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“Lord, I’m much too young to feel this damn old.”                         ––Garth Brooks

Enough with these phrases “falling in love” and “failing at life”—better to be “Eros-bound.” In the myth of Cupid and Psyche, the latter falls for the former. The myth tells that Cupid (or Eros) manifested himself as an invisible figure, came in the night, but left before dawn. Psyche pricked herself with one of his arrows, and upon gazing at Cupid with the dart still in her finger, fell in love with love itself (as well as any ideas associated with it).

The sequence must be kept straight: Psyche falls for Eros—not vice versa—the mind falls for love. Love is never lured by a mind, no matter how mighty. Intelligence alone is never sexy, only the power emanating from that intelligence can be considered sexy.

When it comes to being Eros-bound, an older man begins to act passive and astonished once he realizes his predicament, while a young man remains restless, unsurprised at his fortune with women. An older man can love without lust or can be contented it to the point where lust loses its sting. But lust never dulls for younger men. The lust of the young is the belief in a false ideal—the love of the old is the realization that all ideals are false. As Proust’s translator puts it:

But at the time of life, tinged already with disenchantment, which Swann was approaching, when a man can content himself with being in love for the pleasure of loving without expecting too much in return, this linking of hearts, if it is no longer, as in early youth, the goal towards which love, of necessity, tends, still is bound to love by so strong an association of ideas that it may well become the cause of love if it presents itself first. In his younger days a man dreams of possessing the heart of the woman whom he loves; later, the feeling that he possesses the heart of a woman may be enough to make him fall in love with her. And 50, at an age when it would appear—since one seeks in love before everything else a subjective pleasure—that the taste for feminine beauty must play the larger part in its procreation, love may come into being, love of the most physical order, without any foundation in desire. At this time of life a man has already been wounded more than once by the darts of love; it no longer evolves by itself, obeying its own incomprehensible and fatal laws, before his passive and astonished heart. We come to its aid; we falsify it by memory and by suggestion; recognising one of its symptoms we recall and recreate the rest.[1]

The older man may countercheck love with his memory. He who remembers too much is an excellent deceiver. He who remembers too little makes a great instructor.

Nothing but wanting-not-to-wait––this quivering, quickening, quaking angst––drove me to reread my seventy-five pages of notes on Proust then produce the above paragraphs. I see nothing surprising in the outcome of my actions. My restless and impatience indicates I possess the mind of a younger man. For some of us it is nearly too late to grow old. Our next lesson is to learn to get over it.

---

[1] Proust, Marcel. À la recherche du temps perdu. (In Search of Lost Time.) Vol. I, Du côté de chez Swann. (Swann’s Way.) 1913. § “Swann in Love.”

Continued from:

First of Three Proposals: Toward a Poetics of Ignorance

Second of Three Proposals: Toward a Frankenstein-like Poetics

1.0 The advent of the Internet is itself a kind of Frankenstein—it tore the curtain to the temple of knowledge. The web is the New Tower of Babel, and in effect, the ultimate (the final and most foreboding) Frankenstein for literature and language.

1.1 This ultimate Frankenstein ended the monopoly of access and acquisitions of information formerly dominated by such archons (archangels) as government, bureaucracy, academe, mass media. Now that the literary Holy of Holies is transparent––light shines in and out of its temple and altar.[1]

2.0 Because the writer cannot convey pure doubt, he must instead convey pure ignorance (a kind of “unknown unknown”) about certain book-parts.

2.1 A book made of other books implies that the writer possessed some amount of prior innate knowledge (gnosis) of those book-parts which constitute the final book as a whole.

2.2 A writer does (must) doubt the book-parts before him are yet alive and have yet to exist as a whole––hence the writer has no doubt that he is the one obligated to vitalize the book-parts sitting before him into a whole “new book.” Hence the writer has no doubt that he must quicken, reanimate these book-parts.

2.3 Were our three proposals already accepted and implemented, David Foster Wallace would’ve written a 300-page novel with 900 pages of notes (accessible only electronically), instead of the vise versa found in his Infinite Jest (1997).

 

For all impractical purposes let us examine the divisions of poetic persona by interrupting a scene from Shakespeare’s As You Like It. In our take on the play, Audrey, an American country dame, continually questions Touchstone, a European clown of the court. The two banter back and forth in the forest of Arden.

Touchstone: When a man’s verses cannot be understood, nor a man’s good wit seconded with the forward child understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room. Truly, I would the gods had made thee poetical. (As You Like It III, iii)

Audrey: I do not know what “poetical” is. Is it honest in deed and word? Is it a true thing?

Touchstone: Are you implying, then, that you cannot understand my verses, Audrey? Come on. I know you have more than a mere child’s understanding of the world, even if it doesn’t include comprehending “poetical” things quite as well as I.

Audrey: If you say so.

Touchstone: Come, Audrey, don’t be confused. There’s nothing wrong with a child’s understanding when it comes to things poetical. Some have said that it’s a good thing—and not just Martha Stuart. Take a contemporary of our creator Shakespeare: Sir Philip Sidney, and how he observes in his Apology to Poetry (1595):

If then a man can arrive, at that child’s age, to know that the poet’s persons and doings are but pictures of what should be, and not stories of what have been, they will never give the lie to things not affirmatively but allegorically and figuratively written.[i]

So all I mean, Audrey, is that you must learn to arrive at a child’s age, that is, if you are to someday know the nature of things “poetical” and not give in to the lies of literalists who have no understanding for what is allegorically and figuratively written.

Audrey: You may know what you know, but because you talk so much, I hear everything that you know as well as otherwise. And though I am but a country hick compared to you, tall, terrible Touchstone, understand, my man, that I still hear all things from all beings.

Touchstone: Well, stop with all the hearing and start listening to me, for I will speak of things poetic. I think it best to begin with the pre-origins of the English language poets, those found in the persona of the ancient Welsh bard.

Audrey: But why Welsh?

Touchstone: Because I am specifically interested in how the historical personage of the Welsh bard compares to the English poet—a cultural archetype sometimes called “the good writer.” I am interested in whatever functions, obligations, and responsibilities are required of the modern “good writer” and how they compare to those of the ancient bard. And if that is not enough to inspire indulgence in the subject of bardism, then for no other reason, Audrey, let us be led in the same scholastic spirit as J. R. R. Tolkien:

For myself I would say that more than the interest and uses of the study of Welsh as an adminicle of English philology, more than the practical linguist’s desire to acquire a knowledge of Welsh for the enlargement of his experience, more even than the interest and worth of the literature, older and newer, that is preserved in it, these two things seem important: Welsh is of the soil, this island, the senior language of the men of Britain; and Welsh is beautiful.[ii]

Touchstone: Welsh as an adminicle of English philology contains some compression of thought, Audrey: “adminicle” is fairly rare according to my searches through both the Oxford English Dictionary and Google. It principally means supportive, so we might take Tolkien to mean that the study of the Welsh language is supportive of the original study of English philology. But adminicle has another meaning—that of the decorative graphics that surround the main figure on a coin.

Audrey: So then, we can interpret Tolkien for our purposes to say that Welsh is a kind of decorative graphic, an ornamental interlacing that surrounds the main (and more important) figure of English? And yet both are embossed on the coin of philology (or what today we call linguistics)?

Touchstone: In so many words, Audrey, yes. And from this same essay, “Welsh and English” (1955), Tolkien adds:

If I may once more refer to my work, The Lord of the Rings [1954], in evidence: the names of persons and places in this story were mainly composed on patterns deliberately modeled on those of Welsh (closely similar but not identical) [particularly “Arthurian romance”]. This element in the tale has given perhaps more pleasure to more readers than anything else in it.[iii]

Audrey: So Tolkien is a modern bard, The Lord of the Rings is his song, a song supported by the decorative graphics found in Welsh tales of Arthur, the most notable I suppose, being found in the Mabinogion. Therefore: the Mabinogion functions as an adminicle to Lord of the Rings, or so Bard Tolkien tells us, and this adminicle is what gives readers the most pleasure.

Continued from First of Three Proposals: Toward a Poetics of Ignorance

See also Third of Three Proposals: Toward Reconciling a Poetics of Ignorance with a Frankenstein-like Poetics

1.0 All books of power are made from prior books of power. A few of these books are elaborate tapestries, however, most are patchwork quilts. All books are literally scrapbooks: books made from the scraps of other books.[1]

1.1 These scraps, or parts of prior books, are also the prior parts of dead peoples’ thoughts, ideas, and memories—so these book-parts are no different than the lifeless limbs of dead men and women.

1.2 A writer reassembles, reanimates the dead parts of people to make a book, therefore: any book of power is a “Frankenstein” monster, a kind of zombie text.

2.0 The doubts expressed by a writer stimulate, reanimate the parts, and quicken the book to breathe before the reader.[2]

3.0 A library is a cemetery[3]––the writer is a ghoul, a grave robber, hence the truism: “All writers steal.”

See also Second of Three Proposals: Toward a Frankenstein-like Poetics

Third of Three Proposals: Toward Reconciling a Poetics of Ignorance with a Frankensten-like Poetics

1.0 We accept De Quincy’s demarcation[1] for all books in the Library of Babel[2]: There are “books of knowledge” and “books of power.”

1.1 If books of power are not books of knowledge, they are, in some sense, “books of ignorance.”[3]

1.2 A writer who follows (or applies) a poetics of ignorance produces books of ignorance.

1.3 When applying a poetics of ignorance, the writer should not “write what he knows”—on the contrary: he should write what he doesn’t know. As author he must advertise his avoidances and make his text transparent by unveiling, confessing that which he knows not.

2.0 Because books of power are also books of ignorance, whenever an author attempts to beckon (and reckon) Truth, it tends only to bore the reader. This is because generally, truths and beliefs preached by the writer, or portrayed by his characters drive away the reader’s attention. The presence of truth drives a reader’s attention to halt, stop, stay static. Conversely, any ideas unknown to the reader, unfamiliar (novel) ideas to which the reader is ignorant, tend to intrigue the reader.

2.1 “Doubt”, for readers, includes all ideas unknown, unfamiliar, or novel (and intriguing) to them. Doubt is a stimulus for readers—it stimulates their attention, spurs intrigue, births curiosity, channels wonder, and drives their attention to continuing its quarrying.[4] Following a poetics of ignorance allows a writer to cultivate, articulate intriguing doubts that will stimulate readers onward, page after page.

3.0 Writers of books of ignorance must learn to display novelty: hence the name of the literary form, the Novel. Writers must display novelty, not for the sake of notoriety but rather for displaying their own wonderment at that novelty. When a writer acknowledges novelty, she conveys ignorance to her reader. Anything the writer considers novel must be, in some sense, unfamiliar, because those things unfamiliar to her are the things to which she is ignorant and curious about.

3.1 According to Peirce,[5] and contrary to Descartes, the writer cannot know her unknowns (or the things to which she is ignorant)—but she can know her doubts:

It cost me much Trouble to explain to him what I was doing; for the Inhabitants have not the least Idea of Books or Literature…. It was with some Difficulty, and by the help of many Signs, that I brought him to understand me. He replied, That I must needs be mistaken, or that I said the thing which was not. (For they have no Word in their Language to express Lying or Falsehood.)

––Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (1726), IV, iii.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

––Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), § 7.0.

[T]here are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns––the ones we don’t know we don’t know.

––Donald Rumsfield, Department of Defense News Brief for February 12, 2002.

Years ago a man around 35, in his second marriage with a son by the second spouse, advised me that whether it be marriage, living together or simply dating, a man should always be emotionally and financially prepared for that relationship to end within his next two weeks. Most people I know don’t calculate their romantic endeavors with quite that much icy practicality, but I understood where he was coming from.
 
Much work has been done on the recent morphing of American marriage––work relevant to Christians of all creeds and even readable to a curious yahoo like yours truly.[1]That work shows how modern marriage operates, along with offering solutions which seek to improve the lives of couples and children––surely no one doubts this discussion would be complete without acknowledging the essential centrality of children to traditional marriage––but I am sorry to say these studies and solutions, at best, apply only sporadically to the day-to-day lives of today’s chronically single, straight adult males.
 
The species of men I’m talking about are commonly known—Kay Hymowitz sketched an icon of him several years ago in her infamous “Child-man” article for City Journal: porn, parties, pot, Peter Pan—whatever the details, he is essentially a man not good enough for the modern American woman. But by what methods can such men cure themselves? This is not a question Hymowitz nor others, particularly Jen Doll’s recent piece in the Village Voice, seem interested in asking. They seem more interested in asking why women still sexually succumb to such low-grade men—a perfectly legitimate question––but as a single man approaching thirty, I am more interested in how to become attainable to these modern American women while retaining some sense of romantic morality.
 
I think it all boils down to a single issue: the idea of permanence has been separated from all concepts of marriage (as well as courtship, dating). We’ve all read or heard about how marriage used to be, and we know all the ways in which it is not like that now. Whatever the cause(s), no sober observer can deny that permanence has been severed from marriage in the most default sense of day-to-day living for American single men, whether Christian or heathen, whether divorced or never married. We can eulogize for what has passed while hoping for its return, but for the moment the status quo must be faced.
 
When we turn toward the current state of matrimony, how does a less-than-optimal male notembrace political indifference toward either strengthening or eradicating traditional concepts of marriage? When durability is no longer an expected feature of dating, cohabitating, marrying, remarrying, what incentive can evoke him to revive and preserve the traditions he has lost? Is it wrong to recognize today’s hordes of single men with less-than-stellar incomes need additional motives to consent to marriage beyond biological desire?

Advocates often tout the economic benefits of marriage as the best incentive for eligible singles to alter their status. While I lack the competence to question the statistics of experts, I can’t help but believe this particular sale’s pitch is like saying anyone who enjoys looking up at the sky ought to prefer airplanes to seagulls simply because all aircraft fly faster than marine fowl. While seagulls will never evolve into airplanes, the idea of assuming allunmarried non-alpha males will mature and become marriageable, and thereby be financially stable for their spouses, permits a range of fallacies to creep in unnoticed. Yes, marriage genuinely allows a couple to soar high in the atmosphere of economics, but when measured by the decade, any observer can tell you that today’s airplanes, seagulls, and marriages seldom stay airborne for prolonged periods.
 
Outliers such as beta-men are rightly footnoted and thereby rapidly forgotten in the reports of sociologists, though necessary questions remain to be asked. I’m sure we’ve all known a few single men who wanted to play Jack Nicholson but were stuck––indeed typecast––in the role of Jack Lemon. But by what methods are they or their potential partners to resist bowing before the idol of hypergamy (i.e., the idea of “marrying up”) pitched by our media? Do some men remain unmarriageable because they are beta-males or do they stay beta because they are unmarriageable? And what of those who suffer from involuntary abstinence? As a specimen, and not a sociologist, I can only suspect these answers involve something more than an admixture of snakes, snails and puppy-dogs’ tails.
 
Where does the confused, Christian turn? Emerson once wrote, “If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument,” and in the past my Protestant background turned me toward Scripture. Yes, wisdom resides in Joseph’s flight from Potiphar’s wife. Yes, a foreboding negation of spiritual inheritance lurks beneath the story of Onan. Yes, as Abraham found out with Hagar––and in a more grotesque sense did Lot discover with his daughters––so too do we find demonstrated how the practical, pragmatic path may not be the right way to Yahweh. Yes, we remember marriage and permanence were once inseparable notions via Hosea: he’s stuck with that hussy Gomer whether he likes it or not––and though the imagery of a thorn in one’s side still stirs my spirit, more than a few of today’s single men remain stuck in the dire straits of Job and Ecclesiastes, stumbling to discover how to turn the page and confront the divine satisfaction waiting within the Song of Solomon.
 
I am more than familiar with the phrases: “man up”, “quit whining”, that “while marriage might be a merger, it certainly ain’t no acquisition”, and how the great counselor Clint Eastwood once barked to “adapt, overcome, improvise.” Surely overcoming the status quo of American marriage, as well as the state of its courtship, is not an impossible task––even for a beta-male––but for many, that task lacks teachers.

 [1]Notable advocates, writers, scholars whose work is accessible to Christian laymen and women include: Maggie Gallagher, Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, Andrew Cherlin, Gary Cross, Jennifer Roback Morse, W. Bryan Wilcox, Kay Hymowitz and Mark Regnerus.

Bookseat » Design You Trust.

Found this today:

Multimedia – DW-WORLD.DE.

I never knew until now just what it was that drew me towards Bloom. But after reading his 1991 interview with the Paris Review I think I know why:

INTERVIEWER

Are there [literary, fictional] characters you would like to have known?

BLOOM

No, no. The only person I would like to have known, whom I have never known, but it’s just as well, is Sophia Loren. I have been in love with Sophia Loren for at least a third of a century. But undoubtedly it would be better never to meet her. I’m not sure I ever shall, though my late friend Bart Giamatti had breakfast with her. Judging by photographs and recent film appearances, she has held up quite well, though a little too slender now—no longer the same gorgeous Neapolitan beauty, now a much more sleek beauty.