Proust has a section in Sodom and Gomorrah where the narrator questions an academic on the etymology of place names, but finds that, having learned the origins of these names, some of their magic is lost. On the other hand, when the director of the hotel at Balbec says a totally made-up malapropism to describe the death of the grandmother, the narrator is deeply moved by it.
Haven't read the Pound book (though it sounds like I should add it to the pile) but I think Proust was somewhat aware of the effect that reverence towards experts could have on literature.
Food for thought! I’ll defer to you on the proper attitude of the artist towards knowledge of the humanities. I would however quibble with the framing of Marxist-Maoist elements of the woke program as a form of Enlightenment extremism as opposed to Romanticism: I don’t think the two can be disentangled so easily. The allure of Marx and Mao for the Western intellectual always struck me as romantic: the parts of Marx that still resonate are the poetic ones: all that is solid melts into air, the alienation of labour, the opium of the masses… only true believers are still persuaded by his ‘scientific’ claims about the labour theory of value and the declining rate of profit etc. And perhaps the dawning of a new conservatism should prompt us to reconsider neoconservatism as something more than an excuse for war mongering: I’m thinking of Gertrude Himmelfarb’s championing of the British and American Enlightenments as opposed to the statist French variety. Rationalism doesn’t have to be deadening! And mysticism may be an essential ingredient for great art – but it seems like a poor guide to public policy.
I agree with you about the romantic parts of Marxism, but I thought what made "woke" and its precursor in "political correctness" unique were the procedural formalistic aspects that remind me more of the programmatic side—you have to say these words in this order, books must contain these elements and not contain these, etc. And yes Himmelfarb has a point! Thank you for this corrective. English and American Romanticism were much less anti-rational than European, were more of a supplement to the Enlightenment than an oppositional force, which in turn made English and American Enlightenment less totalizingly rationalistic (Shelley and Emerson spoke highly of Bacon, for example; Mill and James brought Enlightenment and Romanticism together in their philosophy). I would not necessarily be opposed to "neoconservatism in one country"—within reason, so to speak.
Definitely agree about the procedural formalistic aspects of wokeness being the most off-putting, although it seems to serve as a kind of litmus test: I still see people claiming that there has never been a "woke" agenda apart from being kind to minorities. Unfortunately, because so many liberal institutions were unable to maintain a principled stand against the more troubling aspects of wokeness, those in charge MAGAland find it convenient to act like there was nothing good about these institutions to begin with. Trumpism is hardly a triumph for neoconservatism, although I think the latter does help explain the political defection of some ambitious minorities (see also the new Tory leader). As you note, the Harris campaign did try the liberal patriotism angle, but it was too little too late. Can one hope for a liberalism that finds room to accommodate both Drag Queen Story Hour and the Latin Mass?
Deleuze's agonised description of Eco is strangely beautiful:
'People like Umberto Eco... lt's amazing... There you go, it's like pushing on a button, and he knows all of it as well. I can't say that I envy that, l'm just frightened by it, but I don't envy it at all. I ask: what does culture consist of? And I tell myself that it consists a lot of talking. [...] They never stop talking, and I can't stand talking, talking, talking. I can't stand it. So, in my opinion, since culture is closely linked to speaking, in this sense, I hate culture. I cannot stand it.'
On your point about languages- I became aware recently that Pound made a translation of the Confucian Classic of Poetry, which seems to be out of print. One wonders how faithful it could be if he only knew words!
I don't know about Pound specifically, but in the small world of poetry translations, it's common for poets to do "translations" from languages they don't know. They use literal translations made by someone else, and rewrite them to be more poetic. Maybe Pound did something like that.
That's also my impression of how Pound worked. I think he thought he could "see" Chinese because it was ideographic. Seems like one delusion—that of unmediated meaning—that Freud and Marx could both dispel.
Bold stuff – if your readers (myself included) have sometimes gently described Major Arcana as “ethically Victorian” it’s surely because it seems odd to go from a romantic manifesto(d), such as these to the classical formulation where one brings out transgressive energies to ultimately banish (I know your book aims for something more universal, but speaking from experience the line between the kind of nothing because everything stance Ash del Greco takes and nothing because renunciation is a thin one) them and carry out that Austenian confirmation into the life of normativity.
Thanks! If I may, it's possible to exaggerate the Victorian normativity at the end of Major Arcana: the re-composed community of the final chapters does not take the form of the nuclear family (SM and EC don't have children, while JM, AdG, and DdG are three women raising a child, one implicitly asexual, one implicitly bisexual, none of them currently partnered to a man). All the small-business-ownership may be the more obviously conservative fact, casting a MAGA-red glow on the fairly post-post-post-modern sexual arrangement.
I did get a sense of gradual conservatism from the descriptions of the once radical characters growing older and more settled, a sense of submitting to the inevitable. It's a rather poignant part of the book. I think one character said something about voting Republican, though I probably shouldn't make too much of this.
Yes, in my mind Ellen and Diane became Republicans, Ash and Simon think they're totally above politics, and Jessica is a good liberal and Democrat. I only specified some of that in the book, and intend it only as verisimilitude—what people like them in present-day America would believe—not a political statement of my own.
Proust has a section in Sodom and Gomorrah where the narrator questions an academic on the etymology of place names, but finds that, having learned the origins of these names, some of their magic is lost. On the other hand, when the director of the hotel at Balbec says a totally made-up malapropism to describe the death of the grandmother, the narrator is deeply moved by it.
Haven't read the Pound book (though it sounds like I should add it to the pile) but I think Proust was somewhat aware of the effect that reverence towards experts could have on literature.
Food for thought! I’ll defer to you on the proper attitude of the artist towards knowledge of the humanities. I would however quibble with the framing of Marxist-Maoist elements of the woke program as a form of Enlightenment extremism as opposed to Romanticism: I don’t think the two can be disentangled so easily. The allure of Marx and Mao for the Western intellectual always struck me as romantic: the parts of Marx that still resonate are the poetic ones: all that is solid melts into air, the alienation of labour, the opium of the masses… only true believers are still persuaded by his ‘scientific’ claims about the labour theory of value and the declining rate of profit etc. And perhaps the dawning of a new conservatism should prompt us to reconsider neoconservatism as something more than an excuse for war mongering: I’m thinking of Gertrude Himmelfarb’s championing of the British and American Enlightenments as opposed to the statist French variety. Rationalism doesn’t have to be deadening! And mysticism may be an essential ingredient for great art – but it seems like a poor guide to public policy.
I agree with you about the romantic parts of Marxism, but I thought what made "woke" and its precursor in "political correctness" unique were the procedural formalistic aspects that remind me more of the programmatic side—you have to say these words in this order, books must contain these elements and not contain these, etc. And yes Himmelfarb has a point! Thank you for this corrective. English and American Romanticism were much less anti-rational than European, were more of a supplement to the Enlightenment than an oppositional force, which in turn made English and American Enlightenment less totalizingly rationalistic (Shelley and Emerson spoke highly of Bacon, for example; Mill and James brought Enlightenment and Romanticism together in their philosophy). I would not necessarily be opposed to "neoconservatism in one country"—within reason, so to speak.
Definitely agree about the procedural formalistic aspects of wokeness being the most off-putting, although it seems to serve as a kind of litmus test: I still see people claiming that there has never been a "woke" agenda apart from being kind to minorities. Unfortunately, because so many liberal institutions were unable to maintain a principled stand against the more troubling aspects of wokeness, those in charge MAGAland find it convenient to act like there was nothing good about these institutions to begin with. Trumpism is hardly a triumph for neoconservatism, although I think the latter does help explain the political defection of some ambitious minorities (see also the new Tory leader). As you note, the Harris campaign did try the liberal patriotism angle, but it was too little too late. Can one hope for a liberalism that finds room to accommodate both Drag Queen Story Hour and the Latin Mass?
A great read as always.
Deleuze's agonised description of Eco is strangely beautiful:
'People like Umberto Eco... lt's amazing... There you go, it's like pushing on a button, and he knows all of it as well. I can't say that I envy that, l'm just frightened by it, but I don't envy it at all. I ask: what does culture consist of? And I tell myself that it consists a lot of talking. [...] They never stop talking, and I can't stand talking, talking, talking. I can't stand it. So, in my opinion, since culture is closely linked to speaking, in this sense, I hate culture. I cannot stand it.'
Thanks, that's very good. I don't associate Eco with talking, but I assume in Europe they saw him on TV a lot!
On your point about languages- I became aware recently that Pound made a translation of the Confucian Classic of Poetry, which seems to be out of print. One wonders how faithful it could be if he only knew words!
I don't know about Pound specifically, but in the small world of poetry translations, it's common for poets to do "translations" from languages they don't know. They use literal translations made by someone else, and rewrite them to be more poetic. Maybe Pound did something like that.
That's also my impression of how Pound worked. I think he thought he could "see" Chinese because it was ideographic. Seems like one delusion—that of unmediated meaning—that Freud and Marx could both dispel.
Bold stuff – if your readers (myself included) have sometimes gently described Major Arcana as “ethically Victorian” it’s surely because it seems odd to go from a romantic manifesto(d), such as these to the classical formulation where one brings out transgressive energies to ultimately banish (I know your book aims for something more universal, but speaking from experience the line between the kind of nothing because everything stance Ash del Greco takes and nothing because renunciation is a thin one) them and carry out that Austenian confirmation into the life of normativity.
Thanks! If I may, it's possible to exaggerate the Victorian normativity at the end of Major Arcana: the re-composed community of the final chapters does not take the form of the nuclear family (SM and EC don't have children, while JM, AdG, and DdG are three women raising a child, one implicitly asexual, one implicitly bisexual, none of them currently partnered to a man). All the small-business-ownership may be the more obviously conservative fact, casting a MAGA-red glow on the fairly post-post-post-modern sexual arrangement.
I did get a sense of gradual conservatism from the descriptions of the once radical characters growing older and more settled, a sense of submitting to the inevitable. It's a rather poignant part of the book. I think one character said something about voting Republican, though I probably shouldn't make too much of this.
Yes, in my mind Ellen and Diane became Republicans, Ash and Simon think they're totally above politics, and Jessica is a good liberal and Democrat. I only specified some of that in the book, and intend it only as verisimilitude—what people like them in present-day America would believe—not a political statement of my own.