The Discovery of Chance

I'm currently reading this book about the Russian Alexander Herzen, and it's holding my attention:

amazon.com

Here's a review:

The Living Truth

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03 - 10 - 2017

Okay. I finished reading this book. I think it is a well-written and interesting thing. My only real complaint is that Herzen doesn't come to vivid presence. So much is about ideas, to the point that the subject himself seems diffuse, hard to grasp as a solid being.

Churchill on the First World War:

“No part of the Great War compares in interest with its opening. The measured, silent drawing together of gigantic forces, the uncertainty of their movements and positions, the number of unknown and unknowable facts made the first collision a drama never surpassed.”

Ha! -- philosophical G-Men

From Prospect Magazine:

"The FBI files on being and nothingness"

stupid Freemasonry

High officials in the Russian Provisional Government (before and after the February Revolution) were in secret Freemasonry alliance with high officials in the French government. Their mutual weirdo oaths of support precluded the Provisional Government from seeking a peace treaty with the Germans.

So the war continued, which led to heightened unrest, which led to Lenin and his ilk gaining popular support. And the displacement of the Provisional Government.

What led to the February Revolution and the transition out of tsarism? Mass poverty. What exacerbated that condition? War. With the war ended, the Provisional Government would have had the military at home for civil discipline, social order. Deprivation and desperation would have eased somewhat. There would have been a certain amount of time for new a institution of governance to cohere, to have strengthened in the popular imagination.

With great social unrest at home, Russia didn't have the luxury of time and resources to continue participating in an international military adventure.

If the Provisional Government -- Kerensky and his ilk -- had sued for peace with Germany, then the nascent quasi-Democratic/Republican crowd would have retained power. That would have precluded the eventual rise of Stalin.

The mass atrocities of Stalin can be laid at the feet of those air-headed, lisping Freemasons.


[This stuff was brought to my attention while reading Nina Berberova's The Italics Are Mine.]

fascinating stuff

A review by Anthony Grafton of David Nirenberg's book Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition, which is about "imaginary Jews." An excerpt from the review:

Nirenberg’s lucid, searing narrative and analysis rest on extraordinarily wide reading, the contours of which are charted in his ample and informative notes. He never hesitates to take issue with authorities in many fields, and at times—as when he explains that “I intend no resonance with Jacob Taubes’s treatment of Romans”—his language has a touch of Carthago delenda est. But he conducts his arguments with a seriousness rare in our intellectual life, and vanishingly so in works of historical synthesis. Even when he piles paradox on paradox—as when he argues that Spinoza built the portrait of biblical Judaism in his Tractatus from the stockpile of materials that non-Jewish thinkers had created over the centuries—Nirenberg grounds his arguments in close reading of the texts and engages with the modern authorities whose interpretations he rejects.

W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Hunter S. Thompson said this:

We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world, a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just Whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and that is how history will judge us. No redeeming social value.

I don't want to hear anyone alluding to the United States or any other country as "Nazi."

That shit will not stand, Mr. Gonzo Journalist.

The old, real Nazis tried to systematically destroy an entire people. The Nazi horror of cold-blooded, industrial slaughter is unique. Alluding to any other nation as "Nazi" is to diminish or make diffuse the actual phenomenon of Nazis horror.

Just stop it.

toward a new thought

Hermann Hesse was born in the Black Forest. His books are unusual. Johann Reuchlin (1455 - 1522) was also born in the Black Forest -- spirits in the air, tales of old trees, auras of the fantastic. Thus primed, young Reuchlin goes off into the wider world to become a scholar.

I read an article in Haaretz that set me to wondering and thinking about this fellow Reuchlin. For me, his life was fascinating (Reuchlin at Wikipedia). Reuchlin's life as a Christian also set me to contemplating the historical milieu and predicament of Jews in 15th- and 16th-century Europe (the Germanic regions especially). The way Jews were treated casts the whole of Christendom into an unflattering, even malevolent light. Anti-Semitism, flourishing toxically back then, persists today as a general cultural pox, continues to erupt as mini-plagues of idiots.

Reuchlin's scholarly adventure began with a focus on Greek (philology and philosophy). Later, his thought branched out to a focus on Hebrew (philology and philosophy).

That is interesting.

A kind of fusion occurred in Reuchin's head. From the Greeks, he followed the misty trail of the Neo-Platonists into Gnostic precincts of thinking. That dovetailed nicely with the Jewish Cabala. From the weirdness of the Black Forest to peculiar Greek and Jewish glimpses into reality.

Here's how it happened and what happened next.

While on a sojourn to Italy, Reuchlin met and was influenced by Pico della Mirandola, who provided him intellectual entry to the Jewish Cabala.  That interest led our scholar to a long involvement with the Hebrew language and with Jewish culture in general. Against the pressures of Rome -- to burn all Jewish books in Christendom except the Jewish Bible -- Reuchlin stood opposed. For him, free inquiry implied that all texts are sacrosanct. Reuchlin got into a lot of trouble over that. Historians since then have examined that episode as having three important results: exposing the virulence of anti-Semitism in Europe; developing the free mission of humanist scholars; auguring the Reformation.

Mulling over all this stuff, I think Reuchlin contributed indirectly to later proto-Enlightenment and Enlightenment ideas about dissent, about questioning forms of absolutism and monarchical authority. And I think his view of scholarly freedom stems directly from his studies of rabbinical Talmudic commentary. That's a distinctive aspect of Jewish culture -- argument with authority. God as something other than transcendent celestial Caesar. God as something more like a cantankerous uncle who can be interrogated, even occasionally scolded. 

Or as Reuchlin himself wrote about Hebrew: 

In this divine language, God speaks with men, and men with angels, face to face, as one friend converses with another.

So, I'm struck by how our man Reuchlin improvised his way onto paths of subtler, deeper thinking. His experiences led to a coalescence of impressions toward a new thought: beyond the taken-for-granted and the imperious lie wonders concealed in time and language.

Reuchlin remained a Christian, but I suspect his belief became a somewhat eccentric version.

Johann Reuchlin

amazon.com

the Korean War -- Chosin

In 1950, the UN forces at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir totaled 30,000, of which 80% were US Marines. Against them were arrayed 10 Chinese divisions totaling 67,000 troops. 

The UN forces were surrounded and cut off, in the freezing December conditions. Marine Fox Company was trapped in Toktong Pass for five days of brutal engagement. Eventually, break out and a fighting, walking retreat through Hell Fire Valley toward Koto-ri 60 miles away: frostbite, snipers, night attacks. Reciprocal assaults by Marines up mountain slopes to quell the Chinese, to protect the trucks bearing dead and wounded below.

The Korean War tends to get overlooked in the annals of US conflicts. The fighting was as vicious and difficult as in any war before or since. The stamina and courage of Marines against crushing odds were remarkable.


Chosin: The epic Korean War battle Hollywood overlooked

writing against writing

Whenever I notice that someone has written a work of fiction set during the Holocaust, I flinch. Adorno's complex statements about no poetry after the Holocaust return to me on such occasions, and I apply them, in my own way, to the possibility of fiction.

I think such writers of fiction about the Holocaust should be cautious. Especially about that subtle thing Adorno considered: culture has become diffused into a totalizing, therefore leveling, of consciousness. Everything is equal to everything. The vertical pitch of the unspeakable would get flattened into the horizontal frequency of the mundane. 

So...writers of fiction about the Holocaust should almost be writing against the very act of writing. And against the way reception of writing has also become totalized, leveled, conventional. That way any cheapening, dramatic, careerist, ironic, gratuitous effects would be canceled out in advance. 

What would be left over? I have no idea. But what happened back then is, at least for me, beyond the power of fictional imagining.



Side note --W.G. Sebald found a way to background the Holocaust. But are his books mostly fiction or mostly autobiographical? That leaves the question of fiction as such still not fully addressed. Nonetheless, he did manage to write towards the subject in a subtly artistic manner. The unspeakable remains at a safe distance from clumsy attempts at verisimilitude and drama. It's implicit in the moods, circumstances, and words of the characters. It looms powerfully that way. Sebald's way was a respectful way.

I'm thinking about the White Army

And about the White Movement in Russia between 1917 and 1922, in opposition to the Bolshevik Reds.

a White Army battalion flag

Most Whites were anti-Semitic, desiring to unify Russia according to its "true" essential soul. Many were fervent Tsarists. Some were constitutionalists. A few apolitical. For the most part, an autocratic bent of mind shaped the White perspective. Yet there was no overarching, controlling ideology. It was an amalgam. Cossacks and conflicts, Denikins and divisions.  

I have this cinematographic image in my head of Whites on horses charging across some wide vista. Swords and aristocratic conviction amid dust clouds and defeat.

The word "surreal" is overused. I use it too much. But since Surrealism was in the very air elsewhere, maybe it's okay if I think something of that quality settled upon Russia during this time.

The Bolshevik leaders were a strange, unnerving lot. The Whites perhaps more so, ensconced as they were in visions of the past and nervous glances toward the future. The times they were a-changin', but those White guys wanted to yank tight on the reins. Conservatism always goes around with a musty cloud over its head. Tradition and nostalgia are fine as inspirations for music but maybe not so much as the structure for governing a desperate population.  

I have another image in my head. On some estate or in some fine dacha, old mustachioed generals debate strategy between weeping bouts of melancholy. Off in the corner and sitting at a little round table in the shadows, the second cousin of an attache is thinking: "Only a poet perceives the absurdity of kings as well as Caesar within the slave."


So...what if the White Army and Movement had won? What if the cruel Stalin had not risen to power? I have no idea. But it's "surreal" enough to bring a pleasant and idle pondering. About what Russia might be like today if those White guys had shoved those Red guys out of the way.

"Vicksburg" -- a Gothic Rangers song

Robin Willhite plays bass and 12-string electric guitar lead.

"Vicksburg" on Soundcloud


Vicksburg

I have felt it, the quiver of grim deeds
while walking on the cannon field.
Scarlet roses run like blood blooms,
emblems of those fighters killed.

I don’t cotton keeping slaves, ya’ll.
Lord, how loathsome, vile, and fell.
But to those who fought with brave gall,
I lift my glass and a rebel yell.

Did I hear a mockingbird 
from a copse of trees,
bringing to me Dixie measures
wafting on the breeze?
Or did I discern something subtler
haunting that landscape,
whistling in eternity,
still dressed in tattered gray?

Well, I would not glorify war.
It is a savage devil fever.
But the bright flash of gunfire and sword
is as primal as this river.

How did they fight? They fought quite sharp,
a Southern glint hard in their eyes.
On the 47th night, amid the smoldering ramparts,
Vicksburg gave up a harrowing sigh.

Did I hear a mockingbird 
from a copse of trees,
bringing to me Dixie measures
wafting on the breeze?
Or was that song When Johnny Comes Marching
Home Again 
on wan lips with irony
and melancholy without end? 

I could almost feel the fusillades
from those ironclads up to the steeps.
I could almost feel old tears drop
in the dew that morning weeps.


~ Tim Buck, copyright © 2008

I suppose this explains...

...why the Bolshoi Ballet is incomparable, why a natural and cultural commitment to the art of dance would lead to graceful perfection:

Russian ballet class during the war

the past

If you don't have time for the past -- have some historical consciousness -- then you are lost in a freaking daydream. Floating on the surface of a context-less now. It's hard to even imagine it. But it must be similar to the psychosis of derealization. It's not in the medical books -- "Willful Dementia" -- because it would mean a massive and stressful psychological intervention. Just not enough men in white coats for such a thing.

It's not merely about the lack of instrumental or causal knowledge -- being aware of how traces of the far past subtly affect the present. It's more about a spiritual-aesthetic dynamic missing from the brains of 3 1/2 billion people. How could anyone who is incurious and un-fascinated about gone time -- about how it must have felt to look around and breathe in, say, 1920 (or 1865) -- not go into convulsions of shallowness?

On the Beach, Sunset, 1865 -- Eugène Boudin

Further, and I'm just asking now -- how could a poem or any text that is not haunted by some aspects of history (an implicit volume of old and melancholy significance) be much worth bothering with? Maybe that's why I like East European poetry so much. The past is so present there. Poets there are compelled to write into and through the past, rather than express their purely current pathology. Such a temporal orientation forces the issue -- drags the poet out of himself and into the vaster mystic.

Tito

British agent Fitzroy MacLean was sent by Churchill to suss out and possibly assist Tito against the Nazis. Even if he was a Commie. 

MacLean remarked that this future prime minister and later president of Yugoslavia "could see both sides of a question and had a never-failing sense of humor."

Tito wrote this to Stalin:

Stop sending people to kill me. We've already captured five of them, one of them with a bomb and another with a rifle. If you don't stop sending killers, I'll send one to Moscow, and I won't have to send a second.

Accusations of atrocities under Tito's post-war leadership have been raised. As far as I know, they've not been confirmed. Others will know much more about this than me.

I must set aside some time to ponder Tito -- a man of complex consciousness inside a surreal country. A man also playing a long role on the world's stage.

Josip Broz Tito (1892 - 1980)

about COME AND SEE

Who could resist...

...this newly published book?

amazon.com

The Holocaust Chronicle

amazon.com

I obtained this large, important book ten years ago. It's physically heavy and thematically weighty. The horror evoked by the text and photographs makes one tremble at the actual horror experienced during those years.

The entire book is online here:

holocaustchronicle.org

a profound book review

"Faustian Bargain"


About the Holocaust.

AUTUMN IN THE HEAVENLY KINGDOM

I know you must have felt a vague, restless sensation haunting you for ages. What could it be? What is this thing, this sense of absence in the soul? Well, surely it must be your hidden need to know about the Taiping Rebellion in China during the 19th century.

amazon.com

A strange counterpoint runs all through the discussion -- either an unhinged teapot whistling in the back of the room or a pathetic ghost playing a bamboo flute in an adjoining room. At the 35:50 time-mark, it becomes delightfully annoying.

SARAH THE PRIESTESS

The First Matriarch of Genesis 

amazon.com

from the publisher's page -- Swallow Press

The only source in which Sarah is mentioned is the Book of Genesis, which contains very few highly selective and rather enigmatic stories dealing with her. On the surface, these stories tell us very little about Sarah, and what they do tell is complicated and confused by the probability that it represents residue surviving from two different written sources based on two independent oral traditions. Nevertheless, the role which Sarah plays, in the Genesis narratives, apears to be a highly energetic one, a role so active, in fact, that it repeatedly overshadows that of her husband.

In a patriarchal environment such as the Canaan of Genesis, the situation is discordant and problematic. Dr. Teubal suggests that the difficulty is eliminated, however, if we understand that Sarah and the other matriarchs mentioned in the narratives acted within the established, traditional Mesopotamian role of priestess, of a class of women who retained a highly privileged position vis-a-vis their husbands.

Dr. Teubal shows that the “Sarah tradition” represents a nonpatriarchal system struggling for survival in isolation, in the patriarchal environment of what was for Sarah a foreign society. She further indicates that the insistence of Sarah and Rebekah that their sons and heirs marry wives from the old homeland had to do not so much with preference for endogamy and cousin marriage as with their intention of ensuring the continuation of their old kahina-tradition against the overwhelming odds represented by patriarchal Canaan.



Okay. Now this sounds neat to me. The idea of a pagan Canaanite culture in which priestesses had important roles in society is something I like to think about. And that culture beginning to fuse with ancient Hebraic culture (and trying to retain priestess stuff)  is really something to ponder upon.

In fact, if I had it in me, I would try to write a poem about this.