Flaubert's Revenge

What is the best form in which to express one's opinion, occasionally, about affairs of this world without being taken later for a fool? It's a difficult problem. It seems to me that the best way is simply to depict the things that exasperate you. Dissection is revenge." --Flaubert.

Party Animal

Le but de la fête est de nous faire oublier que nous sommes solitaires, misérables et promis à la mort; autrement dit, de nous transformer en animaux. C’est pourquoi le primitif a un sens de la fête très développé. Une bonne flambée de plantes hallucinogènes, trois tambourins et le tour est joué: un rien l’amuse. A l’opposé, l’Occidental moyen n’aboutit à une extase insuffisante qu’à l’issue de raves interminables dont il ressort sourd et drogué: il n’a pas du tout le sens de la fête. Profondément conscient de lui-même, radicalement étranger aux autres, terrorisé par l’idée de la mort, il est bien incapable d’accéder à une quelconque exaltation. Cependant, il s’obstine. La perte de sa condition animale l’attriste, il en conçoit honte et dépit; il aimerait être un fêtard, ou du moins passer pour tel. Il est dans une sale situation.

Michel Houellebecq, Rester vivant

Narrative Imagining is THE instrument of thought

“Narrative imagining—story—is the fundamental instrument of thought. Rational capacities depend upon it. It is our chief means of looking into the future, of predicting, of planning, and of explaining. It is a literary capacity indispensable to human cognition generally”

literary critic and cognitive scientist Mark Turner (1996)

The Grey Monk

by William Blake

"I die, I die!" the Mother said,
"My children die for lack of bread.
What more has the merciless Tyrant said?"
The Monk sat down on the stony bed.

The blood red ran from the Grey Monk's side,
His hands and feet were wounded wide,
His body bent, his arms and knees
Like to the roots of ancient trees.

His eye was dry; no tear could flow:
A hollow groan first spoke his woe.
He trembled and shudder'd upon the bed;
At length with a feeble cry he said:

"When God commanded this hand to write
In the studious hours of deep midnight,
He told me the writing I wrote should prove
The bane of all that on Earth I lov'd.

My Brother starv'd between two walls,
His Children's cry my soul appalls;
I mock'd at the rack and griding chain,
My bent body mocks their torturing pain.

Thy father drew his sword in the North,
With his thousands strong he marched forth;
Thy Brother has arm'd himself in steel
To avenge the wrongs thy Children feel.

But vain the Sword and vain the Bow,
They never can work War's overthrow.
The Hermit's prayer and the Widow's tear
Alone can free the World from fear.

For a Tear is an intellectual thing,
And a Sigh is the sword of an Angel King,
And the bitter groan of the Martyr's woe
Is an arrow from the Almighty's bow.

The hand of Vengeance found the bed
To which the Purple Tyrant fled;
The iron hand crush'd the Tyrant's head
And became a Tyrant in his stead."

The idea of sacrifice runs through the issues explored in “The Grey Monk.” The “greyness” of the monk points physically to his age and the connotations of wisdom and experience. Hence, his ensuing words would be philosophically and morally enlightening – “When God commanded this hand to write…” Also, the colour symbolizes the middle ground between the barren whiteness of the Church and the bloody blackness of the Revolution. As the French Revolution progressed, Blake saw excessive violence and bloodshed being conducted between the Revolutionaries, Counter-revolutionaries and the dictators. The noble cause of the Revolution had been corrupted as it now oppressed the same people that it had aimed to free. The Monk is the symbol of all who had been tortured and sacrificed for it. This is indicated by his wounds – “The blood-red ran down the Grey Monk’s side, his hands and feet were wounded wide” which are similar to the injuries Jesus Christ had suffered as he died on the cross, the ultimate sacrifice to atone man’s sins.

Blake approves of the Monk as he lives a cloistered and austere life – “Stone Bed,” in meditation and to communicate with God. Though Blake abhors the Church and all its Priests in black, he believes that the Monk, also someone connected with the Church, as a “the hermit,” is closer to God than the hypocritical Priests. In many ways, Blake is like a monk as he lived an isolated, simple life, consolidating his theological beliefs and attempting to attain spiritual enlightenment.

The Monk’s intensity of feeling for the oppressed masses has united them as a family – “My brother starv’d… His Children’s Cry my Soul appalls… Thy Father drew his sword… Thy Brother has arm’d himself… To avenge the wrongs thy Children feel.” This kinship of pain and cycle of never ending injustice and violence has paid a terrible price on all involved. The suffering is collective, brought about by the destructiveness of the Revolution. It conveys the message that war is futile.

In the eighth to ninth stanzas, the Monk reveals his inner psyche, criticising the depravation of the idealistic cause. Despite his excessive wounds, he still voices his opposition to the bloodshed and the fighting, “vain the Sword and vain the Bow, they never can work War’s overthrow.” His spirit is still undaunted, he will fight to the very end for the purity of his ideals – “the bitter groan of the Martyr’s woe is an Arrow from the Almightie’s bow.” He speaks metaphorically on what he deems to be the philosophical truth in the struggle between life and death, war and peace. A tear shed in sympathy and love, the prayer made in sincerity and the dying sigh of the Martyr are all weapons connected with God as the “Angel King” and the “Almightie.” These arms stemmed from God as the creative force are by far more superior to the physical death-dealing weapons of war. Hence, Blake is stating that war is not the solution, but the harbinger of greater oppression and turmoil. Intellect and reason are the only tools to bring about justice and peace.

The poem ends with Blake’s view of the legacy of the Revolution. The oppressed masses, having arisen as the “hand of Vengeance,” sought to avenge the injustices of the French absolute monarchy. King Louis XVI, as the “Purple Tyrant,” had tried to flee once he was deposed but the “iron hand” of justice had found him and “crushed his head.” The King was guillotined, but after his execution, followed the Reign of Terror when many were massacred, tortured and executed, with prominent men of the Revolution engaged in a power struggle. Therefore, the Revolution that had sought to achieve equality, liberty and fraternity for mankind had conversely brought about death, persecution and war – “And became a Tyrant in his stead.” On the biblical level, the “Purple Tyrant” can be equated with the serpent, whose head could be crushed by the seed of woman. The monarchy then was associated with Satan and evil. Yet a question is posed now, as to how the Revolution can be compared with this biblical symbol, when it also has established itself as another Tyrant, that is, another Satan.

(analysis from bookstove.com)

Saint Paddy's

"When things go wrong and will not come right,
Though you do the best you can,
When life looks black as the hour of night -
A pint of plain is your only man."
Flann O'Brien, "The Workmans Friend"

J.G. Ballard's Advice

My advice to anyone in any field is to be faithful to your obsessions. Identify them and be faithful to them, let them guide you like a sleepwalker.

La alternancia, el ritmo

Corazón, corazón, si te turban pesares

invencibles, ¡arriba!, resístele al contrario

ofreciéndole el pecho de frente, y al ardid

del enemigo opónte con firmeza.

Y si sales vencedor, disimula, corazón, no te ufanes,

ni, de salir vencido, te envilezcas llorando

en casa. No les dejes que importen demasiado

a tu dicha en los éxitos, tu pena en los fracasos.

Comprende que en la vida impera la alternancia.

Arquíloco de Paros

"Líricos griegos arcaicos" Juan Ferraté.

The Devil's Advice to Story-Tellers

Nice contradiction between fact and fact
Will make the whole read human and exact.

Robert Graves

¿Da lo mismo?

Cuando anochezca
¿qué puedo hacer con la memoria,
dónde guardo la barca de esos años,
dónde los imperdibles del soneto,
el llanto del cristal en las ventanas,
la amarga margarita,
el tiempo fraternal y fracturado?

Se habrá roto el zafiro
y por el suelo correrá, ya libre,
lo prisionero.
(El perro ladra y su ladrido
me arranca de la sombra en que caía).

Pero, de todos modos,
los helechos aquellos se quemaron,
la rosa -¿de quién era?- continúa
en algún libro, no sé cuál. A estas alturas
¿verdad que todo da lo mismo?

Hablando con un haya - Julia Uceda

Yo sé quién soy

--Mire vuestra merced, señor, pecador de mí, que yo no soy Don Rodrigo de Narváez, ni el marqués de Mantua, sino Pedro Alonso, su vecino; ni vuestra merced es Valdovinos, ni Abindarráez, sino el honrado hidalgo del señor Quijana.

--Yo sé quién soy -respondión Don Quijote-, y sé que puedo ser no sólo los que he dicho, sino todos los Doce Pares de Francia, y aun todos los nueve de la Fama, pues a todas las hazañas que ellos todos juntos y cada uno por sí hicieron, se aventajarán las mías.

Miguel de Cervantes, DON QUIJOTE DE LA MANCHA I, capítulo V.

To be strong

It was good to be strong enough for everything, even if all you made melted and changed and slipped under your hands, so that by the time you finished you almost forgot what you were working for. What was it I set out to do? she asked herself intently, but she could not remember. A fog rose over the valley, she saw it marching across the creek swallowing the trees and moving up the hill like an army of ghosts. Soon it would be near the edge of the orchard, and then it was time to go in and light the lamps.

Katherine Anne Porter, THE JILTING OF GRANNY WEATHERALL, 1930.

Narrative is time, hard-wired

Given the presence of narrative in almost all human discourse, there is little wonder that there are theorists who place it next to language itself as the distinctive human trait. Frederic Jameson, for example, writes about the "all-informing process of narrative," which he describes as "the central function or instance of the human mind." Jean-François Lyotard calls narration "the quintessential form of customary knowledge." Whether or not such assertions stand up to scrutiny, it is still the case that we engage in narrative so often and with such unconscious ease that the gift for it would seem to be everyone's birthright. Perhaps the fullest statement regarding the universality of narrative among humans is the opening to Roland Barthes' landmark essay on narrative (1966). It is worth quoting at length:

The narratives of the world are numberless. Narrative is first and foremost a prodigious variety of genres, themselves distributed amongst different substances -as though any material were fit to receive man's stories. Able to be carried by articulated language, spoken or written, fixed or moving images, gestures, and the ordered mixture of all these substances; narrative is present in myth, legend, fable, tale, novella, epic, history, tragedy, drama, comedy, mime, painting (think of Carpaccio's Saint Ursula), stained-glass windows, cinema, comics, news items, conversation. Moreover, under this almost infinite diversity of forms, narrative is present in every age, in every place, in every society; it begins with the very history of mankind and there nowhere is nor has been a people without narrative. All classes, all human groups, have their narratives, enojoyment of which is very often shared by men with different, even opposing, cultural backgrounds. Caring nothing for the division between good and bad literature, narrative is international, transhistorical, transcultural: it is simply there, like life itself.

[...] Narrative capability shows up in infants some time in their third or fourth year, when they start putting verbs together with nouns . Its appearance coincides, roughly, with the first memories that are retained by adults of their infancy, a conjunction that has led some to propose that memory in itself is dependent on the capacity for narrative. In other words, we do not have any mental record of who we are until narrative is present as a kind of armature, giving shape to that record. If this is so, then "our very definitions as human beings," as Peter Brooks has written, "is very much bound up with the stories we tell about our own lives and the world in which we live. We cannot, in our dreams, our daydreams, our ambitious fantasies, avoid the imaginative imposition of form in life." The gift of narrative is so pervasive and universal that there are those who strongly suggest that narrative is a "deep structure," a human capacity genetically hard-wired into our minds in the same way as our capacity or grammar (according to some linguists) is something we are born with. The novelist Paul Auster once wrote that "A child's need for stories is as fundamental as his need for food."

[...] whether from nature or from nurture or from some complex combination of the two -the question remains: what does narrative do for us? [...] if we have to choose one answer above all others, the likeliest is that narrative is the principal way in which our species organizes its understanding of time. [...] it makes evolutionary sense. As we are the only speies on earth with both language and a conscious awareness of the passage of time, it stands to reason that we would have a mechanism for expressing this awareness.

From Cambridge Introduction to Narrative

I think I could turn and live a while with the animals

I think I could turn and live a while with the animals... they are so placid and self contained,
I stand and look at them sometimes half the day long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied... not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.

So they show their relations to me and I accept them;
They bring me tokens of myself... they evince them plainly in their possession.

Walt Whitman, Song to Myself, verse 32...

Maps

The books one reads in childhood, and perhaps most of all the bad and good bad books, create in one's mind a sort of false map of the world, a series of fabulous countries into which one can retreat at odd moments throughout the rest of life, and which in some cases can survive a visit to the real countries which they are supposed to represent.

George Orwell

To tell you the truth...

What is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonymies, anthropomorphisms: in short a sum of human relations which became poetically and rhetorically intensified, metamorphosed, adorned, and after long usage seem to a nation fixed, canonic and binding: truths are illusions of which one has forgotten they are illusions; worn-out metaphors which have become powerless to affect the senses; coins with their images effaced and now no longer of account as coins but merely as metal.

(Nietzsche: "On truth", 1873)

Unity in Writing

Therefore ask yourself some basic questions before you start.

For example:

• "In what capacity am I going to address the reader?" (Reporter? Provider of information? Average man or woman?)
• "What pronoun and tense am I going to use?" "What style?" (Impersonal reportorial? Personal but formal? Personal and casual?)
• "What attitude am I going to take toward the material?" (Involved? Detached? Judgmental? Ironic? Amused?)
• "How much do I want to cover?"
• "What one point do I want to make?"

[...] Every writing project must be reduced before you start to write. Therefore think small. Decide what corner of your subject you're going to bite off, and be content to cover it well and stop.
[...] As for what point you want to make, every successful piece of nonfiction should leave the reader with one provocative thought that he or she didn't have before. Not two thoughts, or five—just one. So decide what single point you want to leave in the reader's mind. It will not only give you a better idea of what route you should follow and what destination you hope to reach; it will affect your decision about tone and attitude. Some points are best made by earnestness, some by dry understatement, some by humor.

William Zinsser, "On Writing Well. The definitive Guide to Writing Nonfiction"