Ten Questions for No One

l.  Can you tell us some things No One thinks everyone should know?

What is most important is difficult to put into words.  The establishment of facts, even quite abstract facts, is much easier.  For instance, the Higgs boson was recently discovered at CERN because particles into which it disintegrated became manifest at the energy level predicted.  Scientists review the data, and if they all come to the same conclusion, one asserts that it has been proven--albeit indirectly--that the boson  exists, and that's that.  (Even in cases where science is almost certain that, say, X is a fact, if new data are found that indicate otherwise, X can be replaced by Y.  The scientific method is simple, and it works exceptionally well for facts about nature.)

2. Not so well regarding human nature, I presume?

Niels Bohr, a seminal figure in the development of quantum physics, thought that the new branch of science he helped develop was, albeit extremely complex, quite simple in comparison to consciousness.  He was convinced that consciousness will never be completely understood.  Many scientists today agree with him.  From the mysteries of consciousness paradoxes arise. Are we merely matter?  After all, all the elements in the human body are present in nature, albeit in very different concentrations.  Yet we are convinced that we are more than matter.  Only a madman could believe that his daughter is merely a piece of meat.

3. Perhaps that conviction stems from a Darwinian compulsion to pass on one's genes?

That is undoubtedly very important.  But does it explain everything?  Who really knows?  One must live with the possibility that two opposing views can each be  true.  In Newtonian science, which describes our everyday world, such paradoxes do not occur; they do however occur in quantum physics.  No One knows that a photon sometimes behaves like a particle and sometimes like a wave.  No One thinks it is fascinating that reality on the simplest level--quantum physics--and reality at the most complex level we know, human consciousness, cannot be pinned down. Between them lies a world which is much easier to understand.

4.  Can you give further examples of ambiguity?

Everything that human beings create, and everything that describes the way we think about ourselves are open to interpretation, sometimes radically different interpretations.  Once again, this is not true of science once a hypothesis has been confirmed by data.  But paradox and ambiguity are very much applicable to our inner lives.  For instance, a history of colonial America would have been quite different if a Native American was the author instead of a Puritan.  When No One was a boy, Columbus was celebrated as one of the first great heroes of the New World; today his legacy is contested.  Other examples: does free will exist?  Some philosophers assert that it does.  Are human actions completely determined by the interaction of genetics and environment?  Some philosophers assert this.  Do free will and determinism somehow coexist?  Some philosophers assert that this is so. Who really knows? No One.

5.  What about the things we create?

Thank you for the opportunity to elaborate!  In the arts, tastes change, and nothing can be proven.  I will give you some examples.  In Bach's day, Telemann was much more critically acclaimed than Bach, who is now widely considered to be the best composer who ever lived.   When Michael Jackson died, No One heard a critic assert that he was the best musician since Mozart,  No One, who much admires Jackson, thought this assertion was ridiculous, but can No One prove it?

6. Are you ready for the question?  What about God?

No One does not consider that the question at all.


7. What then is the ultimate question for us?

There are several, and they all have to do with consciousness and its (ambiguous) perceptions of the world.  Since Kant we know all knowledge arises from sense perceptions.  We can thus never have ultimate knowledge of anything; it is highly likely that beings exist in the cosmos that have evolved with a different neurological constitution and thus see things differently.  Even science does not provide absolute knowledge--who can assert with certainly that the facts of science transcend the human mind?

8. Isn't that the age-old question of whether a sound exits when a tree falls and no one is around to hear it?

You confused me when you said  "no one"--I thought you were referring to me!  Actually that is a meaningless question.  One may assert that vibrations in the air occur when a tree falls when nobody is there, but there is no sound.  Sound is how a brain perceives vibrations of certain frequencies; without a brain there is no sound. The same is true for other perceptions. Music sometimes results in a feeling of awe in those who are sensitive  to it--and No One counts himself among them--but even the queen of the arts is not independent of mind.  A galaxy might resonate at a frequency that is a harmonic of B flat--way below middle C, of course--but it doesn't have any pitch if there is no ear to hear it.  Colors do not exist beyond brains that perceive them; many animals "know" only black and white, and some don't even perceive that.

9. We're almost at the end of the interview, so let me cut to the chase. I repeat, what is the ultimate question?

It's basically this: what is our nature and how should we live our lives?  Although No One assumes--without proof, of course--the unity of human nature, for analysis it is best described in two ways.  First, the Darwinian aspect--self-assertion and the will to survive.  Second, the transcendent aspects, love and wisdom.  (Remember, when No One refers to transcendence, No One is indicating an inner experience, not something that comes from the outside.)

10. I must return to what many believe to be the most important question of all.  What about God?

When we look inside, sometimes we seem to hear an inner voice; sometimes it all seems very impersonal.  No One is therefore supportive of those who use the term God for one's conscience at the highest level; No One is also supportive of those who use impersonal terms, such as Nirvana.  No One vigorously asserts, however, that just like music and colors, God exists within; it is highly doubtful  that there will ever be evidence of God or of gods existing beyond consciousness.  Before the age of science, it was possible to believe in God both as a symbol and as a fact.  It is no longer possible, however, for an educated twenty-first century mind to believe that dogmas--pick any one you choose--are as factual as two and two equal four. Self and God exist together; once self is completely transcended--this is theoretically possible, but whether this has ever been achieved is open to interpretation--things would look very different: both  God and  the self would no longer exist, as it were.  Another way of saying this is that everything becomes God, but that's just another figure of speech for something ineffable.

11.  Another way of describing that state is that everyone becomes No One?

We agreed to ten questions.  For the time being, No One has had enough.

The Baltimore Online Book Club: A Review of "A Sport and a Pastime" by James Salter

                                              A Sport and a Pastime
                                              by James Salter
                                              Farrer, Straus and Giroux
                                              Copyright 1967, renewed 1995
                                              185 pages



This is the fourth edition of the Baltimore Online Book Club.  Many of you might be familiar with the group by now, but I will summarize for new members what we do.  We are a group of six bibliophiles; we meet about every six weeks and discuss what we determine to be a good novel.  (We often choose former winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature.)  After we meet, I put a review of the book online.
We announce the book for discussion six weeks or so in advance, so readers have time to read it along with us.  Online members are invited to give their opinions in the comment section; if requested, we will respond to every one.

Next book for discussion: Peter Stephan Jungk's The Perfect American --or if you prefer to read it in the original German, as I have: der König von Amerika.  It is a biographical novel about Walt Disney, that has received good reviews and has already been made into an opera by Philip Glass.We will meet next on May 8, 2014, and the review will be posted shortly thereafter.

We will proceed now to a review of James Salter's A Sport and a Pastime, which we discussed at the last meeting on April 3, 2014.

A SPORT AND A PASTIME

James Salter's novel has been widely read since its publication in the late sixties--every member of our group thought its popularity is well deserved, and that the book should be even more well known.  In other words, we think it is a classic.

Since the book has been in existence for nearly fifty years; since the novel has been extensively reviewed--many reviews are online--I decided to discuss just two aspects of the work, the ones which impressed me the most.  A plot summary can easily be found online.  The novel is an erotic tale set in France; the lovers are an expatriate, upper-class American male, age 21, and  a working-class French girl, age 18.

The two aspects of the novel I will now discuss are its use of language, and its innovative plot structure.

1. A POET IN PROSE

Salter uses imagery and metaphor brilliantly.  Some of his descriptions rise to the level of prose poems, while functioning perfectly as narrative as well.  Intense interest in the expression rather than in what is expressed is  the purview of poets; most novelists are unable, or unwilling, to write poetically.  Unlike James Joyce, whose wonderful musical use of language often obscures the meaning of his sentences, Salter's use of poetry is always subservient to narration.  He is, of course, much less a virtuoso than was Joyce, and is also thus more easy to read.  I will now present two examples of his poetic prose:

In the middle of the crowd is a girl with an African--I'm certain he's a student--in a cheap grey suit.  They have their arms around each other.  As they dance it's like a playing card revolving.  The jack of spades vanishes slowly, the queen of diamonds is revealed.  Their mouths come together in the dark.
                                                              --page 41
                                                                                       
Notice the lovely use of the adverb "slowly" which indicates the erotic nature of their dancing, a fact which is more directly stated in the last line.  Salter doesn't simply state this episode, he uses a simile which makes the dance scene all the more vivid.  This picture stated in a few words is indeed worth a thousand.  The book contains many fine examples of impressive imagery.

Here is an example of a paragraph which in my opinion surpasses many of the prose poems written today:

I stop for a paper in the bookstore.  I know the old man there very well.  The counter is near the window where the light catches him flat on, like a cabinet minister before breakfast.  He's wearing a heavy sweater and a scarf.  His cheeks are absolutely purple.  He seems very mournful, but there is all the winter still to be survived.  He no longer lives in years; he is down to seasons.  Finally it will become single nights, each one perilous as a lunar journey.  He hands me the change.  His fingers are rough as wood.
                                                             --page 46

What an effective evocation of the terror of an isolated old age! Salter is a keen observer of things human.  There is no Father Williams sentimentality here; the cold light exposes the truth of the old man's situation to himself and to the reader.  "Like a cabinet minister before breakfast"--what a beautiful simile!  The politician wants to be seen and heard only when he is ready for the cameras.  Before breakfast he is like a wrinkled, sad pope without his fancy robes.  One is reminded of tabloid photos of starlets without their makeup.  Notice that the language is concrete and suggestive, which also reminds one of poetry.  There is quite literally a winter to be survived; the phrase, however,  also clearly suggests that the man is in the winter of his life.  Everything will have to be given up until only isolated nights that provide no comfort remain.  This is indeed a very effective, chilling depiction of how some of us will feel when we put the cheery AARP magazines down and look in the mirror.

2. A TECHNICAL TOUR DE FORCE

What is truly outstanding about the novel is not its language but its innovative structure.  Salter solves with genius many of the difficulties authors of novels face. When a novel is recounted by a narrator, this can sometimes be limiting.  For instance, how does one include important scenes in which the narrator isn't present?  How can one blend effectively fiction and truth and thus indicate that our lives consist of a blend of each?  How does one bring home the truth that what we believe to be accurate recollections of actual events  are always distorted by the desires of our minds?  And more down-to-earth--How can one fill a good deal of a book with scenes of explicit sex without a shred of sensationalism?  Salter has solved all these problems with admirable dexterity.

The novel begins with a train ride from Paris to the village of Autun, these two locations are where much of the plot takes place.  It is a vivid evocation of French countryside; Salter, who was a pilot during the Second World War, obviously knew France well.  After the reader feels rooted in a specific area of France, he or she is jolted out of complacency by the following lines:

None of this is true.  I've said Autun, but it could easily have been Auxerre.  I'm sure you'll come to realize that, I am only putting down details which entered me, fragments that were able to part my flesh.  It's s story of things that never existed although even the faintest doubt of that, the smallest possiblity, plunges everything into darkness.

                                                                   --page 11

On one level, the author is making the story universal; it could have happened anywhere--anywhere in France, that is, or, after removal of the French references, truly anywhere.  But there is another, far deeper level.  The plot is told by a nameless narrator who is 34 years old.  He is full of sexual desire that remains unsatisfied. .  He fantasizes about a young woman who lives nearby.  He never seems to make any progress with women, however; he is apparently too psychologically inhibited.  There is no evidence in the book that he ever even talked with the women he adores.  The circle of friends he frequents at one point teases him; they suspect he has a girl friend, although they just might simply having fun at his expense.  Later, the woman he secretly loves marries a student.  Like us, she probably never learned the narrator's name.  What a pitiful state for a man to be in, a full two decades after the onset of puberty.

The narrator meets a young American, an apparent Don Juan.  They travel to a club in Dijon where the young American, Philip Dean, meets a young French woman, Anne-Marie Costillait.  (She is the queen of diamonds of the first quote.) Much of the rest of the novel depicts, without reserve, the many sexual encounters the two have.  How does the narrator know all the details of their sex  life?  The "none of this is true" of the quote above is taken to a new level:

I am not telling the truth about Dean, I am inventing him.  I am creating him out of my own inadequacies, you most always remember that.
                                                                       --page 79

The lurid details turn out to be a fiction in a work of fiction, namely the fantasies of a sex-starved lonely man imagining Dean doing the things with his girlfriend that he would like to do with the girl of his dreams.  That is why there is hardly any conversation between the two lovers; that is why there is virtually no foreplay, only sex.  The sexually inhabited narrator's imagination doesn't waste any time with incidentals.

A very interesting and effective literary device!  It also skirts the clumsiness of having a narrator tell part of the story and having a  so-called "omniscient narrator" relating other scenes in which the narrator is not present.  The sex scenes turn out to be a movie written and directed by the narrator's mind.  He might have gotten some details from Dean--they see each other often--but these would have only helped his imagination run wild.

The young man has nothing in common with the young woman; except for the frequent joining of their bodies, his mind remains virtually untouched.  Yes, she wants to get married, Yes he wants to leave.  Even these banal details--do they reflect the lovers' actual situation or how the narrator imagines it?

What is truth?  What is fiction?  The author hints that experience is always a combination of both, depending how a narrator--an internal or an external one--interprets events.  Salter accomplishes this and more with astonishing understatement.  If the narrator hadn't told us that he is making things up--and this he tells us in just a few sentences of the entire book--the reader might simply take the story at face value,  The novel would still be entertaining, but much less memorable.  It subtly asks the questions about life experiences that we must ask ourselves: Are our memories telling the  truth?  Are they giving us fiction?  Are they storing a combination of both?

A very innovative novel, successful on multiple levels, and worth reading again and again!

Wanderers Nachtlied II
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Über allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh,
In allen Wipfeln
Spürest du
Kaum einen Hauch;
Die Vögelein schweigen in Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.

Wanderer's Night-Song ll

Above all summits
is peace.
In all tree crests
you now sense
scarcely a breath.
The birds are quiet as tombs.
Just wait, soon
you too will rest.

Translated from the German by Thomas Dorsett


This poem is considered by many to be the finest short lyric in the German language. Shortly after it was written, Goethe inscribed the poem onto the wall of a little hunting cabin in central Germany.  This occurred on September 6, 1776.  At that time, Goethe was part of the court at Weimar where he had many functions.  (The cabin is on a mountain near the silver mine which he administered.  Goethe was already very famous across Europe due to his poignant novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, the subject of which is a tragic love affair.

A few months before his death in 1832, Goethe returned to the cabin for the fist time since he had composed the poem.  As he read the poem, still quite legible on the wall of what had become known as"The Goethe Hut," tears flowed down his cheeks.


l. The Poem

This is a perfect short lyric. The many long vowels slow down the reader and have a calming effect.  The feminine or soft endings (in this case the e at the end of Wald and at the end of bald--the word "bald" usually doesn't have a final e--all contribute to the soothing mindfulness of the poem.  The German rhymes perfectly; I replaced--from necessity-- some of the full rhymes with half rhymes, i.e.,  "peace" with "sense" and "breath" with "rest."  This conveys a somewhat modern touch; the rhyme scheme is, however, still maintained, albeit imperfectly.  (It is impossible to convey the meaning with full rhymes in English. Most translations of this poem are either prose translations or ones that fall flat.  There might be a better translation than mine somewhere, but I haven't found one with which I've been satisfied.)

If you have at least a working knowledge of German, read the poem aloud slowly; you might thus appreciate the poem's beauty without any further comment from me.  Now let's proceed to an interpretation.

The poem begins with the cosmos and ends with the individual.  It denotes a process of peace starting from the heavens, proceeding down from the treetops until it reaches the forest floor where the individual to whom the poem is addressed is located.  "Above the summits" that is, in the sky, in the heavens, is peace.  Scarcely a breath of wind occurs in the treetops; peace is there, too.  The birds, intermediate creatures, at home both in the air and on the ground, have received this peace, too.  Notice the last line demands that the person addressed must wait--peace hasn't come to him or her yet, but it definitely will.if he remains open to it.

The progression of peace from cosmos to ground is ideal, but it is not always thus in reality.   It is conceivable that the individual could first find the peace in nature--the birds and treetops--and then find peace in the cosmos.  Goethe presents what might be the most efficacious path, but it has variations.

What the poem says is that if you are agitated, meditate--the use of that word here is not an exaggeration, since the poem is quite contemplative--on the cosmos and on nature and you will soon find rest.   That the cosmos has areas of extreme violence, such as occurs in the vicinity of black holes, or that nature is often "red in tooth and claw,"  is not an appropriate criticism against seeking peace in the natural world. We are talking about contemplation here--although natural, external images are presented, the symbolic meaning of the poem is that we are to find peace within.  Nature can help us do that; that's what's important.

Since peace descends in the poem from on high to the human being, all things are united in peace.  Therefore, the individual is united with both the cosmos and with nature, reducing separation to an illusion, albeit a very practical one.

The poem describes a way of looking outside that at the same time also looks inside; at the end come the joy, wisdom and serenity of true peace. Many people have viewed the last line as a reference to death.  I see it more as death the way Nirvana, the snuffing out of the fire of individuality, is death.   Wanderer's Night-Song is an extremely beautifully wise poem.

2.  Goethe in Reverse

Goethe is not the only wise poet!  I would like to quote here a haiku by Basho, the greatest composer of haiku in the Japanese language--and that says a lot.  It is actually quite similar in content to the Goethe poem, except that the movement is reversed, from the individual (Earth) to the cosmos, instead of the other way around:

A wild sea-
In the distance over Sado
The Milky Way.

Just as in the Japanese poem, only images are presented, no abstract language such as "fear, worry" etc.  Both poems suggest deeper meanings indirectly, through the use of suggestive images.  This is a mark of the best poetry.  Neither poem mentions an individual in torment--it is implied, however, in both poems.  "Just wait, soon/ you too will rest" indicates that the peace above and around him has not yet entered this person, who is in a state of unrest.  Basho's poem is very similar.  "A wild sea" signifies inner turmoil.  In nature, however, all storms are local, especially inner storms.  There is an absolute contrast to the wild sea presented in the poem: the beauty, majesty and calm of the Milky Way.

The theme of both poems are exactly the same: get yourself in accord with the cosmos (Nature) and you will transcend all turbulence.

Although the movement is reversed in Basho's poem, in both poems the cosmos is a source of peace.  Neither poet would begin a wisdom poem with the individual at peace and the cosmos in turmoil.  Once again, we are not implying that plants and animals are not in "cutthroat" competition, nor are we denying the extreme violence of supernovas.  The subject is the attainment of inner calm through contemplation of nature.  In any case, we have no concept of nature except for what our consciousness perceives.  (We can never know the "thing in itself" wrote Kant.  As a part of the system, (nature) we cannot have complete  knowledge of it, taught Gödel.)  The theme of both poems is a natural way to heal a distracted mind--that is, by contemplation, by meditating on nature in its most sublime manifestations.

I recall the ending of a poem I wrote a long time ago:
...God's living promise:/
the abyss in the belly can be filled.

Goethe knew that; Basho knew that.  They also knew that it wasn't easy.  The poems might be short, but it might take a lifetime--Basho might have  said that it could take  several lifetimes--to realize the peace in the last line of each poem.  But there is no doubt about it: the abyss in the belly can be filled.

3. Some People Just Don't Get It

There are people who are tone-deaf to poetry.  They go for the content and not for the craft; they go for the musings and not for the music.   A high IQ does not necessarily correlate with a high PQ, that is, a high Poetry Quotient.  We will now give an example of a great man completely missing the beauty of Goethe's poem.  The man in question is August von Humboldt,  (1769-1859), the notable geographer, naturalist and explorer.  The discussion of Goethe's poem occurs in the very entertaining novel, Measuring the World,  die Vermessung der Welt, by Daniel Kehlmann.  It is fiction, but inability to appreciate poetry in otherwise very accomplished individuals is certainly a common occurrence, as it is among the less educated.  The episode occurs when Humboldt is asked by South Americans, during an exploratory trip to the Amazon, to provide some entertainment:

Mario asked Humboldt if he would please tell them a story.
He didn't know any stories, said Humboldt, and straightened his hat, which the monkey had turned around.  And he didn't like telling them.  But he could recite the most beautiful poem in the German language, freely translated into Spanish.  Here it was.  Above all the mountaintops it was silent, there was no wind in the trees, even the birds were quiet, and soon death would come.
Everyone looked at him
That's it, said Humboldt.
Yes, but, asked Bonpland.
Humboldt reached for the sextant.
Pardon, said Julio, but that couldn't have been the whole thing.

                                      --The Measurement of the World, page 107

Who said Germans (in this case an Austrian) can't be funny?



4. Two Musical Renditions of Wanderer"s Night-Song

Many examples of German poetry of the nineteenth century have been transformed by composers into notable lieder.  Music is more international--and more popular--than poetry; it is the lieder versions that keep much of the poetry alive outside the German-speaking world.  Much of nineteenth century German poetry begs to be made into a lied, since the meter of most poems at the time is quite regular.  (A notable exception to this is the poetry of Hölderlin, whose poetry has too much inner music to accommodate external tones.)

Goethe's Wanderer's Night-Song is also an exception, even when compared to his other poems.  The lines are uneven; much of its beauty is due to inner rhymes and due to its imagery.  Nevertheless, several outstanding composers have composed lieder to the text.  I will briefly discuss two of them with suggested recordings.

Schubert (Youtube, Hans Hotter, Wanderers Nachtlied 11, D 794)

No one would come across as being foolish by claiming that Schubert was the best lieder composer ever.  This is indeed a wonderful song, exuding peace and serenity.  Hans Hotter's performance is flawless; it is a gem.  My criticism here, however, is that Schubert misses the deeper meaning of Goethe's poem.  (This isn't the only example; for instance, Schubert did not sense the irony of Heine's der Doppelgänger, yet created a masterpiece nevertheless.)

Schubert's lied evokes a scene from nature which induces peace.  There is no cosmic descent.  One gets a hint of the universal background by the use of the pedal tone in the tree-tops line.  His use of notes of shorter duration makes the music of "scarcely a breath" sound ominous--as if chaos underlies the peace of the forest but will be given short shrift here.  Then Schubert gets diverted with the birds--one imagines him listening in wonder to the birds on country walks.  He breaks the movement of the poem by breaking the line, "die Vögelein schweigen/schweigen im Walde."  This bird-interlude disturbs the unity of the poem.  The ending is beautiful.  The whole song is indeed exquisite; it succeeds superbly as music, but fails to grasp the meaning of Goethe's poem.

Youtube: Carl Loewe Wanders Nachtlied 1 Hermann Prey

(Note it's designated as Wanderers Nachtlied 1 on Youtube: this is an error.)

This lied alone is proof enough that Loewe is a neglected composer who deserves much more recognition.  He might not be a Schumann or a Schubert, but he composed  some music that should not be forgotten.  I was astonished when I heard this piece; it is very impressive.

It's hard to imagine that Loewe was about a year older than Schubert, yet lived for forty-one years after Schubert's death.  Schumann praised Loewe, but later his enthusiasm waned.  Wagner thought he was first-rate.

Unlike Schubert, who usually gave his musical imagination free reign while composing music to a text,  Loewe paid extremely close attention to the text.  We hear the E flat triad in a metric accompaniment, indicating the peace above summits. The chords change as we pass to the peace of the treetops and to the peace of the quiet birds.  The section about the birds is given an unbroken melodic line.  Notice the piano accompaniment immediately before the "Warte, nur," ("Just wait") phrase.  The piano plays three ascending quarter notes (representing, at least in my interpretation, the three aspects of descending peace, before the individual is reached.)  The three ascending notes culminate  in the dotted quarter, the eighth and the quarter note of "Warte nur."  This is the high-point of the phrase--and the gist of the whole poem--peace coming to the individual.  Notice the notes here ascend, while in the poem the peace descends.  It's as if Loeve is telling us this is the same thing; the peace is welling up from deep inside, ascending into consciousness.  A mirror image, as it were,  sometimes makes the best accompaniment. This is a very deep understanding of Goethe's poem; the peace above the summit abides deep inside human beings, and can be brought out with the help of nature.

The ending is even more fascinating.  Against all expectation, Loewe ends the last note not on the first note of the scale, but on the third.  Also contrary to expectation, this note is a whole note, tied--noted probably with a fermata, indicating a very strong emphasis.  The last note is sung on the word, "auch" meaning "also" (The translation does not follow the German word order.)  The individual is the "auch". he, too finds rest.  Now the individual ends on higher note--you can hear the ascent of the individual toward the cosmos.  And notice the individual is indeed closer to the cosmos now, but has not ascended to the very top; the humility of the human condition is maintained.

Listen to the ending carefully.  The last note sums up the entire poem in a strikingly original, effective manner.  It is a transcendent moment.

This lied is an astounding example of recreating a text through music.  It's as if Loewe has rewritten the poem while being faithful to it; in musical terms, that's indeed what he has done.  This lied should be universally praised and used as a prime example of how to put a poem to music.  Maybe this little essay will help lead to that realization, but I doubt it.  The history of art is not always fair.

Conclusion

Goethe's Wanderer's Night-song is one of the most beautiful poems of the German language.  It can easily be memorized--and should be.  It's harder to realize--it might take a lifetime to spiritually reach the peace of the last line, but it can and should be the goal of us all.   We can full fill our hunger with spiritual peace.  Goethe expressed this in a very short poem that contains images and no abstractions; it is a true work of genius.

Who Never Ate His Bread in Tears

               

                                Harfenspieler

Wer nie sein Brot mit Tränen aß,

Wer nie die kummervollen Nächte

Auf seinem Bette weinend saß,

Der kennt euch nicht, ihr himmlischen Mächte!

Ihr führt in's Leben uns hinein,

Ihr laßt den Armen schuldig werden,

Dann überlaßt ihr ihn der Pein:

Denn alle Schuld rächt sich auf Erden.

                                          --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

                                            from his novel, Wilhelm Meister

The Harpist

Who never ate his bread in tears,

Who never lay awake for hours

Plagued by doubts and fears,

Knows you not, you heavenly powers!

Into life you lead every being,

You let poor man hurt foe and friend,

Then turn him over to suffering:

For on earth all wrongs are avenged.

                               --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

                               translated by Thomas Dorset

Last night I had difficulty sleeping--I woke up at 2 A.M.  Usually when I can't sleep and feel as wide awake as I did last night, I get up and read the newspaper online.  But I usually wake up at 4 A.M, not 2.  I decided not to get up, so I could be more energetic the next day, hoping that I would somehow doze off.  Then that poem of Goethe's came into my head.  I knew the German well, and to pass the time, I began to translate it into English.  By morning, the translation was finished.  I did get some sleep, I think, but I felt that I worked on the translation through the night.  Is it possible to translate while dreaming?  If it is, this is my first dream-translation of a major poem.

It is such a major poem that I decided to spend some time, while awake the next day, writing about it.


1.

I first became acquainted with this poem in 1964, during a course in German literature taught by someone I very much admired, Israel Solomon Stamm.  He was well-read, religious in a very philosophic way; he also had a good aesthetic sense, and  a good sense of humor to boot.  He spoke exclusively in English; his aim was to give his students a solid introduction to the humanities  He succeeded.  A very talkative man, he also listened.  (When a rather dour student asked him how he managed to be so happy and so confident, he replied without missing a beat, "Because I know I'm just as crazy as my neighbor!"  The dour student smiled.)

This was one of Professor Stamm's favorite poems by Goethe.  He especially admired the first stanza; he felt that the second stanza had much less of an impact. This is certainly a major poem; Goethe is saying a lot with an extreme degree of compactness and efficiency.
The first stanza asserts that if you don't know sorrow, you don't know life.  Goethe was not a traditionally religious man--Note that he uses the term, "heavenly powers" instead of the more usual "God."  It all sounds almost as impersonal as the laws of physics--Einstein's "God."  They  represent the mysterious source of everything.

Once you know sorrow, the subject of the first stanza, you are more likely to have access to how nature, specifically human nature, works; this is the subject of the second stanza. In this stanza, the powers seem to be very impersonal.  Without our consent we are born; whether we like it or not, we die; in between we fall far from what we could be .  The literal meaning of the German of the second line in stanza two, is "You let the poor human being become guilty."  The implication, the antithesis of the dogma of original sin, is that one is born innocent.  Once one is out of the womb, the environment and one's reaction to it inevitably lead to trouble.  The powers then consign one to suffering--Goethe sees this as  a passive process, the result of inexorable psychic laws.  The last line is very  subtle--A close translation is, "All misdeeds (debts)  are avenged on Earth."  Like a hurricane, wrongdoings must work themselves out before the tempest is over. The reflexive, that is, the passive form of the verb, is used; the process is inexorable and impersonal.  It is the most lovely definition of what Buddhists call karma that I know of.

I think this is one of the most beautiful and profound poems ever written.  Let's return to the first stanza now, and examine it under the aegis of evolutionary biology..


2.

What is the possible evolutionary advantage of knowing those heavenly powers through sorrow? .

"Knowing those heavenly powers" is another way of saying that one has attained  a profound understanding of life.Goethe's wise poem informs us that periodic sorrow is necessary if one is to achieve wisdom.  If a deeper assessment of human nature and of  the world offers a Darwinian advantage for survival, there must be a genetic reason for both pathological depression and what might be called adaptive or healthy  depression.  It all depends on the degree of expression of the genes in question--and of course enabling factors from the environment also play a crucial role..   Let me give an analogy.

Sickle cell disease is a serious disease.  Good modern treatment has lengthened the life-span and has eased the pain of those afflicted with this disease; prior to modern treatment, however, they died young and suffered much pain.  The gene that causes the disease is a one-point mutation, that is,one of the four bases that compose DNA codes has, by chance, been altered here at a single point--in this case from adenine to thymine.  Sickle cell disease is a disease of the red blood cells; each of the countless hemoglobin molecules in each red blood cell has two long chains, an alpha and a beta chain.  On position 6 of the beta chain one amino acid is replaced by another due to the point-mutation.  This causes the red cells to be defective and results in serious symptoms only if the sickle cell gene is inherited from both parents.  If the gene is inherited from only one parent, one has sickle cell trait which confers a distinct advantage for survival.  The mutation occurred in Africa where malaria has been and is still endemic.  If a person with the sickle cell trait is infected with malaria, the infected blood cell sickles and bursts, preventing the onset of the disease.  The vast majority of people with the sickle cell gene have only one copy of the gene, which is called the heterozygous state.  Indifferent nature, which works through chance, "caused" the mutation; Darwinian adaptation, which does not work through chance, actively preserved the gene, since it gives those who have it a better chance of survival.  It is, of course, not a compassionate process.  As long as the gene is of benefit to the majority it is preserved, even though it causes a life of misery to those unlucky ones who have two copies, or are homozygous, for this gene.

I think the same process might be at work with depression.  Depression is not thought to be inherited as a simple point mutation as is sickle cell disease; it is multi-factorial, involving several genes.  They probably all affect mood due to their effect on neurotransmitters, specifically serotonin.  Those with more receptors that bind serotonin tend to be more depressed.

Just like with sickle cell anemia, I think it very possible that those whose genetic makeup favors a more severe depletion of serotonin might be like those who have sickle cell disease, while those with mild impairment might be more like those with sickle cell trait.  In other words, the "mild impairment" might actually be adaptive, giving the affected individual a better chance of survival. Goethe's great poem is consistent with this interpretation.

There are scientific indications for this assertion.  Nature tends to preserve the health of those in their reproductive years, since the production of offspring is of primary evolutionary importance.  This process is much less concerned with degenerative diseases associated with old age; as long as they are not manifest during one's child-bearing years, the genes causing them can be passed on without affecting the survival of the species.  Depression is different.  It has a special predilection for the young.  It is also not to be assigned to disorders caused by modern living; the most primitive societies in the world contain individuals of all ages who are depressed. Depression is also not rare; about 30% of persons will have an episode of major depression some time in their lives.  This indicates that depression might convey an evolutionary advantage, thus assuring that the genes that tend to cause it are preserved.

What might those advantages be?  We've already mentioned a profounder understating of life, leading to better ways to adapt to it.  Sorrow enables us to see life as a path full of  problems to be solved.  Beneficial, adaptive sorrow causes us to ruminate and to analyze .  It encourages periodic periods of relative social isolation, enabling one to devote  time exclusively to problem-solving.   I do not think it possible to devote the enormous effort needed to create or discover the highest achievements of art and science without being dissatisfied with things they way they are.  Don't think Beethoven, Goethe or Newton worked only on weekends.  They were obsessed, they were dissatisfied.

The example of a Hindu sage is also informative.  Ramana Maharshi experienced enlightenment at an early age.  From then on, he informed his followers, he experienced the bliss of being--and never wavered from it until he died at the age of 70 in 1950.  He also stated that once the state of permanent bliss is achieved, all striving ceases.  He showed compassion to all, but life was no longer a problem for him.  His brain must have been overflowing with serotonin.  After his enlightenment, he went to a sacred hill and never left it until his death more than a half a century later.  Ramana Maharshi was a genuine sage; the point here, however,  is that great sages do not discover things like the theory of relativity or create things like the Ninth Symphony.  In addition, he remained celibate for life, hardly the goal of Darwinian adaption.  (This does not reduce in any way his spiritual achievement.)

Note that  the poem states, "Who never ate his bread in tears...knows you not, you heavenly powers: the poem does not assert,"Who always eats his bread in tears..."  We are talking about a sickle cell trait-like beneficial process here!   Pathological depression, if prolonged, is decidedly maladaptive; it shortens the life span and incapacitates those afflicted with it, sometimes even leading to suicide.  Although it is much less severe,  I am not making light of what I call adaptive depression; even sorrow that is only periodic is sometimes very difficult to bear. What almost destroys us can make us stronger, wrote Nietzsche--and the stronger, as Darwin proved, are more likely to survive.  Getting almost destroyed, of course, isn't enjoyable; the result, however, can be sublime.  (Hamlet is a good illustration of this process.  The melancholy, very intelligent, overburdened Dane becomes a veritable sage at the end of the play.  The irony is that just when he is able to become an outstanding king, he is murdered by Laertes.)


3.

What is the alternative to wisdom gained through sorrow?    Ethel Merman sang it best: "Life is just a bowl of cherries/ Don't take it serious/it's too mysterious." Superficiality!

That has always struck me as one of the most idiotic lyrics ever written.  Goethe's poem is sublime, the once-popular lyric is extremely banal.  How does one know this?  How does one become wise? By having eaten one's bread in tears through difficult nights; there is no other way. Only then can one really appreciate life's exquisite cherries, despite the terrible pits.  Goethe, as his poem indicates, knew this well.

The Harpist, a thing of beauty, is indeed a joy forever; here, in addition, truth is beauty and beauty is truth-- the joy strengthens and deepens, sounding the depths of our innermost well. 

MY GRANDFATHER, UNDER THE CHICKEN TREE

1.

I had a bout of insomnia a few nights back, during which I was an intermittent visitor to the realms of Sleep, Awake, and In Between.  It was in the In Between state when the song came to me, whole and without any effort.  It was only later that I realized how odd this was.  I hadn't heard the song for over fifty years; in addition,  it's about as popular as the national anthem of Kazakhstan is in the United States.  Its obscurity assured me that I hadn't heard the slightest reference to it in all those years.  That I remembered not only the tune but the words was odder yet; I cannot remember my grandfather singing it, and if he didn't, no one else in my family could have.  I am certain that I never heard a recording of it, or heard the tune played on the radio; it was a vaudeville tune that predated World War I and was no more popular when I was a teen than the Kazakh anthem. I do, however,  remember listening to Grandfather recite the lyrics, after he had grown too old to sing and accompany himself on the guitar.  He must have sung it to us years before that--I have no recollection of it, but how else would I know the tune so well after half a century?

My brain was obviously trying to tell me something.  A few hours later, when I got up, it directed me to the piano.  My fingers proceeded to play the song I never played before while my voice sang the song I never sang before.  I felt I had nothing to do with it.

Tears came to my eyes for several reasons.  I recalled a song from a long time ago.  I wrote a song a short time ago.  Fifty years from now, all the coins in my memory bank will be selfless, disembodied atoms.  I felt nostalgic because I am coming to the end of the tunnel--(The other side just better not be New Jersey, where I started.)  I also shed a tear for my grandfather, whom I hadn't thought about for a long, long time.  (There are only about three or four people left on Earth, who, if hard pressed, might recall that he once existed.)  I also shed a tear of delight--the song is absolutely wacky in a Jabberwocky-sort of way.

Modest musicality is part of my inheritance.  Immoderate Jabberwockiness is, too.  I suddenly realized whom I got both traits from: that often stern yet quintessential English eccentric who was my grandfather.

I am writing this little piece to commemorate the three types of tear I shed at the piano: memories of my grandfather; nostalgia for the past and acceptance of a limited future, and, finally, delight in jabberwokiness.
(I am, most of all, dear reader, writing it for you.) A recording of my singing the song will be attached at the end of this essay--My conscience demands that I provide a warning at this point to those with talent; you might want to click yourself out of my amateur world while you still have the chance.

First a few words about my grandfather, Walter Hammond, 1889-1972.

2. My Eccentric and Musical Grandfather

My great-grandparents were James Hammond and Hannah--(I don't know what her maiden name was; I'm not even quite sure of her first name.)  They lived downstairs in an Upstairs Downstairs mansion in the vicinity of Stockport, near Manchester, England.  She was the head cook; he was the head butler.  There were many servants; they all worked to keep the upstairs royalty happy.  Then my great-grandparents disappeared!

Did James make Hannah pregnant?  I'm not sure.  I am sure, though, that they abruptly went off to America without telling anyone a word.  My family has a very long working-class tradition of sub-par communication skills.

They came to New York, where my great-grandfather peddled eggs on the lower East Side.  My great-grandmother continued to cook apparently wonderful meals, but our family lost this tradition almost entirely.  She was so vain--or so unsure of herself which is often  just about the same thing--that she refused to ever share a recipe.  The eccentricities begin to accumulate.

After a few years, they decided to return to England for a visit, again unannounced.  Everyone was astounded to see them--they showed them clippings from the paper about them. Was James Hammond Murdered? The police had searched and searched--they even drained a little lake--I'm not kidding!  Foul play was suspected--I don't think my great-grandparents were particularly likeable.  I imagine them, in true English fashion, not to have reacted much when they encountered all this fuss.  After a short stay, they disappeared again, never to return to their native land.  What can I say?

My grandparents--they were my maternal grandparent--never made it to high school.  I believe they quit school around the fifth grade.  My grandfather continued the downstairs tradition by starting a business; rich people from the upper East and West sides brought in their bibelots--mostly vases--which he fashioned into fancy lamps and such.  The shop was on 49th Street; he commuted every day from the house in Jersey City where we all--grandparents, father, mother, brother and I--lived.  He was very successful in between alcoholic binges.  He was the breadwinner for all of us.

My grandfather was the only--except for, eventually, me--member of our family that played a musical instrument..  He had taught himself how to play guitar and would sing to his own accompaniment.  Mind you, music was not an everyday part of our family life; I only can recall two or three occasions when he sang.  By the time I became a teen, his guitar had long since vanished; he could no longer play--eek! at just about the age I am now--due to  arthritis.  I remember listening to him sing and strum, when I was very young,  at a gathering of friends.  I don't remember what he played, but I do remember that he was fluent and had no problem fishing around for chords.

I can't understand why he never taught me to play.  I also don't understand why I never asked him. Oh, those communication skills!

Although I was only about five at the time of the above-mentioned gathering of friends, I recall a salient characteristic of his performance: he was confident, damn sure of himself.  (I am fairly free of performance anxiety myself, a trait, I do not doubt, I inherited from him.)

My grandfather thought he had a lot of talent.  If there was a stage anywhere, he would invariably and inevitably be on it. His hubris was a source of acute embarrassment for my mother.  If you read my blog entry, "Romney and the Triumph of the Egg," you already know what I mean. If you haven't, let me recount  an anecdote contained therein.  My mother was stopped by a friend while she was rushing out of an assembly of some sort.  "Stop, Mabel--don't leave now!  Don't you know that your father is on the stage, about to perform?"  My mother, without missing a beat, replied, "Yes, I know.  That's why I gotta leave now!"

After my grandfather grew very old, he decided to make his professional debut as a performer.  In those days, there was a popular variety show called the Merv Griffin Show.  (Griffin was known for saying, "I'll be back after this message," before breaking for a commercial.  For his tombstone he chose this epitaph: "I will NOT be back after this message!")  Although Grandfather could no longer sing or play the guitar, he was determined to get on the show.  What was his act going to be?  You'll never guess it: he planned on reciting, with tremendous sentiment and self-satisfaction,  zany lyrics of songs from the beginning of the 20th century, such as those to Under The Chicken Tree.  (My grand aunt, Clara, a relative of my grandmother, had given him her collection of sheet music which she collected from about 1890 to the end of the Great War.  I believe she played the piano--I still have the sheet music--hey! I guess there was another  musical person in the family after all. The music to Under the Chicken Tree was, by the way, part of her collection.)

He thought he was giving a brilliant performance  when he recited lyrics so dated that they had become, albeit unintentionally, hilarious.  I remember watching him practice one before the mirror:

                                    Tetrazini has a horse,
                                    A horse that can't be beat;
                                    And Mildred Schnecky is a hit
                                    Because of her big feet...

His performances, were, of course, pitiful.


Believe it or not, he actually got an audition for the Merv Griffin Show.  He bought a little carrying case, in which he stored his material and of which he was very proud.  Working-class people in those days never dreamed of ever owning a little carrying case.  Self-absorbed and happy as a toddler, he looked like he was getting ready to compete for cake at a Senior Center's Show and Tell.

He never told us the result of this interview, but we all knew what it was.  After that, he gave up his ambitions and began to age more rapidly, until the day he, too, like his parents, disappeared.

Was he musical?  Yes.  Eccentric?  You betcha.

Writing at the beginning of the fifth decade after his death, I readily admit my admiration for him, so different from me and yet so similar.  I learned a lot from him, such as not letting the possession of merely a modest amount of talent get in your way: if you like to do something, don't give it up.  (Even halfway up Mount Parnassus, one sometimes gets a spectacular view--It might not be from the pinnacle, but one will still have the feeling of being between heaven and earth, which is the realm of art ) Regarding music, I greatly admire professionals and attend concerts regularly; I am saddened, however, by the fact that most adults have left the performance of music entirely up to those who earn their living by it.  It is a source of amazement to hear a great performer play X in an A+ fashion; it is even more exhilarating to hear yourself play X, albeit in a C- way.  (I"m not completely sure you think that's true, dear reader; my grandfather, however,  would have no doubt here, and I agree with him.) Active involvement in music, I strongly believe, should play some role in nearly everyone's life--not too long ago, this was indeed the case.  Trying to return to this tradition,  I have founded a "Meetup,"  the Baltimore Musicophilia Society; during periodic meetings at my house, amateur musicians gather to listen to themselves and listen to each other.  It has been alas! only intermittently successful--you guessed it, I'm not giving up.


3, Under The Chicken Tree

Most standards are the musings of Judy Garland-like outpouring hearts; this non-standard is the cluckings of Murakami-like downpouring hens. Dating from the 1890s, it is very much in the vaudeville tradition, silliness of an almost English variety.   The subject is--Well, the time has come for you to find that out. (Don't expect much--it's over the top, not Over The Rainbow.)

4. The Performance

5. Conclusion

If you haven't found anything in the essay to amuse you, I apologize.  You are now free to return to your latest page-turner on inferential statistics.  If you enjoyed the blog--Congratulations!  Be proud of your Wocky within.  My advice to you, dear fellow Borogove: don't let vicissitudes bury your mimsy! Thanks in part to my grandfather,  I never shall, that's for sure.

THE BALTIMORE ONLINE BOOKCLUB'S REVIEW OF 'DISGRACE' BY J.M. COETZEE

                                                                                            J. M. Coetzee
                                                                                            Disgrace
                                                                                            Penguin
                                                                                            First Published: 1999
                                                                                            220 pages      

Not everyone who received a Noble Prize for Literature deserved it; many former winners are deservedly forgotten. Others--Philip Roth comes to mind--deserve what they'll (probably) never receive. J.M. Coetzee, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003, did indeed deserve what he received; his novel, Disgrace, makes this abundantly clear.  

His polished, masterful prose tells the story of the disgrace of a compromised man who refuses to compromise.  Is it the portrait of Flannery-O'Connor-like redemption?  Yes, but not quite.  The fall of a man with a tragic flaw?  Yes, but not quite. Is it the story of a man who is out-of-joint with an out-of-joint world?  Perhaps.  Is it a tale of a professor who deeply cares about literature in a world in which nobody cares what he has to say? Perhaps.  This short novel is actually all these things--and much more.  It is clear; it is ambiguous--It is a masterpiece.

l.

The professor protagonist is named David Lurie, twice divorced and fifty-two years old.  He has withdrawn into an inner world of aestheticism; no one is aware of his inner depths, and, if they were, they would likely be indifferent. .  The university at which he has taught for many years  has been transformed by "the great rationalization."  The institution that employs him, formerly called Cape Town University College is now called Cape Technological University.  Formerly a professor of modern languages, Lurie was demoted to an adjunct professorship of communications, after the literature department had been  decimated.  He is allowed to teach one literature course, called "a special-field course" once a year.  Mostly he must  teach communication skills--He hates this so much that he makes little impression on the students; they have difficulty recalling his name.  Not that anyone in his yearly literature course admires him either; the only reflection the students seem to be passionate about is their own in the mirror.  He is like an aesthetic Saint Francis talking about the love of words and thought to a flock of birds, some of them quite good-looking birds, yet bird-brained nevertheless.  Even worse, he has no friends, merely acquaintances.

As if this tremendous isolation were not bad enough, there are several other bads that accompany it.  He has been at times a womanizer in his life; now at 52, he has to work harder at attracting women.  He is thus terrified about growing old.  This is what he has to say about aging:

Yet the old men whose company he seems to be on the point of joining, the tramps and drifters with their stained raincoats and cracked false teeth and hairy earholes--all of them were once upon a time children of God, with straight limbs and clear eyes,  Can they be blamed for clinging to the last to their place at the sweet banquet of the senses?
                                                                                                        (p. 24)

Aging gracefully this is not.  Lurie has never taken the effort to maintain a relationship with someone his age, during which the pains of growing old are compensated to a considerable degree by the joys of a long-lasting love.  Notice that in the above-quoted passage that Lurie is frightened of losing even more respect in old age; the lack of regard he now receives from others will only get worse.  He will not become a respected patriarch; he believes, with some justification, that he one day will be a friendless, pitiful tramp.

The only somewhat satisfying connection he has with anyone is through sex.  This eventually makes matters worse. The novel begins with him in the arms of a call girl whom he visits once a week.  He begins to fall for her.  When she unexpectedly leaves, he has a detective trace her whereabouts.  She is furious when he calls; even she, apparently, has a happy family and forbids him to call her again.  She had absolutely no emotional involvement with him.  After this, he has an affair with one of his students, the highly attractive but very bland Melanie Isaacs.  Coetzee is very careful to assure the reader that this is not an exploitative situation.  Melanie has a very casual attitude toward sex; she gives in to him in much the same way that one would imagine someone giving in to a persistent friend who  asks her to watch a movie she's not particularly interested in.  They have sex a few times.  One night she arrives distraught at his flat and asks if she could stay for a while.  She apparently has had a fight with her boyfriend.  Now Melanie has a need; she wants him to be a father figure and provide solace.  The narcissistic Lurie misses this cue completely and has sex with her again.  This time she feels used and humiliated.  She withdraws from school.  Her tough boyfriend confronts Lurie; Melanie's parents arrive.  The walls of the little corner he lives in fall, revealing an abyss.

He is accused of sexual harassment and is brought before the college board that handles such things.  Some are sympathetic; they advise him that he will probably be able to keep his job if he humbly apologizes, accepts some sort of punishment, and agrees to receive counseling.  Even the feminist member of the board, who is after his blood, gives an indication that she might show some clemency--if he is sufficiently humiliated.  Lurie has had enough; he refuses to cooperate, he the apolitical individualist refuses to submit and defend his own interests.  He would rather give up his sole source of income, rather than surrender his integrity. He is dismissed from the college in disgrace.

2.  The rest of the book is about how Lurie comes to accept his disgrace and transcend it.  Having no place to go, he moves in with his daughter, Lucy, who has a "smallholding," a little farm on the East Cape.  She runs a kennel and grows flowers and vegetables which she sells at the local market.  She calls Lurie by his first name--there isn't much of a father/daughter relationship left.  She has heard of "David's" troubles.  In a remarkable passage, he explains to her why he gave everything up rather than accept the censure of the college morality board.  He asks Lucy whether she recalls a dog that belonged to a neighbor when Lucy was a small child:

'It was a male.  Whenever there was a bitch in the vicinity it would get excited and unmanageable, and with Pavlovian regularity the owners would beat it.  This went on until the poor dog didn't know what to do.  At the  smell of a bitch it would chase around the garden with its ears flat and its tail between its legs, whining, trying to hide.'
He pauses.  "I don't see the point," says Lucy. And indeed what is the point?
"There was something so ignoble in the spectacle that I despaired.  One can punish a dog, it seems to me, for an offence like chewing a slipper.  A dog will accept the justice of that: a beating for a chewing.  But desire is another story.  No animal will accept the justice of being punished for following its instincts.'
"So males must be allowed to follow their instinct unchecked.  Is that the moral?'
"No, this is not the moral.  What was ignoble about the Kenilworth spectacle was that the poor dog had begun to hate its own nature.  It no longer needed to be beaten.  It was ready to punish itself.  At that point it would have been better to shoot it.
'Or to have it fixed.'
'Perhaps.  But at the deepest level I think it might have preferred being shot.  It might have preferred that to the options it was offered: on the one hand, to deny its nature, on the other, to spend the rest of its days padding about the living-room, sighing and sniffing the cat and getting portly.'
"Have you always felt that way, David?
'No, not always.  Sometimes I have felt just the opposite.  That desire is a burden we could well do without.'
'I must say," says Lucy, "That is a view I incline toward myself.'

                                                                                                  page 90

Lucy has obviously inherited her father's intelligence; she's even more of an enigma.  The child, to paraphrase Wordsworth, becomes the mother of the man--by the end of the book, Lurie accepts his daughter's view that "desire is a burden we could well do without."  What compensates for the loss of this (glorious?) burden is that Lurie begins to care for others. The learning of empathy is perhaps the most difficult task for a narcissist; Lurie, under duress, does indeed make spiritual progress.   He has given up any desire to mold Lucy according to his wishes.  He accepts her.  It is not easy; Lucy has grown portly, a trait her father detests.   She had been living as a couple with a woman who has left, apparently never to return. This, if one reads between the lines, has traumatized her.  Lucy is also broken like her father; she has given up on any desire for happiness in the conventional sense.  All she wants is to be left alone in the country with her dogs, of which she is very fond.  (An essay could be written about the canine symbolism in this book.  Are they the objects of compassion--even love--on the part of those who have been reduced by society to being dogs themselves? Are they emblems of good beings ignored and abused by corrupt ones?  What else?)

Poor Lurie has little to do with his time; he decides to work at a local ramshackle veterinary clinic where he is the assistant to a woman named Bev Shaw.  He finds her at first physically repulsive--a dumpy, poorly dressed woman with "no neck"--the very opposite of Melanie Isaacs.  He soon learns that she, unlike Melanie, is not bland on the inside; we learn by the way she treats animals that she is quite compassionate. She is also sex-starved and lonely.  He eventually has sex with her too, but with a major difference: for perhaps the first time he has sex with a woman not to please himself, but to please her.  Things are changing.

It is now Lucy's turn to be disgraced. She is brutally raped by three men, who had locked up Lurie in the bathroom before attacking his daughter.  After they're done, they return to Lurie to get the keys to the car so they can steal it.  After this, they set him on fire.  He escapes with minor injuries, but his hair is gone--the ironic reference to Samson is obvious.  This is the low point of his daughter's--and also of her now loving father's--lives.  On this tragedy he poignantly reflects that he can speak French and Italian, but had not been able to protect what is most important to him, the welfare of his daughter.

Lucy has decided to stay on the farm, no matter what--she apparently has given everything else up and has no other hopes for the future than to be left alone with her dogs.  Since the end of apartheid, however, it has become much more dangerous to live on an isolated farm--especially for whites, not to mention for a single white woman.  She needs protection.  She has hired someone, a black man named Petrus, whose ambition it is to take over everything.  She knows this, and assents to it, provided that she be allowed to live in her house and maintain the kennels.  Petrus, almost always on the farm, has mysteriously disappeared during the
rape.  The implication is that Petrus was behind the attack; he wanted to humiliate her and make her realize that she cannot survive without his protection.   She is shocked by the hate of her assailants.  (The long era of apartheid was not particularly good for race relations!)  Petrus's involvement is made more likely by the fact that one of the men turns out to be a relative and begins to live on the property.  Lurie is furious and wants to call the police.  She forbids this; she knows that she would not be able to stay on the farm if Petrus's relative is charged with rape.  Even worse: she soon finds out she has been impregnated by one of the three men, which one she doesn't know.  The deal she eventually works out is this: she will marry Petrus, provided that he allows her to live in the house alone  and continue the services she supplies for the dogs.  He will own the entire property. The farm has become her only refuge; she will do almost anything--except becoming Petrus's mistress--to remain there.  Most people would  view her as being at least as stubborn as her father, equally unable to look out for her own interests.

Lurie is determined to take his daughter out of danger; he moves back to his flat in the city in  the hope that  he and his daughter will live there as they did when she was a child.  Neighbors shun him.  The university has replaced him and forgotten about him.  It's not going to work.  He decides to move back and rent a flat near his daughter.

On the way back he stops at the house of Melanie's parents.  He abjectly apologizes--he gets down on this hands and knees and bows down.  Yes, a rather extreme way to say you're sorry,  but Lurie, as is his daughter, is given to extremes and has probably never really apologized before.  A comical element is that Melanie's father is convinced that he's doing this to obtain their help to get him reinstated at the college.  He can't imagine that Lurie is just apologizing and has no ulterior motives.

The ending of the novel is particularly beautiful.  He is back volunteering at the animal clinic, helping Bev euthanize unwanted animals.  This is hard on her; she loves animals.  She reasons that if they must die, they should at least  die at the hands of someone who treats them with compassion.  Lurie, who has learned this compassion through her, has befriended a crippled dog, one who must drag his hindquarters behind him as  he walks.  They develop an inordinate affection for each other.  One day, the dogs that were to be euthanized that day are all already dead.  Lurie's dog is the only one left.  This is how the novel ends:

He crosses the surgery.  "Was that the last?" asks Bev Shao.
"One more."
He opens the cage door.  'Come,' he says, bends, opens his arms.  The dog wags its crippled rear, sniffs his face, licks his cheeks, his lips, his ears.  He does nothing to stop it. 'Come.'
Bearing him in his arms like a lamb, he re-enters the surgery. "I thought you would save him for another week,' says Bev Shaw. 'Are you giving him up?'
"Yes, I am giving him up.'

4.
This great novel is a story of redemption after all, but not of a Christian sort--Lurie is a lapsed Christian.  He is a Buddhist even if he is unaware of it. He obtains something very similar if not identical to Nirvana at the end, the peace that comes with the extinction of desire.  He doesn't even have the desire to spare the dog he loves for a week; the dog is doomed and he will not prolong its misery just because he is fond of it.  His needs are no longer paramount.I don't think he will now become anything like the drifter in the first quote or like the miserable dog in the second.  I think he will go on to be a good grandfather--certainly better than he has been as a father!

Lurie is now a master of the four cardinal virtues of Buddhism called the Brahma Vihara:

1. Karuna--compassion--something new for him.  He has completely triumphed over his narcissism.  A touching example of his compassion and new humility is that he now takes the dead dogs in bags to the incinerator.  He is there to assure that workers don't strike the bags with shovels--the dogs are in a state of rigor mortis and would fit in the incinerator better if the contents of the bags were beaten into a smaller size--like garbage.  He is there to assure a modicum of dignity.  No one will notice. .  Yes, he has learned karuna well..

2. Metta-love.  Love has replaced lust and self-absorption in his life.  His love for his daughter, the animals and others--including his unborn grandson-- is obvious by the end of the book.

3. Muditha--sympathetic joy, the joy in other people's success, Mitfreude, the opposite of Schadenfreude, Buddhism, as far as I know, is the only system that emphasizes this virtue--or even has a name for it.  The Buddhists thought that compassion was to be given freely to  those less fortunate--it is not enough.  The ego must be humbled further by love of those more fortunate--resulting in the destruction of envy and jealousy.  Actually, Lurie has not been a jealous person--he had been too self-absorbed for that.  He now has opportunities, however,  for a more active role of muditha.

4. Uphekkha--Serenity.  He no longer bears the burden of untoward desire.  He has gained inner serenity which cannot help but make the world--even his much reduced world--a better place.  He has lost almost everything, but what remains will be enough.  He no longer has to chase rainbows; he is now at home on the earth and accepts his place.

A happy ending--of sorts.  (Buddhists are allowed to have friends!)

This might not be the only possible interpretation of the novel, but is indeed a valid one..  Coetzee is a subtle author, and, just like life, indicates what is important without providing a manual.

I have been deeply affected by this extraordinary novel. Uncompromising devotion to a speck of inner integrity, pressed by experience into a diamond, can indeed reflect the light of the sun, the light of the entire world.
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                                                                                                Thomas Dorsett

You are welcome to read book review of the Baltimore Online Bookclub by googling the title of the novel along with my full name.

1. The New Life by Orhan Pamuk
2..Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
3. Exit Ghost by Philip Roth

Our next meeting will take place on April 3, 2014.  The six member of our group will discuss the novel, A Sport and a Pastime, by James Salter, on that date; I will post my review shorty after we meet, You are invited to read the book, followed by the review, and, if you wish, post your comments onto the blog. I wish you pleasurable reading!