Anatomy of Melancholy

Moving house

2006-03-01T03:53:00.000+02:00

Please forward all bills and letters to my new address: http://anatomyofmelancholy.wordpress.com.

All posts here can be found there too, so if you want to leave a comment, please do so at the new site.

And if you've got me in your blogrolls, I'd appreciate it if you made the change. (I know it's a pain in the ass...)

And to those of you who helped me by lending me boxes -- much thanks.

Absinthe

2005-12-19T14:16:00.000+02:00

On Saturday night N. and I invited Jamie over for a couple of drinks. I had bought a small bottle of Absinth, of the Czech variety. We had been planning for some time to try it. (He studied French literature in university, and I was a big Rimbaud fan when I was a teenager, so that should explain it.)

I opened the bottle and took a sniff.

To read the rest of this post, please click here.

Sucking the Blood out of Literature

2005-10-12T01:46:00.000+03:00

This entry is made up of notes I made this summer, and had planned to post, but then forgot about. Recently Dr Zen blogged about bad writing, and it reminded me of the notes.

For the rest of the post, please click here.

Crad Kilodney Ramble

2005-04-03T21:10:00.000+03:00

To read my post about Crad Kilodney, please click here.

FOR SALE: cushy job - cigarettes & coffee essential

2005-02-15T15:20:00.000+02:00

There's been an interesting story circulating the Greek blogs the past couple of days, and I was going to write about it here in English, but I've discovered that Academia Nervosa and Histologion have already done a fine job of it, so I'll direct you to them in a minute.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Greek (un)reality, let me give you a brief introduction.

To read the rest of this post, please click here.

Back

2005-01-19T13:10:00.000+02:00

I've been back since early January, but haven't posted anything. I haven't been in the proper frame of mind, and I never wanted this to be a journal.

In December I had become so enthusiastic about them that I registered on Bloglines to keep track of all the ones I was reading. When I returned, there were more posts than I could read. I tried to comprehend, to imagine just how many bloggers there are out there, and I got a wee case of vertigo. My will became a little paralysed, so to speak.

Which is silly, in a way. I'm a newcomer, but already there's a nice little community of people checking in, which I check into as well.

I haven't felt like writing anything, but from time to time, I'd be drafting something in my head.

So, who's the anonymous one who wrote, "Having too good a time to post anything, I hope. Still, some life sign would be nice for us constant readers"?

Off to Toronto

2004-12-21T01:39:00.000+02:00

I'm leaving for Toronto today for two weeks. I hope to have lots of bloggable experiences while I'm there.

Computer mind at work

2004-12-20T19:18:00.000+02:00

Thanks to Helion for pointing out this site, which has a chess-playing Java applet. The program allows you to see the moves the that it's considering. The green lines represent White's possible moves, and orange Black's.

The program is not particularly strong. I played it and won. The pieces are not represented conventionally, which makes it a bit more difficult. When I played my twentieth move, I was expecting to resign soon because I had a hard time visualising the board.

I had the white pieces.

1.d4 Nc6 2.c4 e5 3.d5 Nd4 4.e3 Nf5 5.e4 Nd4 6.Be3 Nf6 7.Bxd4 exd4 8.Qxd4 Bb4+ 9.Nc3 c5 10.dxc6 bxc6 11.e5 Qe7 12.Nf3 O-O 13.Be2 Nh5 14.O-O g5 15.Ne4 Nf4 16.Bd3 Ne6 17.Qe3 Nf4 18.Nexg5 Nxd3 19.Qxd3 f6 20.Nxh7 Qxh7 21.Qxh7+ Kxh7 22.exf6 Rxf6 23.a3 Ba5 24.b4 Bc7 25.Rfe1 Kg8 26.Re8+ Rf8 27.Rae1 Ba6 28.R8e7 Bb6 29.c5 Bc7 30.Rxd7 Bf4 31.Ree7 Bc1 32.Rg7+ Kh8 33.Rh7+ Kg8 34.Rdg7#

OK, I don't claim it's a gem, but it's not often that I play without committing a couple of blunders. And it's always a good feeling to beat a computer.

Palace in a Pup Tent

2004-12-13T19:11:00.000+02:00

I was already twenty or twenty-one when I began learning chess, which was far too late for me to get really good at it, but old enough to approach the game with a more well-rounded intelligence than I would have had if I'd taken it up at the age of five or six. I passed through the common stages of first learning how the pieces move and what the object of the game was, and then there was the difficult part when I was afraid to touch a piece. I knew that each move I could make would have countless negative repercussions, but I wasn't good enough to know what I ought to play. It was the only time when I would sit and stare at the board, overcome with a paralysis of doubt and fear.

It was also the point at which the game became fascinating. It was as if I had crawled into a pup tent and found a palace inside.

I played like this for about a year. My opponents were a few friends and an uncle of mine, and although I hardly ever won, the game lost none of its fascination for me. And then one day, before I had fully realised what had happened, I was better at the game. I started winning most of the time.

For about three or four years, I was addicted to buying chess books. At one point, I my library numbered about 200 books, with both instructional books and collections of games. My knowledge of theory was quite good, although this did not clearly translate into better playing.

The books that have always interested me most were ones which traced the development of man's understanding of the game. Two classics of this genre are Richard Reti's Masters of the Chess Board, which I've heard is out of print, and Max Euwe's Development of Chess Style. Both treat the development over the centuries of our understanding of the game as a mirror of the development an individual undergoes as he learns the game, and both books attempted to use this historical approach as an educational tool.

As I worked my way through them, especially Reti's book, I began to understand why I had felt as if I were entering something which kept expanding, and why the game held such a fascination for me.

It's generally believed that chess was invented about 1,500 years ago. For centuries it was a slower game than what we have now, because the pawns could only move one square on their first move, while the earlier form of the queen could only move one square diagonally. By the 16th century, the pawns could jump two squares on their initial move, the en passant rule had been established, the queen had been given the free reign she now enjoys, and castling had been developed. This sped things up considerably, and the game as we know it was born.

The earliest players of the modern game were interested mainly in tactics. Their games are strange to look over now. They neglected the proper development of their pieces and made premature attacks. Despite improvements in ability, this basic approach continued until the 19th century, and is often called the Romantic Age. It was believed that a strong, successful attack was a reflection of the player's genius.

The first dramatic advance in our understanding of theory came in the 18th century, with L'Analyse des Echecs by Francois Andre Danican-Philidor (1726-1795), although his work was neglected for over a century. Philidor is famous among chess fans for having declared that "The pawn is the soul of the game." He demonstrated that the direction a game took was largely determined, not by a player's genius, but the structure of the pawns on the board. Pawns are the only pieces that cannot move back, so a player must be sure of what he's doing before he advances them. Most weaknesses in a position stem from the pawn structure.

Philidor

Philidor first pointed out that control of the centre of the board was of primary importance, and that an attack made without the support of one's pawns was very dangerous.

The Romantic Age is epitomised by the games of Adolf Anderssen (1818-1879). The basic ideas of Philidor had been assimilated, but still mainly with a view to supporting violent attacks and counter-attacks. Here we find the most brilliant combinations -- series of moves which seem justified by the position, and which seem to force the defender's responses. Playing over the games now, we marvel at how far ahead players of this calibre could see, and at how beautiful the combinations were.

Anderssen

No player has ever towered over all his contemporaries as much as the young American Paul Morphy (1837-1884). What is most amazing about him is that he somehow discovered those basic principles of the game which still escaped other players, entirely on his own. His understanding was natural and intuitive. His games show that he knew you must first develop your pieces before you attack. Your development must facilitate the free mobility of your pieces. Playing the same piece twice in the early stages wastes time, since your opponent can move a new piece and then outnumber your pieces.

Morphy

Morphy's opponents would oblige him by not developing properly, and his attacks were as dazzling as any of Anderssen's, but much sounder.

Morphy did not expound his ideas, and gave up the game quite early in his life. It took quite some time for players to understand the general principles on which his victories were based. This was done by Wilhelm Steinitz (1836-1900).

Steinitz

Steinitz is the most important theoretician of the game, even if he is rarely acknowledged as such. He pointed out in his writings that in order to win, you must have a plan, and that your plan must be a response to what is actually on the board. You must attack your opponent's weaknesses, which means you must wait for these weaknesses to present themselves to you. With Steinitz the early stages of chess become a sort of waiting game, each player developing his pieces, strengthening his position and waiting for his opponent to make even the smallest error in judgement. Then that weakness is attacked until it gets bigger and bigger. Modern games are often decided over the loss of a single pawn.

If the development of chess style mirrors the individual's development, with Steinitz we have the birth of the modern Grandmaster. Advancements from now on are slower and smaller, and much more difficult for mortals like us to understand.

This is a very crude outline of the development of theory. I haven't endeavoured to give any real insight into the principles discovered over the centuries. What I wanted to suggest was this: that human beings invented something which, for some 1,400 years, transcended their own understanding of it.

Of philology, bisexuals and camels

2004-12-07T21:11:00.000+02:00

A lot has been said, at least in these parts, about some dumbass lawyers' threat to sue Warner Bros for implying that Alexander was bisexual, but I want to touch on a broader issue, and in a rather circuitous way.

In my second year at university, at a dinner party held at my Medieval Literature professor's house, a couple of fellow students and I were talking over drinks about the course we had just completed. I said that I had enjoyed it, but that I was planning to concentrate more on Renaissance Literature.

"I don't like the Renaissance," said the one classmate, holding her glass in a refined manner. "It's too self-conscious." (I've learnt that she now teaches at some Ivy League college.)

The other classmate, seizing upon the theatre-crowd jargon, added with a smile: "Yeah. And over-produced."

Despite the pretentiousness, there is some accuracy to the first charge. While the medievals did not think of themselves as living in a Middle Age, the humanists who came after did, however, think of themselves as being part of a Renaissance, and in fact, gave us the term themselves. The term "Renaissance" is actually falling out of favour, for it betrays an oversimplification of both the era in question, and the one that preceded it.

Whenever we refer to the cultural movement that began in Italy in the beginning of the fourteenth century as the Renaissance, we imply that it was a rebirth of classical learning after a long period of cultural and intellectual dormancy. This is to ignore, however, that the medievals themselves studied, albeit to a lesser extent, the classics of Rome and Greece - the latter only in Latin translation, of course - and it is also to ignore the extent to which the humanists in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries reinterpreted the classics themselves. They say that the humanists of the Renaissance attempted to Christianise the classics, but the medievals did this as well: the Aeneid was seen as an allegory in which Aeneas' journey to Latium represented the journey of the soul to the promised land. With the help of Aquinas, the philosophy of Aristotle was interpreted to conform with Christian theology.

The main difference between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance lies in the way each era looked at the past as history. The medievals felt themselves to be direct descendants of ancient Rome, and to be part of its traditions. A common feature of medieval literature that deals with antiquity, such as Sir Orfeo and Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, to name two English examples, was the tendency to portray ancient Greece and Rome as if they were the recent past, and unknowingly give them medieval characteristics. In the early fourteenth century, however, they began to look upon antiquity as historically distinct from the more recent past, and from the present.

It's this new historical approach that chiefly characterises the Renaissance, when the attempt was first made to understand the achievements of classical Rome, and then to emulate it in the present.

It started with Petrarch, who neglected the usual medieval education of the day and studied the classics of Roman antiquity on his own. He was the first to look back on classical antiquity with a view to resurrecting it. With him we first get the notion of antiquity as the peak in civilisation, which ended with the decline of the Middle Ages, as well as the hope that its glory could be achieved again in a Christianised form. Petrarch concerned himself almost exclusively with classical literature, and spent much time on his travels searching for manuscripts to copy down.

By the middle of the fifteenth century, the first printing presses with movable metal type were in use. This meant that authoritative texts were established, which would arrest the slow corruption of manuscripts through faulty copying. It also meant that all of Europe could refer to a single edition, against which comparisons could be made until a more reliable version of the text could be established. This gave birth to a philology that sought to establish the historical accuracy of a text, which in turn led to a more critical historical approach.

The results were significant and palpable. Lorenzo Valla was instrumental in re-establishing classical Latin, which had long since been replaced by its more vernacular medieval form, and he used his knowledge of the language and its etymologies not only to explain the institutions of antiquity, but also to upset the foundations of the present order. His Profession of the Religious discussed the true meaning of religious terms and demonstrated that the medieval sects were corrupting not only the language, but the terms of religion. Greater repercussions followed his Falsely-Believed and Forged Donation of Constantine, which used philology to prove that the Donation of Constantine was a forgery. A historical knowledge of Latin permitted Valla to argue that the document could not have been written any earlier than the eighth century AD. (For example, it uses a word for serf, which would not have existed in Constantine's time, since neither did serfs.) This undermined the Pope's attempt to increase his temporal power, and encouraged King Alphonso of Naples, to whom Valla was secretary, to attack the papal states.

From the humanists' historical approach to the classics, and from their efforts to invent the Renaissance, there emerged the principles of the modern notion of history as a study in itself. They began to see, as the medievals had not, that in order to understand a historical period, we must first recognise its distinctness from ours.

What am I getting at?

Greece is the only country that does not (generally) accept the pronunciation of Greek and Latin as put forward by Erasmus. A classicist here is aware of the pronunciation, and some probably believe that it's as historically accurate as possible, but it's not taught. Classical Greek is pronounced the same as Modern Greek.

When you consider how much the pronunciation of English we find it in Chaucer has changed, you have to acknowledge that a similar change could occur over, say, 2,000 years.

But they don't.

Seferis once said that Erasmus' pronunciation was probably the correct one, but that using it implied a lack of continuity, as if it were a different language. I don't see how this can be true. No one thinks of Chaucer as anything but English simply because the words sound different. Nevertheless, Greeks are sensitive to the possibility that their heritage will be appropriated. When I was at the University of Toronto, the Classics Department voted to move the Modern Greek faculty out into another faculty, or to make it a faculty in itself. (I can't remember which.) My Modern Greek professor told me that one of his colleagues, a British professor of Classics, had wanted to vote no, but had been subtly threatened that he wouldn't get tenure, or something like that.

The change was not so significant, but I never understood why the Department thought it necessary.

It has always amazed me how little Greece offers the rest of the world in terms of classical scholarship. One could argue that it's because Greek scholars write in a language that very few people know, but that's not true. The younger ones all know English, and get their articles translated into whatever language is necessary for them to get published.

A few years ago, I was telling a class of mine that the main reason they found English a difficult language to learn is because of its enormous vocabulary. I tell all my students this, and despite the fact that I'm fluent in both languages, while they're just learning English, they argue that I'm wrong. They can't bear to hear that another language is "richer" than Greek. When I tell them that there is no real measure of this wealth, they don't listen. They tell me that there are so many Greek words in English, but this has nothing to do with it. Let's say telephone is a Greek word, and let's ignore for a moment that it may in fact have been coined by a Scotsman in Canada. The word exists in both languages, and so the count is still equal. Most Greek words in English existed in English before entering the Greek language. The apparatus itself was already in use in some countries before the word was first used in Greek.

One student argued that Greek was not an Indoeuropean language. I asked him if he was studying linguistics, and how he had come to know so much that he could disagree with his own professors. Of course, he wasn't studying linguistics, but he had read a book that proved it. He asked me if I wanted to borrow it. "Not really," I said.

He brought me some photocopied pages anyway. I took them home and read them. The ignorance in those pages was sad. The author argued that it was absurd to claim, for example, that the word psephus (ψήφος), which means "vote", could have an Indoeuropean root, because the civilisations it supposedly descended from did not have a democracy. But the word, even in Greek, meant "stone" first, since they were used to cast votes. Now, surely all civilisations could be expected to have a word for that?

I didn't study linguistics, and can't even claim to be a dilettante in the field, but this was astonishing. Wasn't there an editor involved in the publication of this book?

The response to Oliver Stone's portrayal of Alexander as bisexual has been embarrassing. Perhaps we can't expect lawyers and reporters to know much about ancient Greece, but they should do their homework if they're going to criticise someone's work.

Anyone willing to make the effort will find more books than he has time to read that discuss sexuality in ancient Greece. I won't bother going into it. Arrian, Plutarch and Curtius describe Alexander's relationship with Hephaestion in such a way that indicates they expected their readers to understand what the nature of it was.

This response makes the feeble claim that Alexander could not have had such inclinations because the historian Arrian wrote that "Not even to me does it seem possible that he turned out to be unlike any other human being without divine intervention." (Additional proof is that Plutarch said Alexander was a philosopher. Nevertheless, an extant couplet written by Plato describes his bliss while kissing another male.)

Alexander was not bisexual because he was "unlike any other human being"? This of course does not answer the question of what "any other human being" is like.

In "The Argentine Writer and Tradition" Borges wrote

Gibbon observes that in the Arabian book par excellence, in the Koran, there are no camels; I believe if there were any doubt as to the authenticity of the Koran, this absence of camels would be sufficient to prove it is an Arabian work. It was written by Mohammed, and Mohammed, as an Arab, had no reason to know that camels were especially Arabian; for him they were a part of reality, he had no reason to emphasise them; on the other hand, the first thing a falsifier, a tourist, an Arab nationalist would do is have a surfeit of camels, caravans of camels, on every page; But Mohammed, as an Arab, was unconcerned: he knew he could be an Arab without camels.

When it comes to ancient texts and bisexuality, we can simply take it for granted.

How much disappointment can one man bear?

2004-12-04T14:00:00.000+02:00

How bleak and lifeless everything seems! How miserable and bereft I feel! All is emptiness. In this pitiful excuse for a life I lead, there is no comfort, no hope, no relief from pain and loneliness.

I followed the instructions, but after more than 24 hours since I dropped the Sea-Monkey "Instant Live Eggs" into the purified water, nothing has happened.

Instant Pet

2004-12-02T11:23:00.000+02:00

My sister mailed me a Sea Monkeys set. You get an aquarium with them. I always thought you put them in a glass of water and watched them for about five minutes.

I've filled it up and added the water purifier. In 24 hours I will drop the little critters in.

Meanwhile:

The Bad Fads Museum

Sea Monkey Worship Page

Anti-Rant

2004-11-26T11:18:00.000+02:00

Yesterday, on my way to work again, I was crossing Vassileos Konstantinou, the street which, further down, goes past the ancient stadium. The only approaching traffic was a small truck signalling a left-hand turn. As I was further up the street, after the intersection, I decided it was safe to jaywalk. But the driver decided that, in fact, he wasn't interested in turning left, and kept going straight, and kept signalling left the whole time.

When I reached the other side of the street, I saw the shattered remains of a tail-light on the curb.

Due to this comment by Dr Zen, I merely chuckled this time. My usual good mood had returned, partly due to his response. And I felt the need to write about why I actually love living in Greece.

It's true that drivers here are inconsiderate and dangerous. It's not a question of culture; people die because of this behaviour. They know it's a problem. They just don't address it properly. I saw a commercial once that showed some elegantly dressed people at a dinner party standing around a table, picking at hors d'oeuvres and drinking red wine. A man comes along and nudges a woman out of his way to get at the caviar, causing her to spill her wine on the person next to her. Then another woman trips someone to beat him to some pate. The commercial was about being more considerate on the road.

I must also add that Athens is a large, overcrowded, chaotic city, and sensible people are often too tired to care any more.

And they do expect good manners from people. Taxi drivers are almost universally despised here, because they are, with very few exceptions, obnoxious cheats. (One of the exceptions explained to me that they're not properly unionised, and they get the wrong kind of people.) I know people who boycott taxis as often as they can because they don't want to give them a single cent.

To give you an example: I took my parents to the airport a few years ago, and when the driver who had picked me up realised I lived here, he promptly asked another driver at an intersection to continue taking me. The second driver explained that he had gone back to the airport to pick up a tourist he could more easily cheat.

But the main reason I like living here is precisely because people are not as polite as they are in Canada. Politeness, for me, implies a certain cold hostility, a way to avoid conflict and misunderstanding by keeping people at a distance. In Canada, I never knew quite how to act. People seemed uptight. Greeks don't care. They don't have such misunderstandings. If you do or say the wrong thing, it's quickly forgotten. I feel freer and more welcome here.

I find them much warmer. Despite the machismo and homophobia prevalent among men, good friends will kiss each other on the cheek when they meet. It took me a while to get used to that.

Basically, like the good Dr, I believe that "wallowing in stupidity and working it out on the hoof will always make more appeal than having to remember which knife cuts which meat and which key opens which social door."

None of the politeness of Canadians would ever make me want to go back to live there.

Regret

2004-11-25T05:01:00.000+02:00

Sometimes, when we stopped in the doorway of a room, one of us entering, the other leaving, we would step into each other’s arms, as if it were a chance meeting and we didn’t live together in such a small house. Other times, in the twilight of late afternoon, lying next to each other in bed near the window with the half-closed shutters, she would turn and face me, staring expectantly, both of us rendered silent by the unspeakable. At such times I wanted to bend towards her and tenderly press my lips upon her eyelids. I knew she would close them and offer them to me with same trust and wonder that made her stare speechlessly at me for so long. But an old superstition that to kiss the eyes presages farewell would halt me, and afraid that I would lose her, I forbade myself this pleasure.

So I searched for other parts of her to kiss. Perhaps the cupped palm of her hand. The slope where her neck met her shoulder, or further up, below the ear. Her high forehead, untroubled as she slept. Maybe along her side, from her breasts down to her waist. There must have been many such kisses, but in my memory they are all eclipsed by the two I could never allow myself to give her.

Likewise I have forgotten all the things we said to each other, and remember only what was left unsaid. If there are words which hasten us to our last goodbye, I have never learned what they are. I was not so careful with my words as I was with my kisses.

I lost her nonetheless, despite my precautions. The doorways, the half-closed shutters, the dim afternoon light, everything is as it was then, only more so now that she is gone. I search among it all for the words I may have said when silence was more fitting, for the silences I should have broken, and I remember her eyes, the eyes I never kissed.

The Last Page

2004-11-25T04:45:00.000+02:00

He has a book with countless pages, beautiful sheets of transparent rice paper, the kind once used to protect frontispieces from yellowing. They are so delicate that each one tears off when he turns it. He is meant to write or draw on them, but for now he only likes to feel them between his fingers, to look at their virginal blankness. When each leaf is torn, it gives him the same pleasure he had as a child when he would violate a field of freshly fallen snow with his footprints.

In time, a fault in the grain begins to appear. It's a fraint streak that runs across the page. He strains his eyes, but he can't make out what it is. He's not even sure if it's really there, but gradually it becomes more clearly defined, compromising the purity of the pages and his enjoyment of them.

Eventually he realises that it's a line of words, although he can only distinguish the shapes of them. He tries to concentrate on the paper, but the emerging shapes distract him. By now he turns the pages automatically, without pleasure, thinking only of what is written up ahead.

It's a message. Even before he reaches it he can see through the pages clearly enough to read it. He tries not to. He doesn't want to reach it, but he can't stop.

At last he comes to it. He doesn't know who's written it. Perhaps he himself has. He reads it again and again. He wants to cover it, make it invisible again, but all the other pages are gone, torn off. It's the only page left.

The Collective Solipsism

2004-11-25T03:35:00.000+02:00

The time has come for my first rant here.

Today as I was walking down my street, I was sort of hit by a car.

I came to a corner, and this young guy drove past. When he had passed, I started to cross, but he suddenly and quickly began to go in reverse. I didn't have enough time to stop and step back. I put my hand out on the hatchback and leapt forward. I can't remember to what extent the car made contact. I only remember that the tips of my fingers hurt, and that he hit my leg, right on the ankle. If I hadn't reacted so quickly, I would have ended up under the car.

In an instant I was on the sidewalk. I turned to the guy and said, "Are you crazy?" He merely looked at me. Perhaps he didn't understand what had happened. His window was rolled up, so he couldn't hear me.

I continued down the street, feeling jittery. It was the closest I had ever come to a real accident. As I walked, the guy in the car passed again, and I realised he was looking for a place to park his car. This time I was on the driver's side, where the window was down. He didn't look at me, and I said nothing.

When the adrenaline wore off, the anger kicked in. The guy hadn't even asked if I was all right. Now I wanted to pound his face in.

And it reminded me of how dangerous certain kinds of acculturation can be. Greece has the highest death rate per kilometer of road in Europe. One reason is that it's easy to bribe someone to get your license. Examiners expect to be bribed, so that if you don't, they'll fail you on something ridiculous. This could be fixed by cracking down on them and making sure people learnt how to drive properly.

The other problem, however, is much more serious, and harder to deal with.

Greek individualism and belief in personal freedom are not cliches. They're a euphemism. The truth is that, as civilians, they are largely inconsiderate, reckless, and ignorant. When you observe them as pedestrians, it's no wonder they're so dangerous behind the wheel.

When walking down a narrow sidewalk -- as most sidewalks in Athens are -- it is very rare that you will see someone make way for you. They just plough ahead, knowing that you're the one who's going to step aside. Sometimes they'll stand in the middle of the sidewalk talking, not caring at all that they're blocking the way for others.

When I was young, my mother told me that in Greece, the last one in the line is the first one on the bus, and I thought it was funny. Now it annoys the hell out of me. Nowhere does this rudeness reveal itself more than when Greeks are on public transport.

They crowd around the doors of buses, pushing to get on before anyone can get off. When they get on, they stand near the door, even though there's room in the middle of the bus, so that it becomes impossible for more people to get on. And why do they do this? Because they don't want to miss their stop. (I'm assuming some people have actually thought about it, but most people seem to get on and stop, not concerned in the least if there's anyone behind them.) And why is there a chance they might miss their stop? Obviously because there's so many people crowding around the door.

In fastfood restaurants, when someone has ordered at the cash register, he doesn't step out of the way to let the person behind him place an order. He stands right there so that you have to order over his shoulder.

In my first or second year here, I had a conversation with a friend of mine about this. He was annoyed at having to live in a city where everybody seemed to go around believing he was the only person who existed. Those were my Greek salad days, so I just laughed and called it the collective solipsism.

I still laugh, most of the time. But sometimes I get pissed off. When I see somebody coming towards me on the sidewalk, I don't always move out of the way. I walk off the bus into people who don't let me by, as if they didn't exist. As the years go by, I become more and more like them.

(And just to be clear on one thing. Although I say Greeks are largely inconsiderate, reckless, and ignorant as civilians, I don't subscribe to any notion of racial characteristics. I'm Greek, after all. But I was raised in Canada, where people learn to be polite. Even the Greeks there.)

Ron Sexsmith

2004-11-24T21:30:00.001+02:00

Earlier I wrote about meeting Ron Sexsmith. One of the reasons I decided to follow him and catch up to him was that on his first record he says, at the beginning of one of his songs, "Is it rolling? Oh, OK. Sorry." He says it in one of the most unassuming voices that I knew he'd be approachable. He used the same voice when we spoke.

My friend Alice, who lives in Luneburg Nova Scotia, wrote to tell me about seeing him in concert, probably in Halifax.

We went to see Ron Sexsmith play and he was great!
Really good show, songs spanned a long time, great
backup band. It was a real treat. He looks like a
giant baby, and he says "Thank you!" in a high quick
voice, sort of like a muppet. This all adds to his
charm. Some chick named Sarah Slean opened for him,
and she was a bit of a drag. Sort of torch-songy and
head-rolling, a bit like Kate Bush with more guitars.
Nice voice though, and other people seemed to really
like her schtick (saying things like, oh what a sweet
town, maybe I'll move here, yadda yadda).

Uneasy Rider

2004-11-22T20:35:00.000+02:00

About a year ago, I came across a site that hosted photos and writing by some "Elena" who liked to ride her motorcycle through the empty streets of Chernobyl.

Today I came across a thread that pretty much settles it that she was lying about a lot of things. Nevertheless, the pictures are still great to look at, even if one or two of them are a bit set up.

A Downright Moron

2004-11-15T21:52:00.000+02:00

"When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack, or count himself lost. His one aim is to disarm suspicion, to arouse confidence in his orthodoxy, to avoid challenge. If he is a man of convictions, of enthusiasm, or self-respect, it is cruelly hard…

"The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even a mob with him by the force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second or third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.

"The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."

—H.L. Mencken, The Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920

Two More by Gatsos

2004-11-08T16:14:00.000+02:00

After the last post, I was rummaging around and I found two translations I had done of Nikos Gatsos. The first one is a song, the final song on Hadjidakis's Mythology.

LAMENT

I saw your shadow inscribed
upon the bleeding sky,
a bitter tear and a cloudiness,
and I came and put into your hands
iron, stone, and a knife,
and the nails of your cross.

You sleeplessly endured the bullet,
but I in the courtyard of the earth
will be hiding the wound
until the pine and cypress,
the mint and myrtle
return to the world.

Remain a cyclamen of the forest
now with the dream your joy
and before you rise up to the sun
take love with you as a key
to the shores of Paradise
where you go tonight to stay.

And this one is a poem, one of two found in the edition of Amorgos, although it is not actually a part of that poem.

ELEGY

In the fire of your eyes God must once have smiled
Spring must have closed her eyes like an ancient seashore's pearl.
Now as you sleep brilliant
On the frozen fields where the vines
Became embalmed wings, marble doves
Silent children of hopeful waiting –
I wanted you to come one night like a darkened cloud
Steam of rock, hoarfrost of olive tree
Because on your chaste forehead
I too must once have seen
The snow of sheep and of lilies
But you passed through life like a tear of the sea
Like the splendour of summer and of the last rainfall of May
Even if you too were once its geranium wave
Its bitter pebble
Its small swallow in an all-deserted forest
Without a bell at dawn, without a lamp in the evening
With your warm heart returned to foreign lands
To the other seashore's ruined teeth
To the ruined islands of the wildcherry tree and the seal.

Goodnight, Kemal

2004-11-08T13:27:00.000+02:00

Perhaps the greatest Greek lyricist was Nikos Gatsos (1911-1992). In his entire life, he only published one volume of poetry, Amorgos (1943), which nevertheless was extraordinarily influencial for its use of surrealism with Greek elements. The rest of his life was devoted to theatrical translations, especially of Lorca, and to writing lyrics for composers like Theodorakis, Hadjidakis, and Xarhakos. An example of his lyrics, in English translation, is "We Who Are Left".

Thinking about what's in store for the next four years, I remembered this song he wrote with Hadjidakis. I include the Greek lyrics as well. I have taken the translation from a Savina Yannatou CD and changed it. It is at times a strict and at times a free translation. At no time is it a very good one.

The italicised parts are spoken.

Ακούστε τώρα την ιστορία του Κεμάλ
ενός νεαρού πρίγκιπα της Ανατολής
απόγονου του Σεβάχ του Θαλασσινού
που νόμισε ότι μπορούσε ν' αλλάξει τον κόσμο.
Αλλά πικρές οι βουλές του Αλλάχ
και σκοτεινές οι ψυχές των ανθρώπων...

Στης Ανατολής τα μέρη μια φορά κι έναν καιρό
ήταν άδειο το κεμέρι, μουχλιασμένο το νερό.
Στη Μοσούλη, στη Βασόρα, στην παλιά τη χουρμαδιά
πικραμένα κλαίνε τώρα της ερήμου τα παιδιά.
Κι ένας νέος από σόι και γενιά βασιλική
αγροικάει το μοιρολόι και τραβάει κατά κει.
Τον κοιτάν οι βεδουίνοι με ματιά λυπητερή
κι όρκο στον Αλλάχ τους δίνει πως θ' αλλάξουν οι καιροί.

Σαν ακούσαν οι αρχόντοι του παιδιού την αφοβιά
ξεκινάν με λύκου δόντι και με λιονταριού προβιά.
Απ' τον Τίγρη στον Ευφράτη κι απ' τη γη στον ουρανό
κυνηγάν τον αποστάτη να τον πιάσουν ζωντανό.
Πέφτουν πάνω του τα στίφη σαν ακράτητα σκυλιά
και τον πάνε στο Χαλίφη να του βάλει τη θηλιά.
Μαύρο μέλι, μαύρο γάλα ήπιε 'κείνο το πρωί
πριν αφήσει στην κρεμάλα τη στερνή του την πνοή.

Με δυο γέρικες καμήλες, μ' ένα κόκκινο φαρί
στου παράδεισου τις πύλες ο προφήτης καρτερεί.
Πάνε τώρα χέρι-χέρι κι είναι γύρω συννεφιά
μα της Δαμασκού τ' αστέρι τους κρατούσε συντροφιά.
Σ' ένα μήνα, σ' ένα χρόνο βλέπουν μπρος τους τον Αλλάχ
που απ' τον ψηλό του θρόνο λέει στον άμυαλο Σεβάχ:
Νικημένο μου ξεφτέρι δεν αλλάζουν οι καιροί
με φωτιά και με μαχαίρι πάντα ο κόσμος προχωρεί.

Καληνύχτα Κεμάλ. Αυτός ο κόσμος δε θ' αλλάξει ποτέ. Καληνύχτα...

* * * * *

Hear now the story of Kemal
A young prince from the East
A descendant of Sinbad the Sailor,
Who thought he could change the world.
But bitter is the will of Allah,
And dark the souls of men …

Once upon a time in the East,
The purses are empty, the waters are stagnant.
In Mosul, in Basrah, under an old date-palm,
The children of the desert are bitterly crying.
A young man of ancient and royal race
Overhears their lament and goes to them.
The Bedouins look at him sadly
And he swears by Allah that things will change.

When they learn of the young man's fearlessness,
The rulers set off with wolf-like teeth and a lion's mane.
From the Tigris to the Euphrates, in heaven and on earth,
The pursue the renegade to catch him alive.
They pounce on him like uncontrollable hounds,
And take him to the caliph to put the noose around his neck.
Black honey, black milk he drank that morning
Before breathing his last on the gallows.

With two aged camels and a red steed,
At the gates of heaven the prophet awaits.
They walk together among the clouds
With the star of Damascus to keep them company.
After a month, after a year, they find Allah
Who, from his high throne, tells foolish Sinbad:
'O my vanquished sparrow-hawk, things never change;
Fire and knives are the only things men know.'*

Goodnight, Kemal. The world will never change. Goodnight…

* * * * *

When Manos Hadjidakis was living in New York, during the coup of 67-74, he recorded an English version of this song, which actually predates the Greek one, with the New York Rock & Roll Ensemble. It's rather silly, and a waste of a beautiful melody, although it's a good album.

*The original says "Only with fire and with knives does the world proceed."

Too melancholy for words

2004-11-03T19:50:00.000+02:00

Anything I could say has already been more eloquently expressed here.

One more coincidence

2004-11-02T23:10:00.000+02:00

For a while last year I kept seeing a Greek theatre actor named Dimitris Katalifos in various parts of Athens. I had recently seen him in an excellent production of Glengarry Glen Ross, playing the role of Shel Levene. He has also played the title role in Cavafy and has a part in the recent Scorcese production Brides.

One night I was waiting to use an ATM near my house and the person in front of me was taking his time. I remembered recently having been using an ATM to deposit some money and an impatient man came up behind me and asked, "Are you being served?" His question was so strange and rude that I merely turned and frowned at him a second before going back to what I had been doing.

Now that I was waiting to use the machine, I wondered what it would be like to speak rudely to somone and then be embarrassed when they turned out to be someone famous. Or rather, I imagined some impatient idiot being rude and then apologising to the famous person. For an instant, I idly let my imagination run with the idea, and I imagined that the person would turn around and turn out to be Dimitris Katalifos.

The man in front of me finished his transaction. When he turned around, it was Katalifos.

From behind he had seemed utterly nondescript, so if in fact he had reminded me of Katalifos, it could only have been unconscious. I later learnt that he lives a couple of blocks from that bank in my neighbourhood. Still, the timing was very odd, and I still feel I had no direct reason to have chosen him as an example of a famous person, except for the fact that I had been seeing him lately.

Three images of Katalifos doing Beckett

Cure for Melancholy

2004-10-21T21:12:00.000+03:00

Anyone seeking a cure need not read this book. The title alone should do it.

Fat Albert's Ramble

2004-10-20T06:25:00.000+03:00

When I was sixteen or seventeen I started going to an open stage called Fat Albert's. It was held every Wednesday night in the basement of the Bloor Street United Church in Toronto. It was started in 1967 and had seen the likes of Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Bob Snider and Bob Wiseman. It ran there in the church for 36 years, when their rent was increased so dramatically that they had to relocate. Up to the very end, the stage, backdrop, sound system, tables and chairs never changed. It's one of the few things I miss about Toronto, and wish I had gone more often in the 90's.

One of the singers that I particularly enjoyed was Sam Larkin. He's written beautiful songs and deserves to be heard more widely. His "Sally On" was briefly heard in Highway 61, and a few people have recorded covers of his "Mirabeau Bridge". Sam's a very funny guy, and his website gives you an idea of his humour.

For the most part, people sang and played guitar. There was a piano to the side of the stage, and I remember Bob Wiseman when he was still with Blue Rodeo playing with his fists and elbows and even with his hand in a roll of masking tape.

Sometimes people got up and read poetry, which was invariably bad. It was a fashion at the time, I think, to repeat entire lines in a poem for no apparent reason. I remember one woman reading something that could be likened to the experience of going from one radio station to another, and her reciting at one point the following line two or three times:

I'll give you two kittens if you tape if you tape Lou Reed.

Although it may have been three kittens. I don't know.

We even had the esteemed Maggie Helwig bore us with her pink hair and her lisp. I remember a poem of hers about Nina Thimone. She repeatedly tried to impress us with the fact the singer's name contained the word "moan". She's become a novelist now, and apparently is doing much better.

Kyp Harness was a regular, but I could barely stand to stay in the room when he sang. He's doing fairly well in Toronto.

One singer I always thought would be heard more widely was Caitlin Jenkins, but if Google is anything to go by, she no longer sings. She was the younger sister of the singer and actress Rebecca Jenkins, who was a regular before I showed up, and who complimented me on my set the one and only time I saw her there.

I loved listening to Bob Snider. His songs were either hilarious or beautifully touching. One of the best ones I recall was "What An Idiot He Is":

He hasn't bothered thinkin'
Since he was ten
He'll tell you he already knew
What he had to know by then
Anyone who disagrees with him
Should be in prison
All he wants is what is his
Even if it isn't
You can talk until you're blue
But you'll never make him listen
To what an idiot he is.

Bob must have been in his forties. He was tall and thin, with a kind, weathered face. I believe he told me that he had come from Nova Scotia and had worked in construction. He had a beard and was missing a few upper front teeth. This gave him a distinctive way of pronouncing things, which added to his charm. I liked Bob a lot and thought him very talented, but due to his image and his age, I never even considered him becoming successful or famous. About a year or two ago I was stunned to hear a couple of his songs on the radio here in Athens. (In my seven years here so far, I have heard Joni Mitchell and Neil Young on the radio, but not Gordon Lightfoot.)

Pat Harper was, I believe, an actor or a comedian. He would improvise. I only saw him perform two or three times, unfortunately. I have one of his performances on tape. One night he got up and said a few mediocre jokes and then suddenly burst into a rendition of Mark Antony's funeral speech from Julius Caesar with such wide-eyed earnestness that my gut was sore and tears were streaming down my face. I remember that only Sam Larkin and I were laughing. Most people didn't know what was going on.

Another time he held a piece of paper and did a television news anchorman reading a report about the Toronto Maple Leafs (then in their 1980s doldrums) making it to the Stanley Cup finals because they'd had a sack of potatoes playing defence. In the last game, the sack tears open, the potatoes spill out, and the Leafs lose. Up until this, it was average, mediocre comedic fare. But then he added:

"General Manager Cliff Fletcher had this to say about the near future."

Here he put the paper down and looked around the room with the same earnest expression and droned this poem by Baudelaire:

When the low heavy sky weighs like a lid
Upon the groaning spirit, prey to long monotonies,
And embracing all the horizon's compass
Pours us a black day, sadder than our nights.

When the earth is changed into a dank cell
Where Hope flees bat-like
Beating the walls with timid wings
Striking its head against the rotten roof;

When the rain spreads out its endless trains
Like the bars of a vast prison
And a silent race of loathsome spiders
Come spread their nets deep in our brains.

Suddenly the bells ring out in fury
And hurl against the sky a fearful scream
Like homeless wandering spirits
That stubbornly begin to groan.
And long hearses, without drum or note
Parade slowly through my soul; Hope beaten
Weeps, and dreadful Anguish, despotic
Upon my bowed skull plants its banner black.

I was in even greater hysterics than when he did Mark Antony.

Pat lived with Bob Snider in a house whose previous tenants had been a punk band called Bunchofuckingoofs. Pat invited some of the regulars at Fat Albert's to a Christmas party at his house one year. Some of us sat in the kitchen while he told us that the Bunchofuckingoofs had had a dog which shit in the house because they'd never take it out. They would hoover up the dogshit with a heavy duty industrial vacuum cleaner. When someone expressed disbelief at this story, Pat went down to the basement and brought the vacuum cleaner up and turned it on for us. Within seconds the whole kitchen stank. He said there was no way to get rid of that smell.

Pat eventually moved to Washington with his girlfriend.

There was another guy who came by every once in a while. He wore a black fisherman's cap and carried around a black hardcover notebook. He lived in my neighbourhood, and I often saw him at the bus-stop in the morning with the same hat and notebook. I was in university at the time, and he looked younger than me. I figured he was a high school student, filling up his notebook with poetry he'd someday inflict on us at Fat Albert's. But I never saw him get up on stage. He knew Sam, and would stand around and talk to him whenever I saw him there. He must have performed, but never on a night that I'd happened to come by.

* * * * *

Around 1992 or 1993, I noticed that Sam Larkin had stopped coming to Fat Albert's. I tried calling him, but his number was out of service. I couldn't find him in the phone book. I had been losing interest in Fat Albert's and in the idea of myself as a singer or songwriter. The two guys who had been running the place since 1967, Ray and Ed, retired and passed it on to someone else, but by that time it had already started to decline. I don't know if Fat Albert's is still running. Wherever it moved to in 2003, I'm sure it had very little to do with the Fat Albert's we had known.

For me, when Sam stopped going regularly ten years before that, it had already begun to fade away.

Even the kid with the cap and notebook went away. I no longer saw him on the bus every morning.

* * * * *

I graduated from university in 1995. I knew that soon I'd be moving to Greece, although I didn't leave till January of 1997. It was a strange time for me. I felt I'd already left Toronto behind, but hadn't moved on to anywhere. I felt like a ghost haunting the city. I'd look around me at things as though they were all in the past, as if I'd already left and this was nothing more than a memory. I lost touch with people I'd known in high school and university, and I often found myself thinking about Sam, even though I'd never really known him that well.

One day I found a copy of Now Magazine on the subway. On the front cover was the kid with black fisherman's cap. I picked it up and read the article about him. It turned out he wasn't a writer, but a singer. His name was Ron Sexsmith. He had moved to Tennessee. In 1994 he had released his first album, but it hadn't done well at all till Elvis Costello plugged it in an interview and appeared on the cover of a magazine holding the CD. That turned the tide for Sexsmith. In the article, he talked about a friend bringing Paul McCartney to his house for a pancake breakfast one day, and how they got out the guitars and jammed.

I was stunned. I'd thought he was just a high school kid. I used to ride the bus with him every morning, and we'd had a mutual acquaintance. What a wasted opportunity that was! I could have got to know him. Now it was all too late.

I went to a record shop a couple of days later and looked for the album. The CD had sold out. I was in such a hurry to hear it that I bought the cassette. I loved it right away. My favourite song on it is "Wasting Time":

The day is long, many hours to kill
It's all right if we let a few minutes spill
Where's the crime in wasting time with you?

I would listen to the album all the time on my walkman. Many of the songs spoke to the nostalgia I was already feeling for the place I hadn't left yet.

Some months later, either in the autumn of 1995 or the spring of 1996, I was sitting in a cafe on Queen Street called the Roastery. This was across the street from Kew Gardens, which led down to the beach. I was sitting inside, drinking out of a paper cup, listening to the Sexsmith tape. Whenever I see a famous person in the street, I never talk to them unless I have something interesting to say. There's no point being the thousandth person to say, "I liked your film" or "I like your music". As I sat there, I thought that if I ever saw Ron Sexsmith again, I'd definitely speak to him. I started to consider what I'd say to him if he should ever find himself back in Toronto again, in his old neighbourhood, and we should happen to cross paths. I would probably ask him if he knew what had ever happened to Sam Larkin.

And then, just as I was thinking this very thought, Ron Sexsmith passed by the cafe and crossed Queen Street into Kew Gardens.

I froze. I felt both amazed and also as though I had actually summoned him. I put the walkman into the bag I had with me, put the lid on my paper cup, and went after him.

Catching up to him was quite difficult. He walked much faster than I did, and I didn't want to run up behind him. At one point he bent to pick up a stick, and I thought he looked back and saw me. I followed him for about ten minutes, trying to catch up with running. Later on, in another part of the neighbourhood, he dropped the stick he'd been carrying, and when he picked it up he looked back again. I thought that if he had noticed me both times he'd think I was stalking him, so I put my coffee down and ran up to him.

I called out to him and explained that I'd been listening to his music when he walked past the cafe. He was surprised at the coincidence, even though I had decided not to mention that I'd been thinking about what I'd do if I ever saw him. We walked for a bit.

"You're a fast walker," I said. "I've been trying to catch up to you since you went into the park."

"I guess all those years of working as a courier paid off," he said.

I told him I remembered him from the bus and Fat Albert's and he said I looked familiar to him too. I asked him about Sam, and he told me he'd lost touch with him too, and all he knew was that Sam had moved to some part of north Ontario. I asked him if he was playing anywhere in town, and I think he said he was opening for Sarah McLachlan. He was going to visit some friends of his that lived in the neighbourhood, and we said goodbye. I turned on my walkman again and watched him walk away.

* * * * *

Last year, Ron Sexsmith became the fourth Fat Albert's alumnus that I've heard on the radio here in Athens. So far, he has released eight albums.

Great verses

2004-10-11T11:35:00.000+03:00

When I was in high school, an English teacher I couldn't stand, but who managed to exercise a considerable amount of influence over me, told us that the fourth verse in Shakespeare's 73rd sonnet is considered to be the greatest in English literature:

That time of year thou may'st in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold;
Bare ruin'd choirs where late the sweet birds sang.

I don't remember ever coming across this claim again, but certainly it has captivated people. I was struck then by the sound of the words, although the true meaning of the verse escaped me completely. Or at least the generally accepted meaning. But it wasn't till I was in university, studying Hopkins, that I came to be dazzled by it.

Originally, the 1609 Quarto version had it:

Bare rn'wd quiers, where late the ſweet birds ſang.

The general consensus is that the choirs are the chancels, where the choristers stood. Since the publication of William Empson's Seven Kinds of Ambiguity, many believe that this refers also to the ruins of churches and abbeys after Henry VIII's destruction of monasteries. But I found an interesting discussion at Languagehat of an entry at Eudaemonist, which states that a "quire" was

A set of four sheets of parchment or paper doubled so as to form eight leaves, a common unit in mediæval manuscripts; hence, any collection or gathering of leaves, one within the other, in a manuscript or printed book.

The entry continues:

For Shakespeare [...] it’s almost impossible to deny the pun. The yellow leaves lingering on the branches might just as well be the leaves of a book—pages which must be unwritten, of course, when the poet dies (just as the branches ‘where late the sweet birds sang’ become ‘bare ruin’d choirs’). The full quires containing the sonnets, however, will continue their serenade (dare I say, ‘twittering’?) despite the changing seasons, despite death, in a typical declaration of immortality...

When I was studying Hopkins, I had an excellent professor, Joaquin Kuhn, who made prosody fascinating, and as interesting as any other aspect of poetry. (How sad that such a statement should need to be made. He was the only professor I had who spent any time on prosody, and knew more about it than others I've known who call themselves poets.) I also studied Shakespeare's sonnets in one of his courses. I tried applying what I knew to the fourth verse of the 73rd sonnet, and things got very confusing.

Possibly, "rn'wd" was pronounced as two syllables, but I doubt it. Many, many words which seem to be disyllabic are actually monosyllabic in poetry. "Heaven" is the first one that comes to mind. This is why so many editions write it as "heav'n". "Choirs" would also be monosyllabic, as it should always be, so each word in the verse is only one syllable.

As there are only nine words, there are only nine syllables, one too few. (Trying to talk about about feet here is pointless.)

Try to scan it, and your real difficulties begin. There's absolutely nothing iambic about the line. It looks like a classic example of sprung rhythm. If you make the stressed syllables bold, you could get

Bare ruin'd choirs where late the sweet birds sang.

But I prefer

Bare ruin'd choirs where late the sweet birds sang.

Seven out of the nine syllables are stressed! And twice there are three consecutive stressed syllables. It reminds me of Hopkins, as I imagine him, pounding his fist on the table as he recites

The heart grows wings bold and bolder.

How does Shakespeare manage to depart so dramatically from the prosody of his sonnet without drawing any attention to the fact? Why does the verse work, when it really it shouldn't? I have not, in the over ten years since I first struggled with the question, been able to answer it.

My favourite verse in English literature yields its pleasures more readily, but I never tire of letting it roll of my tongue. It's from Arnold's "Dover Beach", and I quote the entire stanza it's found in.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

The fifth verse shows what can be done with a language where vowels can have such different sounds, something which cannot be done in Greek, for example. Each vowel in that verse, with the exception of the y in "melancholy", grows more and more expansive, till you swear you can hear the sea retreating and leaving nothing but a vast emptiness.

Say it aloud. Say it again. Slowly.

So, what do you know?

2004-10-07T16:26:00.000+03:00

I was talking recently to an ex-colleague on the telephone and he mentioned that he had recently seen Farenheit 9/11. He said he was amazed at how many lies Americans are willing to believe and I lamented how times like these so dramatically divide people. I reminded him of the scene where Lila Lipscomb is standing in front of the White House listening to a protester in a tent, and another woman comes up and tells her not to listen, it's all staged. Lipscomb tells her it's not, and that she lost her son in Iraq. The woman seems embarrassed and adds, "Blame al-Qaida." Lipscomb comments shortly afterwards that this is the sort of ignorance she has to deal with it. "She thinks she knows," she says (I'm quoting from memory), "but she doesn't know. I thought I knew."

At this point my ex-colleague took it a few steps further and said we never really know anything. He gave World War II as an example. He's British, and said he had been taught that Britain and its allies were the good guys and German the bad guys. "But who really knows? Who's to say it was really like that?"

Regardless of whether this is an oversimplification, I was rather surprised to hear the comparison and told him that despite the fact that the US, for example, may have had ulterior motives for entering the war, and did so rather late, to stand by and do nothing would have been morally reprehensible.

Still he clung to his scepticism. Surely no one can doubt that Germany invaded Poland, I said. How can we overlook so many first-hand accounts? History books are held up to academic scrutiny and reputations can be made by people who are able to find holes in other people's research. You can't compare the Second World War to what's going on in Iraq. History is not the evening news on television.

When I first met this colleague, we were talking about books and he said he wasn't very interested in literature. He was more interested in gaining knowledge and learning about ideas. He mentioned Krishnamurti. Years ago, someone recommended Freedom from the Known to me, and I borrowed it from the library. I read some of it but soon became impatient with it. The basic idea was that very little of what we know is first-hand knowledge, and in itself this is a good point. But where do you go with it? (Krishnamurti also says that we must live in the present and forget the past, and forget the teachers of the past.)

I think it was Wittgenstein who ironically asked what it would look like if the sun revolved around the earth. He was implying that it would look exactly the way it does now. It is important to realise that much of what we believe we know about the world we have accepted on someone else's authority. I believe that the earth revolves around the sun because physicists who know more than I do say so. I believe that my heart pumps blood around my body because I trust the doctors and biologists who say so. If I waited until I knew these things myself, I'd never get anywhere. It is important to understand the limitations of my knowledge, but it is vanity to extend this conclusion to knowledge in general.

Some months ago a Bangladeshi immigrant stopped me on the street and tried to sell me some flowers. When I attempted to give him some change, tears welled in his eyes and he explained to me in broken English that he needed 35 euros to buy medicine for his child. I told him I couldn't afford to give him any more. Although I had about 60 euros in my wallet, it was true: it was a financially difficult time for me. Nevertheless, that day I had spent 18 euros on a hardcover notebook I ended up throwing away, and now I was preparing to go to a bar and drink 4-euro beers. "You have money," he said. "I know you do. You have big money."

I was speechless. He was, of course, right. Compared to him, I had big money. I was ashamed to to tell him that I had more expenses than he did. I felt weighed down by all kinds of superfluous things.

I was faced with a dilemma. Should I refuse although he might be telling the truth, or give him the money although he might be lying? If those two were the only possibilities, which would I choose? After all how could I know if he was telling the truth. (I gave him 20.)

The question of what we know should be a practical one. What do I choose to believe?

On the telephone with my ex-colleague, I began to get irritated and impatient. We spoke in raised voices. I said the logical conclusion of his argument is that we can never know if we're not really nothing more than a brain in a jar in a lab somewhere. What do we gain from this exercise in doubt? What does he construct after he's finished tearing down? I happened to be reading Primo Levi at the time. What does it say about me if I choose to say, although there is nothing to recommend the theory except that it's merely possible, that Levi was wrong or not telling the truth? How should I know?*

Am I being naive in choosing to trust such documents? How is one person naive because he chooses to believe what Levi says, and another person wise because he doubts what Krishnamurti tells him to?

*At one point in the conversation, he surprised me by saying one way of getting first-hand experience of things in the past would be through some kind of cosmic travel. "But that," he said, "is for another conversation."