Love Maps of Books.

Books are the most permanent, stable and reliable friends we have in life, so it befits us to make a love map of them. What is a love map? It's a basis for appreciation and affection. It's a map of what you love about a book. The idea comes from marriage scholar John Gottman, as a way of drawing couples closer together.

The kind of book suitable for a love map must be one you would want to spend all your life with. The writing of books is endless, but greatness remains rare. Choose only the greatest of books to do a love map of, and they will reward you with some of their magnitude.

Then, write the answers to the following questions:

1. What is the title? Pages? Divisions?
2. Who are the main characters?
3. What are the main relationships, briefly told?
4. Where is the action set in space? When is the action set in time?
5. What do the characters want most?
6. What do the characters hate most?
7. What happens in the beginning?
8. The middle?
9. The end?
10. What are the most important events in the novel? Why?
11. What is funny? Strange? Sublime? Beautiful? What affects me?
12. What foods are eaten in the book?
13. What opinions are expressed in the book? How are they still relevant?
14. What are the major tools, props, and physical markers of the book?
15. What color is the book overall, or specifically?
16. How do the characters handle conflict?
17. How do the characters recover from conflict?
18. What do the characters read or do for entertainment?
19. What jobs do the characters do? How do they occupy their time when not in the book?
20. What is to happen to the characters after the book ends? What happened to the characters before the book began?

Ask at least 20 questions, and write down the answers.

By now you will be better acquainted with the book than most literary critics, and have a more thorough knowledge with which to enjoy a re-reading of the book.

The books we love deserve to be treated with love and respect; making a love map of them is the best way to get closer to them.

Schopenhauer's "On Style": the Do List of Suggestions for Writers

I just read Schopenhauer's essay on style. And while it is a lovely sort of a rant, good for a blog entry, it tends to focus mostly on the Don'ts and very little on the Dos. So I thought I would record all of Schopenhauer's Do List.

Schopenhauer says the source of the best writing is epigraphic and monumental. I had to look up epigraphic in the dictionary, on google, and in the encyclopaedia before I got insight into what Schopenhauer means by this.

Before paper, all the most important statements a nation used to make were written painstakingly on stone. Throughout the ancient world, then, the style used was spare, grand, round, full, rich, right and true, and it is this Schopenhauer means when he says "epigraphic" style.

Next: "An author should have sometime to say; no, this is in itself almost all that is necessary. Ah, how much it means!" This is his key piece of advice.

"Le Style Empese" means to pour out words like a flood, according to Schopenhauer - again, no hint of this from a google search - and this he contrasts with a prim polite style, both of which are deviations from the epigraphic ideal.

I like Schopenhauer's nice taste, derived from the French, where he says after Hesiod that the half is more than the whole. I learn the same lesson from Gide as a child when I read in his journals that the problem with the English is that they do not know what to leave out. Knowing what to leave out, however, remains the great problem of style.

Style must be objective - that is, directly forcing the reader to think the same thought as the author.

Always write with care, as if the words are to remain forever.

Always write one thought at a time, then link thoughts logically together into paragraphs, rather than interrupting a sentence with parentheses.

Write like an architect builds, sketching out the plan, and thinking it over down the smallest detail.

That's the sum of Schopenhauer's positive advice. There's much negative advice to of great use, and the essay is well worth a read.

Now, I wish I could only apply all this to my writing retrospectively!

On Thucydides and the Peloponnese War History - A Rampage of Appreciation

Although I have reservations about the practice, I'd like to include some web links about Thucydides and his work on the History of the Peloponnesian War.

Here's two introductions to the topic for newcomers:

Squidoo lens on the Peloponnesian War.
Wikipedia on the Peloponnesian War.

Many folk try to convert Thucydides' work into a modern and specific political agenda. Or they try to divorce Thucydides from the Athenian context in some way. This kind of intellectual busywork abounds online because, firstly, if you have an agenda and can read, you can shoehorn Thucydides into it, and secondly, Thucydides is writing universal history, history for the ages, and the interpretations generally fall short of the book itself. But they are illuminating attempts, and sometimes shines a great light on the modern political realm by comparison with the smaller Thucydidean realm.

Iraq war opinion piece. - 'Thucydides: Ur-Historian of the Ur-War' (Great title!)

A really sensationally interpreted piece on the famous Melian Dialog - 'The rape of Melos: Thucydides as great thinker'.

A rather brilliant and austere analysis of the failure of Athenian democracy - 'Contemporary Analysis of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War'.

Much of the commentary for and against Donald Kagan's wonderful history of the Peloponnesian War is politically loaded and divisive, but nevertheless it shows up the precise corruption of language and manners which Thucydides analyzed in the fourth century before Christ. Here's the best:

'Thucydides = Spinmeister' by Neko Bijin. - superb and direct analysis. Especially read the comments.

Anthony Grafton in Slate's 'Did Thucydides Tell the Truth?' critiques Kagan rather than Thucydides.

Alan Gilbert at Democratic Individuality brilliant delineates the moderate position on public corruption using Thucydides in 'How public corruption happens - or Thucydides and the day by day removal of the word torture from New York Times' Reporting'.

Here's what seems to be a marvellously cogent take on Thucydides would-be perspective on the war on terror: 'Thucydides, Aquinas and the GWOT' which, alas, is cut short.

Here's a simply awesome re-vision of the passage in Book Three where Thucydides describes the breakdown in human nature after the Corcyran revolution: 'The Attribute of Manliness', by Eric Lippert.

Here's an earnest 'Lessons Learned from Thucydides' by a blog/person named Newrisks, connecting it with modern strategic war theory. He links to a superb pdf essay on the topic here.

Another contemporary crit of Thucydides vis-a-vis modern global politics: Herodotus vs Thucydides. argues against a narrow interpretation of Thucydides.

Now, against these temporal interpretations of interpretations of Thucydides, I want to contrast the scholarly lights of one Mike Anderson, whose fine web log on the ancients casts light in every direction without dispersing views into opinions.

'- The Greeks and their foolish attack of Syracuse'

- Pericles and the defense of democracy.

- The Peloponnesean War and its Causes.

- The Athenian Polis - Golden Age Decay.

I rate this weblog highly for its insight into the Thucydidean worldview. Because Mike doesn't form views unwarranted by the facts, nor does he tend to introduce modern political controversy, his views remain pristine and clear. He doesn't depart from the source of politics in ethics, it seems to me, and thus remains modest and humane in his views.

Finally, outside politics or perhaps meta-political, see the fine essay at Malaspina about the roots of our political thinking in Thucydides' mathematic worldview: Thucydides as Geometry. You need to scroll down to see it, but it's worth it for the insight into the way we think now.

For fun here's a few juicy quotes from Thucydides himself.

In conclusion, I suggest reading the primary author above these secondary and tertiary views. The work is illuminating in itself; the function of commentary is just to illuminate the primary text. If you read Thucydides now then I have here done my job well.

How to Read a Difficult Book.

Thucydides is next on my reading list, and I'm highly motivated to read his book 'The Peloponnesian War'.

The problem is, it's a long and complex story. I read the two legendary passages in a previous pass - the Melian Dialog and the Funeral Oration of Pericles. Then I tried to read it through and got stuck. I need help.

So what I've done is great guidance for reading any difficult book.

Start by doing one of these two things first. Either:

- Read through the introduction and notes briefly looking for single words or phrases that praise the book, seeking to just appreciate the text and get a bit of positive emotion flowing. (For example, the intro to Thucydides calls his prose "muscular" - which I find interesting!)

Or:

- Simply count the number of pages of the actual text only. Don't count the opening pages, notes, and outside matter. For example, the introduction to Thucydides is 30 pages long. The text, minus the notes, ends at 600 pages. So the text to read it 570 pages long.

Either get an objective measure of how much you must read to complete the book, or generate a subjective sense of how much you could potentially enjoy the book. Simple!

After you've done that, then you can extend both the subjective and objective approach further.

I'll start with objective.

Thucydides' book is 570 pages long. He divided it up into eight books. How many pages per book roughly? Well, eight times seven is 56, therefore each of the eight books of Thucydides is on average seventy pages long. That's the size of a medium sized novella.

Now for the subjective:

If we examine how the writer organized the book itself into eight books, the book seems to suggest is that we read Thucydides not like a 570 page history, but like eight novellas about the same topic. Immediately I can feel relieved knowing I can read an eighth of the book and put it aside for a week to do something else. I don't have to hold the whole thing in mind. Instead of one huge book, Thucydides is now eight short books.

So, if the 'Peloponnesian War' is really 8 books in one, what are they about? How do they relate together?

There are three ports of call to answer this question: the table of contents, the opening paragraph of each book, and the closing paragraph of each book. Reading all of those will let me find nice dramatic interesting titles for each book. And notice it's a fun way to get subjectively engaged with the book, once again?

From a glance at book one, I wrote "Fear Brings War." That's my personal title for book one of Thucycides - the way I think about and feel about that text. This creates a sense of engagement and ownership of the meaning of the text. It's my book, not just any old book.

Book two - Noble Athens under pressure.
Book three - Civil war in Cocyra.
Book four - Athens kicks ass.
Book five - Athens violates integrity.
Book six - Athens versus Sicily, and the treachery of Alcidiades.
Book seven - War at sea.
Book eight - The end of democracy in Greece.

Now, many of these will be inaccurate or irrelevant; the point is not truth but stimulating interest and passion to read. The point is to engage with the text. At this stage of reading I just want a hook to get and keep me interested.

I will be dipping into the first book now looking for what interests me most. In a sense I will be creating the text in myself rather than passively allowing it to pour into me like historical sludge.

In conclusion, a hard book is not a hard book unless you read it in a hard way. If you read a hard book like you would read Harry Potter, by starting at the start and just pushing through, then you'll probably lose your way at the first difficult passage.

Instead:

1 - engage with the text in nonlinear ways
2 - move between gathering information on the structure of the book and appreciating the qualities of the book
3 - find words and ideas that get you excited and motivated to read on.

If you do this, you'll certainly enjoy the best books more and more, no matter how difficult they are to others.

Reading Hippocrates

Today I read Hippocrates' piece on how the environment creates health or illness. The core idea is that a harsh, dry, mountainous, unfriendly environement gives rise to a courageous and strong people, while a soft, swampy, luxurious environment gives rise to weak and soft people.

Hippocrates tries his hand at some ethnology too. He compares the Scythians, Persians, and Europeans. His views don't seem very cogent. But the most interesting part about his opinions is his views on the causes of the impotence of the Scythians. His diagnosis of the Scythian's commonplace impotence is fascinating. I have to wonder if he borrowed it from someone who had lived among them, though. Hippocrates does not seem much like a travelling man.

The piece is called 'Airs, Waters, Places'. It's quite a sensible paper when you read it in historical context. Hippocrates apprehends the malleable nature of humans, and tries to grasp how humans fit the environment without recourse to myth or religion. In that light, his first efforts are very good indeed.

I love the Gateway to the Great Books of the Western World

Imagine having the perfect uncle.

Not only does he introduce you to the world at large, but he is a relentless adventurer. He travels far and wide in search of brilliant trophies.

Your perfect uncle (or aunt) knows all the best stories. He knows all the best places to go.

But more than that, imagine he is of the highest discretion and so only speaks to lead you out into further adventures of your own. Imagine his tact and forebearance allow you to explore exactly what you need to at your own pace and depth.

This is what the Gateway to the Great Books are.

"The works in that set [the Great Books] have a certain magnitude, but they also occupy a unique place in the formation and development of Western Culture. Each of them represents a primary, original, and fundamental contribution to man's understanding of the universe and of himself. It has been said of them that they are books which never have to be written again, that they are inexhaustibly rereadable, that they are always contemporary, and that they are at once the most intelligible books (because so lucidly written) and the most rewarding to understand (because they deal with the most profound and important subjects). It has also been said of them that they are the repository and reservoir of the relatively small number of great ideas which man has forged in his efforts to understand the world and his place in it; and that they are over everyone's head all of the time, which gives them the inexhaustible power to elevate all of us who will make the effort to lift our minds by reaching up to the ideas they contain."

The above sustained and sublime piece of prose is from the Introduction to the Gateway to the Great Books. From the prose style I believe it may be written by Hutchins, but it doesn't say.

I read and reread this paragraph with wonder. The Great Books are larger than my comprehension. And it is the Gateway to the Great Books that have enlarged my sensibility bit by bit so that I can appreciate the truth of these words.

For the last 18 months I have been taking a liberal arts degree through the Gateway to the Great Books. I am just over half way and feel my sense of myself, the world, other humans, nature, and God has been profoundly deepened by this study. It has been liberating. Becoming an autodidact has been empowering. And sharing what I have learnt has been enriching.

Montaigne on Managing the Will.

Michel says "In my opinion, a man should lend himself to others and only give himself to himself."

This is good food for thought!

What does it mean to lend oneself? He says to lend your faculties to another is make yourself a slave to them. You need to be thrifty in lending yourself out. What does it mean to give oneself?

Is happiness more in being fully involved in life, or in detachment, or in involvement without attachment, or in something else? Montaigne says it is in involvement with detachment.

Soon I find myself agreeing with Michel. When we act without passion for outcome, we act freely and happily. We can lend ourselves wholly to the task and keep ourselves for ourselves. To give all and keep all at once is the wisdom of prudence indeed!

Montaigne's prudential guideline1 : want only what is near and free.
Montaigne's prudential guideline 2: the reasonable man prefers peace and avoids disturbance above all else.

Is this quietism? No; in Montaigne's age is was realistic. Confucius agrees: when the leaders are vicious the wise men act stupid.

Reading Dostoyevsky For Kicks and Giggles

Every few days I read a bit of Augustine; he is magnificent reading, but difficult, irregular, and strange.

I read Augustine in the middle of the day, in snatches.

Even in his word choice I can feel the chaos and confusion of his age. In the irregularity of subject and the novelty of the autobiographical voice, we see for the first time what I call the Christian difference. Before Augustine the chief figure of the age were nobles. Augustine was a common school teacher, and a bishop. After Christ, it is the common folk who make history.

But the palpable darkness of Augustine frightens to me. His profound seriousness is the only relief from human nature. His century is a frightening place.

In comparison to Augustine, Dostoyevsky is a blaze of light.

Before I sleep I read as much Dostoyevsky as I can. Before sleep is best - his work is liminal - that is, on the edge of unconsciousness. Reading him when you first wake up or after meditating seems altogether too cheerful to me, but in the dark hours Dostoyevsky shines.

I'm reading Demons; the new Penguin translation is flat out fine work. Translator was Robert A Maguire. I love how well Penguin has translated his work. Maybe the choppy rough Russian just moves better into modern English than the French? I don't know.

Demons is confusing and superb. First I had trouble with the names, and had to bookmark the cast of characters list at the end of the text and refer to it constantly (I still do a bit). Second I had to deal with the allusive and hysterical way characters have of delivering major plot points. My thinking goes something like this:

"So... Stephan Verkovensky is maybe betrothed to some nobody called Sonya or Dunya who is the protege of his patron Vavarya Stravogina, for manifold deeply suspicous and impure reasons other. But Vavarya's maybe looney son, is returning home soon, bringing along with him Stephan's son who is an unknown and sundry complications. And Kirilov thinks everyone should commit suicide to prove there is no God. And Liputin is a vile gossip who seems to know everything and say nothing. And there is a new governor in town whose wife doesn't like Vavarya Starvogina. And everyone speaks French when they're excited, which is all the time, which is tiresome to deciper into English but simpler than having to stop to look it up in the stupid notes at the end of the Penguin Book because you know what it means anyhow if you stop reading for a minute and dig out the French vocab but that means you have to stop reading to translate French."

Jeebus himself couldn't sort out this kind of absurd mess, but it sort of makes sense, if you ignore the many maybes in the plot. Reading a summary online would take away the surprise and leave the hysterics.

At 17 years of age, when I last read Demons, I doubt I understood it anyhow.

Do you know why I find him funny? Because I really enjoy Dostoyevsky's company. I really like Fyodor Mikhaylovich the man. I empathize with him. I feel his wild humor. I see how he sees the Russian people. Dostoyevsky cannot see the future, the Bolsheviks and the present Russian Mafia kleptocracy. Instead he sees the foolishness genius and passionately misplaced devotion of the Russian intelligentsia to French frivolity and sentimental vacuity a la Russe. He sees it clearly, and sees it fully, accepts it all in himself, and he laughs.

Do I love Dostoyevsky most of all because he laughs at himself? I don't mean him to reduce him to a character out of Gogol. He is much more than anything Gogol could invent.

Hm. Please allow me to help non-Dostoyevsky readers understand what kind of experience they are missing out on:

Reading Dostoyevsky is like being trapped in a big hessian sack with twenty-seven affectionate lapdogs: it's unpleasant at the time but when its over you secretly enjoyed it so much. All those flickering pink tongues. Mmm.

Reading the Aeneid of Virgil, Blow by Blow

I read books 3, 4, 5 and half of book 6 of the Aeneid tonight (so far). Publius Virgilius packs a lot of story in his text. I can best appreciate this work in the light of Homer, the tragedians and Plato; the summation of all story up til his time is simply remarkable. It is is as if Virgil in his epic has set out not simply to tell a story, but to give all Story, the archetype of story-ness, the All-Story. But he is not summing up like Homer; characteristically Roman, Virgil seeks to engulf the memories of stories past. Virgil's Aeneid is a colony poem in more ways than one.

And what about the person, the consciousness of Virgil? I must admit I read Virgil through the more accessibly humane Dante. So much of Dante is clearly enriched by Virgil, that if the character Dante had not kept him at his side the strength of Virgil's poem would have overcome Dante the poet. Keep your literary influences close - this seems to be Dante's approach to Virgil.

Virgil sometimes comes across as a bit of a patchwork man. The story leaps from reference to reference of other men's work - and it works, it flows, but we do not clearly get a sense of the cohent consciousness of a work. At least, not yet. Maybe I ought to read on before I judge the man!

The poetry is fine. I have fiddled with many translations, and chanced on the Fagles-like one by Kline, which is superbly lucid compared to the Dryden (best of the olde translations). Tony Kline's Aeneid is free online, and has the benefit of having the books subdivided into the more precise episodic structure. This means the reader gets to rest without losing the thread, and gets reminders of what the thread was, and the sense of the story stands more clearly out than if we just have books one to twelve. It really helps the read. Also, Kline's version renders words that past generations might have called the 'moral sentiments' into plain emotions, which is a bit more real.

Kline's translation of Aeneid is not fancy, but neither is it pedestrian - the poetry reads simply and roughly into Virgil's luminous verse. Compared with ye olde Englishe translations, with which one needs to stop and mentally retranslate into modern English every dozen lines, Tony Kline's translation is a pleasure to read.

Update: I'm now at book 8, and the patchwork is becoming clearer. It makes better sense how Virgil's exercise in epic poetry is not an end in itself but a means to justify the Roman empire. But I can also see how, by making the poem a means to a political end, Virgil undercuts his personal source of inspiration. One cannot turn such sophisticated and urbane critical and aesthetic faculties onto the legends of the founding of Rome without also uncovering something of a critique of the beautiful lies of armed force. Virgil's falterings really illuminate why the Romans were relatively scarce in creative genius: it is hard work being a good Roman!

Update: Finished. I can see why Virgil didn't finish the poem. love the first half of Aeneid, but the second is like reading Rupert Brooke's war poems for a few thousand lines. Pathos becomes bathos. Lyrical emotion become prim patriotism. By the time Turnus dies it is just dreary, and the rage of Achilles has become the duty of Aeneas. Meh.

Part two Aeneid sucks more than Scylla's whirlpool. I suggest prospective readers read up until the Trojans land in Italy and stop there. For reading pleasure, the first half is superb. Trust me on this one: the Trojans settled Italy just fine.

On Sainte-Beuve On Montaigne

Sainte-Beuve writes messily, but the fine feelings sweep you along quickly so you don't notice until the second read.

I have forced Sainte-Beuve to speak here of Montaigne in epigram, as I can only imagine he would have wished if he had a modern audience to communicate with.

Much as his work has been demolished for me by Proust's criticism, Sainte-Beuve's wonderful love and enthusiasm remains:

- "It may be said of Montaigne's style that it is a continual epigram, or an ever-renewed metaphor."

- "Montaigne is a writer naturally fertile in metaphors that are never detached from the thought, but that seize it in its very center."

- "If we desired to write with his severity, exact proportion, and diverse continuity of figures and turns - it is absolutely necessary to enlarge and extend the French language."

- "In imagining the expression and locution that is wanting, our prose should appear equally finished, inspired and emboldened, but not intoxicated, by the pure and direct spirit of ancient sources."

Some stray birds:

Can even a Frenchman still speak about enlarging the language? And now that English cannot be engrossed by any one human mind, can it even be called a single language, or is it rather a super-language or complex of languages?

I find in Montaigne's classicism the best possible kind: to treat the Roman and Greek authors as a matter for pleasure and wisdom alone, and to avoid all pretense of learning and unnatural composure.

The very same things said of Montaigne are also said of Dante by the critics. Can it be the sweet new style is anything other than a sweet fresh mind made intimate with the minds of the ancients?

Finally, how can we account for Dante in Italian, Montaigne in French, and Shakespeare in English? The mystery at least can be traced to the Roman writers. But that does not explain the light that entered the world through their work.

Crikey - It's Proust!

Reading Montaigne on the train today I came upon this:

"The men whose society and intimacy I seek are those who are called well-bred and talented men; and the thought of these gives me a distaste for others. Their kind is, rightly considered, the rarest that we have, a kind that owes almost everything to nature. The purpose of our intercourse is simply intimacy, familiarity, and talk; the exercise of the mind is our sole gain. In our conversations all subjects are alike to me. I do not care if there is no depth or weight in them; they always possess charm, and they always keep to the point. All is colored by a ripe and steady judgment, blended with kindness, candor, gaiety, and friendship... I know my kind even by their silences and their smiles... Hippomachus said truly he that he knew a good wrestler simply by seeing him walk in the street."

I read this with a shock of recognition. Crikey, I said to myself, he's talking about Proust!

It is no good telling me that Proust and Montaigne live three centuries apart. Just imagine Montaigne and Proust in conversation! (I consider myself humbly fortunate to have friends who can follow my conversation at all.)

Neither it is any use telling me that Gide or Saint-Beuve could fit the bill. They do not. Saint-Beuve is Montaigne's disciple, not his mate; and Gide - his diminution.

How to Be A Great Friend: The Great Books of the Western World on Great Friendship.

These are the basic readings on friendship. If you want to be a great friend, here is how.

1. Start with Lysis. This is supposed to be about friendship but actually Socrates is just teasing. Listen in on how Socrates uses the passion for Lysis to direct him to a wise end? This is one aspect of being a great friend: direct your friend to their own greatness. The Lysis of Plato is the single best instruction manual on making friends with young people, because it shows intead of tells you how.

2. Next, read Cicero On Friendship. If the Lysis is the best guide to young friends, the dialog On Friendship by Cicero is the best instructions on how to make friends with elders. Notice how wonderfully Gaius and Quintus draw Laelius out; can you see how they manipulate him with words to show his best qualities? Since it is no deceit to bring out good qualities in your friends, the text of this short dialog really shows another great lesson in friendship: use words to draw out the best qualities in your friend.

3. Finally, we come to a crucial parting point in the lessons on friendship: whether to follow the heart or the head? Francis Bacon is a friend of the head variety, whereas Michel de Montaigne is a friend of the heart. Both have essays entitled ¨On Friendship¨. Between them you must choose your lesson. Which is more important to you? Which is more important to your friend? And, are you aware of the consequences of either path? Among friends with worldly goals and practical concerns, this is the essential thing to know. So the lesson these two men suggest is: Be aware of what kind of friendship you are in, heart or head, and what consequences flow from that.

4. Last but not least are the ethical analyses of Aristotle, the reasoning of Epictetus, and the essay of Seneca. These mordant analysts cover the same material as Cicero with less charm. And they instruct me in the finest lesson of friendship, which is: Be friends only with people who make you happy and who you love to make happy. Because anything that lasts must make the effort to be charming. This

There they are: my four lessons of friendship:
1. Direct your friend to their own greatness. (Especially in young friends)
2. Use words to draw out the best qualities in your friend. (Especially in elder friends)
3. Be aware of what kind of friendship you are in, and what consequences flow from that. (Especially in peers)
4. Be friends only with people who make you happy and who you love to make happy.

Asimov's Foundation and the Great Books of the Western World

The Foundation Series and Great Books of the Western World have many common points. Both Foundation and GBWW are concerned with the preservation of the civilizing influence of reason and Western culture. Both address theories of knowledge and power. Both attack ethics and the sentiments with great feeling and strong views.

But as the Great Books of the Western World is a real life conversation spanning the ages, it is about true things and actual stories, which even though fiction are based in true cultures and times. The Foundation Series is fiction through and through, fiction in the best, the Aesopian, sense of the word. The world of Foundation cannot and could not ever exist.

But in a deeper sense Asimov's Foundation is poetry; it is a fiction that shows more truth than a history can.

The underlying context of Foundation occupies the same epistemic space as Plato's ideal republic. Socrates insists that reality can be measured; how much more does the fictional Hari Seldon force nature to yield up her secrets through psychohistory! The Encyclopaedists of the Foundation represent the Platonic educational ideal, and the various scurrilous derring-do of the first book of Foundation represent symbolically much of the political dialog that followed in the wake of Plato's work these last few thousand years.

Finally, in the annoyingly analytical smugness of the psychohistorians, starting with Hari Seldon himself, we can see Aristotle's rational and dry wisdom at work.

The key point of dissimilarity between the Great Books and Asimov's Foundation is simply that Asimov has a far more narrow view of knowledge than the Great Books. Asimov's Foundation, when exposed to the harsh, humane, realistic light of the Great Books, reveals itself to be marred by a narrow scientism and cramped by reductionistic cliches.

Nevertheless, as Harold Bloom would put it, the Foundation Series expresses considerable anxiety towards the centralized authority of the Western tradition. The Empire is doomed, but the Foundation will endure through the dark age of irrational faith and mystical, magical thinking. Asimov's effort to assert reductionist scientism makes the Foundation Series (at least in the first three books) vital and genuine.

Finally, comparison with the Great Books casts a new light on the latter books - ie, 'Foundation's Edge', 'Foundation and Earth'. If the heroic effort to ward off the forces of gaian wholism in the latter books of the Foundation Series is not entirely convincing, then the fault is perhaps not in the vitality of the writer but in the weakness of the material.

Dan and I Visit Open Day At The South Australian Governor's House

Dan and I visited the governor's house on March 29 2009 and here are the most memorable aspects:

The governor of South Australia has lots of mirrors in his house. "Because," Dan says, "he needs to make sure he looks good all the time."

All the art is either distinguished portraiture or realistic landscapes. Why? We decided between us that it has been decorated by previous governors, with a consideration of the taste of future ones and the dignity of the previous ones; and if it is bland it is nevertheless in excellent taste.

We come across two unfortunate activist friends in the ballroom. Their suits are too tight; they seem puffed up a little with anxiety; unfortunately, their tight suits are matching green and maroon.

They show us their document, which is unintelligible. It asks immediately for something undefined for big group of people. It uses exclamation marks and the words "we demand". Like I said, unfortunate.

I hand it back and smoothly lie: "It's clearly written."

"It's been through many drafts," they tell us, "We're going to present it to the governor today."

Dan, fortunately, has noticed something shiny which requires we attend to it instead of arguing with fanatics. I reckon Dan's social graces make Michelle Obama's seem gauche.

Out in the yard a crowd of about forty tourists have gathered around a tree where two Kookaburras laugh. Other nations have governors' maisons galore, but no hilarious avians. The crowd is still there discussing the event excitedly when we leave.

The pool is meagre - private enough for a nudie dip, but not large enough for embarrasingly fatal set of swimming laps while drunk.

I spot the Great Books of the Western World in the main office, with great satisfaction. The office is roped and officiated.

"What does the governor do?" I ask the official.

He rambles about presiding over occasions requiring a show of pomp domestick. I nod until he lapses into silence, and for a few more seconds while he looks at me.

"He's a figurehead really," the official says sadly.

"And what," I ask, "does he symbolise? What values or ideas?"

He surprises and delights me by giving a really great reply:

"The governor symbolises the Westminster System of law. He stamps all the legislation that goes through State Parliament, just as the governor general stamps legislation through Federal Parliament."

"Cool.. thanks mate!" I tell him. His reply inspires me with considerable respect for the position of state governor.

Later Dan spots in the ballroom a little man in a shiny suit puffed up anxiously into his shoulders and chest half bowing as he shakes old ladies hands who cluster around in a dense cloud of perfume. Dan whispers "It's the governor!" and I spare him a glance.

But respect goes to principles not people. And I have already met the governor in my conversation with the official in the office.

Augustine's Four Rules of Reading A Book

Today I learnt how Augustine read.

His style of reading reminds me of Dante's letter to his patron Can Grande - no doubt Dante learnt to read through Augustine. But what I was unprepared for was how very wide the gap between Augustine's view of reading and the modern view.

Augustine's rules for reading are (to me at least) still relevant. They are four, and I state them as principles rather than practices because of their general usefulness:

1. PURITY - reading that subserves cravings and appetites distorts the mind's ability to read the text. Maybe a text serves the lower appetites; nevertheless, the meaning of it can only be got at with a mind free of bias and a pure appetite to understand.

2. FAITH - You must suspend disbelief, but you must not suspend belief, in reading. That is to say, faith must be present in reading, and cynicism must be suspending in reading, for comprehension to occur.

I would add that faith can be conditional on historical context or limited to the space of the reading of the text, but it must be present according to Augustine in order to read well.

Faith in the text is primary in making sense of it. Why? Because reading is an inclination of the will and appetite towards clarity and freedom, therefore right from the start the will must be freed from doubt, the enemy of good faith.

These two rules for reading, purity and faith, pertain to the appetites and the will. Purity of appetites and a faithful will are the ends of their application.

3. LOVE - I read Harold Bloom's criticism from love of his mind. Why do I love Bloom's work? Because he has taught me that only by love can I win access through the text to another person's consciousness. For me, as for Bloom, Augustine and Dante, love is the only entree into the mind of greatness. A strong love will take you to the heart of any text.

Simply put, love makes reading and writing worth while. Since reading involves the love of that which reads - in other words, reading is intellectual vanity - the most literate books win the greatest love, since they most intimately put us in contact with that quality of intellectual vanity which does reading. Even more deeply, the love that creates a text and the love that reads the text are the one substance, and the love that carefully appreciates a text arises from the same kind of love as that which created the text. Love is the common human factor in reading and writing.

Criticism without love is worthless. A critic without love, even in the form of courtesy, respect, or polite restraint from abuse, is not worth a hearing. Any misreading (in the sense of Harold Bloom's map of misreadings) that adds love to the text is good or at least harmless.

4. MULTIPLICITY - Simple, clear passages of a text offer a meaning which is unarguably revealed by purity, faith and love. The consensus of informed opinions around a great text is fairly fixed, and there is little freedom in it. But Augustine offers a view of free interpretation of the text in the case of ambiguous passages.

Multiple readings, imagined, invented and supposed, are good and useful when the text is ambiguous and poetic, and when they do not violate the good faith of the text. Obscure passages provide freedom to play and explore the text more fully.

These are Augustine's four rules for reading a book, then. Let's put them in their historical and intellectual context now!

Augustine came to value the pagan tradition negatively, as an example of ignorance and error in human thinking. So much of his rules for reading concern the Christian and Jewish religious writings of his time, many of which came to be our present day bible. Augustine's reading was informed by a deep seriousness or purpose, and a moral and devotional aim.

Perhaps the primary challenge to we moderns is Augustine's stark vision of the human good to be got from reading. But Augustine differs not greatly in this from Samuel Johnson, who read voraciously and judged by very high standards of moral purity.

I suppose the biggest difference from we moderns is the more broad sense of what is proper in books - we are less offended and less corrupted, I suppose, by impure and appetite-stimulating images or words. Perhaps it is because we are so constantly overfull with stimuli, that we end up becoming accustomed or unaffected to the tides of vicious and sex-loaded content or screens and pages wash up. Certainly we seem to inhabit an alien and noisy world compared to the agrarian north African environment of Augustine.

Take these rules, then, as you will... a stimulus to your reading more spiritedly, or a window on a kind of reading past and long gone.

What Do You Think of These Four Dante English Translations?

It's customary to comment on parallel translations. Instead I will invite you to read and judge for yourself which is superior. I will say just that the great translations here seem to me a foregone conclusion.

Dante and Virgil are in the middle of the circle of the lustful, and Dante has just seen the damned and is describing them, so it's Canto V of Inferno, lines 40 to 51.

James Finn Cotter

And as the starlings are lifted on their wings
In icy weather to wide and serried flocks,
So does the gale lift up the wicked spirits,

Flinging them here and there and down and up:
No hope whatever can ever comfort them,
Neither of rest nor of less punishment.

And as the cranes fly over, chanting lays,
Forming one long line across the sky,
So I saw come, uttering their cries,

Shades wafted onward by these winds of strife,
To make me ask him, "Master, who are those
People whom the blackened air so punishes?"

XXXX XXXX XXXX

Longfellow:

And as the wings of starlings bear them on
In the cold season in large band and full,
So doth that blast the spirits maledict;

It hither, thither, downward, upward, drives them;
No hope doth comfort them for evermore,
Not of repose, but even of lesser pain.

And as the cranes go chanting forth their lays,
Making in air a long line of themselves,
So saw I coming, uttering lamentations,

Shadows borne onward by the aforesaid stress.
Whereupon said I: Master, who are those
People, whom the black air so castigates?

XXXX XXXX XXXX

Cary:

...As in large troops
And multitudinous, when winter reigns,
The starlings on their wings are borne abroad;

So bears the tyrannous gust those evil souls.
On this side and on that, above, below,
It drives them: hope of rest to solace them

Is none, nor e'en of milder pang. As cranes,
Chanting their dol'rous notes, traverse the sky,
Stretch'd out in long array: so I beheld

Spirits, who came loud wailing, hurried on
By their dire doom. Then I: Instructor! who
Are these, by the black air so scourg'd?

XXXXX XXXX XXXX

Mandelbaum:

And as, in the cold season, starlings' wings
bear them along in broad and crowded ranks
so does that blast bear on the guilty spirits:

now here, now there, now down, now up, it drives them.
There is no hope that ever comforts them
no hope for rest and none for lesser pain.

And just as cranes in flight will chant their lays,
arraying their long file across the air,
so did the shades I saw approaching, borne

by that assailing wind, lament and moan;
so that I asked him: Master, who are those
who suffer punishment in this dark air?

XXXX

What do you think?

Watching A Eugene O'Niell Documentary

Proust teaches us that some life events are so big that they overflow into the past and present. O'Niell's plays and life show how the pervasive impact of tragic events can be transcended by great art.

"Stammering is the nature of eloquence for us fog people," his character Edmund in 'Long Day's Journey...' says.

Likewise, by confessing our defects we begin to transcend them. We learn from 'Long Day's Journey...' that by lovingly struggling with our birth family it becomes possible to embrace the human family in a universal way.

When I read it as a teenager I wasn't adequate to O'Niell's tragedy. Even Othello was just lovely verse to me back then.

The documentary presents these and other fascinating insights.

Every time - when it works - every time we go on stage, we break time. We become able to dream only when we confess our shallow theatricality. We are washed up from eternity on the beach of time; have we got the will to be shipwrecked again and again for a dream? Like Gulliver, we risk bitter disillusionment for our ideals when we sail our of harbour. Like Ishmael, we seek by pilgrimage out at sea an inner visitation with our own oceanic majesty and pomp.

O'Niell's great tragedies are such pilgrimages. Above all, it's time I reread Shakespeare's tragedies; I've been away from them long enough.

This is just to say

A lil homage to William Carlos Williams: click the title for the original WCW poem.

This is just to say
I have read
Gateway to Great Books,
Grade One.

I am sorry -
Educated so finely, I am
Becoming a human being
At last, at last -

I could not resist.
Virtue is so delicious,
Desire for freedom
So sweet.