July 2008
164 posts
In all times and places, among all peoples and nations lies in deep historical memory the glint of the heroes of yore, of which present sons and grandsons to the thousandth generation stand merely as faint echoes, and though they toil in iron mines and erect leaden works, these products of their sweat and labor become deathworks for them — for the labor to produce is all consuming. Within...
“The readiness with which these races have adopted the Judaic life, customs, and...”
– Heinrich Heine, Confessions
“When inequality of conditions is the common law of society, the most marked...”
– Tocqueville
“Fukuyama now tells us that the book that made him famous, The End of History and...”
– Chris Hitchens, The End of Fukuyama
Puzzling over the tautological article Economics Does Not Lie in City Journal, which claims an Fukuyama-inspired “end of history” with respect to economic theory, now claimed to have reached science status, if not to the distribution of this ‘perfect’ system. Regretfully the author does not define ‘science,’ only lists ten principles commonly agreed upon by...
“The gratificatory discipline of mass organizations, politically repressive and...”
– Rieff (30-31)
“Culture, if it is credal, cannot exist apart from a sense of guilt.”
– Philip Rieff, Charisma (‘07, 28)
“‘One of the finest traits of Jewish life in the Diaspora, for instance,...”
– Halkin (87-91)
“You ask me to be honest? Very well: if Israel were about to fall before a...”
– Hillel Halkin, Letters to an american jewish friend: A Zionimist polemic (‘77,205)
“He who searches for Divine Reality with all his heart and soul and finds it,...”
– Sundar Singh
the grip of mortality/ hours and days melt away / languid flesh / seething / anger is useless here / where body means with none / and the echo of eternity turns to sea breeze / my grain of sand lapped on by the shore / abraham
Discovering the inherent and increasing segregation of American life. Mother and stepfather share the same space but not the same things and often avoid each other much as I avoid the second. I wonder how many other familes share these same foibles. Another friend told me of the trend towards self-segregation by political orientation; no longer simple gerrymandering, but entire neighborhoods...
Just discovered I misspelled Ariga Tetsutaro’s name on previous occasions. Apologies.
“‘Everyone in my village was Moslem. It was something that you didn’t...”
– Kaplan (148, 18)
“Afganistan was too physically rough an assignment and offered too few rewards to...”
– Kaplan (15)
“American conservatives claimed that the media deliberately avoided Afghanistan...”
– Robert Kaplan, Soldiers of God (‘01, 227)
One disappointment with Magee’s book is that I hoped he would trace the development of Wagner’s anti-semitism — it always seemed an odd reverse to have a Jew conduct his final opera — and Feurbach’s Jesus/Siegfried seemed more opposed to common stereotypes than the quasi-Buddhist Parsifal, which has always seemed in some measure to transcend them. Rather, Magee...
Today effectively finished The Cloud of Unknowing, Dever’s Who Were the Early Israelites? Dawkins’ Blind Watchmaker, Magee’s book on Wagner’s philosophy, and a book on John Dewey. Last night Paul Celan only, which was depressing. Not every word for any, but more books await. Tomorrow more energy toward Levenson’s Death and Resurrection and Rieff’s Charisma. If...
Yesterday my mother tells me I have not been resting well. She is right. Rest does not seem to be in my bones; liver has re-bloated. Not energetic but not as faint as before, books read in haphazard fashion. Tidbits learned only, typically unfortunate. Much Civil War music with mother. Realized Nietzche’s early love for Schopenhauer, reversed upon. No one loves Wagner, I now think. They...
“What has become of any reflection on questions of morality—questions that have...”
– Nietzche
Sigur Rós | Starálfur
“But maybe it isn’t just a superstition—the terror of...”
– Eliade
How are they down, how have they fallen down, Those great strong towars of ice and steel And melted by what terror and what miracle? What fire and lights tore down, With the white anger of their sudden accusation, Those towers of silver and of steel? Can we console you, stars, For the so long survival of such wickedness? Tomorrow and the day after Grasses and flowers will grow Upon the bosom of...
In Nietzsche the self is too weak to possess the emotion of pity and not be moved by it. The man of pity moved by it becomes the pitiful man. Nietzsche rejects both emotion and fullness of self, culminating in the end of primitive man.
“Dostoyevky’s Devils is one of the great documents of modern times, because...”
– Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self (‘89,517)
“But father never encouraged our patriotic zeal. He continuously minimised the...”
– Maitreyi, It Does Not Die
“How can I see you? Did Dante ever think he would see his Beatrice with eyes of...”
– Eliade, It Does Not Die (UChicago, ‘94)
“Fantasy is beautiful and truth is more beautiful, but half-truth is...”
– Maitreyi, It Does Not Die
Beethoven | op. 132 (Quartetto Italiano)
Are We Listening? Review of End of the Modern... →
I confess I must not have much interest in the ‘public understanding of science,’ the title of Dawkins’ professorship — I am unable to make it more than a couple chapters into his book The God Delusion. The nature of religious critique in the current age is made difficult by the plethora of traditions involved and lack of central authority. Nonetheless one wishes Dawkins...
My mother asked me to watch Merchant of Venice with her today as she is preparing Portia’s monologue for a drama class. The depiction of the Jew was more negative than I remembered. It was difficult to imagine the acting of the original staging or the intended reaction of the audience — perhaps closer to the ideal aristocrat . In this case, the idle shennanigans of the main actors...
Shakespeare | Merchant of Venice (BBC)
Sing to me Captain! Let me know your song. Sing to me Captain! Your love goes on. O Captain my Captain, all though the night. O Captain my Captain, you fought the good fight.
Sing to me sorrows, your death and decay. Sing to me bright star, the rising of day. For death could not hold you, like a shadow you’ve sprung From dying to living, a hope for the young.
Our nations are dying. Our...
“On that afternoon we spoke of many things, but in particular about the...”
– Eliade (152)
“I must acknowledge that there is nothing stronger in this world than the glory...”
– Eliade (43)
After finishing Eliade’s autobiography I find my approach to his works inadequate, having started with late works and touched early one’s only sporadically and not especially coherent manner. I suppose this reflects my American predilection for methodology (pace William James). Also interesting remarks on castles and Romania at the time of the war which I will not précis.
“In time, I would realize that their passion for “methodology”...”
– Eliade, Autobiography v.2 (187)
Fascinated by the absurdity of the film. Like my Chinese housemate’s favorite movie, Forest Gump, except penetrated by an incurable randiness instead of the seeming purer but perpetually unsatisfied love of Forest. Also a discussion with my mother about the Civil War musical she wants me to help write, half of the model of Les Mis, that odd mix of passion and law. I never sympathized much...
Hitchcock | N by NW
Considering the extension of ‘grace.’ I came to extend more at a certain point in college and by the admission of my friend, who I had berated for several unnecessary sexual liasons and related behavior, became more bearable. This plea for mercy, but not mercy really, but ‘grace,’ meaning essentially license and ready absolution is common among evangelical sects, a main...
The picture above because of Eliade’s mention in his Autobiography. St. Mark intercedes to save a slave who has violated his master’s will in coming to see his relics. The question: who sees the saint? Perhaps it is the spectators only, who come to contemplate, with wonder. The audience confined to paint and concrete proofs.
“Chesterton already saw the core of the problem. “What we suffer from today is...”
– Schall
“[Nietzsche] had already seen what Chesterton in his own way saw, namely, that...”
– Schall, “One Hundred Years of Orthodoxy,” Telos