Literary Musings

 

So stay stuck there, for you are rightly punished,

And guard with care the money wrongly gained

That made you stand courageous against Charles

 

And were it not for the reverence I have

For those highest of all keys that you once held

In the happy life—if this did not restrain me,

 

I would use even harsher words than these,

For your avarice brings grief upon the world,

Crushing the good, exalting the depraved.

–Dante Alighieri, Inferno
Canto XIX, lines 97-105
tr. Mark Musa

Reading Dante in the 21^st century is challenging for many reasons—we must negotiate multi-leveled allegory, update ourselves on Florentine politics—the Ghibelines vs. the Guelfs and resultant splinter groups, the Holy Roman Empire vs. Papal authority, 14^th century Catholic liturgy, the evolution of Troubadour style. All of these aspects challenge the modern reader as we try to enter into the work sufficiently to empathize with the arduous spiritual journey of the narrator.

Yet, over the course of our current study of the Inferno, Dante has drawn me in—despite his sharply defined system of justice that is shaped by medieval Catholic values. He has drawn me in through his outrage at a corrupt leadership. In Dante’s time, Florence—and the greater tribe of what we now call Italy—was torn with local and empire-wide factional fighting. Dante found himself exiled from his beloved Florence as a result of shift in the party in control; the election went against Dante’s party and his return to Florence meant his death.

In the quote above, Dante the pilgrim addresses the feet topped with flame of Pope Nicholas III who is forced upside down into a hole in the rock of the 8^th circle for his selling of church offices for his own benefit. Dante’s rage at the corruption of the highest church leader renders him inarticulate. This is one of the moments when the empathy sparks for me: there are moments when I am talking about Trump’s latest outrages when I literally have no words left for the grotesque absurdity of his candidacy.

Corrupt leadership is not simply destructive to the political system. The civic spirit in each citizen is denigrated when leaders behave badly. It is so tempting to turn cynical and disengage—to write off all the candidates as corrupt and lacking in dignity therefore not deserving of our support. In this way, the corrupt leader results in a flood of toxicity reaching across society. By gazing into the Hell of human corruption, we each have travelled to a kind of Hell—the worst parts of human greed are showcased and offered for public support. This makes one want to turn away in disgust from the realm of civic performance—sickened to the soul at the worst examples of human behavior. I found an echo to this urge in the following commentary on Dante’s Inferno:

“. . . In the moral-spiritual sense, there is another reason why the return from Hell is rare and difficult. It takes a special and resolute intelligence to experience the depths of a culture without being rocked by that revelation. Robert Frost, who certainly understood his own and his culture’s depths, called it a mind  ‘too lofty and original to rage.’ Yet, one can understand the rage of those who go to the depths and do not return, who have had their minds turned and are lost forever. . .”

–Ricardo Quinones, “The Plot-line of Myth,” pp. 357-8 in Dante’s Inferno, The Indiana Critical Edition.

Many years ago during a late-night philosophical discussion in Berkeley, California, a dear friend stopped our wine-tinged ramblings with a simple question: “It comes down to this: do you think people are essentially good or essentially evil?”

My outrage at the public figures trading in on fear and prejudice is stoked by how these voices highlight the worst aspects of the human mind. I think Dante’s outrage—and the epic poem that resulted—shares a similar source. Dante wrote towards human salvation in terms he understood. He gazed into ‘the depths of (his) culture’ and refused to be rocked by that revelation.  It is tempting to be lost forever—to witness the bombast and insanity of Trump and his ilk and draw one’s circle close against the world of degenerate souls. But Dante kept climbing—past Hell and the corrupt popes, he discovered penitent sinners and further along, those whose virtues matched their actions. Those are the voices we need to hear now—either through narrative art or in the public sphere. Instead of stoking my daily outrage at Trump’s behavior, I will keep turning to voices that discover and develop human goodness.

 

July 5^th, 2016

Whoosh—where did June go? And more importantly, where did this beautiful country go? Since June 23^rd, I have struggled (as many have) to continue with the rhythms of regular life in the face of the waves of political madness and social upheaval. We are tempted to vilify those who see the world differently—in my case, those who voted for the UK to leave the EU—and to decry those voters as xenophobic or ignorant. Tempting—but where does this leave us?

 

The anger and outrage felt by so many in the face of Brexit—and elsewhere in the rise of nationalism as embodied in horrific figures like Marie Le Pen or Trump—needs some place to land, some direction to go. In the face of my anger, I have sought to understand how those others see the world. Mike Carter at the Guardian gives witness to the parts of England that have struggled and been broken in his walk from Liverpool to London—what he found meant he was not surprised, as so many of us were, by the Leave vote ( well worth reading: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/27/liverpool-london-brexit-leave-eu-referendum). People who feel as though they have nothing left—nothing to offer their children nor a future of possibility – won’t weigh the complicated pros and cons but will vote for change.

 

Even as I am trying to understand the forces that would lead one to close borders, add rigor to the us vs. them categories, I am appalled and frightened by the racist & xenophobic attacks that have been unleashed on anyone perceived as foreign—even when they are demonstrably British. In our study of literature, the complexities of identity are a constant theme and this continues to be at the heart of so many struggles. From the realm of the personal and domestic to the larger political and national arenas, who we are and how we are perceived—how others perceive us—is at the core of every relationship.

 

I have been wondering how to be more actively present in this time of upheaval. It is tempting to suggest that one of the key areas for positive change—locally, globally—is education. Those who feel disempowered or left behind in the global economy have not been given the luxury of education I have had; it is that education that allows me to be flexible in work possibilities, giving me confidence to try new configurations and move to different places. A good education that teaches young people to speak up, to think for themselves, critically & thoughtfully question and discover also leads to compassion as one recognizes the possibilities in others with different perspectives and ideas. Otherwise, one greets the other with fear and the sense that this unknown being threatens one’s own precarious hold.

 

In the midst of the despair and agony of the present moment, I seek glimmers of hope. Marching with tens of thousands of others last Saturday celebrating diversity and European culture, wearing a safety pin to openly express a rejection of racist behavior and promise a safe place to anyone experiencing an attack, listening to Bee Rowlatt as we discussed the power of feminism traced back to the incredible Mary Wollstonecraft and hearing the local voices of activism and challenge to our still unequal roles—these are ways to be fed.

 

And even more closely, the incredible discussions I have had the pleasure to be part of in the Salon: engaging Joyce, Proust, Faulkner, Woolf, Transcendentalists, Sophocles in such profound and generous ways: the Salon community feeds hope. I wish I had the brain capacity to translate some of the gems that have been offered in discussions in the past months—perhaps a few weeks of quiet will give room for some necessary reflection. I want my words to reflect the incredible gift of the Salon community and the work we do together. These discussions speak to the best aspects of human possibility: curiosity, openness, sensitivity and community.

 

 

8.7.16 After I wrote this & before I published—two more black men, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile are shot dead in the USA. More people are shot- including active duty police—in a demonstration against racial violence in Dallas.

 

 

“Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.”

― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

The trouble with the BIG life moments is that when I attempt to capture & contain them in language, I hear my own clichés rolling out like chicks and bunnies at Easter. Knowing this doesn’t stop me—although I have in my head Proust’s disgust at the weakness of language re-played—the way this disrespects the moment you are trying to revere.

 

A dear friend and Salon participant died a few weeks ago—died terribly fighting cancer in the vigor and passion of living. I am stuck trying to spin out words to contain this moment and our response to it: how sharply life shows in reflection of death, how the simple moments I hold of him suddenly become precious, easily lost gems, the rage of inequity, the meaninglessness that sneaks into the narratives I attempt to weave around his death.

 

My head is full of words—full of offerings of the best minds around the humbling moments of life and the meaning we seek in spite of the inexplicable horrors and random tragedies– those next to us, or in Lahore, Brussels… I am honored to read at the celebration of my friend’s life- and I choose a favorite passage from Ulysses that is deeply sensuous—infused with  hope in the first passion of new love against the years of living that threaten to diminish those fresh, wild explosions of the heart.

 

I offer Joyce’s beautiful images in a voice strained through tears—and when I have made it- barely- through the reading—I am left choking and empty. How can we shape meaning in the vortex of dying?

But the words continue to hum in my mind, wrapped in the image of my friend—it was a strange choice perhaps for a funeral reading—but the passage evoked my friend’s incredible love for his life partner—and that ultimately was what I wanted to hold against the void.

Below are some quotes that speak to me just now as I move through the aftermath of the rituals of burial, of a weekend bursting with friends visiting from across time, from the daily struggle to wrest meaning from the simple and necessary acts of living in the blast of tragedy, the transcendent recognition of human connections and rituals– and the power of language in literature to try– against the odds– to say what we mean.

 

From Reflections on the Novel as Tool for Survival by Arthur Krystal

 

There is something “primitive” in the great issues that have traditionally concerned writers, Lionel Trilling submitted in “The Meaning of a Literary Idea.” Questions about the nature of thought and man “match easily in the literary mind with the most primitive human relationships. Love, parenthood, incest, patricide: These are what the great ideas suggest in literature, these are the means by which they express themselves.” Completing the thought, Trilling went on to write, “Ideas, if they are large enough and of a certain kind, are not only not hostile to the creative process, as some think, but are virtually inevitable to it. Intellectual power and emotional power go together.”

 

–from http://chronicle.com/article/The-Novel-as-a-Tool-for/235565

 

“Meaning is a shaky edifice we build out of scraps, dogmas, childhood injuries, newspaper articles, chance remarks, old fillms, small victories, people hated, people loved; perhaps it is because our sense of what is the case is constructed from such inadequate materials that we defend it so fiercely, even to death.”

And…

“Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be bloody-minded. Argue with the world. And never forget that writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things–childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves–that go on slipping , like sand, through our fingers.”

― Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991

Our sympathy for fictitious characters can translate into compassion in real life

There was a lovely piece of writing in the Guardian recently about how reading both inspires empathy and connects people. This is not a new revelation for those who have participated in the Salon studies or other book studies. There is a wonderful connectivity that occurs in the presence of great ideas and complex language.

Overall, we need to find new ways to connect across political divisions & differences in world view– across gender divides and national perspectives. Literature offers this opportunity. Every week in the Salon conversations I witness how we learn to respect differing approaches– and use these to enrich our own particular world view.

Here is a selection from this article– I think you would enjoy the whole piece: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jan/17/a-literary-cure-for-loneliness-pick-up-a-book

But there is another important reason why everyone should read more books, and in particular fiction. The responsibility to combat loneliness lies with those who do not suffer from it. Lonely people often feel that there is no one out there, no one who understands them or can share their point of view. They need to know that actually there are. That requires everybody else to make the imaginative leap of feeling that connection, and reading fiction helps. It makes people more empathic – sympathy for fictitious characters can translate into compassion in real life.

The stories of strangers reach us through many means: news bulletins, interviews, biography and memoir, but also drama and fiction. Listening to these carefully, making imaginative connections, walking a mile in their shoes might help turn some of those strangers into real friends.

I always expect more from the New Years’ moment. We invest so much into this idea of the change of the year– that there will be an overturning– a renewal commiserate with the birth of the New Year. When I making plans towards the coming year in December– it just seems impossible– this distance from one year to another– that the holidays will come through with their whirring and sparkle and then slink out –and suddenly its January. I can hardly crack open the new calendar– those fresh pages in an unknown year seem impossible. There should be a kind of metallic grinding as the old gears give in to new or a new spirit of animation replaces the exhausted, dusty old.

Perhaps it doesn’t just happen, I think. The idea of New Years’ resolutions– those claims towards renewal, the commitment to change–are the means we have to turn this organic sense of change into something recognisable. Swimming in Proust means that I am constantly overturning ideas about time: how fragile is our understanding of time’s movement and our shaping within time, and how deeply we struggle to hold time and make the passing days in some way accountable in our scale of meaning.
That is one view of the past days: another, as fitfully captured in the picture above, is the stance towards passing days that focuses on those startling moments: when the moon bursts into the gloaming on a Christmas Eve walk; when dear friends turn up for a brief moment from miles and years away and the conversation yields remarkable insights; when a simple shared meal- a night like any other– suddenly becomes a galvanising moment– a treasure of solidity and laughter. These are the glimmers that light and lighten the way through time– and those moments also that we do not celebrate– those moments that carve us sharper as we meet and move through the tangled forests of the world– all of these become what we are. The passing of the old year into the new gives room for a recognition of how all these become a life.

This poem is a Solstice favourite; connection to the musings above? Perhaps– or just let it sing to you:

Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,
what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.
In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.
And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.

From Sonnets to Orpheus II, 29 by Rainer Maria Rilke

“Man of misery, whose land have I lit on now?

What are they here -violent, savage, lawless?

or friendly to strangers, god-fearing men?”

The Odyssey by Homer- VI, 131-133

In these days of agony—horror at the events in Paris last weekend, further horror at the bombings in Beirut, the hostage taking in Mali…outrage at the response of the politicians in the USA using these events as an excuse to reject those fleeing from the very perpetrators of this terrorism—the words of Odysseus ring in my ears.

At the heart of the Homeric universe is  Xenia: 

(Greek ξενία, xenía): the Greek concept of hospitality, or generosity and courtesy shown to those who are far from home or unknown. It is often translated as “guest-friendship” (or “ritualized friendship”) because the rituals of hospitality created and expressed a reciprocal relationship between guest and host. XENOS (the singular form) translates to: guest, host, foreigner, stranger and friend. For the ancients, stranger is a temporary state that with right protocol translates to friend.

 

Those that do not offer—or go so far as to desecrate- the rituals of hospitality show themselves to be ‘savage, lawless’—and are isolated, rejected and fought if they have invaded.

 

I am thinking about how in the ancient world as humans attempted to move from lives of violent struggle for survival to civilized existence, negotiating the encounter with strangers was vital. The way in which two people come to know each other, the movement from stranger to guest to friend, sits in core of our social system and is the early testament to our ascension into civilization—towards the best of human enterprise.

 

So although members of the US government (along with other anti-immigration advocates in mostly western countries) may not understand this—their response to reject desperate migrants from ravaged places shows their collapse of civilized behavior in the face of fear.

 

At times this past week I have felt frozen with inaction in the face of the deaths and sufferings of the people of Paris—and then appalled by the critique of the efforts on social media as people tried to come to terms with the events and their own fears and sense of helplessness. I sat down to a wonderful group working their way through Proust’s epic and felt the absurdity of discussing social manipulations and aristocratic degeneracy while the world burns. Unlike a dear friend who is dedicating her work to the Syrian migrants, I sit here in North London and agonize and promote reading literature.

 

I do not think that however iron clad we make our borders, however much we employ surveillance on ourselves or those we have defined as our enemies, we will ever eradicate terrorism until people everywhere have homes that are safe and food to eat and the freedom to live as they choose. I am so appreciative of the glimpses of defiant life in Paris following the attacks—the spontaneous choruses of La Marseillaise, the demonstrations, the cartoons and rejection of fear and hatred on the part of the Parisian people—even, and especially—those who lost loved ones in the attacks.

 

This offers the best response to the inhumanity shown by the IS/ISIS/ Daesh militants—along with the xenophobic US representatives. Live in a way that models civilized, progressive human behavior over violent and random inhumanity: and that means welcoming people in need, negotiating with right protocol your encounter with a stranger, offering a meal before you ask someone to tell their story. We can probably skip the offer of a bath with the scented oil rubdown as the precursor to the sharing of food and drink—although maybe that would help.

 

I accept that refusing to treat every migrant as a terrorist may mean that I will suffer—that me or my family or someone in my community will be killed because desperate people are rejecting the claims of the civilized society. I also understand that safety is not a guaranteed right –because my safety usually comes at the expense of another’s: for me to be absolutely safe the enforcing powers would make some assumptions about who is good and who is evil (always those defined as outsiders) and reject those whose profile causes concern. It seems to me a kind of arrogance that suggests I deserve to be totally safe while Syrian children are sleeping in freezing forest as their desperate parents risk everything to scrape out a life away from immediate fear.

 

In Ancient Greece, communities would take the risk of welcoming a stranger into their midst not knowing if their hospitality would be reciprocated with gifts or blood. Taking that risk: offering humanity first outweighed the risk that the stranger would respond inhumanely. In parts of Greece today, that same generosity is still being enacted as refugees are brought to shore on the island of Rhodes, Lesbos and other shores.

Imagine that, from beginning of the Syrian civil war, the Western countries had responded by spending billions on aid instead of the billions spent on military response—on supporting Turkey, Lebanon, Greece and Jordan in welcoming the migrants –how would this have changed the perceptions of Syrians toward the West?

 

Coming out of ten years of fighting the Trojan War, Odysseus had to learn to approach strangers & unknown communities without the impulse to attack. Here I may find the start of action in the face of my helplessness: approach the stranger with humanity. Accept the risk that there are people who have learned inhuman responses—but I will not let their inhumanity instruct mine.

 

Sometimes you need to return to the source to retrace the outlines– where you have been, what you are and why….though these are the questions that drive us forward into our lives. It is too easy to become distracted with the daily rhythms and not pull yourself up- look around, and remember what you have missed. The Paris Salon group was the source of the original Salon and worked through the early bumps and learning curve as we figured out together how to engage deeply with literature and how to open each other up and into the beauty of language, the challenge and wonder of our humanity. So it is a great gift to return to Paris and offer a new study in the astonishing power of Toni Morrison’s art.

November 27th Salon Intensive on Toni Morrison’s A Mercy 5:30- 10 PM Register here.

The next set of Paris Salons will be in February the weekend of 13th-15th. Please vote now (contact me) as to preferred books for study: William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, Beowulf, Shakespeare: what’s your pleasure?

See you in the Parisian pages…