A Review of J.B. Priestley's "An Inspector Calls"

“An Inspector Calls,” by J.B. Priestley, directed by Stephen Delay, part of the 2018-1019 repertoire of the Shakespeare Theater in Washington D.C., was an enjoyable theatrical experience. The play was once a war horse that galloped across the world’s stages after its premiere—in The Soviet Union no less—in 1945. Why beat a near-dead horse? I’m not completely sure, but I'm grateful that the director chose to revive it—There is obviously life in the old steed yet.

It is a didactic play, true, but quite an innovative and entertaining one, nevertheless.  We know where Priestley’s sympathies lie as the unrepentant capitalist, Mr. Birling, says the following lines at the beginning of the play: "The way some of these cranks talk and write now, you'd think everybody has to look after everyone else, as if we were all mixed up together like bees in a hive--community and all that nonsense." Priestley, like the best of us in every generation, was undoubtedly one of those "cranks". 

"Love yourself and cheat your neighbor," a travesty of The Golden Rule, is still the unspoken mantra of many, 73 years after the play was written. Thus this idea play has still alas! a very contemporary message.

The mise-en-scene is quite impressive. The stage presents a large Victorian house on shaky foundations. The house reminded me of models on a train-set board lovingly erected by my father every Christmas when I was a kid. Its doll-house-like proportions in this production affords a view only of a dining room table around which the wealthy family gathers to celebrate the engagement of Birling's daughter to a younger version of himself, a promising little Koch, expected to exploit for years to come, expected to play dirty with a pristine conscience in the vacuous spirit of his soon-to-be father-in-law.

In the first scene, after the house opens into two equal wings, we find the family seated around a dining room table. The cramped space symbolizes the cramped spiritual life of the inhabitants.

Then the inspector calls, a police inspector named Goole, no less.  A young woman has poisoned herself with disinfectant, symbolizing the moral filth of the upper class members who are, as we shall see, responsible for her death. The family asks the inspector what the young girl’s death has to do with them?  Apparently plenty.

Each family member discovers during the course of the play that their consciences are as diaphanously clear as a pile of Newcastle coal. They killed her as assuredly as the measles virus killed countless numbers of Indians during the Spanish conquest of South America. The virus in this case is that murderously infectious vector of the upper class, namely, exploitation of the poor. (The patriarch fired her because she wanted an increase in wages; his wife had her fired from her subsequent employment for a frivolous reason; the fiancé abused her sexually; Birling's son impregnates her; the matriarch refuses to help her  because she had become “a fallen woman.”

It is a bit too much; the author wants to demonstrate that most members of the upper class are guilty, a defensible position that comes across dramatically as an ineffective exaggeration. That’s not all: the reason she approaches the matriarch for help is that the latter's impecunious son has been stealing from his father in order to support her. The young girl is just too pure to accept stolen money—Oh, brother!

It reminds me of a wonderful, unintended Zen moment from a Marx Brothers film, A Night at the Opera. The bad guy is beating some poor schlep. Groucho stops him with the following words, “Hey, you big bully, why are you picking on that little bully?”

We’re all bullies; nobody’s innocent. What makes one bully a little one is simply due to a lack of power. That the oppressed young girl, born with mud in her mouth while the others eat off a silver spoon, is the only one in the entire play who is as innocent as a canary in coal mine, strikes us as being gratuitously and undramatically ideological. In real life she would most likely be less concerned with the means rather than with the end, namely, survival. Who could blame her? J.B. Priestley perhaps.Truth is, we are all guilty, but the powerful are a good deal more guilty than the powerless “little bullies”; the former alone have the means to be really mean.

In this age of gross inequality, however, Priestley's assessment of society is more apropos than ever. 

It is difficult to read the newspapers these days without getting depressed. To get myself out of the pit into which the world’s abuses have thrown me, I’ve read some of the books by Steven Pinsker, who claims that the world is getting better, and provides convincing charts to prove it. One need only think of the many programs that combat inequality which Great Britain has promulgated in the years since An Inspector Calls was written. Still… 

The arc of justice may eventually lead to a pot of gold--but does it have to be so long; does it have to pass over such desperate landscapes in order to reach its happy goal?

A metaphor taken from physics consoles. According to a theory, there was  an equal amount of matter and antimatter at the time of creation. Each category annihilated the other. A small amount of matter, which comprises our entire cosmos today, remained, since it took more time to turn into matter and thus escaped destruction.This might be a good metaphor for human history. In each generation, evil and good are present in almost equal amounts; however, in each generation, after much suffering and destruction, a small amount of good prevails.

Thus, in every generation “matter” inspectors visit and, with a message of “Love your neighbor” examine our consciences and inspire us to do better. Yet every generation receives visits, in almost equal measure, from antimatter inspectors whose message is “Gold loves you just the way you are.” According to Pinsker and his convincing charts, the good inspectors predominate, if ever so slightly.

In this view, genesis occurs with every generation anew. This is why the family members, after discovering that the inspector was a phantom, revert to their greedy ways. The only ones who have “learned their lesson”, the bride and her brother, are the surviving elements of “matter," the unannihilated remnant of good which will make the next generation better. Hope for the future? Perhaps.

Then comes Priestley’s theatrical surprise. There is an inspector after all, and he will call on the family shortly. Everyone, a new generation of the same characters,  will have to confront their antimatter again—a profound message presented with a theatrical tour de force.

The acting and directing were superb. Kudus to Shakespeare Theater for reviving this interesting play!

R.I.P. Vimala Arjun (1930-2018)

Today, December 10, 2018, we got a call at 4:14 a.m. We knew what it was about. My sister-in-law, Vimala Arjun, passed away in Chennai, India.We had talked with her daughter, Vidya, on the evening of December 9^th. Vimala’s skin had become mottled. I asked if her extremities were cold; they were. She was having excess mucus in her throat and had difficulty breathing. These are all signs of impending death. We advised against tube feeding; Just keep her comfortable, we said; no need to try to feed her if she is unable to eat; just keep her lips moist, etc.

It was not an easy death. She had been struggling against the inevitable for months. Vimala’s mind was sharp until the very end. For instance, she knew when my birthday was (Oct. 9^th) and had her daughter call me this year so she could wish me a happy birthday. This was yet another example of her phenomenal memory, since I am an in-law, one of many relatives in a large family and a large circle of friends and acquaintances. Even toward the end, when her speech became slurred, her mentation had not lost its vigor.

Her body had not been as lucky. She was crippled by scoliosis and severe kyphosis. Her back was so bent that she could hardly walk; she was confined to her flat for the last few years of her life. We called her frequently; she never complained, and always gave us news about close and distant relatives, and news about the successes of past students as well. (Vimala had been a professor of English literature and department head at Ethiraj College in Chennai for many years).

My first memory of Vimala occurred before I had met her. My wife Nirmala and I, both pediatric residents in New York City, were in a relationship, which led to marriage after a two year courtship, in 1974. I remember thinking at the time that Nirmala had a sister who was so old—42! I can’t image what twenty-somethings must think of me now that I’ve become over thirty years older than Vimala was then! O yes I can.

After our residency, we traveled to India as a newly married couple. It was my first of many visits; Nirmala hadn’t been home for about five years. At that time, Vimala’s husband, Krishnarjun, was working for the Reserve Bank of India; they lived in a flat in a compound of flats for bank employees in Kilpauk, Madras—the city hadn’t been renamed Chennai yet. When we entered the flat, we had become, as it were, gods. Vimala had us sit at the center of the living room; she placed a mala, a garland of bright orange flowers around each of our necks. Two large valukkus, ceremonial lamps, had been lit. The bowls of the lamps, filled with oil, had places for several cotton wicks. While we sat on the floor, bathed in a warm glow from the valukku fire, our ears were full filled with carnatic, that is, classical South Indian religious music. It was an unforgettable experience.

Vimala, by the way, had musical talent. She was studying singing before her father’s unexpected death, in 1950, changed everything. I heard her sing a few times; she had a very sweet voice and always sang on key. I fondly recall discussing carnatic music on several occasions with her.

2. From Roshen To Vidya

The next day we had another unforgettable experience, a far less pleasant one. Vimala’s daughter, Roshen, (like Madras, she had not been renamed yet either—she is now called Vidya), had been riding around the compound courtyard on a bike. Vimala came to the courtyard soon after, begging Roshen to stop. Roshen, unfortunately had a severe form of heart disease. Nirmala and I noticed that she was very much out of breath after a few laps around the courtyard. Her lips had turned blue; her fingertips had turned blue as well.

Vimala, by far the most traditionally religious person of the family, had consulted a guru who advised her to change Roshen’s name. Nirmala had chosen Roshen as a name for her niece; Vidya, which means wisdom, however, is a lovely name, no doubt about that. I will call her by that name from now on.

Vidya had had a test a few years earlier to determine the nature of her cardiac disease. The procedure, called a cardiac catheterization, entailed the injection of an iodine-based dye into her blood stream, so that her vessels could be better visualized on X-ray. Vidya, however, suffered a near-fatal allergic reaction to the dye and the procedure had to be aborted. Only a partial video was available. This study was sent to the famous cardiologist, Dr. DeBakey, in Texas. He reported that she most likely had a diagnosis called transposition of the great vessels; he believed that the condition was now inoperable. There was nothing to do but await the inevitable.

Nirmala and I weren’t ready to accept this devastating news; perhaps something could be done. When we returned to the United States, Nirmala contacted cardiologists at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, where Nirmala worked as a pediatrician. She came into contact with a young cardiac surgeon there, whose name was Dr. Griepp. He reviewed the study, which we had brought along with us. He told us that the diagnosis was not transposition, bur a condition called tetralogy of Fallot. (His diagnosis, by the way, proved to be the correct one). He believed an operation could save her, and was willing to do it for free!  Those were the days—such largesse would be impossible today!

Nirmala and I were very pleased—as was Vimala, when we informed her. It was in the fall of 1977 when Vidya and her mother arrived in New York.  An aside: when we left the airport, Vimala noticed a billboard advertisement for drumsticks.”They have drumsticks here!” the vegetarian Vimala beamed. East is East and West is West, I thought, amused, for in India a drumstick is a yummy-gummy  vegetable, very different from the disembodied thigh of a dead bird!

The operation was a complete success! Helping to arrange for Vidya’s surgery was one of the three best things I’ve ever done. The first was marrying Nirmala, the second was adopting our son, Philip. The real hero of all this is, of course, Dr. Griepp, without whose help Vidya would not be alive today, nor would her lovely daughter, Shrada, a psychologist, ever have been born.

3. The Demise of the Family Matriarch

Vimala lived for over thirty years post retirement; her mind, as mentioned previously, remained sharp until the very end. But her last few months were difficult. It made me think of the poem Heinrich Heine wrote on this deathbed, the last stanza of which, in my translation, follows:

You wring your lovely hands so sadly.

O be consoled! It is our fate,

Our human fate, what’s good and great

And lovely ends—and ends badly.

Vimala’s eldest daughter, Sudha, did a fantastic job caring for her mother. She lived with her, slept with her, and did everything she could to ease her suffering. Vidya, of course, was a significant presence as well.

Vidya, who was with her when she died, reports that Vimala, propped up so that gravity could help her with the secretions that had gathered in her throat as she died, suddenly and very quietly simply stopped breathing. This reminded me of a poem by Emily Dickinson, The Last Night She Lived, perhaps the best poem about dying ever written. Here is how it ends:

She mentioned, and forgot—

Then lightly as a Reed

Bent to the Water, struggled scarce—

Consented, and was dead—

And we—We placed the Hair,

And drew the Head erect—

And then an awful leisure was—

Belief to regulate.

Nirmala and I have begun this process of belief-regulation through daily meditations. During one of these sessions, I “saw” Vimala, as it were, and asked her if death had changed any of her views of life. She smiled and “answered” me. “Before I had many views, some correct, some incorrect; now I have all views. You cannot imagine the peace I have now.”

I told this to Vidya, who had had a similar experience. Vimala had become the world; she informed us that there was no reason to mourn; but mourn we will.

Vimala leaves behind two daughters and two grandchildren, Shrada and Varun; her brother, Rajagopalan, and two sisters, my wife Nirmala and Romila, and a host of other relatives and friends, too numerous to mention.

Her passing and the experiences Vidya and I had afterward, remind me of a poem I had written years earlier, after her wonderful mother, Bhagirathy, died in 1994:

Last Words

Dear ones, now that I am gone,

Do not shed another tear;

Why grieve for one beyond harm?

Children, there’s no sorrow here.

There, at the moment of death,

Pain is what I left, not love:

The mother you knew on earth

Has become Mother above.

Where have I gone? Look and learn

From the silent sky: now (do

Not believe I’m in an urn,

Dears!) from the stars I greet you.

R.I.P. Vimala Arjun, you shall be missed.

The Tragic Case of Donald Trump

Trump is not only the worst president in U.S. history, he is arguably the most transparent one as well. If you don't know why he acts the way he does by now, you either haven't been paying attention, or, more seriously, you are inclined to believe that the writing on his identity's wall tends to lead to an heroic interpretation, rather than to a clinical one.

The purpose of this article is not only to explain why Trump acts the way he does, but also to indicate why his personality disorder is so dangerous to the well-being of the United States and to the entire world. I will illustrate this with the help of an excerpt from Stephen Hawking's latest and last book, Brief Answers to the Big Questions, published a few months after the great scientist's death in March 2018, at the age of seventy-six. I will address Trump's personality-disorder first.

1. The Malignant Narcissist

All non-partisan observers should know by now that Trump is neither moral nor immoral, but amoral. Morality for him is that which supports him; immorality for him is any form of opposition--What can be more amoral than that? The examples are legion! One of the latest is his criticism of Mark Hertling, the Navy Seal who was instrumental in capturing Saddam Hussein and killing Osama bin Laden. The retired admiral took Trump to task for his attacks on the press. When Chris Wallace of Fox News asked for a comment on Hertling's criticism, Trump interrupted and stated that the admiral was a Clinton and Obama supporter. (An accusation which the admiral subsequently vehemently denied). For Trump, the accusation of being a Clinton or Obama supporter nullifies the objectivity of whatever is said; whatever opponents say is by definition immoral, according to his internal, very limited dictionary. 

If you would prefer a clinical reason that explains Trump's behavior rather that an ethical one, it is malignant narcissism, an extreme form of vanity. Trump lives on praise as a vampire lives on blood; without it he becomes desiccated, like a grape after a  week in a desert.

Because he lacks a center, he must imagine himself to be the center of the universe. Because he knows so little, he pretends to know everything in order to salvage his precarious equilibrium. If deep down in his psyche he believes that he is worthless--this is why narcissists need constant praise--he surely knows how to cover up his lack of character with his characteristic bragging. "How would you grade your presidency so far?" Trump was asked in a recent interview. "A+," he replied; "Can I go higher than that?" He has been saying such ridiculous things for so long that
one isn't sure if he really believes the lies he tells. I think he does, which is sad and scary--Trump, after all, is the most powerful person in the world. He does not have the right stuff, however; we know it, and deep down there he knows it as well.

2. The Ignorant Narcissist

Trump claims that he is a "very stable genius," and that he knows "all the words," while in reality he is profoundly ignorant of that which one needs to know in order to govern, and cannot even put a decent sentence together. His tragedy, which has become ours, is a toxic combination of ignorance and inability to learn. Learning involves, among other things, humility and the ability to listen. Trump's lack of both of these qualities astounds. How can you learn if you are driven to pretend that you are smarter than everyone else and know all the answers already? One of his former instructors at the Wharton School of Business declared that Trump was a terrible student for this very reason.

Trump's inability to learn, his delusion that he knows all the answers, and his impulsiveness in making decisions without expert input are very dangerous flaws indeed. One of many examples follows. Trump discovered that South Korea has a trade surplus with the United States. Impulsively, he decided to pull out troops from South Korea and transfer missile defenses to Oregon. This would be an unmitigated disaster, since South Korea's proximity to "Little Rocket Man" means that a missile launched at the United States would be detected much earlier, a fact of crucial importance. Trump apparently directed his staff to have a letter ready for his signature, a letter informing the South Koreans that the United States was withdrawing from its military commitments. A patriotic aide intercepted the letter; Trump subsequently forgot about it. Whew! (The source of this anecdote is Bob Woodward's book, Fear, which chronicles the truly fearsome and amoralTrumpian chaos).

Why is he, in addition to his narcissism, so ignorant? He doesn't read. Kelly, the Secretary of Defense, considers Trump to be at the level of a fifth-grader. If he doesn't read, and he apparently doesn't, it is far worse than that. Aides apparently have to have texts illustrated with pictures, so that the president can grasp what is going on in informative meetings. Trump is known to "keep up" with the news by watching television, not by reading. This is truly unprecedented.

How does a refusal or inability to read affect a human being's ability to learn? For this, we turn to a passage from Steven Hawking's last book, Brief Answers to the Big Questions, (Bantam Books, 2018):

Trump ridiculously claims that  he is “a very stable genius”—if he were, he wouldn’t have to make such outlandish claims. Stephen Hawking lacked the narcissism to boast, nor did he need to—his genius was apparent to all. The great scientist who, amazingly, lasted over half a century after receiving a diagnosis of a malady which usually proves fatal within a few years, unfortunately died in March of this year, 2018, at the age of seventy-six, “a very stable genius,” despite his crippling handicap, to the very end of his life. Not only characterized by stability, his genius, as one might expect from a scientist, was also informed by rationality and by a progressive stance as well. He was thus in vehement opposition to the inane populism of Donald Trump. 

What follows is a quote from Hawkings's book:

The DNA in a human egg or sperm contains three billion base pairs of nucleic acids...the total amount of useful information in our genes is probably something like a hundred million bits...By contrast, a paperback novel might contain two million bits of information. Therefore, a human is equivalent to about fifty Harry Potter books, and a major modern national library can contain about five million books--or about ten trillion bits. The amount of information handed down in books or via the internet is 100,000 times as much as there is in DNA.


                                         --pages 76-


What we quoted from his book might not have been written with Trump in mind, but it exposes very well the current American—and world—predicament. Trump isn’t able and isn’t even willing to learn from experts, since he doesn’t read and suffers from a pathology that makes him imagine that he knows all the answers already—a truly toxic combination!

A few pages further on, Hawking writes: 

An even greater limitation (the first arising from specialization in narrower and narrower fields due exponential growth of knowledge) and danger for future generations
is that we still have the instincts, and in particular the aggressive impulses, that we had in caveman days.
                                     
                                                     --page 80

Trump’s aggression and greed are not tempered by wisdom, since he has no access to the wise. Trump’s hates and delusions are not tempered by the light of experience either; his illness prevents him from seeing light in the world, since he lives in his own world, which is dark. (He lives in a primitive world of nitbits, as it were). Trump is thus not merely a narcissist, but a Neolithic Narcissist; we’ve got a caveman in the White House and all, to put it mildly, isn’t well.

Favorite Poems, Volume lll: "Death is Coming," by Heinrich Heine

Death is coming--Time to depart;

time to confess what foolish pride

till now did not let me confide:

for you was each beat of my heart!

The coffin's ready. Slowly I'll sink

into the earth. Peace I shall have--

But you, but you, Maria, you will think

of me often and weep beside my grave.

You wring your lovely hands so sadly--

Oh, be consoled! It is our fate,

our human fate, what's  good and great

and lovely ends--and ends badly.

Heinrich Heine

--Translated from the German

by Thomas Dorsett

Es kommt der Tod

Es kommt der Tod--jetzt will ich sagen,
Was zu verschweigen ewiglich
Mein Stolz gebot: für dich, für dich,
Es hat mein Herz für dich geschlagen!

Der Sarg ist fertig, sie vesenken
Mich in die Gruft. da hab ich Ruh,
Doch du, doch du, Maria, du
Wirst weinen oft und mein gendenken.

Du ringst sogar die schönen Hände--
O tröste dich--Das ist das Los,
Das Menschenlos--was gut und gross
Und schön, das nimmt ein schlechtes Ende.

                          --Heinrich Heine

Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) was a major German poet of the nineteenth century. His poems, especially the early ones, celebrate love and rejection with consummate skill. He also wrote several notable ballads, including the famous Lorelei. He was politically involved as well, and knew Karl Marx; he was, as one might suspect,  socially progressive, but did not advocate communism. He moved to France in his thirties and remained there for the rest of his life. He visited Germany on occasion; toward the end of his life, however, he was banned from has native land due to his political views.

Important for the poem discussed here is his liaison with Crescence Eugénie Mirat, a shopgirl whom he met in 1834 when the former was nineteen. She was uneducated, sometimes embarrassingly so, a periodic embarrassment to Heine's friends and acquaintances; the couple quarreled frequently, but remained committed to each other. Heine, who was Jewish, married Crescence, who was Catholic, in 1841.

In 1848, Heine who had been ill, collapsed. He had become paralyzed, perhaps from venereal disease, perhaps from multiple sclerosis. He became bedridden, confined to his 'mattress grave' until his death a decade later. His wife, whom he called 'Mathilde', the 'Maria' of the poem, was his faithful nurse until his death.

Analysis

This poem was found in the poet's legacy. Its heartfelt directness is a convincing fulfillment of Beethoven's dedication to his Missa Solemnis: Vom Herzen; möge es wieder zum Herzen gehen--"From my heart--may it reach yours as well."

Heine had led a full life until the time of his paralysis; his personality was animated more by a joie de vivre quality, rather than by an introverted gloominess, examples of which abound in German Romantic poetry. He writes about death here only because he was, well, dying. Unlike many of his previous poems, there is no ironic detachment; every word comes from direct experience. This adds to the emotional impact of the poem; it is a grand exception to Wilde's dictum that all bad poetry is sincere--for this is indeed a great poem.

In the first three lines, Heine regrets that he had not confessed his love earlier. Mathilde--whose name was changed to the more euphonious Maria in the poem--was, after all, very ignorant. (On a visit to Germany, Mathilde made a disastrous impression on Heine's family). He loved her, but his pride (and occasional embarrassment) forbade him from expressing that love as much as he would have liked.

The poem is not bitter: one of its many strengths lies in the fact that Heine has accepted death and does his best to console his wife, who will miss him greatly.

For me, the masterful stroke of this poem comes at the end. It is, as one might suspect, much more powerful in the original German:

O tröste dich! Es ist das Los,

das Menschenlos, was gut und gross

und schön--das nimmt ein schlechtes Ende.

The beauty and wonder of life is depicted with the long vowels of gut (good), gross (great) and especially schön (beautiful)--all this is dashed by death, and, as the German has it, "takes a bad end." What I love about this phrase is its understatement: the last five words must be read more rapidly and perhaps, sotto voce. This simple statement, which addresses the main theme of the poem, namely that death is inevitable, has all the more impact due to its lack of elaboration. Only true poets can accomplish a feat like that.

We all know the truth of the last three lines. Human beings, all of whom are great but some of whom are truly great, must die, sometimes die at the height of their powers. The inexorability of death and the sorrow it unleashes is indeed our human fate; no one mourns the passing of  bacteria, for instance, which were the only form of life on earth for three and half billion years. The utter devastation and chaos of  annihilation reminds me of one of Emily Dickinson's poems about the dying process, "The Last Night She Lived".  She finishes the poem after the protagonist's demise with these harrowing lines: "And then an awful leisure was/ Belief to regulate."

We all would like to die in accord with a Spanish proverb, namely, that when one is born, one cries and everyone smiles; when one dies after a full life, however, the opposite is true: one smiles while everyone cries.  Let's hope that this is what happened in Heine's last moments. 

Yes, life doesn't end the way we would like. Yes, "death is (indeed)  coming," whether we like it or not. Yet if we lead a good life--as Heine did--and accept the inevitable, we can continue to console and be consoled until our last breath. That's what Heine has outlined in this brilliant poem. Read it carefully. The implication is that love and wisdom can still fulfill, even at the point of death. That is no small consolation.

What Islam Means to Me (A Poem)

l.

Responding to a current event, I am posting a poem I wrote shortly after the assassination of Shahbaz Bhatti, which occurred on March 2, 2011 in Pakistan. From 2008 until his death, Bhatti, a Christian and the only non-Muslim in the parliament, was the Minister of Minorities Affairs. He struggled to ease the burdens of the "oppressed, downtrodden and the marginalized," struggling "for human equality, social justice and the uplift and empowerment of religious minorities' communities" in Pakistan. He strove to repeal Pakistan's blasphemy law, which includes the sentence of capital punishment for those who "blaspheme" the Prophet's honor. For this reason he was assassinated, a murder in cold blood which received widespread support throughout the country.

Bhatti wasn't the only major figure assassinated for opposition to the blasphemy law. The governor of Punjab, Salmaan Taseer, was gunned down by his own bodyguard in January, 2011; the public cheered.

A few months before Bhatti  was killed, Asia Bibi, a Punjabi Christian, was accused of blasphemy--just what she said is uncertain--and sentenced to death. (Bhatti defended her; this is why he was murdered.) She remained in solitary confinement until last month, when the Pakistani Supreme Court righted a grievous wrong and pardoned her.

Here is a photo of the reaction many Pakistanis had:

Many demand that she be hanged. Having received numerous death threats, several of those who publicly defended her have already fled the country.

2.

Pakistani extremists remind me of the current deterioration of social comity in the United Sates since the election of Donald Trump. First, while the more benign cries of "Lock her up!" may be considered to originate, as it were, just several steps beyond the mouth of the Inferno, while "Hang her!" is a cry heard, as it were again, in the belly of Hell, the former is located on a path which leads directly to the latter. It certainly can happen here if that path is followed farther. There is no doubt in my mind that Trump's bigotry and the recent acts of deplorable violence in the United States are connected. The Bhatti assassination demonstrates where hate leads if it remains unchecked. It is a warning that must be heeded. 

Second, I am reminded that America is not Pakistan. One of the glories of our country is the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which protects freedom of speech. The amendment is threatened, but still very much remains a bulwark of the Republic. Our diversity is also a blessing. Sometimes I think that the partition of the Indian subcontinent was similar to the gerrymandering that plagues American democracy. Muslims went to Pakistan, Hindus remained in India; they no longer had to talk to each other and get along, just as a representative in an American gerrymandered district needn't bother to address the concerns of those on the other side of the political divide in order to get elected. This is especially applicable to Pakistan, since India has a large Muslim minority.

Third, and most important here, I consider the Pakistani fanatics to be in opposition to the true spirit of Islam. As I stated in a previous essay, judging religions should not be a popularity contest; one should judge religions at their best. In literature, for instance, Shakespeare should come first to mind rather than poetasters. Islam has produced great and wise thinkers over the ages, and has inspired millions to lead better lives, including those alive today. I recall the recent aid offered by American Muslims to victims of the horrible Tree of Life synagogue massacre; these Muslims, in their words, wished to conquer evil with good.  

Furthermore, the tolerance and loving kindness characteristic of the Sufi branch of Islam is an inspiration  for us all. (In the spirit of Sufism, I compose the following sentence: If a Hindu abuses a Muslim in any way, he is no Hindu; if a Muslim abuses a Hindu in any way, he is no Muslim; true Muslims and true Hindus are guided by love, wisdom and tolerance. This principle applies to all faiths and to those without any specific faith as well). 

Granted there is more extremism in Islam today than, say, in Christianity; I think this is largely due, however, to the miserable politics in many Islamic countries, which has produced a large number of underemployed, undereducated, and relatively poor young, angry men--a toxic combination. Another factor is that secularism is much more prevalent in Western countries--in most of them, at least! I

n general, people who are unhappy tend to hate, no matter the religion; people who are happy tend to practice loving kindness, no matter the religion. It's as simple and complex as that. 

Human beings can become better through the practice of Islam, there is no doubt about that. 

3.

Words! Words! Words! Time, at last! for a poem.

What Islam Means To Me

In memoriam: S.B., assassinated by extremists

Shahbaz Bhatti worked very quietly.

He knew that to be a non-Muslim in modern Pakistan

is like being black in Georgia in 1921--

Worse than that, being a Christian cabinet minister

made him vulnerable as an “uppity” judge

during Reconstruction. He had had one of five seats

reserved for minorities--Getting paid for tolerance

in this world (he knew it) almost never lasts.

His crime against non-humanity was fighting to repeal

the blasphemy law--Truth is, if we all had 

to die for harrowing the sacred, everyone,

including grandmas in Kansas, wouldn’t survive.

Zia-ul-Haq modified the heinous 1970s law

by making it worse for the usual reason,

to cover up blasphemous failures of power--

This cannot last forever. Decency tells me

people like you, Shahbaz Bhatti, will increase--

(Despite fear for us, half in heaven's image, the other

half in hell's ferocious, self-righteous beast’s)

Peace

Old Yet Optimistic

Compared to the number of bones
supporting lithe tissues and flesh,
the number of atoms in a half-empty
glass of water might as well be infinite.
So why should it shame me if mine isn't full?

Subtracting an almost infinity from two
still leaves me with more than I need,
just as the full glass would: for a man
whose response to the cosmos is ah! one
minim of rain on his tongue is enough.


--Thomas Dorsett
first appeared in bluestem, April 2018


Commentary

Philip Roth said old age is not a battle, old age is a massacre. There is some truth to this, but only some. I think I got a better perspective on aging from my septuagenarian  friend, Cris: when I asked him whether he feared growing old(er), "No," he replied, "life is a sacred journey, every part of it." This reminded me of a Spanish adage which states that when you are born you cry while everyone else smiles; when you die, however, you should be smiling while everyone else cries. 

This poem indicates why many of us who are old, despite our decreasing vision and mobility, are surprisingly happier: we are wiser. Less egotistical, more empathetic.  

The poem's imagery of the invisible world of innumerable individual atoms suggests a consciousness that is aware of more than what can be visualized, that is, a cosmic consciousness, aware of the connectivity of all things. Such awareness tends to increase with age, and when it does, it invariably delights. 

In the last stanza, "Subtracting an almost infinity from two" refers to the almost infinity (from a human perspective) of atoms in a half-full glass of water compared to the almost infinity in a full glass.

"What is a good day now that you're old?" a young child asked my aged stepfather, long ago. "When you wake up and joyfully discover that you're still breathing!" Little things mean  a lot to those who age well, while a lot of things mean little to those who don't.

One evening, an even longer time ago, an old poet, albeit younger then than I am today, told me that he had become  satisfied with just a few drops of syrup on his pancake--yes, one minim of rain on the tongue is enough!

Even Weinbergs Nod

Steven Weinberg is arguably the preeminent theoretical physicist alive today, and that, in the present age of remarkable progress in that field, says a lot. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics, along with Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow, for their work which unites two of the four elementary forces in the universe, the electromagnatic and the weak forces, a significant step on the theoretical journey toward a theory of everything.

(The unification of these two forces with the strong force is beyond experimental capabilities at the present time, and the unification of these three with gravity is probably beyond earth-bound experimentation forever. The only theoretical framework that unites all four is the so-called M-theory, which, for the time being, remains exactly that, a theory).

Steven Weinberg, to put it mildly, is no fool. Thomas Dorsett, however, occasionally comes close to that appellation; not very bright, he knows his place. It would be presumptuous of him to criticize Weinberg, so he requests his inner core, Ramanatom, the, figuratively speaking, impersonal personal inner core of us all, to speak whole truths to half-truths.

The title of this essay, Even Weinbergs Nod, is based on the ancient proverb, Even Homer Nods, meaning even geniuses goof up occasionally. Ramanatom will now discuss two famous philosophical quotes of Weinberg that, according to Dorsett as well as to HimHerIt, are light-years off the mark.

First Quote: The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless...The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.

Did you really expect to see a Smiley Face beyond Arcturus, Mr. Weinberg?

The quote is from Steven Weinberg's book, The First Three Minutes, A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe, which first appeared in 1977 and was updated in 1993. (Books on physics need to be updated frequently, since there is so much progress being made. Most valuable popular books on cosmology antedate the discovery of the Higgs boson and the graviton, for instance). It is a fascinating book, one that Thomas Dorsett read with interest a few years after it appeared. (It has remained in his basement for many, many minutes--a long time, at least in comparison with a human lifespan--and will be dusted off and reread, if found).

It is difficult to argue with a genius. Ramanatom, however, effortlessly brushes the first quote into the dustpan of inner history.

Repeatedly trying to find something that's not there while time after time expecting a different result is farcical indeed. The Kingdom of God is within you, said a wise man long ago. He was right. Meaning is not found in outer space, but in inner space.

The condign response to the unfathomable is awe, wonder, fascination, hardly pointless reactions. It is indeed wondrous that the cosmos is so vast; Dorsett has read that if the visible universe were reduced to the size of an atom, the actual universe would be larger than the visible one!  Does that make consciousness any less wondrous? I think not, for consciousness is primary. As the great sage Ramana Maharshi pointed out, consciousness plus science equals science; stones, as far as we can tell, are oblivious to the latest finding from the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva.

Yes, the universe is large, but consciousness, which contains science and is more than science, is in a very real sense even larger. The near infinities of science fit nicely, as it were, between the ears. It fits nowhere else.

Searching for meaning in the cosmos is like the proverbial thirsty fish searching for water while swimming in it.

Tragedy is indeed part of the human condition; the best tragedies, however, are also cathartic. Physics is what lifts human life above the level of farce? No, Mr. Weinberg, life even without physics is no farce.

You are not going to find a version of the Nicomachean Ethics by analyzing nebulae. You will find the source of morality in only one place: in naught "but (in the) internal difference, where the meanings are," (Emily Dickinson).

Transcending--while not destroying--the phenomenal (s)elf by acts of love of wisdom is not pointless. An unobserved electron is pointless, not you or I.

Second Quote: Frederick Douglas told in his Narrative how  his condition as a slave became worse when his master underwent a religious conversion that allowed him to justify slavery as the punishment of the children of Ham. Mark Twain described his mother as a genuinely good person, whose soft heart pitied even Satan, but who had no doubt about the legitimacy of slavery, because in years of living in antebellum Missouri she had never heard any sermon opposing slavery, but only countless sermons preaching that slavery was God's will. With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil, but for good people to do evil--that takes religion.

Ramanatom is going to let Thomas Dorsett field this one, it's that easy.

This quote might seem reasonable to some, but it is very wrong, just as the Newtonian belief, which still seems correct to some,  that inches and seconds are absolutes, the relativity of which has been proven beyond doubt by Einstein.

Replace "religion" with fanaticism, fascism, greed, hate, or delusion and the quote would make sense. Need I mention the horrors caused by Mao and Stalin, who were both avowed atheists? What about Hitler? He was ready to hang priests who disobeyed him; far worse was his persecution of the Jews, hardly the policy of a man who was even remotely religious.

Perhaps Mr. Weinberg is confusing religion with various types of fundamentalism. As a Jew, for instance, I would hardly recommend a fellow Jew to request a cup of sugar from an Ayatollah Khomeini. Any version of 'hate your neighbor and idolize yourself' is hardly what religion is about.

What is it about? According to Max Müller, the great philologist of the nineteenth century, the root of religion, the Latin religio, means nothing more than "reverence for God or the gods, careful pondering of divine things, piety." Close, but I think the Latin comes closer: religio, to reconnect, seems to me to denote a desire to reconnect with truth. This truth, the source of morality and of deepening wonder--Gandhi referred to it as satyagraha while Martin Luther King referred to it as soul force--can be viewed theistically or non-theistically. Something found inside oneself can be designated as one's God, for as Paul Tillich taught us, God is whatever one considers to be one's ultimate concern. I must admit I am fonder of the Eastern approach, where one finds a great Silence within oneself, a Silence that bids us to accept life as it is, to accept ourselves as we are, and to strive to do good, and has no need of talk about God. 

I also contend that after the Enlightenment, it is impossible for a reasonable person to interpret any example of mythology, however revered, literally. No, I do not find the universe smiling at us in the form, as it were, of a twinkling star; we should be beyond that by now.

One of the best formulations of the essence of religion was stated long ago by Hillel: don't do anything to another that you wouldn't like to be done to yourself. This is the essence of the Torah; all the rest is commentary.

Did  Frederick Douglas's master follow this form of the Golden Rule? The command to love our neighbor as ourselves is found in the Torah as well as in the Old Testament. The talmudic interpretation is very clear: included within the definition of "neighbor" is the stranger, the foreigner. The command is thus beyond race, gender or status; it transcends all these categories. Did Mark Twain's mother follow the advice of truth, heard by her inner ears, despite what her outer ears heard in church?

What about Gandhi, what about Martin Luther King, what about Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel--What about good God- or good Silence-fearing people everywhere? You really nodded on this one Mr. Weinberg!

That crimes against humanity can be done in the name of religion is, of course, beyond all doubt. But as Calvin taught, the mind is a factory of idols. The degree that greed, hate and delusion can trump their opposites while even sometimes intensifying the self-righteousness of the greedy, hateful and delusioned is equally beyond all doubt. 

I am a poet. When I think of poetry I think of Shakespeare, not of Crabs Johnson, the fictive poet laureate of Ellicott City, Maryland. Similarly, when I think of religion, I think of truly great religious men and women, who reconnected with truth and acted accordingly, not of Pat Robinson nor of Franklin Graham, who, it seems to me, worship delusion rather than truth. If, among a hundred poems, one is found to be outstanding, shouldn't one focus on that?

As I was once fond of saying, a good guru is hard to find, you always get the other kind. Does that mean there are no teachers of wisdom? That humankind has sunk so far into the valley of death does not mean that one can't look up and start climbing.

The misuse of religion, like the misuse of politics, does not mean that politics and religion are not essential or basically good. We cannot get by without them. When rooted in a form of the Golden Rule, both of these human endeavors--they are basically one--are what (almost) guarantees that the long arc of history tends toward righteousness.

You certainly deserved the Nobel Prize for physics, Mr. Weinberg. My response to your achievements in that field is a very humble Wow! My response to your views on religion, is, however, Oh, come now! You should know better.

I repeat: you really nodded on this one, Mr. Weinberg!

Favorite Poems, Vol. ll: Just Two Things by Gottfried Benn

This is the second edition of the My Favorite Poems series.  The first poem presented was an ode by Pablo Neruda, the discussion of which can be found on my blog. This time the subject is "Nur Zwei Dinge," a poem by Gottfried Benn. It is followed by a translation into English, after which I have posted a recording of both poems. (No, that is not Gottfried Benn's photo on the recording!--It is that of my son, who processed the recording and e-mailed it to me with his photo on it. I couldn't bear to change it!)

                               Nur Zwei Dinge

                               Durch so viel Formen geschritten,
                               durch Ich und Wir und Du,
                               doch alles blieb erlitten
                               durch die ewige Frage: wozu?

                               Das ist eine Kinderfrage.
                               Dir wurde erst spät bewusst,
                               es gibt nur eines: ertrage
                               --ob Sinn, ob Sucht, ob Sage--
                               dein fern bestimmtes: Du musst.

                               Ob Rosen, ob Schnee, ob Meere,
                               was alles erblühte, verblich,
                               es gibt nur zwei Dinge: die Leere
                               und das gezeichnete Ich.

                                                                  --Gottfried Benn
                                                                     (1886-1956)
                                 Just Two Things

                        Marched through many views of the world,
                        through You and We and I,
                        yet everything's been spoiled
                        by the eternal question: why?

                        Such questions do not survive youth.
                        There's just one thing--you learned late--
                        endure--mind, madness or myth--
                        your 'You must' determined by fate.

                        Whether roses, dahlias, snow--yes,
                         they all washed away in the rain.
                         Two things remain: emptiness
                         and your cursed self, branded like Cain.
                    

                              --Translated by Thomas Dorsett
                                               

Analysis

For me, this is one of the most beautiful poems in the German language. This lovely yet  bitter poem is not extraordinary due its content, but due to its technique, namely, in the way it presents that content. It is difficult, and at the time of its composition in 1953, exceedingly difficult, to compose a rhythmically robust and fresh poem while working within the constraints of four-line stanzas with an ABAB rhyme scheme. Poets, especially German poets, had found this form appealing for centuries; by the time of Benn's composition, it was very much 'old hat,' an almost guarantee to the cultured reader that a modern poem that followed this hackneyed scheme would be quite boring. That it is anything but is a tribute to the technical prowess of this poem. (It reminds me in a way of Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito, an opera seria composed in the last year of Mozart's life. By the time of its composition, 1791, the opera seria, glorious examples of which had been composed in the past, was a thing of the past--The somewhat hastily written score  is, a rarity among Mozart's late works,  a relative "flop," despite some wonderful musical passages).

"Nur Zwei Dinge," perhaps the greatest poem Benn ever wrote, is, to put it mildly, not a flop. That he performed the technical feat that he did while tied up with the constraints of  a very strict, old-fashioned form recalls the magic of a Houdini.

The greatness of this poem is due largely to its fusion of music--even discordant music--with meaning. You get an idea of the content when a non-German speaking person listens to a recording in the original. The author does this with a mastery of juxtapositions of vowels and consonants. The long vowels of "so viel Formen" suggest a Sisyphus burden; the regularity of "Ich und Wir und Du' suggest that Sisyphus-Benn not only has a rock on his back, but is walking through mud. The third and fourth lines are read more rapidly and crash into an all-shattering uselessness, "wozu?" " why?

The first line of the second stanza should be read more rapidly as well, shattering iambic constraints. The "why" is a childish question because it is a question asked when one still believes in individual freedom. The stanza ends with an emphasis on "Du musst", "You must"--signifying that the protagonist's life is not only horrible, but foreordained.

The beautiful long syllables of imagined paradises, "ob Rosen ob Schnee ob Meere", are destroyed by the short vowel , lost among consonants, of "verblich" "withered".  The rhyme of Meere (seas) with Leere (emptiness) is particularly ingenious--Meere should be pronounced in a bright-voweled dreamy fashion, while Leere, its destructive opposite, is pronounced quietly and with a lower pitch. You can almost hear the self-disgust and the inevitability of "das gezeichnete Ich", which refers to the Cain sign, when those three words are read properly.

Benn flirted with the Nazis in 1933; by 1934 his enthusiasm was gone. He was banned by the Nazis in 1938, and due to his flirtation with the devil, banned by the allies, for a while at least, after the war. The poem is an example of utter self-rejection and despair, the result of a life not well lived.

One can argue with the content of the poem; if everything is determined, for instance, how is self-hate still possible? (The Cain's sign, in this instance, comes from within.) 

The most important things in life are, undoubtedly, love and wisdom. This poem can also be seen as a warning as to what happens when one tries to find escape from the  self in ways that lead one astray from a life of love and wisdom. No matter how one interprets the poem, however, it remains what it is, truly unforgettable. 

Is Dr. Ford Telling the Truth?

Regarding the Kavanaugh confirmation hearing, a commentator stated that both Dr. Blasey Ford and Judge Kavanaugh were credible. He stated that whom you believe depends on whether you're a conservative or a liberal--to an accuracy of 100%!

I find this depressing as well as probably accurate. My attitude from the beginning was a suspicious one--suspicious of my own views. Anyone who knows me knows that I espouse progressive causes; issues that concern me, universal health care, the solvency of Social Security, distress about increasing inequality, etc., are best addressed, to put it mildly, by the Democratic Party. It was clear to me that I opposed the confirmation of the arch-conservative Judge Kavanaugh, from the beginning.

Although my political convictions are strong, I realize that conservatives have strong opinions as well. I also realize, that, being human, I could be wrong. Therefore, as the hearings began, I told myself to suspend judgement until the investigation had been completed; let us be fair.

After listening to Dr. Blasey Ford's testimony, however, I became utterly convinced that she is telling the truth--maybe not how an external camera would have documented the attack, but as the camera behind her eyes would have indelibly recorded the event, and seared it into memory. Some of the details might be (slightly) wrong, but I'm convinced that her story is basically true. If Dr. Ford is lying, her acting skills dwarf those of Meryl Streep. No amateur actor could be that good!

I had become furious, why? I surprised myself with the intensity of my response. Trump, for instance, has made me alternatively feel mad, sad, or resigned--Why had I taken Dr. Ford's testimony so furiously to heart?

I rationalized my reaction as a response to the obvious farce of the hearings--namely, the attempt by Republicans to railroad through the nomination without an adequate investigation of the charges, thus reducing Dr. Blasey Ford to a woman of no importance. This realization might have caused me to furrow my forehead or perhaps to raise my eyebrows--not however to raise my blood pressure. My heart was thumping wildly. Why?

Anger doesn't last. As it abated, I felt tossed between a throat-lumpy what-fools-these-mortals-be evanescent pity and constant, from inner Eumenides, soundings of shame. Again one might ask: why?

The reason is simple--I too had been abused. In Dr. Ford's case, over three decades have passed since the event; in my case, six decades have passed. But as far as each of our brains are concerned, the incidents happened yesterday. The details of what happened to me will die with me; the impact of that event, however, will remain with me until I am no more. 

In Dr. Ford's case, as in mine, the scars remain. I hide mine; she would have preferred to keep hers hidden as well. I do not doubt for a moment that civic duty convinced her to tell the American people how those scars came about.


My philosophic stance is not to judge another until one has walked a few mile's in that person's moccasins; after attempting a few steps in Judge Kavanaugh's moccasins, however, I hurriedly took them off.  I soon realized that they belonged to a man who had a pattern of being interested in his own gratification at the expense of another. He had viewed his victim as a potential feather to be placed in his privileged  cap, completely indifferent to the fact that the feather in question had been plucked from somebody else's wings.

Let's now return to the comment by a journalist that began this blogpost, namely, that support of or opposition to Judge Kavanaugh goes strictly according to Party affiliation. As already mentioned, I am admittedly a progressive; I've tried, however, to see the other side of this issue. Yet it wasn't my imagination that revealed the judge to be a sniveling, belligerent liar during the course of the hearings. Nor was it my imagination that convinced me that Dr. Ford was telling the truth. His evident character flaws should preclude him from receiving a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. Even if he hadn't done what I'm convinced he had done, his temperament is enough to make one sick to one's stomach without having had a spicy meal, or a few glasses of beer.

I might be wrong is an oft-repeated phrase I tell myself; in this case, however, for so many reasons, I am telling myself something different: stand up for what is right.

Whatever happens, of this I am certain: Judge Kavanaugh should not be admitted to the Supreme Court.

                                     --September 28, 2018