KEBiKEÇ

"Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor."

farukahmet — Mon, 20 May 2013 15:16:37 +0300

“Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor.”

- Søren Kierkegaard

"Yeryüzüne gelmemiz için iki kişi gerekiyor, ölmek içinse bir kişi yeter. Dünya böylece varacak..."

farukahmet — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 23:18:00 +0200

“Yeryüzüne gelmemiz için iki kişi gerekiyor, ölmek içinse bir kişi yeter. Dünya böylece varacak sonuna.”

- Darl. Faulkner, Döşeğimde Ölürken

24: Varlık ve Eğitilmişlik; Diotima'nın Kont Leinsdorf'la Dostluğu ve Ünlü Konukları Ruhla Uyum İçerisine Sokma Misyonu

farukahmet — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 17:13:08 +0200

Robert Musil, Niteliksiz Adam
YKY Kasım 1999 (orj. 1930)

Diotima’nın ünlü konuklarıyla durumu, Kont Leinsdorf’un banka ilişkileriyle durumundan farklı değildi; ne kadar istenirse istensin, bunların ruhla bütünleştirilebilmeleri başarılamıyordu. Otomobillerden ve röntgen ışınlarından söz edilebilir ve böyle yapmak, yine de bazı duygular uyandırabilir; oysa şimdi her yeni günün beraberinde getirdiği başkaca sayısız icat ve keşif karşısında, çok genel olarak insanoğlunun bu bağlamdaki yeteneğine hayranlık duymaktan —ki, zamanla bu da tekdüze olup çıkıyordu!— başka ne yapılabilirdi? Ekselansları arada sırada geliyor, bir politikacıyla sohbet ediyor ya da yeni bir konukla tanıştırılıyordu, derin bir kültürden coşkuyla söz etmek, onun için kolaydı; ama kültürle Diotima’nın yaptığı kadar ayrıntılı ilgilenmek gerektiğinde, asıl aşılmaz olanın kültürün derinliği değil, fakat yaygınlığı olduğu ortaya çıkıyordu. Yunanistan’nın soylu yalınlığı veya peygamberlerin anlamı gibi insanı doğrudan ilgilendiren sorunlar bile, uzamanlarla konuşulduğunda, kuşbakışına sığrdırılalabilmesi olanaksız bir kuşku ve olasılıklar ağına dönüşüyordu. Diotima’nın edindiği deneyime göre, düzenlediği akşamlarda ünlü konuklar da hep ikili söyleşilerde bulunuyorlardı, çünkü insan o zamanlar bile en fazlasından ikinci bir insanla ciddi ve mantıklı konuşabiliyordu, Diotima ise bunu aslında hiç kimseyle başaramıyordu. Öte yandan Diotima, böylece çağdaş insanın uygarlık denen o bilinen hastalığını da keşfetmişti. Uygarlık, sabunla, telsiz dalgalarıyla, matematik ve kimya formüllerinin iddialı göstergeler diliyle, ulusal ekonomiyle, deneysel araştırmalarla ve insanlar arasında yüksek düzeyde, ama yalın bir birliktelik sağlamaya ilişkin yeteneksizlikle dolu, engelleyici bir konumdur. Diotima’nın kendi iç dünyasındaki ruh soyluluğu ile toplumdaki soyluluk arasında bulunan, Diotima’yı hep çok dikkatli olmaya zorlayan ve bütün başarılara karşın bazı düş kırıklıklarına yol açan ilişki de zamanla Diotima’ya, gittikçe artan ölçüde bir kültür çağının değil, fakat ancak bir uygarlık çağının özelliği olabilecekmiş gibi gözükmekteydi.

Buna göre uygarlık, Diotima’nın zihniyle üzerinde egemenlik kuramayacağı her şeydi. Ve bu nedenle uzun zamandır, öncelikle kocası bunların arasındaydı.

203

25: Bir Büyük Adamın Olaya İlk Kez Karışması

farukahmet — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 18:25:09 +0200

Robert Musil, Niteliksiz Adam
YKY Kasım1999 (orj. 1930)

Tuzzi’nin temel ilkesine göre insan konuşmada fazla sözcük kullanmaktan kaçınmalıydı ve sözcük oyunları da, her ne kadar esprili bir söyleşide bütünüyle eksik olmaları düşünülemez ise de, hiçbir zaman çok iyi olmamalıydı; çünkü böylesi burjuvalıktı.

194

69: Diotima ve Ulrich. Devam.

farukahmet — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 18:07:00 +0200

Robert Musil, Niteliksiz Adam
YKY, Kasım 1999 (orj. 1930)

Onlarda yürüme isteğini bu manzara uyandırmıştı; kışın ortasında artık modası geçmiş, solgun bir yaz giysisini andıran, o insanı duygulandırıcı karsız günlerden biriydi.

[Diotima:] Son konuşmamızı anımsıyor musunuz? O zaman bir şey demiştiniz, sınırsız iktidara sahip hiç kimsenin asıl istemiş olduğu şeyi gerçekleştirmeyeceğini iddia etmiştiniz. Şimdi bununla ne demek istediğinizi bilmek istiyorum. Çünkü korkunç bir düşünceydi, öyle değil mi?

“Evet,” diye başladı Ulrich “elinde olsa bile, kimsenin asıl istediğini gerçekleştirmeyeceğini iddia etmiştim. Önerilerle dolu dosyalarımızı anımsıyor musunuz? Ve şimdi soruyorum size: Yaşamı boyunca tutkuyla olmasını talep ettiği şey ansızın gerçekleşen biri, bu yüzden sıkıntıya düşmez miydi? Örneğin Katolikler ansızın Tanrının devletine, ya da sosyalistler gelecekteki devlete kavuşsalardı? Ama belki de bu, hiçbir şeyin kanıtı değil; insan talep etmeye alışıyor ve gerçekleşme sürecine hemen hazır olmuyor; belki de çokları bunu yalnızca doğal bulacaklardır. O halde sormaya devam ediyorum: Elbette bir müzisyen için müzik, bir ressam için de resim yapmak en önemli şeydir; hatta belki de bir beton uzmanı için beton yapılar kurmak en önemli şeydir. Peki, bu yüzden bunlardan birinin Tanrıyı kafasında beton yapı alanında bir uzman sayacağına, ötekinin ise resmedilmiş ya da nefesli çalgılarla betimlenmiş bir dünyayı gerçeğine yeğleyeceğine inanıyor musunuz? Bu soruyu saçma bulacaksınız, fakat işin ciddi yanı da asıl talep edilmesi gerekenin şimdi saçma gelen olmasında yatıyor! Ve lütfen şimdi sanmayın ki,” diye Diotima’ya döndü Ulrich, artık tümüyle ciddi bir ifadeyle “bununla tek söylemek istediğim, gerçekleştirilmesi güç olanın herkese çekici geldiği ve insanların gerçekten elde edebileceklerini küçük görmeleridir. Benim demek istediğim şu: Gerçekliğin içersinde, gerçek olmayana yönelik anlamsız bir istem de gizlidir!”

454

White people in psychological nudity

farukahmet — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 18:28:58 +0200

Thadious M. Davis, Faulkner’s “Negro”: Art and the Southern Context
Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1983

Most impressive about his [Faulkner’s] achievement is not that he created black characters and positioned them within his ﬁctional world of Yoknapatawpha, but rather that he envisioned what Melville represented as “the whiteness of whiteness.” Faulkner constructed characters who are consciously white, racialized as white, and depicted the construction of whiteness within Southern and American society. As a result, he allowed outsiders to know in ways not otherwise available to them one ongoing narrative of white people in psychological nudity. His treatment of white people, within the normalizing, universalizing elision of racial identity, but with the complexity of the burden of racial subjectivity is an extraordinary achievement, unequaled in the ﬁrst half of the century and unparalleled in the second.
254

The Secret of Kells

farukahmet — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 03:37:31 +0200

Brendan: You can't find out everything from books, you know.

Brother Aidan: (Chuckles) And I think I read that once.

Human heart in conflict with itself

farukahmet — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 13:49:30 +0300

William Faulkner, accepting his Nobel Prize for Literature
1949

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.

He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking.

Openness to the other

farukahmet — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 16:58:23 +0300

Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method
org. 1960, as Wahrheit und Methode in German

Openness to the other, then, involves recognizing that I myself must accept some things that are against me, even though no one forces me to do so. This is the parallel to the hermeneutical experience. I must allow tradition’s claim to validity, not in the sense of simply acknowledging the past in its otherness, but in such a way that it has something to say to me. This too calls for a fundamental sort of openness. Someone who is open to tradition in this way sees that historical consciousness is not really open at all, but rather, when it reads its texts “historically,” it has always thoroughly smoothed them out beforehand, so that the criteria of the historian’s own knowledge can never be called into question by tradition. Recall the naïve mode of comparison that the historical approach generally engages in. The 25th “Lyceum Fragment” by Friedrich Schlegel reads: “The two basic principles of so-called historical criticism are the postulate of the commonplace and the axiom of familiarity. The postulate of the commonplace is that everything that is really great, good, and beautiful is improbable, for it is extraordinary or at least suspicious. The axiom of familiarity is that things must always have been just as they are for us, for things are naturally like this.” By contrast, historically effected consciousness rises above such naive comparisons and assimilations by letting itself experience tradition and by keeping itself open to the truth claim encountered in it.

355

"Astronomers are spherical bastards. No matter how you look at them they are just bastards."

farukahmet — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 05:48:10 +0300

“Astronomers are spherical bastards. No matter how you look at them they are just bastards.”

- Fritz Zwicky, on his colleagues at the Mount Wilson Observatory

Home-made science

farukahmet — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 15:15:38 +0300

Donald L. Unger, Does knuckle cracking lead to arthritis of the fingers?
Arthritis & Rheumatism magazine, May 1998

In 1998, California physician Donald L. Unger wrote to the editors of Arthritis & Rheumatism to report a “50-year controlled study by one participant.” His mother had told him that cracking his knuckles would lead to arthritis, so for 50 years the science-minded Unger had cracked the knuckles of his left hand at least twice a day, more than 36,500 times in all, and left the right uncracked as a control. After 50 years he found no arthritis in either hand and no differences between the two hands.

“This result calls into question whether other parental beliefs, e.g., the importance of eating spinach, are also flawed,” Unger wrote. “Further investigation is likely warranted.”

The editors invited a response from Robert L. Swezey, who had published an earlier investigation in the Western Journal of Medicine. Swezey said that his own study had been inspired when his 12-year-old son’s grandmother had warned him that cracking his knuckles would cause arthritis. “It is now 22 years later and he continues to enjoy frequent KC without manifestations or evidence of arthritis.”

With motherly advice thrown into doubt, Swezey wondered whether knuckle cracking might even prevent osteoarthritis. “The possible utilization of KC by managed care providers as an economic, noninvasive, home preventative treatment for arthritis of the hands should be given further consideration,” he concluded. “A clear distinction between hand wringing related to managed care procedures and therapeutic KC will have to be made.”

Tolstoy

farukahmet — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 22:30:00 +0200

Elif Batuman, The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010

Also from this book: Dennis the Dentist

On the day of my flight to Moscow, I was late to the airport. Check-in was already closed. Although I was eventually let onto the plane, my suitcase was not, and it subsequently vanished altogether from the Aeroflot informational system. Air travel is like death: everything is taken from you. Because there are no clothing stores in Yasnaya Polyana, I was obliged to wear, for four days of the conference, the same clothes in which I had traveled: flip-flops, sweatpants, and a flannel shirt. I had hoped to sleep on the plane and had dressed accordingly. Some International Tolstoy Scholars assumed that I was a Tolstoyan—that like Tolstoy and his followers I had taken a vow to walk around in sandals and wear the same peasant shirt all day and all night.

loc.1915

“We will hear more about these very interesting editions on Thursday! … if we are still alive.” It was fashionable among International Tolstoy Scholars to punctuate all statements about the future with this disclaimer: an allusion to Tolstoy’s later diaries. After his religious rebirth in 1881, Tolstoy changed his practice of ending each diary entry with a plan for the next day; now, he simply wrote the phrase: “if I am alive.”

loc.1934

A few days later, Tolstoy received a letter from Chertkov and refused to let Sonya see it. Sonya flew into a rage and renewed her accusations about the secret will. “Not only does her behavior toward me fail to express her love,” Tolstoy wrote of Sonya, “but its evident object is to kill me.” Tolstoy fled to his study and tried to distract himself by reading The Brothers Karamazov: “Which of the two families, Karamazov or Tolstoy, was the more horrible?” he asked. In Tolstoy’s view, The Brothers Karamazov was “anti-artistic, superficial, attitudinizing, irrelevant to the great problems.”

loc.2018

In a final period of lucidity on November 6, he said to his daughters, “I advise you to remember that there are many people in the world besides Lev Tolstoy.” He died of respiratory failure on November 7.

loc.2042

On the third day of the Tolstoy conference, a professor from Yale read a paper on tennis. In Anna Karenina, he began, Tolstoy represents lawn tennis in a very negative light. Anna and Vronsky swat futilely at the tiny ball, poised on the edge of a vast spiritual and moral abyss. When he wrote that scene, Tolstoy himself had never played tennis, which he only knew of as an English fad. At the age of sixty-eight, Tolstoy was given a tennis racket and taught the rules of the game. He became an instant tennis addict. “No other writer was as prone to great contradictions,” explained the professor, whose mustache and mobile eyebrows gave him the air of a nineteenth-century philanderer. All summer long, Tolstoy played tennis for three hours every day. No opponent could rival Tolstoy’s indefatigable thirst for the game of tennis; his guests and children would take turns playing against him. The International Tolstoy Scholars wondered at Tolstoy’s athleticism. He should have lived to see eighty-five—ninety—one hundred! Tolstoy had also been in his sixties when he learned how to ride a bicycle. He took his first lesson exactly one month after the death of his and Sonya’s beloved youngest son. Both the bicycle and an introductory lesson were a gift from the Moscow Society of Velocipede-Lovers. One can only guess how Sonya felt, in her mourning, to see her husband teetering along the garden paths. “Tolstoy has learned to ride a bicycle,” Chertkov noted at that time. “Is this not inconsistent with Christian ideals?”

loc.2044

The Dukhobors—literally, “Spirit Wrestlers”—were a Russian peasant religious sect, whose tenets included egalitarianism, pacificism, worship through prayer meetings, and the rejection of all written scripture in favor of an oral body of knowledge called the “Living Book.” When they were persecuted for their refusal to fight in the Russo-Turkish war, Tolstoy donated all the proceeds from his novel Resurrection to finance their immigration to Canada in 1899.

loc.2314

Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana, 1908

Traduttore, Traditore

farukahmet — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 14:40:00 +0200

Joel M. Hoffman, And God Said: How Translations Conceal the Bible’s Original Meaning
Thomas Dunne Books, Feb. 2010

Rhymes

…something about this process of breaking up a word and looking at its parts resonates deeply with many people. When most people hear that “apologizing is important because it leads to a feeling of unity,” they evaluate the proposition with their head. Does it makes sense? Why? Who is making the claim? What is the evidence? By contrast, many people evaluate “atonement is at-one-ment” with their heart. It’s cool. It’s a neat wordplay. And, surprisingly, even rational thinkers sometimes give the statement more weight because of the wordplay. Similarly, even the most rational people in modern society tend, unknowingly, to believe things that rhyme more than they otherwise would. “A stitch in time saves nine.” It (nearly) rhymes. It must be true. Even people who don’t know what it means think it’s probably accurate. (It means that mending clothing with one stitch before a small rip becomes worse will save more stitches later. Take care of things before they get out of hand.) In the infamous O.J. Simpson trial, defense attorney Johnnie Cochran tried to put a glove on Mr. Simpson’s hand. The glove was too small. “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit,” Cochran told the jury. “Fit.” “Aquit.” It rhymes, so it must be true. The strategy was incredibly effective, even though it mixed rational thought with, in this case, poetry.

Etymology

A slightly longer example involves medieval monks who were tasked with copying ancient religious manuscripts. The manuscripts had to be copied by hand because printing had yet to be invented, and the job had to be done by monks because most laypeople were illiterate. So some monks would spend their days copying Greek and Latin manuscripts, preserving the ancient texts by writing them anew. It turns out that due to its architecture, the interior of the typical monastery is an ill-advised place to read and write. There’s not enough light. So the monks put tables just outside their dark buildings and used these tables as copying desks. Because these fixtures were immobile, they were called stationary booths. As the general population in Europe grew more literate, more and more people needed writing supplies: paper or parchment, quill pens, blotters, and so forth. Before specialized stores arose to fill this consumer need, people had two choices: They could make their own supplies, or they could try to buy them. Buying was easier, and the most convenient place to find writing supplies was one of the monks’ stationary booths. By association, then, the supplies themselves came to be called stationary supplies. (The technical name for this sort of expansion of meaning is “metonymy.” It will come up again later.) Only afterward did an arbitrary spelling decision assign the ending “-ary” to the word that means “immobile” and the ending “-ery” to “writing supplies.” Both words actually have the same etymology.

Emphasis

This is why airlinese sounds the way it does. Flight attendants tend to emphasize exactly the words that normal speakers do not. For example: “We have arrived at the Atlanta airport… .” Most speakers naturally emphasize “arrived” in that sentence. But the emphasis on “arrived” naturally raises other possibilities in the minds of those who hear the sentence. “Crashed,” for example, is one possibility the airlines would rather passengers not think about. By emphasizing “have,” the flight attendants only raise the possibility of “have not [arrived],” which, by comparison, isn’t so bad.

Affect

Let us consider yet another possibility. What if the “cleverness” of having used “ten kilometers” doesn’t come from within the sentence but rather from the culture? For example, suppose we have an American English story about a patriot who, in a demonstration of his love for his country, walks 1,776 miles by foot. How should that be translated into Modern Hebrew? Americans reading the story immediately recognize the figure “1776.” Should the Hebrew translation have a number that, like the English, is immediately recognizable?

Babylonians could multiply small integers. Accordingly, in addition to multiples of ten, “round numbers” in antiquity were products of small numbers. Two times three, three times four, etc. That’s why there were originally six days in a workweek (two times three), twelve hours in a day and twelve hours in a night (three times four), sixty seconds in a minute and sixty minutes in an hour (three times four times five), and so forth. How then should the description of Noah’s ark in Genesis 6: 15 be translated? The Hebrew tells us that the dimensions are “300 amas long by 50 amas wide by 30 amas high.” The KJV version, not surprisingly, keeps the numbers and translates ama as “cubit.” By that translation, however, a matter-of-fact statement about the ark has become esoteric. (The English “cubit” comes from the Latin word cubitus, “elbow,” and one cubit is the length from the king’s elbow to the end of his middle finger. So “cubit”— that is, “elbow”— was just like “foot.”) The U.S. version of the New International Version converts the figures into feet: “The ark is to be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high.” That’s much more useful for an American reader, but what about the figures? Did they have some particular significance that they no longer do?

We have the same problem when talking about years. Genesis 5: 8 tells us that Seth lived to be 912 years old. Notice the “12” at the end. That was a round number in antiquity. Whether Seth was really that age or not, readers of ancient Hebrew would see such a number as a round number, while we do not. Genesis 14: 4 talks about “twelve years” of service. Should the translation make it “ten”? An even clearer case for translating round numbers (according to antiquity) into round numbers (according to modernity) comes from Genesis 17: 20. There the second part of Ishmael’s blessing consists of two parallel parts: “twelve princes shall he beget, and I will make him a great nation.” Clearly, having “twelve princes” is poetically akin to becoming a great nation. Any ancient reader of Hebrew— regardless of their view of the literal truth of the story itself— would know the “twelve” here isn’t meant to be taken literally. Twelve was a round number, similar to the “thousand” in “I’ve told you a thousand times.”

Allusions

Talking about pregnancy is taboo in some circles, so new words to describe pregnancy keep popping up in the language. Once “with child” was a common expression. Then that became too common, so people started using “pregnant,” Latin for “expecting,” as in “expecting a child.” Then that became too common, and now some people prefer the English “expecting.” In yet another move away from talking about the woman and her womb and so forth, many people use “pregnant” and “expecting” for both members of a couple, so in some dialects it’s not just the woman who’s “pregnant” or “expecting,” it’s the couple.

198

Levav & Nefesh

The most important commandment, according to Jesus in Matthew 22: 37, Mark 12: 30, and Luke 10: 27, is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind” (NAB and, essentially, NRSV). Jesus himself (using Greek) is quoting Deuteronomy 6: 5 (which is in Hebrew), and that line is central to both Jews and Christians. Deuteronomy 6: 5 is part of the text that Jews traditionally affix to their doorways, and, as we just saw, Jesus calls this the most important commandment. The combination “heart and soul,” or some variation of it, appears nearly forty times in the Bible, further emphasizing how important these two ideas were in antiquity. But here’s the problem. The Hebrew words for “heart” and “soul,” the words in Deuteronomy 6: 5 that Jesus quotes, are levav and nefesh, respectively. And they are severely mistranslated. In fact, the translations miss the point entirely.

…

[So:] The nefesh was like the hardware of humanity and the levav like the software. It should not surprise us, then, that levav and nefesh were used together to form an expression. And it is precisely that expression that appears in what Jesus calls the most important commandment. We are supposed to love God with everything about us that makes us human. Unlike the usual English translation, which limits the commandment to our “heart,” excluding our thoughts, the Biblical commandment includes emotions and thoughts and more. And again unlike the usual English translation, the Biblical commandment specifically addresses our corporal, physical existence.

Casuistic & Apodictic

Technical words help distinguish the Ten Commandments from other laws. Laws that prescribe consequences are call “casuistic.” Those that simply state right from wrong are called “apodictic.” … Why say “Don’t steal” when another part of the Bible already has a punishment for stealing? The answer is that Leviticus 5 is a legal system, while the Ten Commandments are a moral framework. The point is that stealing is wrong. The severity of the offense has nothing to do with getting caught or punished.

Curiously, court records of the time don’t reference the Code of Hammurabi in the way we would expect them to if they were really the law of the land. So the role of the code may not be exactly what it seems. Some scholars think that the Code of Hammurabi, coming as it does before the Ten Commandments, diminishes the importance of the Bible. In their minds, the Ten Commandments are merely a revision, sometimes not even a good one, of something that the Babylonians had long before. But like our modern American laws, the Code of Hammurabi merely prescribes consequences. It lacks the fundamental force of the Ten Commandments. (In technical jargon, all of the laws in the Code of Hammurabi are casuistic, not apodictic like the Ten Commandments.)

154

Revolution with police permission

farukahmet — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 20:22:00 +0200

Umberto Eco, from the essay How to Use Suspension Points inside How to Travel with a Salmon & Other Essays
Harcourt, 1994 (org. essays written in Italian between ‘59-‘61)

Also from this book: How to Travel with a Salmon?

Writers use suspension points only at the end of a sentence, to indicate that more could be written on the subject (“and this point could be further elaborated, but…”), or, in the middle of a sentence or between two sentences, to underline the fragmentary nature of a quotation (“Friends … I come to bury Caesar…”). Non-writers use these dots to crave indulgence for a rhetorical figure that they consider perhaps too bold: “He was raging like a … bull.”

A writer is someone determined to extend language beyond its boundaries, and he therefore assumes full responsibility for a metaphor, even a daring one: “The moving waters at their priestlike task / Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores.” Everyone agrees that Keats has allowed his fancy to soar, but at least he makes no apology for that. The non-writer, on the other hand, would have written: “The moving waters at their … priestlike … task/ Of pure … ablution.” As if to say: don’t mind me, I’m only joking.

A writer writes for writers, a non-writer writes for his next-door neighbor or for the manager of the local bank branch, and he fears (often mistakenly) that they would not understand or, in any case, would not forgive his boldness. He uses the dots as a visa: he wants to make a revolution, but with police permission.

184

John Keats

Umberto Eco

How to Travel with a Salmon?

farukahmet — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 01:05:00 +0200

Umberto Eco, How to Travel with a Salmon & Other Essays
Harcourt, 1994 (org. essays written in Italian between ‘59-‘61)

Also from this book: Revolution with police permission

How to Travel on American Trains

The train, in America, is not a choice. It is a punishment for, having neglected to read Weber on the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism, making the mistake of remaining poor.

How Not to Know the Time

All these clocks, like the whole information industry today, run the risk of no longer communicating anything because they tell too much. But they also possess another characteristic of the information industry: they no longer speak of anything except themselves and their internal functioning. The zenith is reached in some ladies’ watches with imperceptible hands, just a marble face without hours or minutes, shaped in such a way that, at most, you could say we are somewhere between noon and midnight, and perhaps it’s the day before yesterday.

How to Justify a Private Library

A second shock of banality occurs to many people in my condition—that is, people who possess a fairly sizable library (large enough in my case that someone entering our house can’t help but notice it; actually, it takes up the whole place). The visitor enters and says, “What a lot of books! Have you read them all?” At first I thought that the question characterized only people who had scant familiarity with books, people accustomed to seeing a couple of shelves with five paperback mysteries and a children’s encyclopedia, bought in installments. But experience has taught me that the same words can be uttered also by people above suspicion. It could be said that they are still people who consider a bookshelf as a mere storage place for already-read books and do not think of the library as a working tool. But there is more to it than that. I believe that, confronted by a vast array of books, anyone will be seized by the anguish of learning, and will inevitably lapse into asking the question that expresses his torment and his remorse.

In the past I adopted a tone of contemptuous sarcasm. “I haven’t read any of them; otherwise, why would I keep them here?” But this is a dangerous answer because it invites the obvious follow-up: “And where do you put them after you’ve read them?” The best answer is the one always used by Roberto Leydi: “And more, dear sir, many more,” which freezes the adversary and plunges him into a state of awed admiration. But I find it merciless and angst-generating. Now I have fallen back on the riposte: “No, these are the ones I have to read by the end of the month. I keep the others in my office,” a reply that on the one hand suggests a sublime ergonomic strategy, and on the other leads the visitor to hasten the moment of his departure.

116-7

How to Compile an Inventory

Research bogs down also because the bureaucratic routine makes us waste time in solving ridiculous problems. I am the head of a university department. Some years ago we were told to make an inventory of the department’s physical possessions, a scrupulous list. Our only available employee was supposed to deal with a thousand other questions. But it was possible to farm out the task to a private organization that asked for three hundred thousand lire. We had the money, but in funds meant for inventoriable materials. How could we declare that an inventory was inventoriable? I had to set up a committee of logicians, who suspended their own researches for three days. In my statement of the problem they saw something comparable to The Set of Normal Sets. Then they decided that the act of compiling an inventory, as it is an act, is not an object and therefore cannot be inventoried, but they further decided that its output is the catalogue of the inventory and, as this is an object, it can be inventoried. We asked the private firm to bill us not for the act but for its result, a result that we then inventoried. For several days I distracted serious scholars from their specific tasks, but I avoided going to jail.

119

How to Buy Gadgets

Culture, as we know, is all the more interesting if it serves to revise and correct nature. Nature is tough and hostile; culture, on the contrary, allows people to do things with less effort, saving time. Culture frees the body from the enslavement of toil and opens the way to contemplation.

126

It is well known that, to reduce their cholesterol levels, the Americans have long since taken up jogging: they run for hours and hours until they drop dead of a heart attack. Pulse-Trainer ($59.95), worn on the wrist, is attached by a wire to a little rubber sheath slipped over the index finger. When your cardiovascular system is on the brink of collapse, an alarm goes off, apparently. A real achievement, if you consider that in underdeveloped countries a person stops running only when he is out of breath—a highly primitive criterion, and perhaps for this reason children in Ghana are not brought up to jog.

128

How to Speak of Animals

Human beings have always been merciless with animals, but when humans became aware of their own cruelty, they began, if not to love all animals (because, with only sporadic hesitation, they continue eating them), at least to speak well of them. As the media, the schools, public institutions in general, have to explain away so many acts performed against humans by humans, it seems finally a good idea, psychologically and ethically, to insist on the goodness of animals. We allow children of the Third World to die, but we urge children of the First to respect not only butterflies and bunny rabbits but also whales, crocodiles, snakes. Mind you, this educational approach is per se correct. What is excessive is the persuasive technique chosen: to render animals worthy of rescue they are humanized, toyified. No one says they are entitled to survive even if, as a rule, they are savage and carnivorous. No, they are made respectable by becoming cuddly, comic, good-natured, benevolent, wise, and prudent.

214

The Collapse

farukahmet — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 21:50:00 +0200

Ryszard Kapuscinski, from the third chapter titled The Collapse inside The Emperor
Penguin Classics, 2006 (org. in Polish as Cezars, 1978)

Also from this book: The Throne & It’s Coming, It’s Coming

Experience confirms it. A man starved all his life will never rebel. Up north there was no rebellion. No one raised his voice or his hand there. But just let the subject start to eat his fill and then try to take the bowl away, and immediately he rises in rebellion. The usefulness of going hungry is that a hungry man thinks only of bread. He’s all wrapped up in the thought of food. He loses the remains of his vitality in that thought, and he no longer has either the desire or the will to seek pleasure through the temptation of disobedience. Just think: Who destroyed our Empire? Who reduced it to ruin? Neither those who had too much, nor those who had nothing, but those who had a bit. Yes, one should always beware of those who have a bit, because they are the worst, they are the greediest, it is they who push upward.
113

…in order to limit excessive war expenses, only officers had a right to a funeral, while the bodies of the common soldiers were left to the vultures and hyenas.
122

They [the soldiers who finally ended Haile Selassie’s reign by a coup d’etat] were completely dumbfounded, however, completely unable to understand, when they saw that His Most Singular Majesty wore his military uniform all the time (medals jingling), and carried his marshall’s baton, as if he wanted to show that he still commanded his army, still stood at his head, and still gave the orders. No matter that this army had designs against the Palace. Well, so it had, but under his command it was a faithful, loyal army, which did everything in the Emperor’s name. They rebelled? Yes, but they rebelled loyally!

That’s it, my friend—His Venerable Majesty wanted to rule over everything. Even if there was a rebellion, he wanted to rule over the rebellion, to command a mutiny, even if it was directed against his own reign.
134

It's Coming, It's Coming

farukahmet — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 04:28:00 +0200

Ryszard Kapuscinski, from the second chapter titled It’s Coming, It’s Coming inside The Emperor
Penguin Classics, 2006 (org. in Polish as Cesarz, 1978)

Also from this book: The Throne & The Collapse

[After a failed coup d’etat…] That same night His Unrivaled Highness ordered that his favorite lions be shot, because instead of defending the Palace they had admitted the traitors.
74

These generals, with His Gracious Majesty’s help, arranged such a good life for themselves that in out Empire, which contained thirty million farmers and only a hundred thousand soldiers and police, agriculture received one percent of the national budget and the army and the police forty percent.
93

His August Majesty chided the bureaucrats for failing to understand a simple principle: the principle of the second bag. Because the people never revolt just because they have to carry a heavy load, or because of exploitation. They don’t know life without exploitation, they don’t even know that such a life exists. How can they desire what they cannot imagine? The people will revolt only when, in a single movement, someone tries to throw a second burden, a second heavy bag, onto their backs. The peasant will fall face down into the mud—and then spring up and grab an ax. He’ll grab an ax, my gracious sir, not because he simply can’t sustain this new burden—he could carry it—he will rise because he feels that, in throwing the second burden onto his back suddenly and stealthily, you have tried to cheat him, you have treated him like an unthinking animal, you have trampled what remains of his already strangled dignity, taken him for an idiot who doesn’t see, feel, or understand. A man doesn’t seize an ax in defense of his wallet, but in defense of his dignity, and that, dear sir, is why His Majesty scolded the clerks. For their own convenience and vanity, instead of adding the burden bit by bit, in little bags, they tried to heave a whole big sack on at once.
97

The Throne

farukahmet — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 20:40:00 +0200

Ryszard Kapuscinski, from the first chapter titled The Throne inside The Emperor
Penguin Classics, 2006 (org. in Polish as Cesarz, 1978)

Also from this book: It’s Coming, It’s Coming & The Collapse

Each step was a struggle between shuffling and dignity, between leaning and the vertical line.
6

…in the Palace questions were always asked from top to bottom, and never vice versa. When the first question was asked in a direction opposite to the customary one, it was a signal that the revolution had begun.
9

[After his usual morning visit to his leopards, lions and other animals of prey in the palace’s garden, The Emperor…] …approaches a flock of flamingos, but the shy birds scatter when he comes near. The Emperor smiles at the sight of creatures that refuse to obey him.
10

[Every morning while strolling through his gardens The Emperor Haile Selassie listens to reports from his various information agencies who competed against each other. These spying organizations ‘live in fear of not reporting something in time and falling into disgrace, or of a competitor’s reporting it better’] Haile Selassie never commented on or questioned the reports he received, during his morning walks, about the state of conspiracy in the Empire. But he knew what he was doing, as I shall show you. His Highness wanted to receive the reports in a pure state, because if he asked questions or expressed opinions the informant would obligingly adjust his report to meet the Emperor’s expectations. Then the whole system of informing would collapse into subjectivity and fall prey to anyone’s willfulness. The monarch would not know what was going on in the country and the Palace.
11

Haile Selassie was a constitutional Chosen One of God, and he could nor associate himself with any faction (although he used one or another more than others but if any one of the favored coteries went too far in its eagerness, the Emperor would scold or even formally condemn it. This was especially so for the extreme factions that our Emperor used to establish order. The Emperor’s speeches were remarkably kindly, gentle, and comforting to the people, who had never heard his mouth form a harsh or angry word. And yet you cannot rule an Empire with kindness. Someone has to check opposing interests and protect the superior causes Emperor, Palace, and State. That is what the extreme factions, were doing, but because they did not understand the Emperor’s subtle intentions, they slipped into error—specifically the error of overdoing it. Desirous of His Majesty’s approbation, they tried to introduce absolute order, whereas His Supreme Majesty wanted basic order with a margin of disorder on which his monarchical gentleness could exert itself. For this reason, the extremists’ coterie encountered the ruler’s scornful gaze when they tried to cross into that margin.
29

I’ll come right out and say it: the King of Kings preferred bad ministers. And the King of Kings preferred them because he liked to appear in favorable light by contrast. How could he show himself favorably if he were surrounded by good ministers? The people would be disoriented. Where would they look for help? On whose wisdom and kindness would they depend? Everyone would have been good and wise. What disorder would have broken out in the Empire then! Instead of one sun, fifty would be shining, and everyone would pay homage to a privately chosen planet. No, my dear friend, you cannot expose the people to such disastrous freedom. There can be only one sun. Such is the order of nature, and everything else is a heresy. But you can be sure that His Majesty shined by contrast. How imposingly and kindly he shone, so that our people had no doubts about who was the sun and who was the shadow.
33

Mr. Kapuchitsky, do you know what money means in a poor country? Money in a poor country and money in a rich country are two different things. In a rich country, money is a piece of paper with which you buy goods on the market. You are only a customer. Even a millionaire remains a customer. He may purchase more, but he remains a customer, nothing more. And in a poor country? In a poor country, money is a wonderful, thick hedge, dazzling and always blooming, which separates you from everything else. Through that hedge you do not see creeping poverty, you do not smell the stench of misery, and you do not hear the voices of the human dregs. But at the same time you know that all of that exists, and you feel proud of because of your hedge. You have money; that means you have wings. You are the bird of paradise that everyone admires.

Can you imagine, for instance, a crowd gathering in Holland to look at a rich Dutchman? Or in Sweden, or in Australia? But in our land—yes. In our land, if a prince or count appears, the people run to see him. They will run to see a millionaire, and afterward they will go around and say, “I saw a millionaire”. Money transforms your own country into an exotic land. Everything will start to astonish you—the way people live, the things they worry about, and you will say, “No, that’s impossible”. Because you will already belong to a different civilization. And you must know this law of culture: two civilizations cannot really know and understand one another well. You will start going deaf and blind. You will be content in your civilization surrounded by the hedge, but the signals from the other civilization will be as incomprehensible to you as if they had been sent by the inhabitants of Venus. If you feel like it, you can become an explorer in your own country. You can become Columbus, Magellan, Livingstone. But I doubt that you will have such a desire. Such expeditions are very dangerous, and you are no madman, are you? You are already a man of your own civilization, and you will defend it and fight for it. You will water your own hedge. You are exactly the kind of gardener that the Emperor needs. You don’t want to lose your feathers, and the Emperor needs people who have a lot to lose.
45

Next, he [the Emperor] writes that he forbade the custom that a man who had been accused of murder—and this was only an accusation by the common people, because there were no courts—would have to be publicly executed by disembowelment, with the execution performed by the closest member of his family, so that, for example, a son would execute his father and a mother her son. … Next, he abolished by decree a method that we call lebasha, for the discovery of thieves. Medicine men would give a secret herb to small boys, who, dizzy, stupefied, and directed by supernatural forces, would go into a house and point out the thief. The one who had been pointed out, in accordance with tradition, had his hands and legs cut off. Just try to imagine, my friend, life in a country where, even though you are completely innocent of crime, you can at any moment have your hands and legs cut off.
51

Standing on a platform, His Highness would hear the case as it was presented by counsel, and then pronounce his verdict. This was according to a procedure established three thousand years ago by the Israelite King Solomon, of whom His Most Exalted Majesty was a direct descendant—as established by the constitutional law. *
55

* From the Wikipedia article on the Rastafari Movement:

The Rastafari movement or Rasta is a new religious movement that arose in the 1930s in Jamaica, a country with a predominantly Christian culture where 98% of the people were the black descendants of slaves. Most of its adherents worship Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia (ruled 1930–1974), as God incarnate, the Second Advent, or the reincarnation of Jesus.

"The average American loves his family. If he has any love left over for some other person, he..."

farukahmet — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:55:00 +0200

“The average American loves his family. If he has any love left over for some other person, he generally selects Mark Twain.”

- Thomas Edison

An even more unfortunate misnomer

farukahmet — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 16:56:33 +0200

Marshall Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, Vol.3

Writers used to cite it as a paradox that Ismâ’îl, ruler of ‘Persia’, wrote his verse in Turkic, while his rival, Selîm, ruler of ‘Turkey’, wrote his verse in Persian. The paradox springs only from a misuse of the term ‘Persia’ for the Safavî empire, which included Persians, Turks, and Arabs equally, and the term ‘Turkey’ for the Ottoman empire, an even more unfortunate misnomer. In itself there is nothing paradoxical in the leader of a tribal grouping writing in the popular tongue, Turkic, while the head of an established state writes in the cultivated tongue, Persian.

from Chapter 1: The Safavî Empire