Dewitt Jones: Forest DancerVIRGO IN GRAY
“Battleship gray,” he defined it,
with the precision native to his sign.
We went to the harbor to check, and there
it was, his color: a battleship, gray
to the tip of the radar tower.
*
The grays multiplied
like the moon and memory.
Sun cindered, the water shone
oily gray. Pelicans sat on a barge,
reflections fractured in gray waves.
We stood next to NO TRESPASSING sign
on a stairway down to the ocean.
No one ever gets arrested, I told him.
He said, “If I went down,
the entire Coast Guard would arrive.”
Gray and immobile as a pigeon,
he stayed behind. Alone
I went down the wobbly stairs,
then stood on slippery rocks.
Foam hissed around my feet.
*
Strange, what drew me to him
that night on the campus parking lot,
the windshield streaked with rain,
wind tangling eucalyptus leaves.
He spun his proletarian dreams:
an overstuffed leather armchair,
a closet full of three-piece suits,
and he, a civil-rights attorney,
at a stunning young age elected
to the Supreme Court,
writes the decisive opinion
in a great legal case, then commits
a rational suicide, his one-
word note: BECAUSE.
I said: “You are a child.”
*
I was in love
with a grown-up suicidal child.
Instead of studying for the bar exam,
he’d watch black-and-white
war movies on TV,
wishing it were him
on the screen, an R.A.F. pilot
soon to be heroically dead.
I came to him at noon,
wearing a burgundy fedora.
~ Oriana
Since later on I devote quite a bit of space to reviewing a movie based on a stormy, obsessive, unhealthy “love without love,” this is my “me-too” moment in regard to that. Of course I could see the all the red flags. But I was too young and emotionally and erotically starved to turn down any kind of love. And I didn’t yet know that I should have run for my life — that falling in love with the wrong person means that pretty soon you’ll start paying a heavy price.
“As Sokrates tells it, your story begins the moment Eros enters you.
That incursion is the biggest risk of your life. How you handle it is an index of the quality, wisdom, and decorum of the things inside you.
As you handle it you come into contact with what is inside you, in a sudden and startling way. You perceive what you are, what you lack, what you could be.” ~ Anne Carson
*
Oriana:
But circumstances play a huge part — it's not that you have a huge choice of partners. Not infrequently you have to learn to love whoever is there to be loved (as long as the person is not abusive). Eros enters in the form of a person who is attracted to you — but it's not necessarily the optimal person (I don’t mean “perfect” — there is no such thing). Or Eros may enter in the form of unrequited love. All we know for sure is — it's not going to be easy. There will be tears.
And yes, that difference between being in love with the wrong person versus being in love with the right person. We may have to learn it the hard way.
Also, someone may be right for us in one stage of life, but not in another. We change — and our mate changes too. The prevalence of divorce doesn’t necessarily mean that the couple’s marriage was unhappy from the start. It’s possible that they were very much in love and quite happy at first. So what happened? Life. Let’s leave it at that.
Etruscan sarcophagus, Cerveteri necropolis of Baditaccia, 510 bce
*
Alas, that love, so gentle in his view,
Should be so tyrannous and rough in proof!”
~ Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act 1 Scene 1
Note the pigeon in the upper left, on the fold of the gravity-free drapery around Eros*
COLD WAR, THE MOVIE: “THE VIEW IS BETTER FROM THE OTHER SIDE”
I hesitate to recommend it. The female lead, Zula, is hard to like, at least by women — for men, her blond looks may cover a multitude of sins (like alcoholism and abandoning her little boy). The first half hour held me, but later the movie started falling apart — too many gaps in the narrative. Also, I bet most of the audience didn’t get it that the couple commit suicide at the end. The last words we hear Zula say seem straight out of Beckett: “Let’s cross the road. The view is better from the other side.”
(Another memorable line is spoken early in the movie, when Zula explains why she stabbed her father: “He mistook me for my mother, so I used a knife to show him the difference.” Otherwise, the dialogue isn’t much. Glances and gestures count for more.)
I will admit that this movie is far from ordinary, and the music alone may make it worthwhile for music lovers. Even in this context, I find it odd that the loveliest song (to my taste) is in Russian — and it’s also Zula’s first and best (again, to my taste) singing performance. When asked to sing at an audition for future members of the Polish folk song-and-dance ensemble, Zula sings in flawless Russian (even though she apparently knows no Russian — or any language except Polish). She explains that she heard this song in a Russian movie and liked it so much that she memorized it. Is she a musical genius, a kind of rural Mozart who doesn’t even know how to read musical notation, but has a stunning native gift for both music and languages?
Later in the movie Zula’s singing is adequate at best, but here I'm willing to forgive the lack of believability because the Russian song is so beautiful and tender. True, the main Polish folk song finally won me over in its choral version, with beautiful voices and harmonizing — the often-repeated “Two Hearts” (those words are actually diminutives, child-speak for the sake of tenderness — like “corazoncito” in Spanish). It’s fascinating to listen to the original peasant versions, then the polished and enhanced professional folk ensemble versions, and finally — jazz in a Parisian nightclub.
Thus, musically the movie is unusual and interesting. I may be somewhat biased because I grew up hearing the songs performed by Mazowsze, the folk ensemble on which “Mazurek” is based. There existed another folk ensemble during that era, one that presented songs from Southwestern part of Poland. But Mazowsze always loomed larger and seemed more geared to being Poland’s cultural ambassador abroad. The movie shows just how “enhanced” the folk music was. To me, the untutored singing and music-making by “actual” peasants was a revelation (sure, those must have been actors, but a marvelous sense of authenticity was achieved).
What didn’t work for me was the whole underlying assumption that Wiktor and Zula are madly in love. Their sexual attraction to each other is indeed almost demonically intense — but there seems to be no other basis for their relationship. What do they have in common? Love of music would seem to be the obvious answer, but we never hear them talk about music as such, or see them enjoy listening to music together — the gap between Zula’s lack of formal musical education and Wiktor’s being an accomplished musicologist and classical and jazz pianist is perhaps the reason for it. But you’d still think that now and then he’d say to her, “Let me play something for you” — in my modest experience, for the musician music is his real language of love.
And Wiktor is also a composer. It would be natural for him to say to a partner, “I'm working on something new I want to play for you. Let’s see if you like it.” But there is no such moment in the movie.
Zula is no intellectual, but she is shrewd and intuitive. Early in the movie she states that their relationship will never work “because I am worse than you.” Her lack of education may be the main problem, but there are other incompatibilities as well. Exploring them could be one of the ways the movie might gain focus. Another obvious focus might be how corrupt politics ruins both art and love. This is in fact what the title Cold War strongly suggests — I didn’t expect the war to be chiefly between the two lovers.
Another focus could be “career versus love.” Zula finds singing and dancing with Mazurek glamorous and fulfilling. She has no dreams of living in the West. It’s understandable that after a while Wiktor would feel bored and trapped in his job, but Zula doesn’t share his alienation. Nor does she seem upset that the folk songs are used as propaganda. She doesn’t seem to have any political opinions or awareness. Stalin? Not important. So politics becomes almost tangential to the movie. And Zula means it when she says, in Paris, “My life was actually much better in Poland” — it’s not just nostalgia and immigrant exaggeration. Zula’s “real life” was on stage. Her smile doesn’t appear to have been fake. It was ecstatic.
Here we are back to “career versus love” theme, which would be the simplest way to make the movie cohere. But both the political aspect and homeland versus life abroad also have a rich potential. The reality of life in the West turns out to be bitter rather than idyllic — those with established artistic careers often find not Utopia, but rather Paradise Lost. This movie has such rich possibilities that it should not have become a disappointing, underdeveloped depiction of a stormy relationship based chiefly on sexual attraction without much (or any) real connection. Are we supposed to believe that these two enjoy being together? Much of the time they are separated anyway, and have other partners. She also becomes a mother, but that seems meaningless next to her compulsive passion for Wiktor.
At the heart of the problem?At first Wiktor — older, accomplished, worldly — seems to have all the advantages, but eventually Zula emerges as the dominant partner. In the end she directs their private marriage ceremony in a ruined church, and knows an effective way to commit suicide (“You have to take more because you are heavier”). They are both broken human beings, but she’s the boss while he passively obeys. The inequality between these two, when she started as “worse,” is now reversed.
There are scenes in the movie that provide genuine pleasure. As I’ve said, the first half hour or so had be completely captivated. But the love story — if this even is a love story (one critic called it “love without love”) — is painful to watch. The passion seems hyped, pathological, histrionic, and ultimately unconvincing. It’s a mess.
**
(The real creator of Mazowsze was the highly regarded composer Tadeusz Sygietyński. But Wiktor is not based on Sygietyński, even though the lead actor, Tomasz Kot, claims that Sygietyński’s personality was “an inspiration.” Really? Sygietyński was known as a modest, charming, sensitive and somewhat nervous man. Above all, he was utterly dedicated to his work for Mazowsze and, in spite of his international connections, would never dream of abandoning it and leaving Poland. He died in Warsaw of lung cancer. His wife and long-time artistic collaborator, Mira Sygietyńska, took over as the director of Mazowsze.)
Tadeusz Sygietyński, 1951*
The birthplace of Andy’s parents. It’s a welcome sign. I love it.
*
Leonard Kress:
Quite a review!!! And I pretty much agree with everything you say. I must say that my favorite parts of the film were the opening scenes with the ethnomusicologists. (My son, who's a jazz musician [guitar], and not so much in touch with Polish culture, agreed . . . and was even inspired to work on a series of what he calls "Jazz Mazurkas." The movie was terribly flawed in all the ways you delineate. Still, I was drawn in from the beginning — the folklore and then the co-optation of that folklore — that horrifying scene with the performance in front of Stalin's portrait. And yes, the song, I think, carried the film, which is not such a bad thing.
The entire relationship was less interesting and compelling to me, and I tended to focus on the background events and scenes rather than the foreground. I barely recall the talk of Lemko music not being "theirs." That's both odd and completely sensible — given the multi-cultural aspects of pre-war and historical Poland and then the horrible wartime and post-war behavior of Ukrainians.
Just one more point. I loved the ending statement — what you correctly identify as Beckettesque: “Let’s cross the road. The view is better from the other side.” I thought this was a tiny redemption--an attempt, though only through irony and words.
Oriana:
I absolutely loved the last statement, which in the context outdoes Beckett. Consider the double meaning of “the other side” after they already took the pills. And I should make it clear what an excellent ending this was (at least for the literati) — just pulling it out as a headline for the whole movie doesn't quite say it.
The Lemko part was important to show that the folk “purity” didn't matter — the professional musicians, and esp the political director, were perfectly willing to appropriate whatever bit of folklore would be a captivating Mazowsze ("Mazurek") song after the "photoshop" equivalent of musical enhancement (which is excusable if the end result is beautiful — though I was surprised how much I liked the peasant versions).
You are right about the power of the scene with the giant portrait of Stalin. Imagine, in the thirties’ Germany, a performance of folk singing and dancing — and then a banner with a huge portrait of Hitler drops down. What makes Stalin even worse here is that this is Poland, and here is a leader of another country — the country from which the puppet Polish government takes orders. So here the real ruler — the “Big Brother” — is revealed, during what is meant to be a celebration of Polish culture.
And then, alas, the movie loses that kind of richness and wider importance, and stunts its vision by focusing on the pathological relationship between the two protagonists. You were wise to focus on the more interesting background rather than foreground.
from another review: UGLY LOVE
PERIOD ROMANCE COLD WAR LACKS LOVE, DEPTH
~ “Though Pawlikowski surely intended for his characters’ passion to burn red hot on the screen – in stark contrast to the black-and-white cinematography – we’re instead left with little but a cold, passionless, underwritten tale of a relationship wrecked by circumstance.
The film’s episodic structure sucks relatability, character development and narrative satisfaction from what could have been a haunting tale of found-and-lost-and-found romance. More a series of vignettes set over two decades, Cold War might have held intrigue and heartbreak if Pawlikowki’s script (co-written by Janusz Głowacki and Piotr Borkowski) contained more tenderness. Rather, it portrays Wiktor and Zula as angry, frustrated, non-communicative and even abusive.
And thus Wiktor and Zula keep on keeping on, clinging to an inexplicable, impractical and often ugly love that is so understated and undernourished as to be practically non-existent.” ~
https://www.orlandoweekly.com/orlando/period-romance-cold-war-lacks-love-depth/Content?oid=23504222
Oriana:
The phrase “ugly love” really summarizes it for me. I know this kind of toxic “love” (it’s really love-hate) from unfortunate personal experience. That relationship also ended with suicide — just his, though during the first year after that greatest emotional shock of my life, I crazily felt that he killed himself instead of my having to kill myself (please don’t try to make any rational sense of this).
Ugly love, toxic love — perhaps we should leave out the word “love.” Rather, it was turbulence — a storm rather than a refuge from the storms of life, a vampire-like drain of vitality, a constant heartbreak rather than fulfillment. That’s what I found so off-putting once the fascinating folk ensemble part of the movie was over.
I didn’t relate to any of the characters, but if I felt anything it was a growing dislike for Zula and some pity for Wiktor. At moments I was tempted to sum it up very simply: he’s cultivated, she’s a vulgarian — but that’s not a fair assessment. She’s a survivor, a go-getter, a manipulative femme fatale for whom the soft-voiced, beautiful way of speaking that marks educated Polish women would be as alien as living abroad turns out to be. He has the seductive Humphrey Bogart-like looks (only softer, sweeter), but also his share of personality flaws — his callous treatment of his other partners points to a deeper moral deficiency. His attempt to transform Zula from a folk singer to a French chanteuse shows his lack of true concern for what is best for her. One wonders if he even respects her as a person. Ultimately neither one is a sympathetic character.
“I never laughed, I never cried. The movie left me completely cold,” my companion remarked. I started out very engaged, then grew increasingly disengaged and disappointed. Basically the movie started falling apart for me as soon as Wiktor crossed from East Berlin to West Berlin (after being stood up by Zula — but her unwillingness to live abroad is the most comprehensible thing in the whole movie).
Zula gradually takes over the movie — and her drinking, irrationality, promiscuity, temper tantrums, and just the constant tension she creates, make her, as one Polish commentator ruthlessly said, “despicable.” This may be too harsh (and we need to remember that Zula has obviously been brutalized in her younger years) — but I can see where that judgment comes from. And it’s hard to feel positive about a movie, no matter its visual poetry and its often brilliant use of music, if the warring lovers in this alleged love story produce mainly negative emotions. If the essence of genuine love is mutual nurturing, then this is indeed “love without love.”
*
In the second half of the movie, I couldn’t help wondering if Zula suffered from the Borderline Personality Disorder. Here is a description (excerpt):
~ “Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a condition characterized by difficulties regulating emotion. This means that people who experience BPD feel emotions intensely and for extended periods of time, and it is harder for them to return to a stable baseline after an emotionally triggering event.
This difficulty can lead to impulsivity, poor self-image, stormy relationships and intense emotional responses to stressors. Struggling with self-regulation can also result in dangerous behaviors such as self-harm (e.g. cutting).
People with BPD experience wide mood swings and can display a great sense of instability and insecurity. Per the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual diagnostic framework, some key signs and symptoms may include:
Unstable personal relationships that alternate between idealization (“I’m so in love!”) and devaluation (“I hate her”). This is also sometimes known as "splitting."
Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment by friends and family.
Distorted and unstable self-image, which affects moods, values, opinions, goals and relationships.
Impulsive behaviors that can have dangerous outcomes, such as excessive spending, unsafe sex, substance abuse or reckless driving.
Self-harming behavior including suicidal threats or attempts.
Periods of intense depressed mood, irritability or anxiety lasting a few hours to a few days.
Chronic feelings of boredom or emptiness.
Inappropriate, intense or uncontrollable anger—often followed by shame and guilt.” ~
(note: not all the symptoms need to be present for the diagnosis to apply)
https://www.nami.org/learn-more/mental-health-conditions/borderline-personality-disorder
75% of people diagnosed with BPD are women. Physical and sexual abuse in childhood raises the risk.
Relationships with people who have BPD are intense, chaotic, and notoriously “roller-coaster” in character.
BORDERLINE PERSONALITY IN LOVE
~ “Whole Object Relations: “Whole object relations” is the capacity to simultaneously see both the good and bad qualities of a person and accept that both exist. This capacity is normally developed during early childhood through copying your parents and, most importantly, through being seen realistically and accepted and loved for who you are by your parents, despite your imperfections. This capacity can be acquired later if the person is sufficiently motivated and has appropriate psychotherapy.
Without “whole object relations,” people alternate between two equally extreme and unrealistic views of themselves and other people: either they are “all-good” or “all-bad.” Instead of integrating these views when they see something that makes it clear that the other person is not all-good, they simply switch to seeing the person as all-bad—and vice versa.
In both cases, they also temporarily forget all the past history associated with the side that is now out of awareness. Therefore, if they are seeing you as “all-good,” they only remember things that support that view. When they are seeing you as “all-bad,” they only remember the things that support that view. As both of these views are overly extreme and inaccurate, they are inherently unstable and sometimes can rapidly shift back and forth in the course of a day.
Narcissists and Borderline individuals . . . can quickly form intense romantic attachments based on very little information about the other person. Most people who do not have either a Borderline or Narcissistic adaptation tend to take their time when making the decision whether their new lover is “the one.” My Borderline and Narcissistic clients often bond instantly when they barely know each other.
Many people with Borderline adaptations live for love. They use connecting to someone as a remedy for feelings of emptiness, restlessness, and loneliness. They are what I think of as “Clingers.” They form quick strong attachments and resist any information that suggests that they should detach because this person is an inappropriate mate. The idea of detaching brings up their underlying fears of abandonment, so they find reasons not to leave.
When things get bad, as they often do when a Borderline marries a Narcissist, it is the Borderline mate that usually has the most trouble detaching from the relationship. This is because they are terribly conflicted: One side of them is quite rational and knows that the relationship is not working and that they should leave, while the other side is very fearful of taking the step of leaving because it means that they will be on their own again. Many people with BPD feel inadequate to deal with everyday adult life and being with someone – almost anyone – can feel more secure than being on their own.
Narcissists want continuous self-esteem enhancement. Borderlines want continuous, unconditional love.
There is an old saying that applies here: A bird and a fish can fall in love, but how will they make a life together?” ~
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/understanding-narcissism/201711/why-do-narcissists-and-borderlines-fall-in-love
From Comments:
“After the honeymoon, both the BPD and NPD partners enter a stage where they perceive the other as "not good enough," and the dance of manipulation begins, when each partner tries to force the other to be a more perfect mate.”
Charles:
Pure pathology is pure entertainment. Like the entertainment value of decay. Always slowing down to watch the aftermath of an accident.
*
Oriana: THE FOUNDATION OF GENUINE LOVE IS DEEP RESPECT
Nevertheless, I'm struck by the statement about the Borderlines having a rational side. The movie worked best for me at the beginning, when Zula shows the most rationality. True, the couple seems to fall in love too fast, without taking the time to get to know each other. But on Wiktor’s side this can be attributed simply to a strong sexual attraction; on her side, sheer ambition may be a factor, the desire to advance her career. Later it becomes obvious that she has no scruples about using her physical attractiveness to get what she wants.
Only gradually we get to see that that there is a deeper pathology at work — that Zula in particular lives out of her wounds. She doesn’t see people for what they are in their complexity — she’s not interested in that. People are either tools, or they are the exaggerated “great love” who’s meant to satisfy fathomless emotional cravings. She may be a shrewd survivor, a manipulator, but above all she’s desperate for love.
Wherever Zula may be on the Borderline spectrum, Wiktor seems equally uninterested in her as a real person, so when he keeps calling her “the woman of my life,” that strikes me as an empty statement — “love without love.”
Of course we all want to feel loved — but we also want to be respected and cherished as we are, as a complete person. That’s where pathology can wreck a relationship. A healthy, lasting relationship requires be a deep, reality-based respect both for the partner and for oneself. Fits of rage and other emotional outbursts are only a symptom. The underlying problem is that the necessary deep respect is missing.
*
HAPPINESS IS A MODERN EMOTION
~ “Happiness is a modern emotion. No one – no society, no language – had a concept of it before the 16th century, when the idea of happiness first appeared in England, and this means that it was inconceivable for people who lived before the 16th century and to those who lived outside of England even for some time after it. If it was inconceivable, it could hardly been experienced, and certainly could not be consciously desired and pursued. As to whether it could be felt, desired, and pursued unconsciously we cannot know, because for obvious reasons, we cannot have any evidence regarding this possibility.
The English word “happiness” was created in the 16th century. At that time it had no equivalent in any other language. The words in French, German, or Russian, with the help of which we translate it, specifically meant “good luck,” a concept that existed in English as well, the word for any kind of luck being “hap.” The idea of “good luck” itself went back to the pagan antiquity. From the eudemonia of the Ancient Greeks on, all the synonyms of it connoted the benevolence of fate. To experience good luck meant to be subject to such benevolence, to be “blessed.” *Luck was an objective state, not an emotion.* The Greek eudemonia, in fact, could not be experienced at all, one of its defining characteristics was an easy and honorable death, and it was impossible to say whether one was or was not subject to the benevolence of fate until one was dead.
Luck, good or bad, is completely outside of one’s control, therefore, one cannot blame oneself for not being lucky or take pride in one’s good luck. Jewish monotheism rejected the idea of luck, opposing to it a view of the world predicated on the concept of justice. Man became to a certain extent responsible for his own fate. Under the influence of Jewish monotheism, which began to spread sometime in the 6th century BCE, eudemonia was reinterpreted and could now be applied to actual experience. From our, modern, perspective, however, it was certainly not a happy experience. The word now referred to the acceptance of mortality. Because the task of philosophy was to prepare one for death, eudemonia became the goal of philosophy. Today, when we translate eudemonia as “happiness,” this leads to the misconception that happiness is the goal of philosophy. But, actually, the advice of the philosophy which pursued eudemonia was to live a life that, while free of actual suffering to the extent that was possible, would be so devoid of enjoyment that one would not regret leaving it when time comes – a sort of nirvana. Such life was considered the “good life,” and eudemonia became a name for it.
This interpretation was reinforced and at the same time further modified in the Christian thinking. “Good life” acquired the meaning of faith, in particular, the absolute faith in eternal life, which often sought to express itself actively. Therefore Christian felicity (a derivative from Latin for “luck” – felix, which we also wrongly translate as “happiness”) could be found in martyrdom, an especially painful death one chose to demonstrate how free of fear of death one was.
Happiness has nothing in common with the phenomena whose names are used to translate this utterly novel English experience into other languages. To start, it is a joyful and pleasant emotion. Of course, human beings, like animals, have always been familiar with the sensations of joy and pleasure. Happiness incorporates them but implies much more. Examine yourselves and you’ll recognize that the word refers to a lasting, profound, fully conscious feeling of satisfaction with one’s circumstances – the sense that one’s life fits one like a glove. This implies that one experiences existence as meaningful, feels there is a reason for being here and now, and that one has a firm and satisfactory identity. Above all, perhaps, happiness is experienced as an achievement. It is a conscious realization that one reaps the results of right choices.
It is an historical fact that for much of human history people could not be happy. This was not because the capacity for happiness did not exist, but because happiness the emotion did not exist. It was created at the dawn of modernity. In future posts I’ll discuss what exactly brought this new experience, so important in our emotional life today, into being. Perhaps the reader already begins to see what connects the modern emotions on which we focus: ambition, happiness, and love, together.” ~
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-modern-mind/201305/modern-emotions-happiness
Oriana:
For me happiness has three main sources: work and accomplishment, reliable love (including deep friendship), and being in the presence of beauty.
Dante’s heaven is insipid mainly because work and accomplishment are missing. There is a new kind of beauty — circles of light, the angels singing — but people want familiar beauty most, the beauty of a meadow in bloom or a forest’s dappled sunlight.
*
WHEN VOLTAIRE FINALLY MET DIDEROT
~ "In mid-December 1776, the eighty-three-year-old Voltaire pulled out a piece of paper and dashed off a note to Diderot. Having been exiled from Paris for more than twenty-five years, the now wizened and virtually toothless philosophe lamented the fact that the two men had never laid eyes on each other: “I am heartbroken to die without having met you … I would gladly come and spend my last fifteen minutes in Paris in order to have the solace of hearing your voice.”
Fifteen months later, Voltaire rolled into the capital in his blue, star-spangled coach. Quite ill with prostate cancer, the famous humanitarian, essayist, and playwright nonetheless organized a feverish schedule for himself. In addition to finishing work on a five-act tragedy—he lived long enough to attend the premiere—Voltaire spent most of his days holding court in a friend’s hôtel particulier on the corner of the rue de Beaune and the quai des Théatins. Here, for hours at a time, Voltaire received visits from a long list of adoring friends and dignitaries, among them Benjamin Franklin and his son. Sometime during Voltaire’s three-month stay, Diderot also came to pay his respects. Journalists who wrote about the meeting hinted that some relationships are best conducted solely by correspondence.
Diderot and Voltaire had first exchanged letters in 1749 when the “prince of the philosophes” had invited the then up-and-coming Diderot to dinner. In addition to hoping to get to know the clever author of the Letter on the Blind, Voltaire had presumably hoped to help the newly appointed editor of the Encyclopédie rethink his atheism. Diderot decided to dodge both the invitation and the sermon. One might wonder what kind of young writer turns down lunch with the most famous public intellectual ever to live. The answer, in 1749, was pretty clear: a proud and unremorseful unbeliever who had no interest in having his philosophy questioned by an unbending deist.
What did these two old men talk about when they finally sat in front of each other in 1778? The only real accounts we have, alas, focus on an argument that the two men had regarding the merits of Shakespeare. Convinced of the superiority not only of French theater but of his own art, Voltaire supposedly asked Diderot how it was possible to “prefer this tasteless monster to Racine or Virgil.” In the discussion that ensued, Diderot conceded that the playwright lacked the polish of some of the greatest poets, but that the Englishman nonetheless possessed a sublime energy that transcended the “gothic” aspects of his writing. He then went on to compare Shakespeare to the massive fifteenth-century statue of Saint Christopher that stood just outside the doors leading into Notre Dame Cathedral. While perhaps crude and rustic, this colossus was very much like Shakespeare, according to Diderot, because “the greatest men still walk through his legs without the top of their head touching his testicles.” The implication was clear. Voltaire, who rightly considered himself the greatest French poet and playwright of his generation, did not measure up either. According to one journalist’s account of this exchange, Voltaire was not “excessively happy with Monsieur Diderot” after this comment.
Diderot’s unrestrained tongue had reportedly irked Voltaire as much as it had captivated him. After years of exchanging letters—with Diderot, the epistolary mode had the distinct advantage of allowing the other person to respond without being interrupted—Voltaire had finally witnessed the Encyclopedist’s legendary ability to leap from one idea to the next without stopping to take a breath. After Diderot left the quai des Théatins, Voltaire reportedly remarked to some friends that his visitor had lived up to his reputation as a tremendous wit, but that nature had refused him “an essential talent, that of true conversation.” Diderot, too, summed up his meeting with the brilliant yet failing Voltaire. He reported that the man was like an ancient “enchanted castle whose various parts are falling apart,” but whose corridors were “still inhabited by an old sorcerer.”
Diderot’s visit with Voltaire was the first and last time that these two figureheads of the Enlightenment era would see each other in person. Not long after his visit, on May 30, the old sorcerer succumbed to his cancer. This turned out to be the first of two significant deaths in 1778. A little more than a month later, on July 2, Jean-Jacques Rousseau would die as well.
Rousseau’s and Voltaire’s deaths signaled the beginning of an era in which many more of Diderot’s close friends, associates, and enemies would also die. Diderot’s generation was disappearing." ~
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/01/24/when-diderot-met-voltaire/?fbclid=IwAR1rx3RlsC-7hDwMCQJuAHJFP7KsNTjFIZpHkc1XhY3I7INA80d5xLoY8oU
Oriana:
Some relationships work best if they remain epistolary. And we all know at least one story of people who fell in love “by correspondence”; then they met in person.
Given that both men knew Shakespeare’s work only in translation, possibly of dubious quality, it says a lot that Diderot was able to recognize Shakespeare’s greatness, and not be fixated on the question of “polish,” as Voltaire seems to have been.
Voltaire no doubt expected flattery; alas, that’s probably what he secretly really meant by the “art of conversation.” I don’t mean to come across as hostile to Voltaire; he was an intellectual and literary giant. “Candide” is still read, performed, and enjoyed; we don’t really read Diderot, though I heard Jacques the Fatalist on the radio while still in Poland and remember enjoying it; later I read at least some of it, with more understanding. But it will never have the importance and popularity of Candide.
Below is my favorite quotation by Voltaire.
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“Politically speaking, tribal nationalism always insists that its own people are surrounded by 'a world of enemies'—‘one against all’—and that a fundamental difference exists between this people and all others. It claims its people to be unique, individual, incompatible with all others, and denies theoretically the very possibility of a common humankind long before it is used to destroy the humanity of man.” ~ Hannah Arendt
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“We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers.” ~ Martin Luther King, his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.
But my favorite part is this:
“We must learn to live together as brothers or we shall perish together as fools.” ~ MLK, 1964
Oriana:
Lots of people have preached brotherhood; it’s “or we shall perish together as fools” that’s the wonderful rhetorical figure here, and of course a twist of the knife.
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"Any idiot can face crisis; it's this day-to-day living that wears you out." ~ Anton Chekhov
Oriana:
A crisis mobilizes our resources; a gazillion petty troubles wear us out . . . it's like being bitten by a swarm of mosquitoes.
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AMERICA NEEDS TO ATTRACT MORE IMMIGRANTS
~ “The U.S. bounced back from falling fertility once before, in the late 1980s. But as economist Lyman Stone has written, there are reasons why history may not repeat itself. High and increasing costs of housing, child care and education show no sign of reversing. The need for ever-higher levels of education in order to thrive in the U.S. job market is causing families to delay childbirth, which results in fewer children. Stone projects that U.S. fertility rates could fall as low as 1.5 or 1.4 — the levels that prevail in Japan and some European countries.
There is one more source of population growth that the U.S. has traditionally depended on — immigration. Low-skilled immigrants make it easier to raise kids by providing cheap child-care services. High-skilled immigrants earn more and pay a lot of taxes, while using few government services themselves, meaning that their fiscal contribution is enormously positive.
But low-skilled immigration to the U.S. has declined, meaning that more expensive child care is on the horizon. And high-skilled immigration may soon taper off, as President Donald Trump’s policies and rhetoric make the country less hospitable for the world’s best and brightest.
In other words, the U.S. may soon find itself without its two big long-term population boosters, and wind up as a graying, shrinking nation, with young people burdened with supporting ever-more old people, and the elderly themselves forced to work long into what used to be the golden years.” ~
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-23/america-needs-more-young-workers-to-support-aging-population
MUST BARBAROUS HUMAN SACRIFICE REMAIN THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIANITY?
Fairness demands that if we are to criticize the bad ideas in Islam, we must criticize the bad ideas in ANY religion, including Christianity. One of the worst ideas in Christianity is the notion that Jesus died on the cross as a blood sacrifice for the sins of humanity. Without this “bloody ransom,” no one could enter heaven.
~ From Patheos: an exchange between two sisters, one a right-wing Christian and the other an atheist:
Christian: What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
Atheist: Human sacrifice was practiced in ancient times to appease the god(s) but it is considered barbaric in modern civilization.
X: Not to me!
A: If you heard of a case today where a human being was sacrificed to a god, would you be okay with that?
X: I live for Jesus because He gave his all for me.
A: That doesn’t answer my question.
X: Why would you ask me such a question? My God is the One and Only, True and Living, Almighty God! You know by beliefs and stand for that! What other people do for a dead false god I can not answer for. You need to ask them!
A: I asked because you said that human sacrifice wasn’t barbaric to you.
this goes on until the Christian sister explodes: Get thee behind me Satan, in the name of Jesus!!!
A: Are you serious?
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Here is Bishop Spong on crucifixion (condensed by me):
“The language of original sin and atonement has emanated from Christian circles for so long that it has achieved the status of a sacred mantra. This means that it cannot be questioned. Upon closer inspection, these sacred concepts involve us in a view of human life that is no longer operative, a theistic understanding of God articulated in a form that is all but repulsive, a magical view of Jesus that violates our minds, and the practical necessity for the church to elicit guilt as a prerequisite to conversion.
The service of baptism presupposes the rescue operation. The primary eucharistic worship of the church, frequently referred to as “the sacrifice of the mass,” reenacts liturgically this rescuing view of Jesus. The entire corpus of the the bible traditionally has been read and interpreted in such a way as to undergird this particular understanding of Jesus as the rescuer. The presence of a cross or a crucifix as the central symbol of Christianity proclaims it.
To be human was by definition to be evil, fallen, and in need of rescue.
It was the conviction that humans were sinful and in need of redemption that enabled guilt and religion to be so closely tied together in the history of the Western world. Religious empires were built on helping people live with and, to some degree, overcome their sense of guilt. Confession, penances, acts of supererogation, and masses for the dead were but a few of the guilt levers built into the Christian enterprise.
Death was not natural, Augustine argued, it was punitive. The sin of Adam had been passed on through the sex act to every other human being. Sex was evil. Sex was universal. So evil was universal. It was said to be the heritage of Adam. We were fallen creatures in need of rescue. Christ died, said Paul, “for our sins” (1 Cor 15:3). Our sins somehow required his death. He was the sacrifice made on our behalf. God, it was said, sent his son to “pay the price of sin.”
It was said “God nailed his son to the cross for our salvation.” Seldom did Christians pause to recognize the ogre into which they had turned God.
The unraveling of this strange theological system began with the realization that Adam and Eve were not the primeval human parents. The theory of evolution made Adam and Eve legendary at best. There were no first parents, and so the primeval act of disobedience on the part of the first parents could not possibly have affected the whole human race. The myth was thus dealt a death blow, and the monolithic story of salvation built by Christian apologists over the ages began to totter.
How can there be a fall into sin if there has never been a perfection from which to fall? What kind of deity is it who would require of us a sacrificial offering to overcome a chasm that is now understood to be nonexistent? All of these interpretations [of atonement] involve us in images of an external deity who acted like a capricious human authority figure who would be displeased with human conduct and who would require some kind of restitution. They involve us in a definition of human life as sinful and fallen.
We human beings do not live in sin. We are not born in sin. We do not need to have the stain of our original sin washed away in baptism. We are not fallen creatures who will lose salvation if we are not baptized. We were not created in God’s image in any literal way. We simply evolved out of lower forms of life and ultimately developed a higher consciousness. There was no fall into sin. Yet there is a sense in which all human beings are still caught in the struggle to become our deeper and truest selves.
The realization is dawning that we human beings are alone and therefore are responsible for ourselves, that there is no no appeal to a higher power for protection. We are learning that meaning is not external to life but must be discovered in our own depths and imposed on life by an act of our own will.
~ Bishop John Shelby Spong, “Why Christianity Must Change Or Die.”
“Man is naturally a savage, and emerges from barbarism by slow degrees.” ~ William Hazzlit
“We didn't fall from grace. We rose from slime.”~ Jeremy Sherman
Pisces, Stained Glass, Chartres*
Yo no hablo de venganzas ni perdones. El olvido es la unica venganza y el unico perdon. ~ Jorge Luis Borges
(I don’t speak of vengeance or forgiveness. Oblivion is a unique vengeance and a unique forgiveness.)
Library of Babel, Hall of the Planets; Erik Desmazieres*
SALT OVERLOAD LEADS TO AUTOIMMUNE PROBLEMS, RAISES THE RISK OF STROKE IRRESPECTIVE OF HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE
~ “It is well known that a high salt diet leads to high blood pressure, a risk factor for an array of health problems, including heart disease and stroke. But over the last decade, studies across human populations have reported the association between salt intake and stroke irrespective of high blood pressure and risk of heart disease, suggesting a missing link between salt intake and brain health.
This research proposes new therapeutic targets for countering stroke—the second leading cause of death worldwide—and cognitive dysfunction. Reducing salt intake is applicable to people around the globe, as nearly every adult consumes too much salt: on average 9–12 grams per day or around twice the recommended maximum level of intake (5 grams) by the World Health Organization.
The researchers used mice, and found that immune responses in the small intestines set off a cascade of chemical responses reaching the brain’s blood vessels, reducing blood flow to the cortex and hippocampus, two brain regions crucial for learning and memory. This, in turn, brought a decline in tests of cognitive performance. The impairment in learning and memory was clear even in the absence of high blood pressure; they observed that the gut is reacting to the salt overload and directing immune signals that lay the basis for deterioration throughout the brain’s vital vascular complex and compromise cognitive function. While this study has only been carried out on research animals so far, the scientists believe it's likely that much of the same applies to people.
The implications of this newly identified gut–brain connection extend to several autoimmune disorders, including multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, and inflammatory bowel disease, that have been shown to activate the same immune signaling pathway implicated in this study.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-new-connection-between-the-gut-and-the-brain/
ending on beauty:
Come and help me. I am disappearing.
The god is in the process of transforming me, the one in the corner
over there (whispering)
~ Gunmar Ekelöf
Sleigh Ride; Winslow Homer
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