Moscow’s Terror Attack and Big Brother

By Robin Bates | Published: March 28, 2024
Photo by @AZemlianichenko

Note: Comments can be sent to [email protected]. Also, you may write me there if you wish to receive, via e-mail, (1) my weekly newsletter or (2) daily copies of these posts. I promise not to share your e-mail address with anyone. To unsubscribe, send me a follow-up email.

Friday

The horrific terrorist attack against a Moscow rock concert last Friday has drawn a predictable response from Vladimir Putin. Although it was apparently a plot by ISIS extremists, Russia’s dictator is blaming whom you would expect. In other words, like Big Brother in 1984, Putin’s political goals, not facts on the ground, are determining whom Russians are supposed to hate.

Authoritarianism expert Tim Snyder, who the day after the attack predicted that this would happen, explains the reasons:

What was entirely predictable (and predicted) was that, regardless of the facts, Putin and his propagandists would place the blame for the attack on Ukraine and the United States.  If Ukraine and the West are guilty, then Russian security services do not have to explain why they failed to stop Islamic terrorists from killing so many Russians, because Islamic terror vanishes from the story.  And if Ukrainians are to blame, then this would seem to justify the war that Russia is prosecuting against Ukraine.

Early in Orwell’s novel a public venting, known as “the Hate,” is directed against Eurasia, with which Oceania is at war:

Before the Hate had proceeded for thirty seconds, uncontrollable exclamations of rage were breaking out from half the people in the room. The self-satisfied sheep-like face [of Goldstein] on the screen, and the terrifying power of the Eurasian army behind it, were too much to be borne…

The film, and the hate, continue until Big Brother appears to reassure everyone that he has everything under control:

Then the sheep-face melted into the figure of a Eurasian soldier who seemed to be advancing, huge and terrible, his sub-machine gun roaring, and seeming to spring out of the surface of the screen, so that some of the people in the front row actually flinched backwards in their seats. But in the same moment, drawing a deep sigh of relief from everybody, the hostile figure melted into the face of Big Brother, black-haired, black-moustachio’d, full of power and mysterious calm, and so vast that it almost filled up the screen.  

Winston Smith, however, is aware of how the hate object has little to do with objective reality since, a mere four years earlier, Eurasia had been an Oceania ally:

Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control. Officially the change of partners had never happened. Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible. 

While Putin continues his all-out assault on Ukraine, however, there is one silver lining, albeit a tiny one. According to Snyder, Russia’s leader no longer has his former ability to calm the Russian people:

When he went on television to accuse Ukraine, he was no longer the nimble post-truth Putin who is capable of changing out one lie for another as necessary, with a wink to the insider along the way.  This now seems to be a Putin who actually believes what he says — or, in the best case, lacks the creativity to react to events in the world.  His speech yesterday was grim for everyone, including to Russians who would like to think that their leader is ahead of events. 

In other words, Putin’s “Hate” did not conclude with “a deep sigh of relief from everybody.” And if Russians think that their dictator can no longer keep them safe, then he will have lost one of the major mainstays of his power.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Comments closed

Beware Freeing an Authoritarian Gulliver

By Robin Bates | Published: March 27, 2024
Illus. from Gulliver’s Travels

Note: Comments can be sent to [email protected]. Also, you may write me there if you wish to receive, via e-mail, (1) my weekly newsletter or (2) daily copies of these posts. I promise not to share your e-mail address with anyone. To unsubscribe, send me a follow-up email.

Thursday

On Monday night MSNBC commentator Rachel Maddow made a nice literary allusion when she noted that authoritarian types fantasize about a dictator strongman breaking free of Lilliputian ropes. She was referring, of course, to Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver, who is bound to the ground by the tiny citizens of Lilliput after being shipwrecked. There’s a lot to unpack in Gulliver’s Travels—Swift is in my opinion the GOAT of political satirists—but let’s first look at this particular fantasy.

Yale historian Timothy Snyder, one of our foremost experts on authoritarianism, explains that while people may dream of a strongman uniting the nation and getting things done, the reality is far different. Dictatorial power today, he writes, “is not about achieving anything positive.  It is about preventing anyone else from achieving anything.  The strongman is really the weak man: his secret is that he makes everyone else weaker.”

This is why conditions inevitably deteriorate under authoritarian rule. “Unaccountable to the law and to voters,” Snyder writes,

the dictator has no reason to consider anything beyond his own personal interests.  In the twenty-first century, those are simple: dying in bed as a billionaire.  To enrich himself and to stay out of prison, the strongman dismantles the justice system and replaces civil servants with loyalists.

Basically, people think that strong men (and it’s usually men) will work for them whereas in reality they work only for themselves. Everyone else is expendable, including their loyal followers.

I recommend reading the entire article, which gives a grim account of how societies spiral downward under the rule of such people. Snyder has seen the work of strongmen up close so he knows what he’s talking about. But I want to turn now to what Swift adds to the conversation.

Gulliver’s Travels is composed of four books in which Gulliver recounts his experiences in (1) the land of the Lilliputians, (2) the land of the gigantic Brogdingnags, (3) a hodgepodge of fantastical locales, and (4) the land of the Houyhnhnms, who are highly intelligent horses that have subjugated bestial humans. After Gulliver is tied down by the Lilliputians, the question arises why Gulliver allows himself to be dictated to when he so clearly has a size advantage. To be sure, he swears allegiance to the Lilliputian emperor while he is still bound, but authoritarians would see him as gullible (the origin for his name) for not taking advantage of his power.

And indeed, he has violent impulses. Take, for instance, the moment when Lilliputians are clambering over his body:

I confess I was often tempted, while they were passing backwards and forwards on my body, to seize forty or fifty of the first that came in my reach, and dash them against the ground. But the remembrance of what I had felt [being shot with tiny arrows], which probably might not be the worst they could do, and the promise of honor I made them—for so I interpreted my submissive behavior—soon drove out these imaginations. Besides, I now considered myself as bound by the laws of hospitality, to a people who had treated me with so much expense and magnificence. 

This talk of honor and the laws of hospitality sounds almost quaint in the wake of the Trump years. One reason why Trump has had such a toxic effect on American politics is because of his readiness to cast aside any norms and conventions that stand in his way. Trump has provided a permission structure for his fans to entertain—and even to act out—secret desires that they have previously suppressed.

To be sure, the GOP had been going this way for a while now. I think of Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich shattering Congressional protocol in the 1990s, of the Bush-Cheney presidency engaging in preemptive war and torture, of Senate Majority Lead Mitch McConnell violating traditional practices regarding filibusters and judicial confirmations.

Trump, however, accelerated the process. When his supporters commend this non-stop liar for his truth-telling, they are referring to how he speaks to their base desires, which feel true to them. Sometimes their response is to quietly cheer, sometimes to directly insult perceived enemies (whether on-line or in person), sometimes to engage in violence.

In Civilization and Its Discontents, Sigmund Freud famously explains how civilization relies on a certain suppression of instinctive hungers in order to operate, even while the suppression results in discontent. Gulliver is willing to submit to civilization’s restraints—he has been well-trained—whereas populist authoritarians rise to power on the promise that they will banish discontent and give the people what they crave. In the minds of their followers, why settle for irritating governance and messy politics when someone is offering to make your dreams come true? In reality, however, only those at the top get what they want.

In Gulliver’s Travels, the Lilliputians are fortunate that Gulliver doesn’t use his power, even after the Emperor condemns him to be blinded for trumped up charges. Instead, Gulliver runs away, and even then he’s apologetic about not following the nation’s laws. (“At last I fixed upon a resolution, for which it is probable I may incur some censure, and not unjustly…”) Meanwhile, Swift will go on the mention other authoritarian excesses in his work, whether it be the flying island of Laputa hovering over rebellious populations (thereby cutting off sunlight and rain) or the Houyhnhnms initiating genocidal slaughter against the Yahoos. Swift is no democrat but he recognizes the evils of autocracy when he sees them.

The author would rather have us emulate the giant king of the Brobdignags, who has a strong ethical compass. When Gulliver offers to teach him how to make gunpowder, he is horrified.

Returning to the Lilliputian ropes, the next time you fret about the inefficiencies of electoral democracy, messy political compromises, onerous regulations, waffling politicians, the slowness of the courts, or having to choose between the lesser of two evils, recall that the alternative may be an unleashed Gulliver who will stomp on you if you get in his way.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Comments closed

Joe Biden as Old Father William

By Robin Bates | Published: March 26, 2024
Tenniel, illustration of Old Father William

Note: Comments can be sent to [email protected]. Also, you may write me there if you wish to receive, via e-mail, (1) my weekly newsletter or (2) daily copies of these posts. I promise not to share your e-mail address with anyone. To unsubscribe, send me a follow-up email.

Wednesday

Having recently applied Lewis Carroll’s Alice books to Donald Trump’s legal woes (see yesterday’s post), today I apply one of Carroll’s Alice poems to his opponent. Much has been made of Joe Biden’s advanced age—as though Donald Trump isn’t just three years younger and unhealthier to boot—but the president has started pushing back. The Carroll poem I’ve chosen for today is about another elderly man responding similarly.

Biden began changing perceptions with his combative State of the Union address, where it became clear to most that he is not the doddering old fool many had claimed him to be. In fact, after Trump last week angrily blamed Biden for a case brought by a Manhattan prosecutor (in other words, not under Biden’s jurisdiction), the Biden camp turned the tables, replying

 Donald Trump is weak and desperate—both as a man and a candidate for President…. His campaign can’t raise money, he is uninterested in campaigning outside his country club, and every time he opens his mouth, he pushes moderate and suburban voters away with his dangerous agenda.

America deserves better than a feeble, confused, and tired Donald Trump.

Some have opined that Biden’s superpower is that his foes underestimate him. Maybe it’s because of his stutter or his gaffes but, repeatedly, they are stunned when he turns their attacks against them. When “Fuck Joe Biden” became transmuted, with a nod and a wink, to “Let’s go Brandon”—an indirect way of insulting the president—he embraced the appellation with the meme of “Dark Brandon,” a superhero often sporting dark glasses or x-ray eyes. Biden has also embraced “Bidenomics”—once a term of derision—as a compliment. It’s not unlike how Barack Obama embraced “Obamacare,” which since its rocky start has become wildly popular.

So think of Biden as Carroll’s Father William, who self-deprecatingly fields questions from a judgmental young man until he’s finally had enough. In each case, he turns the criticisms into a strength:

“You are old, Father William,” the young man said,
    “And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head—
    Do you think, at your age, it is right?”

“In my youth,” Father William replied to his son,
    “I feared it might injure the brain;
But now that I’m perfectly sure I have none,
    Why, I do it again and again.”

“You are old,” said the youth, “as I mentioned before,
    And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door—
    Pray, what is the reason of that?”

“In my youth,” said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
    “I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment—one shilling the box—
    Allow me to sell you a couple.”

“You are old,” said the youth, “and your jaws are too weak
    For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak—
    Pray, how did you manage to do it?”

“In my youth,” said his father, “I took to the law,
    And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw,
    Has lasted the rest of my life.”

“You are old,” said the youth, “one would hardly suppose
    That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose—
    What made you so awfully clever?”

“I have answered three questions, and that is enough,”
    Said his father; “don’t give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
    Be off, or I’ll kick you down stairs!”

This question-answer session reminds me of the time in February when a special counsel, tasked with deciding whether Biden should be charged for possession of governmental documents, claimed that he had forgotten when his son Beau died, when he was vice president, when his term ended, and when his term began. Pressed by reporters about these matters, the president replied, “I’m well-meaning and I’m an elderly man and I know what the hell I’m doing. I’ve been president, I put this country back on its feet.”

Later, resorting to sarcasm, he barked,

My memory’s fine. My memory’s — take a look at what I’ve done since I became president. … How did that happen? I guess I just forgot what was going on.

It was his version of, “Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff? Be off, or I’ll kick you downstairs!”

Further thought: Carroll’s poem is a parody of Robert Southey’s “The Old Man’s Comforts and How He Gained Them,” written at a time when our elders were more respected than they are today and which you can read here. I have two thoughts about the Southey poem. On the one hand, it actually describes Biden, who has indeed matured into a rich old age by (1) abusing not his health or vigor, (2) maintaining a humane perspective on life, and (3) remembering his God. Here are the final two stanzas:

You are old, Father William, the young man cried,
⁠And life must be hastening away;
You are cheerful, and love to converse upon death!
⁠Now tell me the reason I pray.

I am cheerful, young man, Father William replied,
⁠Let the cause thy attention engage;
In the days of my youth I remember’d my God!
⁠And He hath not forgotten my age.

Biden would sound as insufferably sanctimonious as Southey’s Father William if he talked this way. The self-satisfied preachiness is why the poem lends itself so readily to Carroll’s comic parody. Better for Biden to jerk the chains of the insistent young reporters before dismissing them.

Oh, and I suspect that Biden’s sense of humor, so much like that of Lewis Carroll, is another superpower against a rival who takes himself utterly seriously. There’s nothing like laughter to deflate a self-important authoritarian.

It’s as though the president has taken Carroll’s Father William as his model.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments closed

To Understand Trump’s Trials, Ask Alice

By Robin Bates | Published: March 25, 2024
Tenniel, Alice in the courtroom

Note: Comments can be sent to [email protected]. Also, you may write me there if you wish to receive, via e-mail, (1) my weekly newsletter or (2) daily copies of these posts. I promise not to share your e-mail address with anyone. To unsubscribe, send me a follow-up email.

Tuesday

Kudos to Sunday’s Washington Post for using Lewis Carroll’s Alice books to explain the Trump trials. In the article, reporters Devlin Barrett and Perry Stein invite us to follow them down the legalistic rabbit hole.

The article is entitled “The Trump Trials: Aileen in Wonderland,” Aileen being Judge Aileen Cannon, who is presiding over the stolen documents case in Palm Beach, FL. Cannon’s orders are confusing judicial experts. One former judge observed, “In my 30 years as a trial judge, I have never seen an order like this.” Another, citing the White Queen in Through the Looking Glass, said Cannon appeared to be “believing impossible things.” At one point the queen has the following interchange with Alice:

“Now I’ll give you something to believe. I’m just one hundred and one, five months and a day.”

“I can’t believe that!” said Alice.

“Can’t you?” the Queen said in a pitying tone. “Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.”

Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.”

“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

Cannon’s belief in impossible things, according to another Post article, shows up in a ruling that suggests

an openness to some of the defense’s claims that the Presidential Records Act allows Trump or other presidents to declare highly classified documents to be their own personal property. National security law experts say that is not what the law says, or how it has been interpreted over decades by the courts, particularly given the other laws that govern national security secrets.

Cannon apparently also issued

an unusual order late Monday regarding jury instructions at the end of the trial — even though she has not yet ruled on when the trial will be held, or a host of other issues.

To which the Post reporters commented that the orders have become “curiouser and curiouser”–which is Alice’s response to her rapid growth after she eats a piece of cake:

“Curiouser and curiouser!” cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English); “now I’m opening out like the largest telescope that ever was! Good-bye, feet!” (for when she looked down at her feet, they seemed to be almost out of sight, they were getting so far off).

Cannon too appears to be losing sight of something, namely the actual law that Trump is accused of having broken. The reporters note that, by “ordering lawyers in the case to submit proposed jury instructions under two different legal theories, Cannon

 is setting the table for a trial that would look like a Mad Hatter tea party — a gathering run by a broken clock, in which everyone inexplicably switches seats. And at the rate she’s going, that party may not happen this year.

The Post article applies another Wonderland episode to the case that Manhattan prosecutor Melvin Bragg is bringing against Trump for hush money payments and violation of election laws. Trump’s lawyers are arguing that Bragg has mishandled evidence “recently turned over by their federal counterparts a few blocks away,” claiming that this “should lead to dismissal of the charges and sanctions for the prosecutors.” In response,

Bragg called Trump’s accusations against him a “grab bag” of nonsensical legal arguments, or, as they say in Wonderland: “Let us both go to law: I will prosecute you — Come, I’ll take no denial; We must have a trial.”

The reference here is to the poem recited by the mouse to Alice and the other creatures that have escaped from the pool of tears in Wonderland. The cat in the poem, however, resembles Vladimir Putin, rather than the American judicial system:

         Fury said to a
         mouse, That he
        met in the
       house,
     ‘Let us
      both go to
       law: I will
        prosecute
         you.—Come,
           I’ll take no
           denial; We
          must have a
        trial: For
      really this
     morning I’ve
    nothing
    to do.’
      Said the
      mouse to the
       cur, ‘Such
        a trial,
         dear sir,
            With
          no jury
        or judge,
       would be
      wasting
      our
      breath.’
        ‘I’ll be
        judge, I’ll
         be jury,’
             Said
         cunning
          old Fury:
          ‘I’ll
          try the
            whole
            cause,
              and
           condemn
           you
          to
           death.’

The final Alice allusion occurs in relation to the Georgia trial, where Trump and his campaign are accused of attempting to overturn the 2020 Georgia election results. One of the issues is whether Trump should be allowed to remain free while his trial is underway. The Post reporters, who believe that Trump does not in fact represent a flight risk, observe,

In Wonderland, the queen liked to shout “off with her head,” and insist the sentence should come before the verdict. “Stuff and nonsense,” Alice said, “The idea of having the sentence first.” The U.S. legal system largely agrees with Alice, and says the only reasons to put someone in jail before a trial is if they pose a risk of flight, or a danger to the community.

I don’t find this a very effective use of Alice. A better example would be those Trump supporters who have called for Hillary Clinton to be locked up or Joe Biden to be impeached for crimes to be determined later.

If Trump manages to be reelected, Queen of Hearts justice—or Fury justice—will become the order of the day. Pray that the rule of law successfully wields the vorpal blade against jabberwockian anarchy.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Comments closed

Revisiting My Son’s Grave

By Robin Bates | Published: March 24, 2024
Eichenberg, Heathcliff mourning Catherine in Wuthering Heights

Note: Comments can be sent to [email protected]. Also, you may write me there if you wish to receive, via e-mail, (1) my weekly newsletter or (2) daily copies of these posts. I promise not to share your e-mail address with anyone. To unsubscribe, send me a follow-up email.

Monday

One of our final stops on our recent trip around the east coast was St. Mary’s City, Maryland, where we lived for 36 years before retiring to my boyhood home of Tennessee. For the first time since 2018, Julia and I visited the graveyard where our eldest son lies buried.

It was a sunny and still, chillier but not otherwise unlike the day 24 years ago when Justin drowned in the St. Mary’s River. His gravesite overlooks the spot where a treacherous current pulled him under, and the blue sky and calm water stood in marked contrast to the turmoil of that awful day. As I gazed, I thought of the ending of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights.

Lockwood, the narrator, has been introduced to the tumultuous history of an old English family, including the mad love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, which breaks up Catherine’s marriage to Edgar Linton. Like me, Lockwood notes the contrast between a calm day and their tempestuous lives as he visits their graves:

I sought, and soon discovered, the three headstones on the slope next the moor: the middle one grey, and half buried in heath; Edgar Linton’s only harmonized by the turf and moss creeping up its foot; Heathcliff’s still bare.

I lingered round them, under that benign sky: watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass, and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.

I too listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass. And while the pain has never entirely gone away, it has, like the music of Langston Hughes’s long-suffering trumpet player, mellowed to a golden note. I sensed that Justin was sleeping quietly.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Comments closed

Strow the Way, Plants of the Day

By Robin Bates | Published: March 23, 2024
Hanna-Cheriyan Varghese, Palm Sunday


Note: If you wish me to send me a comment to include in the post, or if you wish to receive, via e-mail, (1) my weekly newsletter or (2) daily copies of these posts (indicate which), notify me at [email protected]. I promise not to share your e-mail address with anyone. To unsubscribe, send me a follow-up email.

Sunday

When I read the poetry of Henry Vaughan, I now think of John Gatta’s observation, in his recent book Green Gospel, that we can find God’s immanence in nature. Palm Sunday is one occasion where the idea is accentuated, with John reporting, “So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, ‘Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!’” While Gatta acknowledges that he cannot “pretend to know” “what God’s redemption of all creation might ultimately look like,” he adds, “I know only that a Christian faith worthy of the name must presume that God somehow wills to bring to fulfillment not human beings alone but everything God had ever created, sustained, and esteemed as ‘very good.’”

With this view of nature in mind, I turn to what 17th century Welsh poet Henry Vaughan, whose poetry is filled with God manifesting him or herself in natural phenomena, says about Palm Sunday.  I’m hoping for help from readers about what the poet by plant becoming “green and gay” from suffering—is this a Walt Witman-esque idea of death producing the manure that feeds vegetable life?—but we can all relate to Jesus coming to borrow “your shades and freshness.”

Throughout the poem there are references to spring growth and new life. Borrowing John Donne’s punning on “the sun,” Vaughan imagines  the palm fronds, after having been laid low in humility, rising again in the Easter season. The poet tells us he would willingly suffer the travails of Job if he could but secure “one green Branch and a white robe.”

Palm Sunday
By Henry Vaughan

Come, drop your branches, strow the way
Plants of the day!
Whom sufferings make most green and gay.

The King of grief, the man of sorrow
Weeping still, like the wet morrow,
Your shades and freshness comes to borrow.

Put on, put on your best array;
Let the joy’d rode make holy-day,
And flowers that into fields do stray,
Or secret groves, keep the highway.

Trees, flowers & herbs; birds, beasts & stones,
That since man fell, expect with groans
To see the lamb, which all at once,
Lift up your heads and leave your moans!
For here comes he
Whose death will be
Man’s life, and your full liberty.

Hark! how the children shrill and high
Hosanna cry,
Their joys provoke the distant sky,
Where thrones and Seraphins reply,
And their own Angels shine and sing
In a bright ring:
Such young, sweet mirth
Makes heaven and earth
Join in a joyful Symphony,

The harmless, young and happy Ass,
Seen long before this came to pass,
Is in these joys an high partaker
Ordained, and made to bear his Maker.

Dear feast of Palms, of Flowers and Dew!
Whose fruitful dawn sheds hopes and lights;
Thy bright solemnities did shew,
The third glad day through two sad nights.

l’ll get me up before the Sun,
I’ll cut me boughs off many a tree,
And all alone full early run
To gather flowers to welcome thee.

Then like the Palm , though wrong, I’ll bear,
I will be still a child, still meek
As the poor Ass, which the proud jeer,
And only my dear Jesus seek.

If I lose all, and must endure.
The proverbed griefs of holy Job,
I care not, so I may secure
But one green Branch and a white robe.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Comments closed

Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now

By Robin Bates | Published: March 22, 2024
Cherry tree at the National Arboretum

Friday

Yesterday our friends Paul and Paulette Thompson took us to see the cherry trees in the National Arboretum. Few moments of the the spring are more beautiful.  I remember the shock a number of years ago when a beaver moved onto the St. Mary’s College of Maryland campus, where I was teaching at the time, and took down all the trees that bordered St. John’s Pond. The animal was captured and deported, new trees were planted, and I understand that the blossoms are back.

Former colleague Bruce Wilson, our comparative literature specialist, tells me that the Japanese prefer a different moment in the blossoming moment than do Americans.  Bruce is a national expert on the ancient Japanese art of ikebana, which technically is the art of flower arrangement although that doesn’t do it justice.  (“The way of the flower” might be more accurate.)  Apparently connoisseurs treasure the moment when the blossoms are beginning to fall and the green is pushing through.  Bruce says that this transitional moment mingles the joy of blossoming with a certain sadness about the passing of innocence.

Maybe youthful American culture thinks that innocence is still possible.  Ancient Japanese culture knows otherwise.

In the greatest poem I know about cherry blossoms, English poet A. E. Housman may be getting at this hint of sadness in the midst of joy.  The speaker is 20 but, instead of reveling in his youth, he sees himself getting older and having limited time. 

Rather than this awareness detracting from the present moment, however, it makes the cherry blossoms seem all the more precious.  Figuring that he’ll live to 70 and thinking his remaining 50 years  aren’t enough to do justice to the beauty of the trees (Housman in fact lived to 77), the speaker must step more fully into appreciation.  Therefore, “about the woodlands I will go/To see the cherry hung with snow.”

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my three score years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Comments closed

Austen Defines “the Best Company”

By Robin Bates | Published: March 21, 2024
Hinds, Root as Wentworth and Anne Elliot in Persuasion (1995)

Note: If you wish to receive, via e-mail, (1) my weekly newsletter or (2) daily copies of these posts, notify me at [email protected] and indicate which you would like. I promise not to share it with anyone.

Thursday

Yesterday I wrote about how we have been using our current trip to revitalize friendships. Because our talks have been so rich and substantive, I was put in mind of an interchange that Anne Elliot has with her cousin in Persuasion. Ann is a profound woman of substance, Mr. Elliott a shallow social climber, so it makes sense that she would opt for Aristotle’s friendships of virtue whereas as he would come down strongly for friendships of utility.

Ann’s superficial father and sister have been falling all over themselves to attract their distant cousins, the high-born Lady Dalrymple and her daughter Miss Carteret. Ann is embarrassed that such a fuss is being made over two people who have “no superiority of manner, accomplishment, or understanding.” As Austen puts it,

Lady Dalrymple had acquired the name of “a charming woman,” because she had a smile and a civil answer for everybody. Miss Carteret, with still less to say, was so plain and so awkward, that she would never have been tolerated in Camden Place but for her birth.

Mr. Elliott, however, says they have value and are worth cultivating “as a family connection, as good company, as those who would collect good company around them.” To this Ann replies,

“My idea of good company, Mr Elliot, is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.”

“You are mistaken,” said he gently, “that is not good company; that is the best. Good company requires only birth, education, and manners, and with regard to education is not very nice. Birth and good manners are essential; but a little learning is by no means a dangerous thing in good company; on the contrary, it will do very well. My cousin Anne shakes her head. She is not satisfied. She is fastidious. My dear cousin” (sitting down by her), “you have a better right to be fastidious than almost any other woman I know; but will it answer? Will it make you happy? Will it not be wiser to accept the society of those good ladies in Laura Place, and enjoy all the advantages of the connection as far as possible? You may depend upon it, that they will move in the first set in Bath this winter, and as rank is rank, your being known to be related to them will have its use in fixing your family (our family let me say) in that degree of consideration which we must all wish for.”

None of our friends provide us advantages of the sort Mr. Elliot has in mind. But all are “clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation.” When I am with them, there is no place I’d rather be.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Comments closed

Master, Speak to Us of Friendship

By Robin Bates | Published: March 19, 2024
Renoir, Luncheon of the Boating Party

Note: If you wish to receive, via e-mail, (1) my weekly newsletter or (2) daily copies of these posts, notify me at [email protected] and indicate which you would like. I promise not to share it with anyone.

Wednesday

Julia and I are in the second week of an immensely nourishing tour of friends scattered throughout the east coast, from Ohio to Pennsylvania to Maryland to Washington, D.C. We started in Cincinnati with our best friends from our graduate school days, moved on to more recent friends in Mechanicsburg PA, and are currently in West Chester PA with colleagues from our St. Mary’s College of MD days, and will be joining up with both active and retired former colleagues in St. Mary’s County MD; with members of a former film group in St. Mary’s County; with a former Carleton roommate in Greenbelt Md; and with our son and his family in D.C. Each of these friends is so integrally bound up in our lives, helping determine who we have become, that my heart fills with gratitude as I think about them.

In Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle writes that there are three different kinds of friendship: utility-based, pleasure-based, and character-based. With some people we value their usefulness to us, with some the pleasure we take in their company, with some their good character. While pleasure is undoubtedly a component in the friends we are meeting on this trip, the friendships all fall within the third category, which for Aristotle is the highest. Also known as friendships of virtue, they are those relationships that develop over time and that are made up of people “who are good and alike in virtue; for each alike wishes well to each other… they are good in themselves.” 

Aristotle would see our trip as important because he believes that friendships must be maintained by activity, just as muscle tone must be maintained by exercise. The philosopher observes, “If… the absence be prolonged, it seems to cause the friendly feeling itself to be forgotten.”

As so often when it comes to important relationships, Kahlil Gibran has important insights into the nature of friendship. Here is his poem in The Prophet:

And a youth said, Speak to us of Friendship.
    And he answered, saying:
    Your friend is your needs answered.
    He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
    And he is your board and your fireside.
    For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.

    When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the “nay” in your own mind, nor do you withhold the “ay.”
    And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;
    For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.
    When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
    For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.
    And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.
    For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.

    And let your best be for your friend.
    If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.
    For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?
    Seek him always with hours to live.
    For it is his to fill your need but not your emptiness.
    And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
    For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

Gibran is echoing what Aristotle says of friendships of virtue when he writes, “Let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.” Utility and pleasure are all very well—Aristotle doesn’t dismiss them, seeing them as having an important role to play—but the friendships to be prized above all are those in which the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Comments closed