A rosehip neuron and pyramidal neuron*
How far it is between the stars, yet how much farther
what is right here. The distance, for instance,
between a child and one who walks by —
oh how incredibly far.
Not only in measurable spans does Fate
move through our lives.
Think how great the distance between a young girl
and the boy she avoids and loves.
Everything is far, nowhere does the circle close.
See, on the plate upon the festive table
how strangely the fish is staring.
Fish are mute, we used to think. Who knows?
But is there not a place where what would be
the fishes’ language is spoken without them?
~ Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus 2, 20
Oriana:
I realize how strange the last stanza is. I went to the German original to make sure: yes, this is pretty much a literal translation in all its crazy glory.
What I love about this Sonnet to Orpheus is not so much the wildness of the fish ending (though that too), as the leap from the physical distance between the stars to psychological distance.
Mary:
Those last two lines are tantalizing, mind ending, an amazing imaginative leap.
Klee: Der Goldfisch*
THE STRANGE STORY OF THE LITTLE DANCER BY DEGAS
~ “She is famous the world over, but how many people know her name? You can admire her in Washington, Paris, London, New York, Dresden, and Copenhagen, but where is her grave? All we know is her age, 14, and the work she did, because it truly was work, at an age when our own children are attending school. In the 1880s, she danced as a little rat (as girls in training for the corps de ballet were known) at the Paris Opera, and what seems like a dream to many of our young girls today was not a dream to her, not the happy age of youth.
The little dancer's name was Marie Genevieve van Goethem. She was born in Paris in 1865, the middle of three daughters of parents who had moved from Belgium to Paris in an unsuccessful attempt to escape poverty. By the time Marie reached double-digits, her father was long gone, "either dead or returned to Belgium," and her mother, a laundress, did what she could to make ends meet by indenturing all three daughters to become trainees for the corps de ballet at the Paris Opera, who were known as “little rats.” The harsh, physically torturous life these girls endured evokes Les Misérables, and makes it clear that this financial transaction was a form of child slavery rather than the enrichment and privilege that characterizes little girls' ballet lessons today.
The little dancer was sent home after a few years’ work, when the director grew tired of seeing her miss rehearsal—eleven times in the last trimester alone.
But the reason was that she had another job, possibly two other jobs, because the pittance she earned at the Paris Opera was not enough to feed her and her family. She was an artist’s model, posing for painters and sculptors. Among them was Edgar Degas. Did she know as she posed in his studio that, thanks to him, she would die less completely than the other girls? Stupid question—as though the work counted for more than the life. It would have been no feather in her cap to know that, a century after her death, people would still be buzzing around her in the high-ceilinged halls of museums just as the fine gentlemen in the foyer of the Paris Opera did, that she would still be examined up and down and from all sides, just as she was in the seamy dives where she may have sold her body on orders from her mother—her frail body, now turned to bronze. But maybe it did make a difference, maybe she did think about it sometimes. Who can say?
When she posed for her employer for hours on end, growing tired in what was supposedly a “rest” position, one leg forward, hands clasped behind her back, silent, did she consider that Monsieur Degas had enough talent to make her famous too, that her little walk-on role would one day make her a star? Did she imagine such a future for herself—a fame that the ballet world would never grant her? It’s possible. After all, little girls do have their dreams.
What I hope, as I look at her in triptych on a postcard—back, front, and profile—bought at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, is that she was oblivious to all that was said about her during the first exhibition of the Little Dancer. Although it wasn’t exactly said about her. Do you know the story of Cézanne’s portrait of his wife? Some people stopped in front of it and said, “What a hag!” while others said, “What a masterpiece!” Which counts for more, the painting or the model, art or nature? Does the work of art console us for what happens in life? Certainly, the little dancer was not expounding on the relation between actuality and representation. Nor was anyone else.
Almost all who saw it [first], sensitive and cultured as they were, reacted with horror to the Little Dancer. This isn’t art! some people said. What a monster! Said others. An abortion! An ape! She would look better in a zoological museum, opined a countess. She has the depraved look of a criminal, said another. “How very ugly she is!” said a young dandy. “She’ll do better as a rat at the Opera than as a pussy at the bordello!” One journalist wondered, “Does there truly exist an artist’s model this horrid, this repulsive?” A woman essayist for the British review Artist described her as looking “half idiotic,” “with her Aztec head and expression.” “Can Art descend any lower?” she asked. Such depravity! Such ugliness! The work and the model were conjoined in a single tide of disapproval, a wave of hostility and hatred whose virulence surprises us today. “This barely pubescent little girl, a flower of the gutter,” had made her entry into the history of artistic revolutions.
Marie had not slept with Degas, as far as we know. She hadn’t read the accounts in the newspapers either—she’d been obliged to leave school early and barely knew how to read or write. The sculpture received few favorable reviews. The nicest came from Nina de Villard, companion to the poet Charles Cros, who visited the exhibition and wrote: “I felt before this statuette one of the strongest artistic sensations I’ve ever experienced: I have long been dreaming of exactly this.” Marie wouldn’t have seen the review. And no one would have read her Huysmans’s encomiums, directed at the artist in any case, not at her. The critic praised Degas for acting boldly, for overthrowing all the conventions of sculpture, “all the models endlessly recopied over the centuries” to produce a work “so original, so fearless . . . truly modern.” But Huysmans was pitiless in his description of the little dancer, with her “sickly, grayish face, old and drawn before its time.” I like to think that in posing for the great artist with that defiant air, which the critic Paul Mantz characterized in the following day’s Le Temps as “bestial effrontery,” Marie foresaw the scandalized reaction of the moneyed set and responded to it in advance with that look of insolent detachment. And I like to believe that it speaks of her freedom, rising above all hindrances, a twin to Degas’s own, yet very much hers, calm and nearly smiling, chin up, her personal freedom.
When the stormy Salon of 1881 closed, Degas brought his Little Dancer home and never showed it again to anyone. It gathered dust in a corner of the studio, visibly darkening, piled up among other sculptures, its tutu in shreds, next to ballet slippers and photographs of dancers.
It was only after his death in 1917 that more than 150 wax statuettes, found at his home in a greater or lesser state of deterioration, were given conservation treatment, the Little Dancer Aged Fourteen among them. But Degas’s close circle did not let time walk over the Little Dancer. After hesitating about whether to restore it for sale as a unique piece, the family decided to send it to the A. A. Hébrard foundry in Paris. There, thanks to the painter Paul-Albert Bartholomé, a friend of Degas, 22 bronze casts of the Little Dancer were made, after an initial plaster mold, then patinated to better imitate the original wax, and finally dispersed to various museums and private collections.
This quick and dirty decision by Degas’s heirs, which showed little respect for the artist’s personality and wishes, was seen by some as a betrayal. Yet making reproductions of the original did not, as Mary Cassatt had feared, detract from the work’s artistic value, and the casts were remarkably faithful. Looking at auction catalogs, we learn that one cast, which included the original clothes, was sold in 1971 for $380,000. Another was auctioned at Sotheby’s for more than £13 million. The work has inspired investors. At the start of the 21st century, Sir John Madejski, owner of the Reading Football Club, bought the sculpture for £5 million and sold it five years later for £12 million. We won’t editorialize on the gross unfairness of the worlds of art and finance, knowing how many painters ended up in mass graves whose works now slumber in safe-deposit vaults.
When it came to the Little Dancer, the administrators of the French national museums paid scant attention to the original wax version: it was allowed to leave the country for $160,000. Bought in 1956 by an American citizen, Mr. Paul Mellon, it has been in the United States ever since, a development Degas might have approved of, since he himself spent time in Louisiana, where his mother was born and a part of his family lived. He adored sprinkling his conversation with English words and would probably not have objected to the expatriation of his work, having considered emigrating himself at one point. In Paris, only one posthumous bronze casting with tutu and ribbon is on view—at the Musée d’Orsay.
https://lithub.com/the-story-of-an-iconic-statue-behind-degass-little-dancer/?fbclid=IwAR1iCbtW1-hRA6mPqN3w8sgCy7PTYMt_bVc1x1q8DGX7MQxPcGhu-4dm8S0
Mary:
The horrified reactions to Degas' Little Dancer are a wonderful exposition of a tension, a dichotomy, central to art. It may be phrased as 'art versus nature,' but that is a simplification. The 14 year old little "rat" who posed for Degas was poor, exploited, child labor, who, as the article notes danced in the Opera in training for the corps de ballet, but likely had other jobs as well, to patch together enough for survival. And one of those jobs might well have involved selling that young "ugly" "Aztec" "abortion" "ape"s body on the streets, to just the kind of "gentlemen" expressing such sentiments of outrage and offended sensibility.
So here is a little guttersnipe of a girl who so possessed the artist's imagination he reworked her image again and again, left it in wax, still malleable, unfinished, unfixed. And yet her stance, her lifted chin, her expression, are solid and unshakable, impossible to dismiss or forget.
The fact that she is a dancer is particularly important. In dance the raw material is the body itself, all the dense solidity of flesh...transformed by motion in time into something fleeting, ephemeral, the gesture in tension with rest, inertia, the body as matter. Both poles are necessary for art , which comes into existence in the dynamic between them. For the corps de ballet to exist, you need the little rat. And in her stance, her pose, lies the potential unfolding of the dance. In its culmination we come to the question of knowing "the dancer from the dance” — and the answer that at once we can and cannot.
I am reminded of the first time I saw live ballet, from a seat near the orchestra. There was all that beauty and grace, the exquisite harmonies and perfection of movement....and the thudding of the dancers feet hitting the stage floor with every pas and jeté.
Oriana:
A friend who read a different article about The Little Dancer said that the trainees were called “little rats” because rats transmit disease, and those girls allegedly transmitted syphilis. So we start with a charming (to us moderns), marvelous statue, and then the more we learn, the more the ugliness grows and grows. Poor child . . .
*
“I am for small nations. Small nations mean small catastrophes. Big nations mean big catastrophes…” ~ C.G. Jung
Switzerland: Aescher Hotel*
Ah, those gray-white foggy Novembers. First look in the morning out the window, and the streets are bandaged in fog. It's a kind of wounded tenderness. Impossible to explain to people who didn't grow up in one of those mysterious northern cities. This is Leningrad, 1957. Just the name Leningrad is a shard of nostalgia. Forget history, forget literature. It's simply about having grown up in a northern climate. Note the streetcar departing into the fog. Streetcar! Fog! Oh the lost ecstasies . . .
photo: David Korovin
FROM RUSSIA WITH HOPE: TIME-CAPSULE LETTERS FROM 1968 TO THE SOVIET YOUTH OF 2018 UNEARTHED IN RUSSIA
~ “PERESLAVL-ZALESSKY, Russia — On a crisp afternoon last month, a couple hundred people gathered on the main square of this small town a few hours north of Moscow to witness a historic event: the unearthing of a letter written half a century ago in Soviet Pereslavl to the youth of 2018.
The letter, written by young people in 1968, had been sealed in a metal cylinder shaped like a rocket — no doubt in homage to Yuri Gagarin’s triumphant venture into space, which took a few years before the capsule was buried under a small gray pedestal. Photos from the 1968 ceremony show locals bundled in coats and quilted jackets under the square’s statue of Vladimir Lenin, his disproportionately long arm pointing over their heads toward the undoubtedly bright Communist future in the 21st century.
“We bequeath to you the ardent love for the great leader of the working class Vladimir Lenin,” the letter says. “Create a beautiful monument to Vladimir Ilyich, the palace of Communism, a great and worthy manifestation of his immortal ideas!”
Fifty years later, Russia under President Vladimir Putin looks pretty different from what Lenin or his followers imagined. The Pereslavl Lenin himself suffered an unfortunate fate a year ago, when construction workers rebuilding the square knocked off his arm and then encased the one-armed body in a plywood box. A sign on the box now denotes the traditional “location” of Vladimir Ilyich, a 1929 monument under state protection. Locals aren’t certain he is still inside.
Letters to the future were a widespread phenomenon in the Soviet Union in 1967 and ’68. Those years were characterized for the Soviet masses by the fantasy of space exploration and the introduction of the two-day weekend, the first time since World War II that workers didn’t have to work six days a week. The letters were written to commemorate a half century since the 1917 revolution and the establishment a year later of the Komsomol, the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League. They reflected the dream of a more comfortable future, one where ordinary people could finally enjoy the fruits of grueling labor of generations before them.
“You work and live in a Communist society which we have begun to build, our generation: the pupil of Lenin’s Komsomol, Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin unveiled the first space routes, while you fly to other planets,” says a handwritten letter unveiled in October in Sedelnikovo, a Siberian village.
“We are building, building, building,” reads a letter in the city of Tobolsk, listing hardships during construction of a railroad through the swamps to western Siberia’s oil fields. “We believe that in 2018 people will be safe from war and hunger. The world will be more just than it is today and there will be no capitalists left.”
Unveiling and reading these letters over the past two years, as the quality of life for most Russians declines, has inspired bittersweet contemplation. While the two-day weekend is still around, another institution of the Soviet era, the state pension, has taken a hit: a reform pushed by Mr. Putin will raise the retirement age next year to 60 from 55 for women and to 65 from 60 for men. (These reforms have been especially unpopular and are widely believed to be responsible for a sharp decline in the popularity of United Russia, the majority party, and of Mr. Putin himself.) The remnants of other benefits of the Soviet welfare state — like free health care and education — continue going through “optimization,” the preferred Russian euphemism for budget cuts.
The sense of injustice is rising, especially outside big cities. Even the optimistic television coverage of a new bridge to Crimea and the reports of military victories in Syria are showing signs of wear. A study by the Institute of Sociology by the Russian Academy of Sciences published this month found that Russians’ priorities have changed since late 2014, when many celebrated the annexation of Crimea. Today, more people believe that projecting great power and military might is less important than a fair society and people’s well-being. Russians may have given up the idea of Communism and a government of workers and peasants, but they still want the state to ensure their economic survival.
Despite Mr. Putin’s proclamations about economic growth, analysis shows that Russians are increasingly pessimistic. An October study by the Higher School of Economics found that consumer confidence has fallen sharply. Despite economic growth over the past two years, rising oil prices and macroeconomic stability (if we are to believe official state statistics) have not provided much relief to the average household. In fact, Russians are more jaded than they have been in years.
The busts of various Marxist luminaries in Grutas Park, LithuaniaThe Kremlin has tried to contain public dissatisfaction by appointing a flock of new governors this fall, but micromanaging the brewing social discontent is unlikely to work, said Vitaly Pashkov, a local entrepreneur and activist in Pereslavl, which in September elected a City Council dominated by members of parties other than United Russia — a rarity.
Pereslavl was one place to which a new mayor with his team from Moscow region had been sent to patch things up after a previous mayor was jailed in 2016. Mr. Pashkov calls this type of Moscow-appointed official a “nomad manager” who has no connection to the region. “Their main concern is to build their careers and make money” before moving elsewhere, Mr. Pashkov said.
The nomad mayor spent two years in Pereslavl and then moved on to take over another, bigger city — but not before single-handedly liquidating the town’s pride: its small university that produced I.T. specialists. The mayor simply ordered that the struggling institution move out of the municipally owned buildings it had been using free for 25 years, which led it to lose its education ministry license.
Sergei Abramov, a mathematician who was the university’s rector and now directs a local research institute, predicted that losing the university would eventually cause Pereslavl to lose a quarter of its population, in line with trends in similar Russian towns where higher education had been “optimized.”
Local discussion of the letter from 1968 has been bitter, Mr. Abramov said: “And us? What are we leaving for future generations?”
“Prices are growing, bills are growing, you only think of how to manage not to be a burden for your children,” said Asya Shobanova, a retired engineer who in 1968 sealed the letter in the rocket-shaped capsule. She didn’t have illusions about the Soviet system, but back then she found justice during an important dispute with her boss, when a local prosecutor came to her defense. “There is no justice now, just routine, instability, fear and lack of confidence,” she said.
Mr. Pashkov remembered that even when he was growing up in the ’80s, Pereslavl was developing new residential neighborhoods. These days, one of the town’s few development projects was renovation of the town square and its “house of culture” community center. Not only did that cost Lenin his arm; it also risked injuring the living when the newly renovated portico collapsed a month after reopening. Shiny new plastic panels were simply covering up the rotting frame of the building.
“That sort of characterizes today’s system,” Mr. Pashkov said, “where you have a modern finish outside but internally it’s complete decay.” ~
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/21/opinion/sunday/russia-economy-optimism-confidence.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&fbclid=IwAR1inMdShFshjelAKkuJEl30madc_JmOEvnpr9hdMRUDI22h7mrzooVvuXU
Oriana:
I hope that the readers don’t get overly fixated on Russia per se — and the change from the Soviet Union to Putin’s Russia (who some see as just the latest in the long line of Russia’s authoritarian leaders). What interests me more is the universal theme: the predictions made in mid-twentieth century for the year 2000 and beyond. Those predictions, regardless of the country, tended to be rosy in the extreme: no more cancer and other dreaded diseases, no more famine, no more war; universal prosperity, clean, gleaming cities with futuristic transportation; beautiful and extensive “green belts” around those cities; robots doing all sorts of tasks that we regard as drudgery (aside from changing a baby’s diapers; no seer dares to come close to that subject); climate control so there is neither drought nor flood. And of course extensive space travel, with colonies on the Moon and on Mars, along with the search for more planets suitable for humans.
Oh, and the average life span was supposed to be 150 — in perfect health of course, so it’s left unsaid how anyone’s life comes to an end. A few most daring prophets even suggested “e-mortality” (e standing for “eventual”) — a very long existence, with odds finally catching up to an individual — an accident during space travel, say.
Now, the article doesn’t quote from the letters extensively enough for us to know for sure if the Soviet youth of 1968 entertained those utopian prospects, but I suspect they did — and it would be somewhat boring to be repeating certain universal themes and perennial hopes. I for one remember articles in popular magazines (whether Polish or American) that spelled out exactly that kind of future paradise. At the same time there were articles about the predictions made in the nineteenth century about the twentieth century, and how laughable those were — for instance, women in corsets and crinolines traveling by balloon to visit their aged but perfectly healthy parents (all disease had long been conquered, along with famine, poverty, wars, and other pesky problems). And somehow no one drew the logical conclusion that any predictions end up being mostly laughable, and that paradise keeps eluding us.
While we may chuckle to see that the Soviet youth predicted the continued existence of the Soviet Union and the expansion of communism to include the whole world (“no more capitalists left”), let me remind you that no one in 1968, or even much later, foresaw the end of the Soviet empire. We predict what is familiar to us — just a grander, better version of it.
Religious wars in the twenty-first century? The idea would have seemed utterly ridiculous in 1968. More floods and droughts related to climate change? The most pessimistic scientists foresaw a new ice age — but many centuries from now, at a time when, if the worst comes to worst, humans would simply leave the earth for other planets.
Are humans wired for irrational optimism? Apparently so.
But the article omits the universal elements found in futuristic predictions, and focuses on how Russia changed in many ways for the worse — as if the rest of the world did not complain of rising prices and lower benefits, unwinnable perpetual wars, religious and political fanaticism, the spread of dictatorships, economic and ever-more threatening environmental problems.
To be sure, there are matters here that are specifically Russian: poor Lenin losing his arm and being locked in a box (if he’s even there); the mere façade of modernity hiding the shabby decay; the renewed militarism and macho posturings of bare-chested Putin.
And this brings me to the next article, one that requires no comment:
PUTIN AS RUSSIA’S MACHO HUSBAND
~ “Putin in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s was the opposite of sexy. A modest KGB officer working on the sidelines who grew to be a quiet bureaucrat and evolved into a tough but self-effacing ruler, a man without qualities, an invisible man, “a man without a face,” as Masha Gessen calls him in her seminal biography.
The first and rather shocking awareness of Putin’s sexiness came to people a few years before the election of 2012, after a series of photos depicting him in the midst of bold and striking adventures appeared in the press.
There was Putin in 2009, vacationing in Siberia. Climbing trees. Having simple meals with villagers. Swimming in freezing Siberian rivers. Diving in the world’s deepest lake, Baikal. Riding horses down the rugged terrain while shirtless.
Then there was Putin in 2010 hunting a whale off the coast of Kamchatka Peninsula. Choppy waters, steel-gray sky, Putin dressed in macho red and black colors leaning over the edge of a rubber boat, aiming his dart gun with great concentration. He did manage to kill a whale (or rather, his team managed to create the impression that he had). The mission was a great success.
But if the [stunts were] merely suggestive of Putin’s sexual prowess, there were other, more transparent publicity tricks. The most amazing of them was the series of videos credited to an advertising agency Aldus ADV.
In one of them, a young Russian woman asks a fortune-teller about her intended. “It’s my first time,” she confides, “I want it to be for love.” Everything in the scene, from the woman’s words to her nervousness suggests that she’s about to lose her virginity. The fortune-teller pulls a card, and guess who is on it? You’re absolutely right, Vladimir Putin! Because who else would be better at taking your virginity with love?
Another video of the series shows a young woman in a doctor’s office. Her concern is the same. She wants her first time to happen just right. The doctor talks to her about the importance of protection. Safety is important, especially during the first time (I’d say it’s equally important during subsequent attempts, but let’s stay on topic). And just then the camera shifts to the calendar on the wall. Now, guess who is on that calendar? You’re right again, Vladimir Putin! Because who else is responsible enough to ensure the needed level of protection during your first time? After that we follow the young woman to the polls. She looks enthusiastic, and we’re confident that she’ll make the “right” choice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=VxU-WUtza9c
The Aldus ADV agency said to the press that it created the clips with the aim of targeting younger voters and making them excited about taking part in the elections. But I think they also targeted a much larger demographic by planting the idea of Putin as a strong and capable lover.
Historically, all the other Russian leaders—from the tsars to Lenin and Stalin—were seen as Russia’s stern but fair fathers or sometimes even as frail grandfathers (like Brezhnev in later years). The great change came with Gorbachev, a West-oriented, liberal figure who positioned himself as a cool uncle rather than boring father, which was met with either admiration or ridicule by the Russian population, or often with both admiration and ridicule. And then there was Yeltsin, who presided over Russia during the years following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Yeltsin further developed Gorbachev’s liberal reforms, but the country kept experiencing unbearable political humiliations as well as being on the verge of economic collapse. Cultural elites were enjoying previously unimaginable freedoms—literature, film, media projects all flourished, journalists weren’t afraid to speak their minds. But at the same time, the general population suffered from real poverty, just as the newly minted oligarchs kept appropriating the country’s resources and flaunting their unimaginable wealth. Ordinary Russian didn’t appreciate the freedom of speech and other tenets of democracy all that much. Most of them would have certainly preferred some stability. Yeltsin, with his flailing politics and boozy TV appearances came to be regarded as a weak alcoholic husband, the one that would flaunt his largess while drinking his wages away and draining the family’s finances, a sadly familiar figure in many Russian households. Back then, a lot of people felt that Russia didn’t have a chance to survive let alone regain power, unless it had a much stronger leader.
And just then Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned, and Putin took his place as acting president—a quiet, “faceless,” seemingly unthreatening man who quickly established himself as a savvy, determined, and unusually ruthless politician.
There is an unconfirmed anecdote from Putin’s first year in power that reveals his true character as a leader. The second Chechen war was going on, and there was no end in sight. The Russian Army surrounded Groznyj, the capital of Chechnya, yet the Chechen fighters refused to give it up. The only way to seize the city was to carpet bomb it. While the majority of the population had gone, there were still plenty of civilians stuck within Groznyj’s walls, a lot of them elderly and disabled, tens of thousands or perhaps even hundreds of thousands of people. All of them Russian citizens. Top Russian military officials had an emergency meeting with Putin, still an acting president at the time, to assess the situation. One after another, seasoned generals would stand up and say that, no, the Russian Army couldn’t possibly bomb Groznyj, when so many Russian civilians would be killed. And then it was Putin’s turn to speak. He said: “We have to bomb it.” There was a deadly silence in the room, after which everybody present understood that Putin was a true ruler of Russia and he was there to stay. Russian troops seized Groznyj soon after that, while razing most of it in the process.
Putin’s ruthlessness allowed him to reestablish Russian power in all kinds of different aspects. He severely restricted the most vociferous oligarchs, imprisoning some while banishing others and appropriating their assets. He poured a lot of money into the Russian military, basically restoring its strength. He instigated some important reforms to help Russia’s economy grow (rising oil prices didn’t hurt either), which helped the Russian population emerge from poverty. But perhaps more importantly, he restored Russian national pride. In the eyes of the Russian general population, Putin “made Russia great again.” Or rather, strong and scary again. And when he smothered new freedoms and silenced the opposition, the general Russian population didn’t seem to mind.
This image of a macho husband was in perfect sync with the movement to restore the old Russia’s values that had been destroyed after the revolution of 1917, to reestablish the power of the Russian Orthodox Church, and create conditions for the general revival of Russian patriarchal traditions. In January of 2017, domestic violence laws were changed to make the punishment for offending husbands less severe. Before, a husband who repeatedly beat his wife would be sentenced to several years in jail. Now all he will get is a fine, which will probably hurt the family more than him, making the wives reluctant to report any violence whatsoever. It looks like it is only a matter of time before Domostroy, the infamous 16th-century set of domestic rules, will be resurrected, along with the required tyrannical domination by a husband.
There is an old saying that is still uncomfortably popular in Russia: “He doesn’t love you if he doesn’t beat you.” Which means that the only reason the husband wouldn’t beat his wife is that he doesn’t care about her. And it’s obvious that beatings are done for the wife’s own good. The saying suggests that the beatings are not just acceptable, but desirable, a symbol of marital attention and love. And this is precisely the type of husband that Russia got in the person of Putin. He does horrible things that often badly hurt Russian citizens, but the Russian population is okay with that. He is tough but sexy, he is full of care and love. Because, you know, he doesn’t love you if he doesn’t beat you.
Here is how this logic works. The West applies sanctions against Russia. Putin’s response is to apply his own sanctions that say “fuck you” to the West but actually hurt Russian citizens. The ban on foreign adoptions of Russian orphans is just one example. The ban on Western food import that is about to be followed by the ban on Western medications is another. The West is humiliated, the Russian pride is preserved. And so what if the Russian people would not have access to their medications and Russian orphans would have to rot in the badly managed state institutions?
Terrorists seize buildings, like the Moscow theater in 2002 or Beslan elementary school in 2004, and take hostages. Putin refuses to negotiate. He orders the attacks by the Russian armed forces, killing more than half of the hostages in the process (including small children). 204 hostages died in Moscow. 334 died in Beslan, 186 of them children.
The deaths don’t really matter, because Putin has shown to the world that the Russians are too tough to negotiate with terrorists. He doesn’t love you unless he beats you.
In 2014, Putin annexed Crimea, which started an unofficial war with Ukraine, Russia’s closest and historically most trusted neighbor. Many more Russian lives were lost. But the general population rejoiced—Putin managed to flip the West and regain some of the formerly Russian territories. It’s uplifting, it’s invigorating, it’s sexy to have a leader who is making your country “great again.”
So sexy it hurts. Really hurts badly.” ~
https://lithub.com/on-the-manufactured-sex-appeal-of-vladimir-putin/?fbclid=IwAR0ukRLgYn-2j0HCx4Pamj6mdkir00SQ2couUCSCLJVR91iLD__08OiYl6A
Vladimir Putin at a younger age: the "faceless man"Mary:
As for all that Soviet optimism and romance, sometimes I think cultures (I won't say nations because it's more and older than that) each develop their own mythology — stories that reflect history, but also habit, tradition, our most cherished wishes and deepest fears. Like the US and the Wild West — a story we tell ourselves that is only tenuously connected, and only briefly, to actual history, but gives shape to our imaginations in ways we are hardly conscious of. So for Russia, the terrible, powerful rulers, the long habit of authoritarian rule, wild men and wife beaters, a legacy like a bad fairy tale set on repeat.
Oriana:
Is there a single country or culture that could endure a truly honest examination of its history? Of course there has to be a lot of omission and idealizing. Poland has its heroism and martyrdom as its main framework, and the current authoritarian government is doing all it can to further “patriotic education.”
The young seem to be always swinging back and forth between idealism and cynicism. But these days there is a lot more information available, and a diversity of perspectives. Not that I can quite explain why, the first time I encountered the phrase “God and Fatherland” on a pre-ward postcard, I immediately felt nauseous. I was still a child, but that seemed so utterly arrogant and absurd, especially in a small country (and it’s a blasphemy if you think about it, and idolatry). Maybe my decision to leave Poland at the first opportunity arose right then, though I didn’t consciously think of it. All I knew was that I was disgusted — and even horrified since people were ready to die for that grandiose delusion.
(Or used to be. These days there isn't quite the willingness to die that seems to permeate the past. I suspect it's because life has become more pleasant, more worth living and more interesting than the promised pie in the sky.)
Nationalism is like the toxic masculinity, though I don’t mean to say that women are exempt. In fact women are vulnerable to be literally in love with the Supreme Leader, who up close is more of a pathetic clown, definitely devoid of wisdom. Plato told us. The Chinese sages told us. All serious thinkers have been telling us the same forever. But what counts is the façade, the persona, the mass hypnosis, the supposed need for a “strong leader” (and if he beats you, well, that shows how much he loves his people).
Gerald Ford and Leonid Brezhnev in Vladivostok, 1974. Brezhnev started out as a virile, lustful “strong leader.” The coat that Brezhnev is trying on was a gift from Ford. **
MILOSZ: THE TRUE REVOLUTIONARIES WERE THE POETS AND THE ARTISTS
~ “Our epoch began somewhere around the end of the eighteenth, the beginning of the nineteenth century, and should be viewed as a whole. It is distinguished by a central philosophical problem ripening slowly as a result of the criticism directed at traditional Christian beliefs and aristocratic institutions, monarchy chief among them. . . . The true revolutionaries were the poets and the artists, even the most ethereal and least bloodthirsty of them, because they cleared the way; that is, they acted as the organizers of the collective imagination in a new dimension, that of man’s solitude as a species.” ~ Czeslaw Milosz
Artists began that revolution already during the Renaissance (for instance, celebrating the beauty of the human body). We are still undergoing the transition away from the oppressive hierarchical culture toward the culture of human rights and dignity — without gods and demons, and — “hope springs eternal” — eventually without dictators.
Milosz about to enter the heaven of his last apartment in Krakow, 1997*
“There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract quantum physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature.” ~ Niels Bohr
Einstein and Bohr, Brussels, 1920 *
A SIDE NOTE ON POETS AND ARTISTS KEEPING THE CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY ALIVE
I'm almost moved to tears when I think of the fact that poets, writers, painters, and composers have kept the wonderful stories of the classical mythology alive for century after century. The temples were razed, the groves burned, but we still know about Demeter and Persephone, Orpheus and Eurydice, Odysseus, and much more. The concept of the Three Fates was very useful, for instance — you could blame the Fates or “the gods” having sport with us, while you were not allowed to blame the Judeo-Christian god.
At first — this includes Dante and Milton — the Greco-Roman gods and heroes were regarded as having actually existed. The concept of mythology didn't emerge for a while. Comparative mythology began as a field of study only in the 19th century. But it’s obvious that already Ovid did not literally believe in the myths he so beautifully preserved.
Speaking of Ovid: the Maenads being turned into oak trees, and Io as a cow visiting her parents and scratching “IO” in the dirt with her hoof are among my favorite pages. And just being turned into flowers and constellations — how beautiful, and how far from the stick and carrot of the heaven-hell mentality.
Some high schools offer classes in mythology. It should be universal. Young people need to encounter the concept of mythology, how we draw lessons from the stories without taking them literally. Psyche and Eros is a particularly didactic story — think of all the symbolic tasks that Psyche is given. I felt very enriched by a Jungian reading of it. There is also a superb Jungian book by Jean Shinoda Bolen on Wagner's Ring. You can remove the Jungian terminology, and it still makes brilliant sense.
If more people saw the bible as mythology we could have some open debate about interpretations — open discussion is a great tradition of the Western culture. The hands-off treatment of religion, “we mustn't offend” sort of spineless “tolerance” only keeps the darkness in. More light, more light!
*
Sometimes I feel puzzled by the charm of classical myths. They are full of terrible events, really, and perhaps we should be as repelled by them as we are by certain bible stories, e.g. the she-bear mauling little boys for making fun of Elisha's bald head. And yet we are charmed. Part of it may indeed be the flowers and constellations that various characters are turned into. Another factor is perhaps that we don't feel we are being moralized. And perhaps the very fact that there are many gods makes it a more friendly kind of reality. Sure, the gods were often cruel, but we don't take them seriously — they were never used to frighten us.
NOT GREAT IDEAS, BUT SMALL PLEASURES
~ “If humanism has a message it is not the fatuous one of progressivism that says everything will always get better — but the real one of the all-night dentist at his lonely, well-lit chair, many pains can be relieved, for more and more people. And the good feeling after is not an illusion but a weekend's worth of wonder. For millennia, the world has had a toothache — and thanks to use of critical reason applied to the problems of human pain, we do better. We have Novocain and electric drills and all-night dentists with well-washed hands.
The job of modern humanists is . . . to make the thrill of the ameliorative, the joy of small reliefs. To make those things as sufficient to live by as they are good to experience.
We cannot cure existential anxiety, but we can show that there is no necessity to have big ideas worth dying for in order to find small pleasures worth living for. Some days, or late nights, I think we do this a bit better than we once did. Other days I think that the endless cycle of anxiety, of needless panic and false promises, will win. It is, perhaps, my chief remaining worry.” ~
Adam Gopnik, Four Types of Anxiety and How to Cure Them
Oriana:
In my early youth, I longed to live for a great idea. It’s been quite a journey to discover how imperfect great ideas are, how the good is not separable from the bad. Maturity brought gratitude for small pleasures.
By the way, at first I thought that the the lonely “all-night dentist” must be a painting by Edward Hopper that I have somehow missed — maybe because it got overshadowed by his famous “Nighthawks.” But no, no dentist, diurnal or nocturnal, was ever painted by Hopper — a sad omission. There are, however, dental emergency clinics that are open 24 hours. They probably charge plenty, but — bless them.
Yes, it’s being able to put the week’s groceries into my little Toyota rather than daily drag two heavy bags home like a beast of burden, the way I saw many women in my childhood, that is one of “ameliorative pleasures” that makes life better, easier, less stressful. Having been able to build a patio that stops the sun from blasting into my kitchen and making it a hot hell-hole. Which reminds me: air conditioning, another blessing to be thankful for. It uses electricity and it bothers my sinuses — but then nothing is perfect, and there is a price for everything. Some things about life remain eternal — there is a price for every improvement. But it is often worth paying.
My teenage self would be appalled reading this essay. What? Instead of serving some great ideal I am praising small pleasures? To that young self I’d reply that simply enjoying life IS a great ideal. Happiness is a great ideal, rather than suffering —not to mention dying, and especially killing, for an abstraction.
It was poetry, in part, that taught me that — the great sleeps in the small. Not “living for poetry,” but actual poems, constantly demonstrating that it’s the small, manageable details that are the most reliable way to attain lyricism.
Happiness is enough. In fact it is a lot. It’s worth living for. Hearing a bird chirp in the backyard. Watching the shift in the shadows of trees and houses. My Spanish lavender in blossom again, even though it’s late November. And the bees and bumblebees busy collecting nectar from those modest blue blossoms. Simple, ordinary, daily happiness — who knew?
Not at 15 or 17. Not at 27 either, my dream of a Prince turned into a nightmare. Only much, much later, when the cruelties of youth were over. On the list of my Thanksgiving gratitudes: having gotten older and calmer, able to appreciate the little pleasures at last.
Autumn in Szczecin, Poland *
“Ideologies are substitutes for true knowledge, and ideologues are always dangerous when they come to power, because a simple-minded I-know-it-all approach is no match for the complexity of existence.” ~ Jordan B. Peterson
Oriana: I’m not a fan of Jordan Peterson, but he got that one right.
Lenin, 1919, making a gramophone recording. Does anyone else happen to be reminded of the Wizard of Oz?*
ENTER, MEANING RETURN
I looked down at my keyboard and saw one key:
Enter, with its backward arrow.
Enter, whose other name is Return.
**
I'm not sure if I wrote this; I know a friend first pointed out that the “Enter” key used to be called “Return” back in typewriter days. I'm content to let the author be the “collective psyche.”
It’s been true many times in my life: going back to something begun a long time ago has yielded rich “returns.” Every day I'm starting something new, and almost every day I discover something seeded in the past.
I know this won’t go on indefinitely. As Jane Kenyon put it, “One day it will be otherwise.” But if it could go on, I wouldn’t mind living like that for centuries.
And if there is a gate of paradise, I think it might well have a sign over it that says not ENTER, but RETURN.
KISS THE UNIVERSE GOOD-BYE
Browsing at The Lady of the Lake, a little New Age bookstore about to close its doors (what’s else is new), I hit on a book that announced that the whole UNIVERSE is supposed to be consumed in fire, not just the earth. Those billions of galaxies, who needs them? Well, some time by 2050 they will all be blotted from existence.
Stars, if you remember, are to fall down to the earth, but for some reason, until today, I was oblivious to the fact that the notion of end times includes the whole universe, scheduled for an imminent extinction. That Horsehead Nebula in Orion that people love so much? Blow a good-bye kiss toward Orion, that gorgeous constellation. In fact kiss the whole universe goodbye, since the end could come anytime. Haven't you seen the bumper sticker that says, “In the event of Rapture, this vehicle will be unmanned?”
The book made no reference to astrophysics and the expanding universe, the galaxies speeding away from one another — a different kind of apocalypse, a vanishing that perhaps will be constrained by dark matter and dark energy — perhaps. With so many immediate problems, it’s a bit difficult to ponder the universe a billion years from now. No, the book was “spiritual.”
It was a New Age book, which is sort-of crypto-Christianity, I’ve decided. Instead of Jesus, they talk about the Holy Spirit. But these days New Age is in decline — maybe in part because people no longer flock to any bookstores, including New Age bookstores with their crystal lamps, incense sticks and “magic wands.” No one seems interested in Lemuria anymore, or in how “two entities of light” appeared in anyone’s living room. Empires rise and fall, Yahweh is dead, Jesus appears only on grilled cheese sandwiches. The Holy Spirit still keeps hovering, but in fewer and fewer bookstores and “centers for creative living.” Yes, this is the end of the old world order, but isn’t it always the case?
Horsehead Nebula*
“A PERSON OF FAITH” AND “A PERSON OF DEPTH” (redux)
The memory of Rabbi F’s remark, “I don’t see how an atheist could enjoy a poem” also flashed back. I also remember being called “weak-minded,” and when I asked for an explanation, it was an accusation that I think only with my brain (I presume it meant “no intuition”). There has also been an accusation of cowardice, since it takes courage to make the “leap of faith” — as if most believers took a brave, conscious leap of faith rather than being born and indoctrinated into their religion in childhood, before the capacity for critical thinking.
The courage it took to leave an oppressive totalitarian church was not something my accuser was willing to consider, nor the courage to assert that this one life is all we have — something that goes against the kind of wishful thinking that’s closest to the heart.
Fortunately this morning I also quickly regained my peace of mind. I didn’t have to call myself “a person of no faith.” Instead, I would describe myself as “a person of depth.”
What I value about myself is my ability to go into any subject in depth. In part it’s a function of education: I am grateful to all the teachers who pointed out the complexity of anything we examine closely (as Nietzsche said, “an infinity opens up”). And I am glad that circumstances have exposed me to smart people who disagreed with me, and thus forced me to re-think and re-define my views. Coming to a different culture, and one so richly diverse at that, was also an enlarging experience bar none.
Ultimately, however, I owe most of my re-thinking to leaving Catholicism. It’s somewhat funny that I arrived at the idea of the social contract by myself all over again, but I suspect I had to — it was much more powerful that way than if I had merely read about.
I am not trying to create a dichotomy between a “person of faith” and a “person of depth.” Of course a believer can also think and experience life in a complex manner. One such person whom I had a pleasure to talk with was an ex-Jesuit priest I knew in Warsaw. He was not an atheist and tried to see the good side of religion in spite of his personal history of being ex-communicated and persecuted at first. And I see the seriousness of those who have tried to imagine the kind of god who is not simply a big parent in the sky. I certainly don’t deny depth to them.
To me, the primary dimension is depth. It’s not opposed to faith. Rather, depth requires the courage to question anything, and to go wherever this questioning may take you.
*
THE ROSEHIP NEURON, APPARENTLY UNIQUE TO THE HUMAN BRAIN; THE INHIBITORY DEFICIT THEORY OF COGNITIVE AGING
[Recently] an international team of researchers introduced the world to a new kind of neuron, which, at this point, is believed to exist only in the human brain. The long nerve fibers known as axons of these densely bundled cells bulge in a way that reminded their discoverers of a rose without its petals—so much that they named them “rose hip cells.” Described in the latest issue of Nature Neuroscience, these new neurons might use their specialized shape to control the flow of information from one region of the brain to another.
“They can really act as a sort of brake on the system,” says Ed Lein, an investigator at the Allen Institute for Brain Science—home to several ambitious brain mapping projects—and one of the lead authors on the study. Neurons come in two basic flavors: Excitatory cells send information to the cells next to them, while inhibitory cells slow down or stop excitatory cells from firing. Rose hip cells belong to this latter type, and based on their physiology, seem to be a particularly potent current-curber.” ~
https://www.wired.com/story/meet-the-rosehip-cell-a-new-kind-of-neuron/
a rosehip neuronOriana:
Inhibition is an advanced brain function, more complex than “excitation.” Filtering out irrelevant information and deliberately not reacting to stimuli is difficult for a young child. Last to develop, inhibition is also the “first to go” — to deteriorate with aging. That’s why some elderly become abnormally talkative, and say the first thing that comes to mind, without judgment, with as little self-control as a small child. Some of them start making racist or otherwise socially inappropriate comments — their inhibitory function has become too weak to make them “stop and think.”
They also become very easily distracted. They start to talk about one thing, but soon veer off into ten other topics. Sometimes they may not be able to watch a movie since a scene reminds them of something, and they have to talk about it right away.
The first signs of deteriorating inhibition may manifest themselves as early as the age of fifty. There even exists the “inhibitory deficit theory of cognitive aging.” Let’s hope that new research, including the discovery of the rosehip neuron, will help produce behavioral and pharmaceutic approaches to improving the inhibitory function.
Inhibitory deficit becomes greater under conditions of fatigue and stress. The efficiency of inhibitory function also varies among non-elderly individuals, and may in part account for differences in academic performance or any kind of work that makes demands on the ability to focus and pay sustained attention. Fortunately this ability can be improved through training and stress reduction.
*
ending on beauty:
ST. MARY MAGDALENE PREACHING AT MARSEILLES
Now at the end of her life she is all hair —
A cataract flowing and freezing — and a voice
Breaking loose from the loose red hair,
The secret shroud of her skin:
A voice glittering in the wilderness.
She preaches in the city, she wanders
Late in the evening through shaded squares.
~ Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin (first stanza)
“A voice glittering in the wilderness” is a beautiful transformation of a “voice crying in the wilderness.”
Mary Magdalene, St. John's Cathedral in Toruń, Poland, 14th century. According to legend, Mary Magdalene became an ascetic who wore no clothes; the naked saint was covered only by her long hair. I love the way Mary M and the angels are smiling. Got me wondering if perhaps one of the purposes of art, at least now and then, is to make us happy.
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