passivity and lack of ambition, Montaigne observes that “the archer who overshoots the target misses as much as the one who does not reach it. And my eyes trouble me as much when I raise them suddenly to a strong light as when I drop them in the shadow.”

At that point in the essay, Montaigne is speaking of philosophy and–through references points in the same paragraph–politics and religion, but the latter two only in passing.

Montaigne has bigger game in his sights, and it is in this pursuit that he leaves me behind, confused. Moving on from philosophy, Montaigne takes on morality as exemplified by sex and physical affection between man and woman:

The branches of knowledge that regulate men’s morals, like theology and philosophy, enter in everywhere. There is no action so private and secret that it escapes their cognizance and jurisdiction. [...] I want to teach husbands this–if there are still any who are too vehement: that even the pleasures they get in making love to their wives are condemned, unless moderation is observed; and that it is possible to err through licentiousness and debauchery, just as in an illicit affair. Those shameless excesses that our first heat suggest to us in this sport are not only indecently but detrimentally practiced on our wives.

Marriage is a religious and holy bond. That is why the pleasure we derive from it should be a restrained pleasure, serious, and mixed with some austerity.

Montaigne writes as a product of his time of course, but it is an important point if we consider what he says soon after, namely that:

Isn’t man a miserable animal? Hardly is it in his power, by his natural condition, to taste a single pleasure pure and entire, and still he is at pains to curtail that pleasure by his reason: he is not wretched enough unless by art and study he augments his misery…

Sandwiched as this section is, between Montaigne’s opening contention that moderation can itself be pursued with excessive zeal, and musings about how pain and punishment can become a kind of pleasure, a kind of addiction to the scourge, I have a hard time figuring out where Montaigne is trying to go here. It seems he is attempting to revitalize the Stoic idea of moderation, but nowhere does he seem to account for real pleasure…and certainly not the passion which he expressed in the previous two essays, particularly in his account of his singular friendship with Boétie.

Perhaps we are to assume the common sense I mentioned at the beginning of my own reflection, that sexual love is the exception and that passionate enthusiasm and connection is otherwise natural, but it’s not clear to me.

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Post tags: 12x12, moderation, reading montaigne

Reading Montaigne 1.29: Twenty-nine sonnets of Étienne de La Boétie

chris — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 20:20:00 +0000

Here Montaigne gives us a wisp of an essay, in reality a letter, introducing a small collection of his late friend Étienne de La Boétie’s poetry to the Comtesse de Guissen. But it fits here, following his long paean to his lost friend, and Montaigne offers a tidbit about creativity that provides some insight into his own aesthetic mind:

…these [sonnets] have about them I know not what that is livelier and more ebullient, written as they were in his greenest youth, when he was inflamed by a fine and noble ardor whose details, Madame, I will one of these days whisper in your ear. The others were written later, for his wife, when he was suing for her hand, and they already smack of a certain marital coolness. And I am one of those who hold that poetry is never so blithe as in a wanton and irregular subject.

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Post tags: 12x12, poetry, reading montaigne