148. Kafka and memory

Previous - 147. Certifiably a Geezer

Link to Table of Contents

Candide

"Voltaire and Candide" by I.O. Wade 1959
...

p151 Candide is thus in its substance not wholly optimistic, or pessimistic, or skeptical, or cynical: it is all of these things at the same time. Since every created thing resembles its creator and the moment of its creation, it is precisely what Voltaire and his time were: optimistic, pessimistic, skeptical, and cynical, a veritable "moment de la crise" {moment of crisis}. Facts had produced ideas, it is true, but ideas had not yet produced ideals, and no one knew what to do.
...

...The world had become a paradox and Voltaire responded with a revolt.

p152 It is imperative to understand the nature of this revolt, since the whole eighteenth century and subsequent centuries have derived from it. Voltaire's response was born of both anger and despair. He was "fâché" {angry with kings}... with earthquakes... with God...

Voltaire's attitude toward Providence must be considered very carefully if we are to grasp the meaning of Candide...

If to be specific, Voltaire felt that Pope's arguments no longer "justified the ways of God to man," and Leibniz's were equally deficient, did he thing that he had better ones, or that he could find better ones elsewhere? In other words, was his quarrel with the optimists whose arguments could not justify Gods ways or with God whose way could not be rationally justified? ... It is undoubtedly true that his act was not a critique but a revolt, a titanic revolt [that's nice as it is a revolt against the Gods] brought about by a breakdown in the power of critique... he could only attack the irrationality, the ambiguity of the universe by annihilating rationally all rationality. In that respect his wit is a spiritual, not a rational, instrument for assailing the ambiguity, the clandestinity of a universe which refuses to make itself known. 

This would make him de Sade's precursor.

p153 This state of things explains why one never knows in reading Candide whether to laugh with Voltaire or at him, whether to laugh with the philosophers or at them, whether indeed to laugh with or at Providence... 

Vertigo

Dr. K Takes the Waters at Riva

I assumed this was Kafka, but it's hard to find anything about him being in Italy through an online search. I did find this interesting (to anyone obsessed with The Magic Mountain) quote in Wiki,

Around 1915 Kafka received his draft notice for military service in World War I, but his employers at the insurance institute arranged for a deferment because his work was considered essential government service. Later he attempted to join the military but was prevented from doing so by medical problems associated with tuberculosis,^[54] with which he was diagnosed in 1917.^[55] In 1918 the Worker's Accident Insurance Institute put Kafka on a pension due to his illness, for which there was no cure at the time, and he spent most of the rest of his life in sanatoriums.^[5]

One can almost imagine a novel in which Hans Castorp's place at the Berghof is taken by Kafka when Hans rushes off to the war.

On the cover of my copy of this book is the following quote, "Think of W.G. Sebald as memory's Einstein." -Richard Eder, The New York Times". Yes, I'm procrastinating getting back into this book, but what can he mean by that. What would a General Theory of the Relativity of Memory be? What is "space" to "time" here? 

The Proust chapter in Proust Was a Neuroscientist, did establish the relativity of memory in that what we recall is not absolute or unchanging. Perhaps it's "time" and "memory" that combine, at least in Lehrer's view. But Sebald -- at least some of the time -- is imagining the memories of other people. 

And, to reference the chapters in that book on music and painting, what engages me about this book is that, as with Stravinsky's music or a canvas by Cezanne, I struggle to make sense of what the author is doing and it's that struggle that attracts me.


Perhaps I should have my head looked at, I now see that Part II, All'estero is the account of the author gathering the material for Part III, Dr. K Takes the Waters at Riva. This is amusing as Part III is so much shorter than either Part II or Part IV. The author travels (twice) through central Europe and northern Italy to research an extremely un-dramatic episode in the life of Kafka, and then pads his tale with a much longer account of his own un-dramatic travels, and only slightly more dramatic childhood.  
 

Almost Easter so time for a resurrection of my blog

I'm going to keep this one short as the next will be quite long.

Next - 149. Candide, God, and evil

133. Necessitarianism

Previous - 132. George Eliot

Link to Table of Contents

George Eliot (and George Henry Lewes)

p33 [Eliot's words, but Lehrer seems to think they express Lewes ideas] ...insisted that the brain would always be a mystery, "for too complex is its unity." Positivists may proselytize their bleak vision, Lewes wrote, but "not thinking man will imagine anything is explained by this. Life and being remain as inaccessible as ever." If nothing else, freedom is a necessary result of our ignorance.

..."Necessitarianism," [Footnote: a synonym for determinism... the theory holds that human actions are "necessitated" by antecedent causes over which we have no control.] Eliot wrote, "I hate the ugly word." Eliot had read Maxwell on molecules... and she knew that nothing in life could be perfectly predicted. To make her point, Eliot began Daniel Deronda with a depiction of human beings as imagined by Laplace. The setting is a hazy and dark casino full of sullen people... These gamblers are totally powerless, dependent on the dealer to mete out their random hands. They passively accept whichever cards they are dealt. Their fortune is determined by the callous laws of statistics.

p34 ...As soon as Eliot introduces this mechanical view of life, she begins deconstructing its silly simplicities... "Like dice in mid-air," Gwendolen is an unknown. Her mysteriousness immediately steals Daniel's attention; she transcends the depressing atmosphere of the casino. Unlike the gamblers, who do nothing but wait for chance to shape their fate, Gwendolen seems free...

Eliot creates Gwendolen to remind us that human freedom is innate, for we are the equation without a set answer. We solve ourselves. [Footnote: ...being free also makes us accountable for our behavior. One of Eliot's main problems with social physics was that it denied humanity moral agency... If social physics made us callus, then art might make us compassionate.]

Before we get into Darwin, I have to reflect on "Necessitarianism." I think there's a difference between a social physics that lets you calculate and predict the behavior of individuals, and the lack of cause and effect in our behavior. It's interesting that Eliot used a casino as a setting, as games of chance are one place where there is a kind of freedom. If you make your life decisions on the basis of flipping coins or rolling dice, then they would be free -- though you would not be, except insofar as you occasionally refused to follow the decisions of random chance.

Otherwise, your decisions are based on who you are and can't be other than what they are. You must make the decisions that are natural for you. What sense does it make to insist that you are free to make decisions that are not the decisions necessitated by your character? 

I've now read ahead, and, sad to say, this chapter does not go to the quantum uncertainty place I was hoping for. You know what that means... One could view decisions as existing in superposition. Up until the instant you decide, a multitude of decisions exist as possibilities. You can either stay on the train, looking at Verona, or get off and experience Verona directly. The probability waveform (nonsense but it sounds interesting) only collapses when the train rolls out of the station. And yet there's a reason you stayed in your seat. Still (to reassert the position that Maxwell represents in this chapter and that Bohr and the Copenhagen Interpretation represents in quantum mechanics), even though there's a "reason" for Sebald staying in his seat, you could only have described the probability of his staying on or getting off the train, no matter how much information you had. 

I may be having my cake and eating it too, but I think this position supports cause and effect (which tends to lead to Determinism) while leaving a quantum of freedom. Though maybe not "freewill."

...while positivists believed that the chaos of life was only a facade, that beneath everything lay the foundation of physical order, Darwinism said that randomness was a fact of nature. In many ways, randomness was the fact of nature... [Footnote: Darwin acknowledged the deep chanciness at the heart of natural selection... Darwin constantly asserts that variations are "undirected" and "occur in no determinate way."] Life progressed because of disorder, not despite it. The theologian's problem -- the question of why nature contained so much suffering and contingency -- became Darwin's solution. [So Voltaire wasn't a Darwinian.]

p35 The bracing embrace of chance was what attracted Eliot to Darwin. Here was a narrative that was itself unknowable, since it was guided by random variation... Unlike Herbert Spencer, who believed that Darwin's theory of evolution could solve every biological mystery (natural selection was the new social physics), Eliot believed that Darwin only deepened the mystery... Because evolution has no purpose or plan -- it is merely the sum of its accumulated mistakes -- our biology remains impenetrable...
...

p37 In her intricate plots, Eliot wanted to demonstrate how the outside and the inside, our will and our fate, are in fact inextricably entangled. "Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending," Eliot confesses in Middlemarch. Our situation provides the raw material out of which we make our way, and while it is important "never to beat and bruise one's wings against the inevitable," it is always possible "to throw the whole force of one's soul towards the achievement of some possible better." You can always change your life.
...

p42 ...The mind is never beyond redemption, for no environment can extinguish neurogenesis. As long as we are alive, important parts of the brain are dividing. The brain is not marble, it is clay, and our clay never hardens.
...

p43 ...while freedom remains an abstract idea, neurogenesis is celular evidence that we evolved to never stop evolving. Eliot was right; to be alive is to be ceaselessly beginning. As she wrote in Middlemarch, the "mind [is] as active as phosphorus." Since we each start every day with a slightly new brain, neurogenesis ensures that we are never done with our changes. In the constant turmoil of our cells -- in the irrepressible plasticity of our brains -- we find our freedom.

Voltaire - more English visitors to Ferney

John Moore and Douglas Hamilton (Eighth Duke of Hamilton), July 1772

The Duke, Mr. Mallet, and I am to sup and stay all night sometime this week with Voltaire, his vivacity and spirit is amazing; he is writing and publishing every day; and I do believe he is not without hopes that the Christian religion will die before him'.
...

The most piercing eyes I ever beheld are those of Voltaire, now in his eightieth year. His whole countenance is expressive of genius, observation, and extreme sensibility.

In the morning he has a look of anxiety and discontent; but this gradually wears off, and after dinner he seems cheerful...

Next - 134. Neural plasticity

129. Travelers

Previous - 128. Well, Everything Is Well

Link to Table of Contents

Vertigo

P53 ...when I am travelling I often feel as Grillparzer did on his journeys. Nothing pleases me, any more than it did him; the sights I find infinitely disappointing, one and all; and I sometimes think that I would have done far better to stay at home with my maps and timetables...

Now I'm thinking of Sebald not in the tradition of novelist but in the tradition of travel writers. He's not Bill Bryson. Bryson has referenced Paul Theroux in the past, but it's been too long since I've read Theroux to recall his style. 

Sebald curtailed his 1980 trip after he had a vaguely unsettling experience in a deserted Verona restaurant. Seven years later he is attempting to repeat and complete his trip but is transfixed by the view of Verona from the train and can't get off, and so continues on to Limone. 

(The young woman sitting next to me at this counter -- having a meeting with another woman sitting next to her -- has a magnificent mane of hair which she habitually flips back so that it hits me. I can't identify her accent.)

Bryson doesn't always end up where he intends, and sometimes changes his plans due to, for example, the birth of a grandchild. But it's hard to imagine him being chased from Europe by a thoughtless restaurant proprietor, or being so transfixed by contemplating something that he misses his stop. 

Who does Sebald remind me of? Mary Elliott from Persuasion? Marianne Dashwood (in the novel version of Sense and Sensibility)? Cousin Charlotte from Room With a View? Not sure.

P57 I hadn’t noticed before that Casanova’s confinement in Venice overlapped with the Lisbon earthquake that was so shocking to Voltaire. The account here gives no indication of why Casanova was detained, but his situation seems to me to be of more moral interest than the earthquake. 

At least twice in this volume, our narrator "sees" a historical figure during the course of his travels. He recently saw King Ludwig II of Bavaria in Venice, and near the end he sees some queen (Elizabeth, the Winter Queen) on a train on his way home to England. This is pushing the unreliable narrator idea rather far.

Candide

"Voltaire at Les Delices and at Ferney" - Gustave Lanson

p98 On the propaganda that flowed out of Voltaire's estate at Ferney ...These "little pot-pies," these portable scandal-sheets easy to read, and continuously exciting, came out of the factory at Ferney for twenty-three years; they emerged in all forms, on all subjects, in verse, in prose, dictionaries, stories, tragedies, diatribes, extracts on history, literature metaphysics, religion, the sciences politics legislation, Moses, snails, Shakespeare, and notes written by a gentleman... they became nothing more for him than a means to an end. Tragedies and verses served to hasten the spread of his ideas.

He repeated himself, he went over the same ground again and again... For he knew that ideas enter the public mind only by dint of repetition. But the seasoning must be varied, to prevent disgust; and at that art he was a past master.

He has all the qualities, with many of the faults, of the journalist...

This passage caught my eye because, just today, I commented to one of the teachers of science I follow on YouTube that nothing was more important to teaching difficult subjects (quantum mechanics, for example) than repetition. I even used a painting analogy... you need to brush or roll multiple times from a variety of angles before you can finally cover the surface. 

Also, wasn't Voltaire trying to create, hundreds of years in advance, what can be done so easily today with Twitter and social media in general? He was propagating facts "alternative" to those of the Church -- both in Rome but also in Geneva. Breitbart can be viewed as trying to undo his Enlightenment using the latest version of the very tools he mastered. 


"Gestation: Candide Assembling Itself" - Hayden Mason

Reading page 100 got me interested in the history of Portugal during Voltaire's life and I ran into the very interesting account of the life of Sebastião de Melo (Count of Oeiras after 1759.) He's certainly a mixed bag. On the one hand he seems to be almost a puppet of Voltaire, and yet also an autocrat. Now I'm curious what Voltaire had to say about him.

p100 ...He tells Elie Bertrand (another of the Genevan clergy)... that the myth of the Fall of Man... is more reasonable in human terms than the Optimism of Leibniz and Pope, which beneath the disguise of a consoling name simply removes all hope: 'if all is well, how do the Leibnizians admit of a better?'... It is the fatalistic quality of Optimism that is so cruel, for it invites man to acquiesce and therefore give up all striving for improvement... To Thieriot he makes a touching confession that he is writing about the sufferings of his fellow-men out of pure altruism, for 'I am so happy that I am ashamed of it' (D6875, 27 May {1756}).

I admit that it is something of a problem, if you believe in God, that life can smash you like a bug at any time. And not just you but entire ant hills of people, like Lisbon. But then again, from a devoutly religious position This Life if nothing special in any case. The victims of Lisbon just meet their maker a little quicker and in a large party.

In part of that paragraph I didn't quote, Mason shows that Voltaire quickly moved from Lisbon to the greater evil of war. (I was going to say that the 18th century was a good time to consider war, but then what century isn't?) So Voltaire quickly returns to the evil in man, where I think his opposition to the Optimists is on a surer footing.

p105 Pennsylvania is the model for Eldorado?!

p108 Unless Candide were virtually finished before Voltaire's visit to Schwetzingen, which appears unlikely, one must view it as written not simply in a state of ambivalent feelings about Paris and Geneva nor as a work of detached irony by a happy man but as a composition of someone who was once more plunged into despairing gloom. When he returned to Geneva he received definitive news from d'Argental that Mme. de Pompadour had declared him persona non grata at Court. Besterman rightly notes: 'it is from this moment that can be dated his spiritual severance from his fatherland'...

p109 ...Voltaire is disheartened by the decline of French prestige and influence in the world. Concern is often expressed about cultural and military affairs together... since the battle of Rossbach 'everything has been in decline in our armies, as in the fine arts in Paris'... The philosophe has long been persuaded that belles-lettre in France were degenerating and that the French were living on past credit...

...He has taken a new decision, to renounce urban life... [after buying his estates at Tournay and Ferney] 'I do not know of any situation preferable to mine'... and that he can now cultivate his garden in tranquility.... 

Finally

After over a month -- and almost a week longer than I can quite justify -- I returned to the gym today. I expect to be sore tomorrow, even though I reduced all my weights. Early on, I heard someone coughing and was happy I waited until I was completely over my illness, but then I found myself struggling with even some reduced weights and wished I had come back a bit sooner. I have my work cut out for me to get in shape by mid-April. The problem now is the weather which continues to be colder than normal (though not today) and there is still more rain forecast.

Next - 130. Proust Was a Neuroscientist

128. Well, Everything Is Well

Previous - 127. Time in dreams

Link to Table of Contents

Candide

"Well, Everything Is Well" (or "Bien, Tout est Bien" from the Dictionnaire Philosophique of 1764, also by Voltaire.

p85 What! to be driven out of a delightful garden [after the Fall]... to experience every sickness, feel every grief, die in anguish, and then in recompense to be roasted for eternity! This fate is really the best thing possible? It's not too good for us; and how can it be good for God?

Leibniz sensed there was nothing to be said in reply; and so he made big fat books in which he confused himself. [I love this analysis... of German philosophy in general.]

A denial that evil exists: it can be made in jest by a Lucullus in good health, who is eating a fine dinner... but... let him catch a fever, he'll be miserable himself....

(Yes, I love this in part because he correctly refers to Lucullus rather than making the common mistake of associating this high living to Epicurus, but beyond that... no, I just like that he brought up Lucullus, an excellent Roman general who refused to pander to his troops. Though, now I think of it, that incident is a little more problematic than it seems while you're plowing through Livy. Lucullus's troops balked as he lead them further and further east into lands Rome had never before interfered with. I can't exactly say they were wrong in that. But then Pompey came along and managed to get them on board. I believe this campaign also let to the conquest of Judea.

In any event, Lucullus, fed up with public life, retired with his amazing wealth and spent the remainder of his life enjoying himself. Cultivating his garden, as it were.

OMG! At the end of that paragraph Epicurus is mentioned.)

...But I must cite Lactantius, father of the church ["the Christian Cicero"... ouch!], who... makes Epicurus talk in this fashion: 

Either God wants to remove evil from the world and cannot; or he can and does not want to; or he cannot and does not want to, either one; or else, finally, he wants to and can. If he wants to and cannot, that is impotence, which is contrary to the nature of God; if he can and does not want to that is malice, which is equally contrary to his nature; if he neither wants to nor can, that is malice and impotence at the same time; if he wants to and can (and this is the only one of the alternatives that is consistent with all the attributes of God), then where does all the evil of the world come from? 

This is a nice statement of the Problem of Evil.

...

The origin of evil has always been a pit of which nobody could see the bottom...

...

Here's a creation story I haven't heard before.

The Syrians imagine that when man and woman were created in the fourth heaven, they decided to eat cake instead of the ambrosia which was their natural diet. The ambrosia they could exhale through their pores; but after eating the cake, they had to go to the toilet. Man and woman together asked an angel where were the facilities. -- Look ye, says the angel, see that little planet down there, no bigger than a minute, some sixty million leagues from here? That's the privy for the whole universe; now get there right away. -- So they went, and were left there; and that's why, ever since, our world has been what it is.

Of course you can ask the Syrians why God let man eat the cake and allowed such a swarm of evils to follow from his doing so....

I really like that Creation story. It does have a bit in common with Douglas Adams's theory of the Golgafrinchan ship of fools that originally settled Earth. 

p88 ...God, says Pope,

sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall;
Atoms or systems into ruins hurled,
And now a bubble burst, and now a world.
Essay on Man, 1. 87-90

p89 Here, I confess, is a pleasant consolation; don't you find great comfort in Lord Shaftesbury's [who inspired Pope] remark that God isn't going to disturb his eternal laws for a miserable little animal like man? But you must grant this miserable little animal the right to exclaim humbly and to seek, as he exclaims, why these eternal laws are not made for the well-being of each individual.

This system of all is well represents the author of all nature as a potent, malicious king, who never worries if his design means death for four or five hundred thousand of his subjects, and poverty and tears for the rest, as long as they gratify him.

Far from consoling, the best of all possible worlds doctrine is a doctrine of despair for those who embrace it. The question of good and evil remains an insoluble chaos for those who seek in good faith for an answer....

This argument actually left me in a place I didn't expect to find myself, I see the Shaftesbury/Pope position. What has always bothered me about Voltaire is how outraged he was by the Lisbon Earthquake. To see "evil" in that event is to take the personal, Christian God rather too seriously, in my view. He seems to see God as a kind of guardian angel. The Lisbon Earthquake was a disaster, certainly, but I don't see it as an instance of evil. Ivan, in The Brothers Karamazov, did a great job of describing the evil in the world to Alyosha. That's the evil I feel a religious person has to come to terms with. 

I would have to read more of Shaftesbury/Pope then I currently feel like, to discover if they tackled that task or only took on the straw-man of natural misfortune instead. I just did a search on the contents of Pandora's Box and found this:

For Zeus had packed the box full of all the terrible evils he could think of. Out of the box poured disease and poverty. Out came misery, out came death, out came sadness - all shaped like tiny buzzing moths. The creatures stung Pandora over and over again and she slammed the lid shut.

I would call these misfortunes, not "evils." As is so often the case, I think we are talking about two different things using the same terms. I'm happy with Pope's take on misfortunes, but evil is another matter and probably will take us all the way to de Sade.


(I am sitting in the window of the Market street Peet's and, as a seemingly endless stream of damaged and demented people wander past, it occurs to me that there could hardly be a better place to contemplate Candide.)

Next - 129. Travelers

122. Venice

Previous - 121. In which Hegel fails us

Link to Table of Contents

Candide

Chapter 20. Martin the Manichee. I do like Candide's method for choosing a traveling companion and how he spends his time on a long voyage arguing philosophy -- rather like a Carnaval "The Magic Mountain" cruise. Martin seems to be a fairly one-sided Manichee. The whole appeal of Manicheanism is that it reflects the obvious reality that the world is filled with both good and evil. Unless you're a monotheistic theologian, this view is hard to beat. 

I don't think I wrote about Eldorado, It is always interesting to think about what life would be like without the usual economic concerns (lotto fantasies). Did Voltaire make it clear that it was not wealth but the virtue of the people that made Eldorado special? Gold and gem stones had no inherent value in Eldorado. Also, I can't recall why Candide's last "sheep" is red -- right! This is some confused notion of llamas or alpacas which are also supposed to be faster than Andalusian horses. Why not? 

Alas, no. There is very little about the economy of Eldorado. It is merely given that it is a universally comfortable kingdom. Voltaire seems to be content to leave nobility in its station, though he is happy to take down the monks and priests. In short we are given no clue as to why Eldorado is such a fortunate place. Does Voltaire really confuse gold and gems for wealth? I can't really make anything of this account.

Vertigo

p132 ... The opera, said Salvatore [the character's source of information in Milan], is not what it used to be. [He's referring to La Scala] The audience no longer understand that they are part of the occasion. In the old days the carriages used to drive down the long wide road to the Porta Nuovo in the evenings, out through the gateway, and westward under the trees along the glacis, skirting the city, till nightfall. Then everyone turned back. Some drove to the churches for the "Ave Maria della Sera", some stopped here on the Bra and the gentlemen stepped up to the carriages to converse with the ladies, often till well into the dark. The days of stepping up to a carriage are over, and the days of the opera also....


Since opera (along with rap) is one of the few forms of music I have no interest in, this passage shouldn't affect me, and yet it does. And not just because this reminds me just a little of young Marcel's sightseeing of the carriages of his idols in the Bois. At heart I guess I'm just a very conflicted petit bourgeois boy. 

Venice

Both Candide and Vertigo have progressed chapter by chapter since I last mentioned them but now both stories are in Venice. Vertigo hits Venice every chapter or so. Venice had a very unique status in Europe for centuries, until Napoleon in fact. And even after that the city had a special status in Hapsburg Germany until the Risorgimento. And since then, Venice has still had its spectacular charm, growing ever more wabi sabi over the generations.

I wonder if Hong Kong will continue to maintain its independent identity over time? It's my impression (based on very little) that Shanghai still maintains a hint of the identity it acquired before the Communist takeover, so maybe Hong Kong will survive in that sense.

From what I've read, Venice's continued existence as a true city -- as opposed to a tourist destination and resort for the wealthy (like Aspen) -- is also in doubt. But then that, at least in part, goes back to the question of what people in the future will do in an age of robots and AI. But then, when you read about Venice how often do you learn about what the people are doing? Aside from the arsenal and the glass industry, the public face of Venice has always been the service industry.

Candide p63 [Pococurante is dismissing the whole of classical and contemporary art and literature] -Oh what a superior man, said Candide... what a great genius this Pococurante must be! Nothing can please him...

-Don't you see, said Martin, that he is disgusted with everything he possesses? Plato said, a long time ago, that the best stomachs are not those which refuse all food.

-But, said Candide, isn't there pleasure in criticizing everything, in seeing faults where other people think they see beauties?

-That is to say, Martin replied, that there's pleasure in having no pleasure? ...

Which?

There's a point where it's hard to tell if you're being wisely cautious or just procrastinating and being lazy. I want to return to the gym, but then I find myself dealing with some residue (literally) of my cold or I wake up at 7am and it's freezing cold (for here) and going out in my shorts just seems ill considered. 

It will (presumably) eventually get warmer -- this is usually when we have some of our nicest weather -- and then I can throw myself into getting back in shape. It's not like I'm training for a marathon. But I still feel lazy.

Haguro

I've talked about the Pacific War battles that are great stories, but another way of talking about that war is to tell the story of a class of warships. I've sort of done this already by talking about the role of the U.S.S. Independence class (and of the CVEs) in the American victory, but to tell the story of the entire war the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) Myōkō-class heavy cruisers might be the best choice.

The IJN, as a rule, operated sister ships together so that ships operating together would have similar characteristics (speed and armament, for example). In 1942 the Myōkō-class ships were not the newest or most powerful heavy cruisers in the IJN -- all four had been placed in commission in the late 1920's -- but they were fine examples of the superiority of IJN heavy cruisers over the ships of every other navy of the time. If you had been the commander of a USN heavy cruiser, say the U.S.S. Houston serving with the Asiatic Fleet, you might have been a little concerned that the Myōkō-class ships had 10 x 8" guns in 5 turrets vs your 9 x 8" guns in 3 turrets. What you wouldn't have realized was that those 8" guns were their secondary armament. Their main "battery" really consisted of launchers for the amazing Long Lance torpedo. For the first year of the war Allied ships would suddenly blow up and sink and no one on the Allied side knew why.

The reason the Myōkō-class is perfect for telling the story of the entire war is that all four ships of the class worked together during the invasion of the Dutch East Indies in 1942 and took part in the Battles of the Java Sea where they utterly dominated their Allied foes, and, while having participated in many of the intervening battles and campaigns, all four ships survived into late 1944 when the war returned to the waters of Indonesia and the Philippines. Here they again faced the Allies when roles were completely reversed. Instead of the IJN having all the advantages, as in 1942, in 1944 and 1945 the USN and Royal Navy were dominant everywhere. All four Myōkō-class ships were battered and sunk by the full spectrum of Allied strength: Aircraft, submarines, and surface ships. 

In early 1942 the Allies didn't have a chance. In late 1944 and 1945, the IJN didn't have a chance. The battles in the middle of the Pacific and in the middle of 1942 into 1943 are the most famous because the opponents were evenly matched, but the events before and after are in some ways more revealing.  

Next - 123. Drifting off

114. The age of Supers

Previous - 113. Books For Living

Link to Table of Contents

"We hold these truths...

...to be self-evident: that all men are created equal...." The last time I quoted this I was interested in slaves and Native Americans -- the individuals who were not "self-evidently" equal at the time of the American Revolution. Now I'm interested in the "supers."

Super heroes, super stars, super models. All the individuals our culture places not below the "equal" but above. This train of thought left the station as I was riding the elliptical this morning at the gym. (The inclusion of "at the gym" there hints at my fantasy of some day having an elliptical machine in my apartment. This would be after I discover the extra room I never realized I had.)

Film and TV are currently obsessed with super heroes. The DC 'verse has Superman and Supergirl and "Metas" who are humans but with special powers -- I can't really explain "metas," because DC. The Marvel 'verse, my home, has mutants who are also humans with special powers. Then there's my other home, the Whedon 'verse.

Buffy also falls into the superhero category since she is mostly human but part demon -- as we learn late in the series. Season four of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (BtVS) is one of the weakest, but one of the few things that season I liked was when Buffy tries to team up with a secret government anti-demon force called The Initiative. They are para-military with fancy weapons and technology. But Buffy is in another league. We, the fans, know she is special just as the fans of the Harry Potter films knew he was special. Buffy thrives (to the extent that she does thrive) because of her relationships with her merely human friends, just as Harry thrives, in part, due to his mudblood friends. But "we" understand that in the end Buffy and Harry are the "special" ones. 

The Lord of the Rings, especially The Return of the King, and countless other books and popular movies, extend this superness to nobility of blood. Even Neo in The Matrix is "The One." 

Sports is all about superstars, those rare individuals who excel at some particular activity. (If only Barry Bonds had been bitten by a radioactive spider instead of doing whatever he did to "augment" his natural abilities, we wouldn't be having a debate about his belonging in the baseball Hall of Fame.) Joe Montana is still just shy of a god here because he excelled at activities, and in situations, that even other superstars struggle in. You'd think people would pull for the more average guy, but it's the thrill of seeing the exceptional person soar above the rest that draws people to these events. Mediocrity isn't that interesting to see. 

I suppose the gods were the original superheroes and you have to wonder if the same desire wasn't, at least in part, behind their creation. Inventing powers we wish we had, or at least that we would like to see.

Bringing this around to government, you could say, in favor of Napoleon, that at least he was exceptionally good at something, and so more deserving of imperium than the average Bourbon. (Though I would insist on making Berthier co-Emperor if we're going to base this on his military reputation.) Of course democracy is (or should be) more about compromise than excellence. But, then again, LBJ should have been the perfect leader -- and maybe would have been, except for the Vietnam War.

BRT

If you go to Google Earth and search on "Van Ness Avenue" you will probably still see a street with a median lined with large and small trees, but not for long. All the trees around the intersection with Sutter Street are already cut down, with more trees now destined for destruction.

Not only is this bad news for the trees -- and those of us who breath oxygen -- but this would seem to be an unfortunate time to cut the trees as I imagine birds have already built nests in some of these trees in anticipation of spring. And all of this is to make way for Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) lanes that I really doubt will make that much of a difference. I do hope I'm wrong about this.

Cantigo

These books are giving me surprisingly little to work with. My favorite thing so far in Candide is a quote from Voltaire in a footnote right after we learn that the Old Woman is the daughter of a Pope Urban the Tenth and a Princess, "Note the extreme discretion of the author; hitherto there has never been a pope named Urban X; he avoided attributing a bastard to a known pope. What circumspection! what an exquisite conscience!" Though Voltaire may seem to have been less discreet in the future as, after our current Urban IX clears the stage, it will be rather awkward for another cardinal to assume the name Urban. Either the current pope is Urban the Last, or the next Urban will be, or at least might be seen to be, a rake.

Vertigo p104 ...In this little booklet [Der Beredte Italiener], which had belonged to a maternal great-uncle of mine, who spent some time working as an office clerk in northern Italy toward the end of the last century, everything seemed arranged in the best of all possible ways... even the greatest of horrors were safely banished, as if to each dark side there were a redeeming counterpart, to every evil its good, to every pain its pleasure, and to every lie a measure of truth....

This is an overwhelmingly odd novel. I'm 116 pages in and have no idea what it's about. We just had what I would take to be a plot device, except that so far the course of the book has seemed more random than plotted. While staying in Limone sul Garda (not clear why) the protagonist's passport goes missing and has presumably been given to another departing German by mistake. He then goes to Milan to get a new passport from the German Consulate there. OK, but wouldn't you assume that Herr Doll would notice -- and probably quite soon -- that he also lacked his proper passport and would desire to retrieve it? Wouldn't the rational thing be to stay where you were for at least a day or so and see if your passport would return to you? That's what I would do.

Next - 115. Crossroads

113. Books For Living

Previous - 112. I immediately regret this...

Link to Table of Contents

Some updates

Since I bought that special tool to tighten the chair screws at Peet's, they've tightened them all properly. So I only got to use the tool once. Either this is the usual thing that happens with me where I call about something or see a doctor right before the problem goes away on it's own or the package shows up in the mail; or my offering to tighten up their chair screws made them finally address this on their own. I'd like to think that it's the latter, but I doubt it.

On the other hand, recall the non-functioning cable car override switch? It's been weeks since I first noticed it wasn't functioning and tried to report it yet it still isn't working. I've finally noticed that this malfunction gives me more time to walk across Bush street -- the harder direction to cross at that intersection -- so I'm just going keep quiet and let the car traffic remain delayed. 

New books

Having finished Absalom, Absalom!, I ventured yet again to Green Apple Books to sell a bunch of books and to buy something new to read. Just as happened last time, I had a long list of books to find and couldn’t find most of them. They didn’t have A Tale of Genji, I’m sad to say, and their shelving system is so chaotic and poorly signed that if they had any of the non-fiction titles on my list I couldn’t locate them. (Granted, I would have been surprised if they had had The Essence of Christianity by Ludwig Feuerbach.)

What I did find was Candide by Voltaire and Vertigo by W.G. Sebald. I’ve started Candide and already found my next role in life. But is there still time for me to become an instructor in metaphysico-theologico-cosmoloonigology? 


And now Vertigo. Oh, my! The beginning is also about war in Europe -- though a century later -- and the protagonist (Beyle) already suffers, along with Pangloss, from our old friend syphilis. And Beyle starts his story as a youth in Napoleon’s army as it crosses the Great St. Bernard Pass for the first campaign in Italy. While nominally a dragoon, he doesn’t seem to take much part in the war and only visits Marengo fifteen months after the battle. His merely dropping a few names, like Kellermann and Marmont take me back to an almost unimaginable past -- since I’ve almost exclusively read about the 1815 campaign for so long. (Oh, the names... Berthier, Lannes, Desaix, Masséna, Murat, Victor. It's like recalling the 1st or 2nd 49er Superbowl teams back in the '80s. The first glimpse of people destined to become legends.) Was Napoleon crushed by the failure of his old Marshals to rally to him after he landed in France after Elba? Fifteen years of war! You could write an Iliad about Napoleon’s endless wars -- with the Marshals grousing in their tents; refusing, like Achilles, to put on their armor and fight. Only wondering if they would ever be able to retire home to rest in peace. 

Anyway, Destiny or which ever Hellenic Deity is the God of Books, mandates that I blog these two titles next, and together, apparently. 

The basics

Candide by Voltaire (originally by "Doctor Ralph")
The Norton Critical Edition, 2nd Edition, 1991

(Finally thought to look up the entire library of Norton Critical Editions... that could keep me busy for a lifetime or two.)


Vertigo by W.G. Sebald 

A New Directions Book, 2nd Edition, 1990

Candigo (the shipper mashup of Candide + Vertigo)

It occurs to me that our modern optimistic liberals share a good deal with Pangloss. While many wish for a world where people are not discriminated against on the basis of their various statuses, the only thing people seem to really agree on is that they themselves would rather not be discriminated for their own statuses. While many wish for a world where young women can dress as they please and drink as they please without having to worry about being molested by Bulgars, the modern Pangloss thinks we actually live in that world, all evidence to the contrary.

Schwalbe

Last night I went to a Will Schwalbe book signing on West Portal (a posh neighborhood commercial street) with a couple people from my book club. Our Meaning Of Life Book Club was inspired by his The End of Your Life Book Club, which was also our first title. His current title is Books For Living in which he talks about books that he feels he read at just the right time and that taught him important lessons.

He's an interesting writer and possibly a better public speaker. He brought up a number of points I wanted to go into more detail about, but, unfortunately, the signing was very well attended, so I couldn't really get into it with him. 

I haven't yet read this book, so all I have to go on is what he said last night. It seems to me that to do this right, you would have to first lay out the proper circumstances under which you should read the titles he's selected. Some of these are easy: After the death of someone very close to you; or When you realize that the path you are on in life isn't that satisfying. But others are more challenging. It would be interesting to describe the perfect circumstances for ones reading the books you yourself have found most important. Sometimes this would include having already read prerequisite books. Sometimes you might have to be at the right age or level of maturity. 

(And of course there is the reverse of this idea: Books you should not read at certain times -- either because of what you're dealing with or because of what you haven't yet experienced or learned. I'm now imagining "trigger warnings" on books. For Metamorphosis, "Avoid this title when your residence is experiencing an insect infestation.") 

Someone in the audience brought up the lack of books in translation on his list, which he loved since in his other life he is a publisher of books in translation -- mostly from the Far East. 

He also made what may be the most frightening comment I've ever heard, I brought up my question about the possible existence of books that are better in translation than in the original, and he said he had heard from German speakers that some English translations of German philosophy are actually better because the translator had to struggle to make sense of, and then translate, ideas that were even more puzzling in the original German. I have always assumed Kant and Heidegger and the rest must be at least a little more understandable in German. I even tried to tackle Kant in German back in the late '70s... no wonder I didn't have any luck (as if that was the real problem).

It turns out he has dreams of a type I also have, but had never heard mentioned before. The kind of dream where you suddenly discover your house has rooms (or sometimes just storage areas) that you had previously been unaware of. I love these dreams. A variation on the genre are dreams where you discover you still have things you haven't had for decades. I recall a dream where I discovered my old P-38 automatic had simple been stored in an unlikely place (since high school, I guess.) 

Troy, 4?

p72 Schliemann began his search for Troy after retiring from his business enterprises as a millionaire at age forty-five or so...

Schliemann made his money as a successful businessman, who earned one fortune selling indigo, tea, coffee, and sugar in the Crimea, and another during the California gold rush in 1851-52. It was in California that he served as a banker/middleman in Sacramento, buying gold dust from the miners and selling it to the Rothschild banking family, via its representative in San Francisco. He bought low and sold high -- and, some say, kept his thumb on the scales while doing so. He may well have left California one step ahead of the law, perhaps with as much as $2 million in profits, amid charges concerning the amount of gold dust that he was shipping....

I had no idea he had a local connection. I'm not going to go into any detail about Schliemann (since I don't really care) but I will say that the account of him here reminds me a great deal of Donald Trump -- though Schliemann may have been more deceiving than delusional. Well, maybe a few more details,

p75 Upon his return [to the Eastern Med.] from the United Sates, in September 1869, just a few months after procuring both his American citizenship and divorce through unorthodox and possibly illegal means, Schliemann married Sophia Engastromenos in Athens. He was forty-seven; she was sixteen. They had two children, whom they named Andromache and Agamemnon -- but that would come later...

Schliemann was in such a rush to get down to Troy II, which he believed to be the Troy Homer wrote about, that his workers dug through and dumped the more recent layers of Troy on the mound -- the remains of cities more recent in time -- including Troy VI and VII, which are now believed to be the actual levels of interest. He literally destroyed what he had been so desperate to find.

Next - 114. The age of Supers