There was a word in the bottom of a deep well, only dimly seen and impossible to make out, but unmistakably there. There was much excitement, even too much perhaps a cynic might have thought, but there was no such cynic- not to my knowledge- and the excitement was universal.
"Could this be the word we've all been looking for?! The Last Word!"
They haven't managed to retrieve it yet, but it can surely only be a matter of time.
What happens after the 'Last Word' has been found? Do we have to shut up forever, safe in the unspoken knowledge that there is nothing left to be said?
Your guess is as good as mine, but, to be honest, I'm not quite sure why they've all leapt to such conclusions about this word. It could be the gravest disappointment; enough to make cynics of all of them. Though then again maybe their excitement isn't misplaced, though again why they can expect so much from a word...it's all a bit confusing.
(edited using comments)
Tuesday, 28 April 2009
Sunday, 26 April 2009
Found Words
I came across the following somewhere.
I have always been- which is to say I haven't, but I might have been, had I been other than I am- have always been fully focused on the task at hand, or again might have been, had I ever been able to be fully convinced of the value of the task at hand, which it has remorselessly transpired I haven't. Though that suggests something altogether false: that I have been setting myself tasks, positioning myself before or beneath these tasks in the honest hope, if not expectation, of becoming convinced of the virtue of these tasks; that if not yet enthused with the vigour of the acolyte at that moment for the task, or anything even remotely resembling such, yet I was ready to submit my energies to the task, whatever it may be, and that perhaps in time, having satisfied the preparatory preliminaries of involvement necessary in my awkward case, that by virtue of immersion in the intricacies of the demands of the task, the subtle pathways of its nature; that by an osmosis of interaction a developing fascination for its nature would develop in mine, all leading to an unfeigned conjoining of our natures, mine and its; and, in short, that I would grow to love the task, and so be able to devote myself happily to the satisfaction of the logic of its being, and the improvement of its nature, the logic of its being, would be accompanied by a similar improvement in mine, thus, all in all, happily satisfying both our natures.
But if that's what I appeared to suggest, then this was not intended, for not the faintest glimmer of, belief in, expectation or even thought of such an enthusiasm ever entered my head, and so no real placing myself beneath these tasks...and all the rest of it ever really occurred. Perhaps some interested bystanders hoped- even if without much of it- that having positioned myself beneath such tasks- for there was the occasional task- that something like the above process might occur- even if only the faintest shadow of such a process- and the subsequent conjoining of myself and task might prove my salvation, or something like it. Well, if they ever did they were disappointed.
I have always been- which is to say I haven't, but I might have been, had I been other than I am- have always been fully focused on the task at hand, or again might have been, had I ever been able to be fully convinced of the value of the task at hand, which it has remorselessly transpired I haven't. Though that suggests something altogether false: that I have been setting myself tasks, positioning myself before or beneath these tasks in the honest hope, if not expectation, of becoming convinced of the virtue of these tasks; that if not yet enthused with the vigour of the acolyte at that moment for the task, or anything even remotely resembling such, yet I was ready to submit my energies to the task, whatever it may be, and that perhaps in time, having satisfied the preparatory preliminaries of involvement necessary in my awkward case, that by virtue of immersion in the intricacies of the demands of the task, the subtle pathways of its nature; that by an osmosis of interaction a developing fascination for its nature would develop in mine, all leading to an unfeigned conjoining of our natures, mine and its; and, in short, that I would grow to love the task, and so be able to devote myself happily to the satisfaction of the logic of its being, and the improvement of its nature, the logic of its being, would be accompanied by a similar improvement in mine, thus, all in all, happily satisfying both our natures.
But if that's what I appeared to suggest, then this was not intended, for not the faintest glimmer of, belief in, expectation or even thought of such an enthusiasm ever entered my head, and so no real placing myself beneath these tasks...and all the rest of it ever really occurred. Perhaps some interested bystanders hoped- even if without much of it- that having positioned myself beneath such tasks- for there was the occasional task- that something like the above process might occur- even if only the faintest shadow of such a process- and the subsequent conjoining of myself and task might prove my salvation, or something like it. Well, if they ever did they were disappointed.
Raconteur
The man held his small audience spellbound. "I gazed into infinity. Infinity gazed back. Who would blink first? One of us had to go."
After Many a Summer
I'm reading Aldous Huxley's After Many a Summer, from which one could extract an army of brilliant extractions, but the following which reiterates a couple of earlier posts on Machiavelli (here and here) and the evolution of democracy; the lines, in Huxley's work, written by a rapaciously inclined character particularly in relation to sex, a member of the ruling elites, an Earl, whose notebooks from the early 1800s sprinkle the novel.
'Privilege is dead; long live privilege.' Government must always be by Tyrants or Oligarchs. My opinion of the Peerage and the landed gentry is exceedingly low; but their own opinion of themselves must be even lower than mine. They believe that the Ballot will rob them of their Power and Privileges, whereas I am sure that, by the exercise of even such little Prudence and Cunning as parsimonious Nature has endowed them with, they can at ease maintain themselves in their present pre-eminence. This being so, let the Rabble amuse itself by voting. An Election is no more than a gratuitous Punch and Judy show, offered by the Rulers in order to distract the attention of the Ruled.
A character commenting on a separate earlier fragment of the Earl's notebooks observes:
"Have you ever noticed the way even the most hard-boiled people always try to make out they're really good. Iagos don't exist. People will do everything Iago did; but they'll never say they're villains. They'll construct a beautiful verbal world in which all their villainies are right and reasonable."
Saturday, 25 April 2009
What the Isn't
"What do you mean, What the isn't? What the hell kind of title is that?!"
"Well, given what's following it, I think it's a perfectly reasonable title."
"Well, given what's following it, I think it's a perfectly reasonable title."
What Follows
What follows never happened. Or never yet happened. What I mean is I haven't written it yet. Perhaps I never will, in which case it never will happen.
"But what is this it that never happened?"
I'm sorry, I thought I'd made myself clear. The subsequent writing hadn't yet happened, the great whole, the entirety of the edifice.
"But how could it? We are at the tip of an arrowhead of time forever piercing the oblivion of the non-existent future, and since what lies beyond the forever arrowing arrow doesn't as yet exist, then of course what follows, or followed, the present moment doesn't yet exist, hasn't or hadn't yet happened."
But it does now, or at least it did. It did happen. These very words are their own proof that the subsequent writing happened.
"But differentiate between the verb and the noun for goodness sake! By 'the writing' do you mean the actual act of writing or the writing itself?"
Both. The verb, the act of writing, had not yet occurred nor the noun, what is written, existed. The noun now exists, or at least some of it, some of all that is subsequently written, but the verb is, yes, perhaps a stranger phenomenon. Someone, some blackguard, might voice doubts as to the verb. "All we have is the noun," says he. "Show us this verb."
And how could I, unless, I suppose, I recorded it, the act of writing, that is, with some technological device, like a camera-phone. A prosaic enough object in this day and age. But I'm not going to do that- start making technological copies of my actions. What are we going to end up doing- making records of everything we do in order to prove it happened? If that's where we're going we might as well get off now. And anyway, how could there be writing without writing, and why would anyone want to pretend there could? What is at stake? And why waste your time arguing the case?
"But what is this it that never happened?"
I'm sorry, I thought I'd made myself clear. The subsequent writing hadn't yet happened, the great whole, the entirety of the edifice.
"But how could it? We are at the tip of an arrowhead of time forever piercing the oblivion of the non-existent future, and since what lies beyond the forever arrowing arrow doesn't as yet exist, then of course what follows, or followed, the present moment doesn't yet exist, hasn't or hadn't yet happened."
But it does now, or at least it did. It did happen. These very words are their own proof that the subsequent writing happened.
"But differentiate between the verb and the noun for goodness sake! By 'the writing' do you mean the actual act of writing or the writing itself?"
Both. The verb, the act of writing, had not yet occurred nor the noun, what is written, existed. The noun now exists, or at least some of it, some of all that is subsequently written, but the verb is, yes, perhaps a stranger phenomenon. Someone, some blackguard, might voice doubts as to the verb. "All we have is the noun," says he. "Show us this verb."
And how could I, unless, I suppose, I recorded it, the act of writing, that is, with some technological device, like a camera-phone. A prosaic enough object in this day and age. But I'm not going to do that- start making technological copies of my actions. What are we going to end up doing- making records of everything we do in order to prove it happened? If that's where we're going we might as well get off now. And anyway, how could there be writing without writing, and why would anyone want to pretend there could? What is at stake? And why waste your time arguing the case?
Writer
There was a writer who began writing- for what else can a writer do, and what might we call him if he didn't? But anyway, he began writing and was amazed to find that the characters incarnated within his writing apparently found it perfectly unsurprising, banal even, to find themselves alive and within the confines of a book. He even wondered whether he should be annoyed at the matter-of-factness of their attitudes.
"We are here? Well, where else would we be? And what's so special about here that you imagine we should be surprised, grateful even, by the occurrence of our presence within it? What do you expect- that we should bow down in perpetual astonishment at the fact of our existence?! No, this is all most ordinary and utterly so!"
Though who knows? Maybe he was merely putting words in their mouths. Though, then again, maybe this really is how it was.
"We are here? Well, where else would we be? And what's so special about here that you imagine we should be surprised, grateful even, by the occurrence of our presence within it? What do you expect- that we should bow down in perpetual astonishment at the fact of our existence?! No, this is all most ordinary and utterly so!"
Though who knows? Maybe he was merely putting words in their mouths. Though, then again, maybe this really is how it was.
Thursday, 23 April 2009
The Intellectual Koan Again
Expanding a little, and even perhaps alot- immeditate time will tell- on the very recent post, whose very short entirety amounted to the title Strange, and the line:
This was written years ago.
I am in the disadvantaged position of having produced the line and finding it harder to approach it as nakedly as would be desired, but anyway, is it really strange, and if so why?
Perhaps it really was written years ago and has only surfaced 'now', this moment, before the gaze of the viewer. But even if it was written years ago it still claims to have been written years before, regardless of when one is seeing it. But maybe it is not the original; maybe someone else had written the line years before and this is but a copy, and a humble acknowledgement of such. So it really was written years ago. Ah, but even then the original line claims to have been written years ago. But perhaps that 'original' wasn't really the original, and it really was written years earlier. But even then...and so on.
But even this is a kind of mental taming of the linguistic phenomenon of the line, rendering it less nakedly direct. It could, I think, be included in the bracket of the Intellectual Koan, an utterly condensed but explosive form of literature of which I am perhaps, for all I know, the humility drenched originator and sole exponent. Other recent examples of the form-collapsing form possibly being, though possibly not:
This is the first word of this sentence.
"This sentence is shit."
"What a harsh judgement. I think it's a wonderful sentence."
Most thought perhaps amounting to the tightening of a knot, genuine thought perhaps the loosening of the knot, while these the positive unravelling of it, though they could certainly do without being lumped together within stagnation breeding 'form'; leading to the degeneration of something 'known', or 'understood', instruments within the intellectual armoury, upon which edifices of certainty these intellectual koans would perhaps sneer, were they to bother to recognise their existence, which, given their nature, they wouldn't.
This was written years ago.
I am in the disadvantaged position of having produced the line and finding it harder to approach it as nakedly as would be desired, but anyway, is it really strange, and if so why?
Perhaps it really was written years ago and has only surfaced 'now', this moment, before the gaze of the viewer. But even if it was written years ago it still claims to have been written years before, regardless of when one is seeing it. But maybe it is not the original; maybe someone else had written the line years before and this is but a copy, and a humble acknowledgement of such. So it really was written years ago. Ah, but even then the original line claims to have been written years ago. But perhaps that 'original' wasn't really the original, and it really was written years earlier. But even then...and so on.
But even this is a kind of mental taming of the linguistic phenomenon of the line, rendering it less nakedly direct. It could, I think, be included in the bracket of the Intellectual Koan, an utterly condensed but explosive form of literature of which I am perhaps, for all I know, the humility drenched originator and sole exponent. Other recent examples of the form-collapsing form possibly being, though possibly not:
This is the first word of this sentence.
"This sentence is shit."
"What a harsh judgement. I think it's a wonderful sentence."
Most thought perhaps amounting to the tightening of a knot, genuine thought perhaps the loosening of the knot, while these the positive unravelling of it, though they could certainly do without being lumped together within stagnation breeding 'form'; leading to the degeneration of something 'known', or 'understood', instruments within the intellectual armoury, upon which edifices of certainty these intellectual koans would perhaps sneer, were they to bother to recognise their existence, which, given their nature, they wouldn't.
Wednesday, 22 April 2009
Edmund Spenser - Misjudged
At my local library I opened James Shapiro's 1599 A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, and in one of those odd coincidences, the opened page that I chanced upon yielded the following extract related to Edmund Spenser, which suggests that from my thus far limited reading of Nicholas Canny's Making Ireland British 1580-1650 I may have done the fair poet a disservice, but only in the sense that he was far more homicidally inclined, and systematically so, than I imagined. Spenser, wrote Canny, "in View of the Present State of Ireland proceeded to detail how an existing socio-political order might be destroyed, and another erected in its place." And Shapiro details a little, as I'm sure Canny does later in his far more involved work, of Spenser's envisaged means towards this fine end:
"Subsequent to writing the View Spenser reiterated the main point in 'A Brief Note of Ireland':
"Great force must be the instrument but famine must be the mean(s), for til Ireland is famished it cannot be subdued."
Spenser (who lived on an estate of 3,000 acres of confiscated land in County Cork) knew the consequences of the starvation he advocated. The most powerful paragraph in his View renders in graphic detail the effects of a starved and cannibalistic Irish population who 'consume themselves and devour each other':
"Out of every corner of the woods and glens they came creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs could not bear them, they looked like anatomies of death, they spake like ghosts crying out of their graves, they did eat their carions, happy where they could find them. Yea, and one another soon after, inasmuch as the very carcasses they spared not to scrape out of their graves."
Having seen its effects first-hand, Spenser vigorously advocated mass starvation as proven policy."(Shapiro)
Reminds me of modern imperialist and 'conservative' apologist, nay champion- for why apologise for what should be celebrated- Roger Scruton's line, included in a defence of particularly British and modern American imperialism, which he effectively labels Conservatism, that "Unlike Islamic culture, western culture has gone out to the stranger, has tried to understand, to sympathise, to learn, in every arena where learning is available", and that all this imperialising was and is all done with the best of intentions, and these intentions really are themselves the best of intentions, intrinsically good, and so the whole process is and was in everyone's interests.
Given the obviously duplicitous version of imperialism he offers- since surely no amount of naivety could result in an educated man producing such insulting rubbish- it sheds an interesting light, if such a light needed to be shone, on today's idealistic western aggressors, particularly the ever incestuously aligned British and American regimes, championed as they are by today's crop of propagandists; for there is never a short supply of Edmund Spensers, separated only by degree of talent rather than intent for the task at hand; an intent which is always so happily rewarding materially for the propagandist, and in which, such is his inclination for self-serving self-deception, the propagandist may genuinely have persuaded himself to believe.
Tuesday, 21 April 2009
More of the Previous- Beckett Again
I wrote in the last piece that since the implications of a false position's own falseness must ultimately be included within the internal logic of itself- though that was far more in the way of an intuitively produced notion than analytically so, and may itself be nonsense- but anyway, with that line as an entry-point, taking another quick look at Beckett's description of self as "one's ultimate hard irreducible inorganic singleness," and also of the capacity for a 'genius' for inhabiting an error and this single-minded devotion comprising much of his alleged genius, though even there this fleshing out of the error is only partially done or else the internal logic of the error would have revealed to him its falseness.
A look at a definition of inorganic:
1. not having the structure or organization characteristic of living bodies.
2. not characterized by vital processes.
Beckett's view of human existence, this line that strives to be a meaningful linguistic structure, as an emanation of a living being possessed of vital processes within a living body cannot, by any sane logic, make sense. The fact that a living being produced the line contradicts the line's notion that one is not a living being, regardless of whether one describes this human state of oneself as an ultimate position.
And so the reasonable response for the thinker of the thought should be that the language process has betrayed itself, shown itself to be false, and that the self who thinks itself to be, or is proclaimed to be, this inorganic singleness is simply a matter of false language. This should be perfectly self-evident, particularly for a genius, else the type of people permitted into the enclosure of Genius renders the word almost useless, since what then denotes the being that doesn't fall prey to such obvious error- and about the very essence of life. But to repeat what I wrote yesterday:
Though since the implications of a false position's own falseness must ultimately be included within the internal logic of itself, he happily stops well short of this final implication, or even, such is his devotion to the error, he will be willing to shift the implied falseness onto life itself, if it suffices to keep his 'truth' intact.
So Beckett- not particularly meaning to pick on Beckett but he is almost archetypally useful here- rather than make the obvious deduction that it is his language that is false and producing the false sense of self, shifts onto poor life, and all of it, the implications of falseness, deadness; not done disingenuously but simply because of the narrow capacity to dwell within self-conceived error. Though one could also argue that it is the false sense of self that calls forth the false language that produces and justifies the false sense of self in the first place! A genius, or one who dwells in truth, should immediately have seen the falseness of the idea or philosophy the moment it appeared (and the line is ultimately for such as Beckett an over-arching idea, the hierarchical notion within which all else stands in relation), but then again, one who is in truth wouldn't have produced the line in the first place.
A look at a definition of inorganic:
1. not having the structure or organization characteristic of living bodies.
2. not characterized by vital processes.
Beckett's view of human existence, this line that strives to be a meaningful linguistic structure, as an emanation of a living being possessed of vital processes within a living body cannot, by any sane logic, make sense. The fact that a living being produced the line contradicts the line's notion that one is not a living being, regardless of whether one describes this human state of oneself as an ultimate position.
And so the reasonable response for the thinker of the thought should be that the language process has betrayed itself, shown itself to be false, and that the self who thinks itself to be, or is proclaimed to be, this inorganic singleness is simply a matter of false language. This should be perfectly self-evident, particularly for a genius, else the type of people permitted into the enclosure of Genius renders the word almost useless, since what then denotes the being that doesn't fall prey to such obvious error- and about the very essence of life. But to repeat what I wrote yesterday:
Though since the implications of a false position's own falseness must ultimately be included within the internal logic of itself, he happily stops well short of this final implication, or even, such is his devotion to the error, he will be willing to shift the implied falseness onto life itself, if it suffices to keep his 'truth' intact.
So Beckett- not particularly meaning to pick on Beckett but he is almost archetypally useful here- rather than make the obvious deduction that it is his language that is false and producing the false sense of self, shifts onto poor life, and all of it, the implications of falseness, deadness; not done disingenuously but simply because of the narrow capacity to dwell within self-conceived error. Though one could also argue that it is the false sense of self that calls forth the false language that produces and justifies the false sense of self in the first place! A genius, or one who dwells in truth, should immediately have seen the falseness of the idea or philosophy the moment it appeared (and the line is ultimately for such as Beckett an over-arching idea, the hierarchical notion within which all else stands in relation), but then again, one who is in truth wouldn't have produced the line in the first place.
Alleviating
A great, and perhaps the greatest, merit of objects such as watches and mobile phones is that their presence offers nervous people an escape route, something to look at, to absorb their attention in ardently focused activity, when finding themselves in awkward situations such as, for example, someone walking towards them along a quiet footpath.
Monday, 20 April 2009
Common
Write! But why? There are people, it appears, who are hungry, hungry for words. But surely those kind of people have enough going on in their own heads to keep them busy. But seemingly not, though yes, they do have enough going on in their own heads to keep them even more than busy, but those words fail to nourish, provide no sustenance, and so they are still hungry, famished even. But what can they expect from me of all people? Will they be full after a helping of whatever appears here, satiated for a time, or will they end up flinging the plate from them in disgust into the farthest corner, speaking metaphorically, of course.
But perhaps they will be satiated. That which is hungry hungry no longer, for a while. After all, speaking in my defence, the words that appear here are not quite what tends to appear elsewhere... the writing rather, the words are common enough, maybe even more than common, too common. One might even call the lack of style a conscious lack of style. And why? Is it stubbornness, an unwillingness to please, a desire to negate, or is that all a bit unfair? Perhaps it's in the interests of realism. But I think we can discount that straight away. What kind of realism appears here? Unless it's a different kind of realism, a higher kind. But if it's higher, why would it almost go out of its way to appear lower?
But perhaps they will be satiated. That which is hungry hungry no longer, for a while. After all, speaking in my defence, the words that appear here are not quite what tends to appear elsewhere... the writing rather, the words are common enough, maybe even more than common, too common. One might even call the lack of style a conscious lack of style. And why? Is it stubbornness, an unwillingness to please, a desire to negate, or is that all a bit unfair? Perhaps it's in the interests of realism. But I think we can discount that straight away. What kind of realism appears here? Unless it's a different kind of realism, a higher kind. But if it's higher, why would it almost go out of its way to appear lower?
Sunday, 19 April 2009
More Humanising Logic
In the wake of the 'humanist' argument exampled in the last piece about how those whose heads were cut off didn't actually suffer for the process and so this decapitating was not a practice against which anyone could seriously argue, another almost blackly comic example follows, which edifying use of the remarkable tool of Reason happily demonstrated the intrinsic superiority of the wielders of this wondrous intellectual tool, set against which civilising intelligence the savage foe was nakedly shown in all his barbaric ingloriousness.
Nicholas Canny writes of what was "considered as essential justification for the English purpose to fashion a completely new order through a process of plantation in preference to reforming the existing society in Munster": this justifying aid being the Roman law of res nullius, which maintained that all 'empty things', particularly unoccupied or under-utilised land, remained the common property of humanity until brought into efficient use by an enterprising people who might then become its owners.
But Ireland was well populated so what use was this here?
Francis Bacon had a preference for a "Plantation in a pure soil; that is where People are not displanted to the end to Plant others. For else it is rather an Extirpation than a Plantation," and Queen Elizabeth was not keen on making enemies of dispossessed subjects whose loyalty she should have been encouraging. Also to deserve her place at the head of the state, her conduct should uphold rather than contravene the principles of correct government.
According to Edmund Spenser, describing the province of Munster in the 1580s after the wars and attendant famines visited on the lands by its civilising colonisers: "A most populous and plentiful country was suddenly left void of man and beast", and Sir Valentine Browns wrote that "not one of thirty persons" had survived the wars and "those for the most part starvelings."
And so since, according to the colonisers themselves, a genocide had been so wholly effected, then the queen could overcome with ease of mind any scruples regarding the dispossessing of the native Munster population and repeopling of the land with English people, since there was virtually noone left alive to dispossess.
And so the happy logic of res nullius ushered in with ennobling justification the more zealous colonisation ahead, a logic "altogether more compelling when supplemented by evidence that the lands lay vacant, thus overcoming any reasonable objections that might have been raised." (Canny) Reason's dictates were satisfied. All was in order. Onwards.
Nicholas Canny writes of what was "considered as essential justification for the English purpose to fashion a completely new order through a process of plantation in preference to reforming the existing society in Munster": this justifying aid being the Roman law of res nullius, which maintained that all 'empty things', particularly unoccupied or under-utilised land, remained the common property of humanity until brought into efficient use by an enterprising people who might then become its owners.
But Ireland was well populated so what use was this here?
Francis Bacon had a preference for a "Plantation in a pure soil; that is where People are not displanted to the end to Plant others. For else it is rather an Extirpation than a Plantation," and Queen Elizabeth was not keen on making enemies of dispossessed subjects whose loyalty she should have been encouraging. Also to deserve her place at the head of the state, her conduct should uphold rather than contravene the principles of correct government.
According to Edmund Spenser, describing the province of Munster in the 1580s after the wars and attendant famines visited on the lands by its civilising colonisers: "A most populous and plentiful country was suddenly left void of man and beast", and Sir Valentine Browns wrote that "not one of thirty persons" had survived the wars and "those for the most part starvelings."
And so since, according to the colonisers themselves, a genocide had been so wholly effected, then the queen could overcome with ease of mind any scruples regarding the dispossessing of the native Munster population and repeopling of the land with English people, since there was virtually noone left alive to dispossess.
And so the happy logic of res nullius ushered in with ennobling justification the more zealous colonisation ahead, a logic "altogether more compelling when supplemented by evidence that the lands lay vacant, thus overcoming any reasonable objections that might have been raised." (Canny) Reason's dictates were satisfied. All was in order. Onwards.
Making Ireland British
I'm reading the excellent Making Ireland British 1580-1650 by the leading historian in the area, Nicholas Canny, a couple of opinions of offered below:
wonderful work, richly layered and contextualised ... a masterly study and an unmitigated triumph ... a masterpiece of painstaking research ... [a] splendid volume.(History Today)
No other work reveals so much about the transformation of life across the island through the remorseless colonial process that began in Elizabethan times. (Wiliam and Mary Quarterly )
This reading of the heavy tome prompted by a piece by TLS editor Peter Stothard's Severed heads all in a row, where Stothard writes:
Sir Humphrey Gilbert was the half-brother of Sir Walter Ralegh, less glamorous and, in most places, lesser known. Ireland is perhaps the one place where the name of Sir Humphrey still comes with a chill, famed as he was there for decapitating the corpses of rebels against Queen Elizabeth's rule and laying the heads like kerbstones along the path to his tent.
He liked a double row along the path by which Munster men seeking English clemency were forced to tread. The eyes and ears of their fellows would encourage a suitably compliant attitude, in Gibert's view.
Only just now, have I taken the trouble to read the original account of Gilbert's path of heads - from Thomas Churchyard's A General Rehearsal of Warres (1579), cited in a new Oxford edition of Edmund Spenser's letters.
What is striking is not the terror tactic itself but what the editors describe as 'the humanist apology on ethical grounds' by which it was justified.
This was the observation that the dead suffered no more by the decapitation ("the dedde felte no paines by cuttynge of their heddes") and that, following the view of Diogenes the Greek philosopher, their bodies might just as well be laid out 'ad terrorem' or eaten by dogs on a dunghill as decompose in any other way.
The author of The Fairie Queene, who served as a bureaucrat and private secretary in sixteenth century Ireland, included frequent beheadings, dismemberments and slaughters in Books V and VI of his poem - 'a clear residue of Spenser's experience', say the editors.
And from there I took out Canny's book, fortuitously, and a little unusually perhaps for such an academically inclined work, available in the local library.
Edmund Spenser was the principal ideological architect of the aggressive policy towards a cultural whitewashing of Ireland- making it British and, specifically in Spenser's framework of absolute good, English. Spenser's hopes for a change towards this policy were set out obliquely or analogically within The Faerie Queen, and directly in the prose piece View of the Present State of Ireland.
Everything Irish within this mental framework was intrinsically barbaric, uncivilised, and so its redemption could only consist in being Anglicised. And if one refused to submit to what was by definition good, then logically all one was fit for was death. Thus the severed heads.
"Evil could only be overcome through confrontation & continuous action; otherwise, as with the earlier English settlers in Ireland, even persons of the highest rank and best education could be seduced by the evil they had been sent to destroy."(Canny)
Happily as shown in much of The Faerie Queen, given the necessity of civilising through violence, Spenser seems to have found violence aesthetically pleasing, and the poem in large part a glorification of violence when employed in a worthy cause.
Canny writes that "what would have been most shocking within Spenser's View of the Present State of Ireland piece would have been the general supposition that everything had to be cast down in Ireland before the perfect commonwealth could be established. This assumption conflicted with every received idea of the duties of government, far beyond even Machivellian principles because Machiavelli in 'The Prince' was offering advice on how order might be restored to a polity that had been destabilised by (improper rule). The propositions being advanced in 'The View' were altogether more fundamental, because they proceeded to detail how an existing sociopolitical order might be destroyed, and another erected in its place."
And so, for example, as a measure of at least Spenser's partial success, Irish people now speak English.
Mr Justice Robert Gardner in the 1590s listing "the diseases of this commonwealth" which alienated potentially loyal people in Ireland from the government, gave particular attention to abuses of martial law( martial law or absolute power, incidentally according to Machiavelli the goal of all ruling nobility), alluded to the "common allowance of head silver to such as bring heads, never knowing or examining whose heads, whether of the best or worst, so no safety for any man to travel."
Sir Henry Wallopp, treasurer and treasurer at war, 1579-99, also briefly joint lord chief justice, and ideological colleague of Spenser's, was by 1584 impressed by the heavy mortality that had fallen on Munster through war and its inevitable shadow of famine, pointed to the consequent need "to repeople it again with a better race and kind of people than the former were."
So here can be clearly seen how on 'humanist' grounds a philosophy of untermenschen can be justified. If someone is less than human then their absence, through the means of severed heads, famine, or whatever, is actually a blessing, and opportunity to accelerate cultural improvement. Spenser, incidentally, like similar ideologues, was the recipient of large estates in Munster, so the ideology wasn't entirely disinterested. Also much of the value of the notion of lebensraum is also perfectly in evidence here; i.e. the most fervent and able supporters of the empire or Reich being made wealthy in foreign lands, thus rewarding and encouraging such subservience of the individual will to the greater will, all the available host British territory already of course carved up.
Queen Elizabeth was, by the way, uneasy with the new level of ideological imperialist zealotry that was formulated by people like Spenser, whether on ethical grounds or the practicalities of government- alienating subjects whose culture you are actively destroying, on the basis that you are 'humanising' them and their land- otherwise in their former or native state they are less than human, unworthy of existence. All linked in people like Spenser's case with notions of man's original fall against which degeneracy you are battling.
Theme continuedhere and here.
wonderful work, richly layered and contextualised ... a masterly study and an unmitigated triumph ... a masterpiece of painstaking research ... [a] splendid volume.(History Today)
No other work reveals so much about the transformation of life across the island through the remorseless colonial process that began in Elizabethan times. (Wiliam and Mary Quarterly )
This reading of the heavy tome prompted by a piece by TLS editor Peter Stothard's Severed heads all in a row, where Stothard writes:
Sir Humphrey Gilbert was the half-brother of Sir Walter Ralegh, less glamorous and, in most places, lesser known. Ireland is perhaps the one place where the name of Sir Humphrey still comes with a chill, famed as he was there for decapitating the corpses of rebels against Queen Elizabeth's rule and laying the heads like kerbstones along the path to his tent.
He liked a double row along the path by which Munster men seeking English clemency were forced to tread. The eyes and ears of their fellows would encourage a suitably compliant attitude, in Gibert's view.
Only just now, have I taken the trouble to read the original account of Gilbert's path of heads - from Thomas Churchyard's A General Rehearsal of Warres (1579), cited in a new Oxford edition of Edmund Spenser's letters.
What is striking is not the terror tactic itself but what the editors describe as 'the humanist apology on ethical grounds' by which it was justified.
This was the observation that the dead suffered no more by the decapitation ("the dedde felte no paines by cuttynge of their heddes") and that, following the view of Diogenes the Greek philosopher, their bodies might just as well be laid out 'ad terrorem' or eaten by dogs on a dunghill as decompose in any other way.
The author of The Fairie Queene, who served as a bureaucrat and private secretary in sixteenth century Ireland, included frequent beheadings, dismemberments and slaughters in Books V and VI of his poem - 'a clear residue of Spenser's experience', say the editors.
And from there I took out Canny's book, fortuitously, and a little unusually perhaps for such an academically inclined work, available in the local library.
Edmund Spenser was the principal ideological architect of the aggressive policy towards a cultural whitewashing of Ireland- making it British and, specifically in Spenser's framework of absolute good, English. Spenser's hopes for a change towards this policy were set out obliquely or analogically within The Faerie Queen, and directly in the prose piece View of the Present State of Ireland.
Everything Irish within this mental framework was intrinsically barbaric, uncivilised, and so its redemption could only consist in being Anglicised. And if one refused to submit to what was by definition good, then logically all one was fit for was death. Thus the severed heads.
"Evil could only be overcome through confrontation & continuous action; otherwise, as with the earlier English settlers in Ireland, even persons of the highest rank and best education could be seduced by the evil they had been sent to destroy."(Canny)
Happily as shown in much of The Faerie Queen, given the necessity of civilising through violence, Spenser seems to have found violence aesthetically pleasing, and the poem in large part a glorification of violence when employed in a worthy cause.
Canny writes that "what would have been most shocking within Spenser's View of the Present State of Ireland piece would have been the general supposition that everything had to be cast down in Ireland before the perfect commonwealth could be established. This assumption conflicted with every received idea of the duties of government, far beyond even Machivellian principles because Machiavelli in 'The Prince' was offering advice on how order might be restored to a polity that had been destabilised by (improper rule). The propositions being advanced in 'The View' were altogether more fundamental, because they proceeded to detail how an existing sociopolitical order might be destroyed, and another erected in its place."
And so, for example, as a measure of at least Spenser's partial success, Irish people now speak English.
Mr Justice Robert Gardner in the 1590s listing "the diseases of this commonwealth" which alienated potentially loyal people in Ireland from the government, gave particular attention to abuses of martial law( martial law or absolute power, incidentally according to Machiavelli the goal of all ruling nobility), alluded to the "common allowance of head silver to such as bring heads, never knowing or examining whose heads, whether of the best or worst, so no safety for any man to travel."
Sir Henry Wallopp, treasurer and treasurer at war, 1579-99, also briefly joint lord chief justice, and ideological colleague of Spenser's, was by 1584 impressed by the heavy mortality that had fallen on Munster through war and its inevitable shadow of famine, pointed to the consequent need "to repeople it again with a better race and kind of people than the former were."
So here can be clearly seen how on 'humanist' grounds a philosophy of untermenschen can be justified. If someone is less than human then their absence, through the means of severed heads, famine, or whatever, is actually a blessing, and opportunity to accelerate cultural improvement. Spenser, incidentally, like similar ideologues, was the recipient of large estates in Munster, so the ideology wasn't entirely disinterested. Also much of the value of the notion of lebensraum is also perfectly in evidence here; i.e. the most fervent and able supporters of the empire or Reich being made wealthy in foreign lands, thus rewarding and encouraging such subservience of the individual will to the greater will, all the available host British territory already of course carved up.
Queen Elizabeth was, by the way, uneasy with the new level of ideological imperialist zealotry that was formulated by people like Spenser, whether on ethical grounds or the practicalities of government- alienating subjects whose culture you are actively destroying, on the basis that you are 'humanising' them and their land- otherwise in their former or native state they are less than human, unworthy of existence. All linked in people like Spenser's case with notions of man's original fall against which degeneracy you are battling.
Theme continuedhere and here.
Thursday, 16 April 2009
Either Way
He started to speak but everything came out wrong, unless of course it wasn't wrong but right, but in any case, either way, it was gibberish.
Tuesday, 14 April 2009
Lines
Long grim lines of people trudge their various ways into the endless grey, the first figure of each line always looks familiar; you know him from somewhere. His look, when animated, though it usually isn't, seeming to say: "Where did I get this crowd from? Am I responsible for them too?" For their part, the followers, particularly those nearest the front, appear keen to convince their leader that there is no question of his guilt before them, on the contrary, now more than ever...
Some are even making the strained effort to appear cheerful: "Where are we going? Isn't this pleasant. All of us together." Though this effort is all too impossible to sustain, apart, that is, from the odd childishly naive figure whose joy seems genuinely unfeigned, but such men seem an irritation, an embarrassment even, to the others; particularly for the added pain such gormless innocents' presence must surely evoke in the first man, not that the leader even deigns to acknowledge the presence of the long line of followers behind. In different circumstance perhaps he might have even been proud of the followers, basked a little in the adulation of these admittedly inconsequential men, but that is all of course only idle conjecture.
Some are even making the strained effort to appear cheerful: "Where are we going? Isn't this pleasant. All of us together." Though this effort is all too impossible to sustain, apart, that is, from the odd childishly naive figure whose joy seems genuinely unfeigned, but such men seem an irritation, an embarrassment even, to the others; particularly for the added pain such gormless innocents' presence must surely evoke in the first man, not that the leader even deigns to acknowledge the presence of the long line of followers behind. In different circumstance perhaps he might have even been proud of the followers, basked a little in the adulation of these admittedly inconsequential men, but that is all of course only idle conjecture.
Cup of Coffee
My coffee was hot or at least something close to hot. It is now, however, lukewarm or even less than lukewarm. What happened in the interim? It was one thing, now another. Was hot, now not hot. Did this hotness dissipate into the surrounding atmosphere? Maybe it did but that's simultaneously too vague and yet too specific. It doesn't satisfy me on any count. Of course science could tell me all about vibrating molecules or some such, but what kind of sense would that have for me? Precious little. And anyway, the human being should be self-sufficient regarding truth, or at least capable of it; not reliant on anything beyond his ordinary sense experiences and the ordinary language tool of this here language; no need for esoteric abstractions regarding invisibilities. To think otherwise would be humiliating. Not that I've anything against science.
So anyway, it was hot and became cool and still more so. Well, before it was hot the water was cold, water's natural state is in natural accord with its environment; it was only artificially, so to speak, made hot. And unless artificially sustained, nature returns to nature, the state of normal equilibrium. For instance, a man cannot stay indefinitely standing on one leg. He'll either fall down- if he only has one leg- or else he'll return to his two legs. And even then eventually he'll still fall down.
Is there a cup of coffee regardless of its being hot or cold? In other words, are these mere properties of the cup of coffee, changeable, transitory, while the liquid itself is solid, as it were. Show me this absolute cup of coffee, or is it merely 'a cup of coffee'; that is simply those four words, a purely linguistic phenomenon. I can see them all right, those words, but the 'thing in itself' or, for example, 'world of ideal forms' have never been seen, apart again from the words themselves, and that is in truth all they are.
"But what if we add sugar to this cup?" Well then, we've added sugar. Do you expect the cup of coffee to try separating itself, mentally if not physically, from the sugar content so as to be this unadulterated coffee? Try it sometime. "Okay, maybe not, but what about milk then or cream?" You're very persistent. But all right, now the liquid is a mix of milk, sugar and coffee. Do you think the whole cup should try, while in this 'impure' state, to imagine itself in some pure altered state of absolute undiluted coffeedom without milk or coffee, and that therein lies its freedom? Freedom from what? I think overall it fair to say you'll find no such angst-ridden stirrings going on within the confines of the humble cup.
So anyway, it was hot and became cool and still more so. Well, before it was hot the water was cold, water's natural state is in natural accord with its environment; it was only artificially, so to speak, made hot. And unless artificially sustained, nature returns to nature, the state of normal equilibrium. For instance, a man cannot stay indefinitely standing on one leg. He'll either fall down- if he only has one leg- or else he'll return to his two legs. And even then eventually he'll still fall down.
Is there a cup of coffee regardless of its being hot or cold? In other words, are these mere properties of the cup of coffee, changeable, transitory, while the liquid itself is solid, as it were. Show me this absolute cup of coffee, or is it merely 'a cup of coffee'; that is simply those four words, a purely linguistic phenomenon. I can see them all right, those words, but the 'thing in itself' or, for example, 'world of ideal forms' have never been seen, apart again from the words themselves, and that is in truth all they are.
"But what if we add sugar to this cup?" Well then, we've added sugar. Do you expect the cup of coffee to try separating itself, mentally if not physically, from the sugar content so as to be this unadulterated coffee? Try it sometime. "Okay, maybe not, but what about milk then or cream?" You're very persistent. But all right, now the liquid is a mix of milk, sugar and coffee. Do you think the whole cup should try, while in this 'impure' state, to imagine itself in some pure altered state of absolute undiluted coffeedom without milk or coffee, and that therein lies its freedom? Freedom from what? I think overall it fair to say you'll find no such angst-ridden stirrings going on within the confines of the humble cup.
Sunday, 12 April 2009
Thursday, 9 April 2009
Idolatry
Idolatry is the worship of the products of man's thought as though they possessed independent organic form. 'Sin' here isn't the depriving ourselves of some wonderful pleasure for reasons of morality, but a labelling of the process, and inevitable consequences, of losing ourselves in self-made unrealities. Regarding idolatry one might say: what about, for example, sun-worship? One doesn't create the sun with one's own thought and so this does not equate to the given notion of idolatry.
But it isn't the sun one is worshipping. It is the idea of the sun. The whole process of worship is an intellectual or mental activity: the mind has the concept of the sun, the concept of itself, and then the itself concept tries to bow down to the sun concept.
All organised religion where the individual is supposed to exist at some point within a hierarchical structure could arguably be seen as an example of this. A man-made structure is a product of thought, and if the individual is supposed to maintain his position within the structure, as he must if he is to remain a part of the religious structure, that is at least if it is a hierarchical one where he has his allotted place, then he must always remain within the bounds of thought and so inevitably idolatry; ie bowing down to manifestations of the intellect, a perverting of reality.
Such hierarchical structures have to always curb surrender to pure being, which is genuine religion, for if one does not remain within the world of thought, then, as a matter of natural course, all structures fail to manifest themselves, and so no longer existing within the parameters of structure, how can one be part of a religion? So religion is true where it aids and seeks as its proper end this release from self-made structure, false where it seeks to maintain it.
Tuesday, 7 April 2009
Ramblng on Greeks, Celts, etc.
I don't enjoy- who does, though come to think of it plenty do, unless they're all pretending, though why should they all pretend?- mutual vanity?- but on such a scale! no, that's ridiculous- Greek myths. I don't much enjoy Greek myths. They don't really appeal to my nature. Why? Is it because I'm a Celt- a different sense of being altogether, perhaps. Whether I'm a Celt in a biological-cultural sense, by nature, or on an individual level, nature again, my sense of self just happening to accord with Celtic sensibilities, I'm not really sure. And to be honest, despite probable appearances, I'm not even really interested. Which probably makes me even more of a Celt. Not that I'm much interested in the idea of being a Celt, have read precious little on them, this indifference itself probably a manifestation of being a Celt...and so on.
We, or at least I, don't understand, or don't want to understand, the atrophied need of other peoples for rational maps to and of existence, within which self-formulated structures they, the world, and all within it, have their solidly defined places. Slaves. Though they probably imagine all this map-making goings on in their heads is the path to freedom, which reinforces the concise point. If you believe yourself to be not free, trying to gain freedom, then of course you're a slave. What else could you be? And think of a line like "I am trying to find myself"; the first word particularly- "I". If you are engaged in the trying to find yourself then you've already achieved your purpose, since it's yourself that's doing it. Maybe if we switched the words around it would become clearer: "Myself is trying to find I."
I've an idea, by the way, which is that people are their nationality before they're born, conceived even. They are already Irish, English, German, etc spiritually , and so they incarnate where such a nature naturally is. That's why people are so English, French, American, etc- all within reason of course- not just for simply earthly reasons. This is their nature to begin with. "But how do you know? Prove it..." But see, that's the thing; I've no interest in proving it. I'm not even all that interested in it in the first place. I mean I'm interested while I'm thinking of it, but I've no interest in artificially sustaining, as it were, this interest; creating an ideology, nailing my colours to its mast. It's an idea which feels true to me, but I'd get on perfectly well without it.
All incidentally reminds me of some of Dostoevsky's musings about the Russian abroad, and perhaps more or else specifically himself: that there was an ingrained sense of cultural inferiority, of uncouthness compared to the civilised Europeans, but it would begin to dawn on him that he was actually the superior one, broader, less able to exist within 'form', and this at being at ease within form was much of what this being civilised or cultivated comprised; the capacity to exist without doubt within a definition, and this capacity for inhabiting narrowed dimensions endowed them with boundless certainty and self-righteousness; in subservience to the idea of the nation-state, for example, and beneath which certainty those not capable of dwelling comfortably within 'form' mistakenly quailed.
We, or at least I, don't understand, or don't want to understand, the atrophied need of other peoples for rational maps to and of existence, within which self-formulated structures they, the world, and all within it, have their solidly defined places. Slaves. Though they probably imagine all this map-making goings on in their heads is the path to freedom, which reinforces the concise point. If you believe yourself to be not free, trying to gain freedom, then of course you're a slave. What else could you be? And think of a line like "I am trying to find myself"; the first word particularly- "I". If you are engaged in the trying to find yourself then you've already achieved your purpose, since it's yourself that's doing it. Maybe if we switched the words around it would become clearer: "Myself is trying to find I."
I've an idea, by the way, which is that people are their nationality before they're born, conceived even. They are already Irish, English, German, etc spiritually , and so they incarnate where such a nature naturally is. That's why people are so English, French, American, etc- all within reason of course- not just for simply earthly reasons. This is their nature to begin with. "But how do you know? Prove it..." But see, that's the thing; I've no interest in proving it. I'm not even all that interested in it in the first place. I mean I'm interested while I'm thinking of it, but I've no interest in artificially sustaining, as it were, this interest; creating an ideology, nailing my colours to its mast. It's an idea which feels true to me, but I'd get on perfectly well without it.
All incidentally reminds me of some of Dostoevsky's musings about the Russian abroad, and perhaps more or else specifically himself: that there was an ingrained sense of cultural inferiority, of uncouthness compared to the civilised Europeans, but it would begin to dawn on him that he was actually the superior one, broader, less able to exist within 'form', and this at being at ease within form was much of what this being civilised or cultivated comprised; the capacity to exist without doubt within a definition, and this capacity for inhabiting narrowed dimensions endowed them with boundless certainty and self-righteousness; in subservience to the idea of the nation-state, for example, and beneath which certainty those not capable of dwelling comfortably within 'form' mistakenly quailed.
Saturday, 4 April 2009
Something Brilliant
I was going to write something brilliant but I've forgotten what it was. That is, I seem to have been under the impression of having forgotten something brilliant, but then again perhaps the sense of forgetting is all there was. Though who knows, maybe there wasn't actually even a sense of forgetting. Maybe I only imagined it, after the event, or non-event, so to speak.
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