vocalics
sibilants sound the bells,
herald the spit that speeds
away from smirked lips.
gutturals follow on
their heels, grudging
grief that hides its other
fricatives. should phonemes
be parallel to thought,
desire and anger then
would be palatal philo-
sophies from the cornered
mouth, wisdom punctuated
by glottal stops.
frames
zeno built motion
on stillness, and still
the notion holds - film,
for instance, where frame
after frame is movement.
the converse may be true.
the photo taken in an instant
flits quietly, drifts
unnoticed, then sits in a corner,
teasing memory to forget.
cezanne's fruits ripen
before the eyes. murder
is replayed in black and white
in one man's guernica.
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Popular Histories
Historiography has been approached in delicious ways. Consider Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire , for example - still juicy reading even as we begin the 21st century. It's because he wrote so well and his characters come alive. I don't know if it's Gibbon who is vital or the Roman emperors whose lives are like 20th century violent lives wrapped in ancient costumes. Even now, they're still vital to Hollywood for their perverse stories and the academe for their perverse politics. Or Spengler's proto-Nazi Decline of the West, interesting because idiosyncratic.
The writing of history can be in grand sweeps like Toynbee's. When it is, it often becomes an academic exercise which the rest of us poor folks read only in abridged editions. Or it may focus on plain folk and plain guilds like Huizinga's and the Annales school's. Histories often read well if written in this gear. Or histories may be pseudo-histories written specifically for the initiated few to demonstrate particular philosophical positions like Michel Foucault's demonstration of society's exercise of power in sexual or mind matters.
Often, though, they're now written with the hope of making the bestseller lists. Here, the focus is on persons who make history, the more notorious being more attractive.
Occupying a middle ground is Peter Watson's history of the 20th century trailblazers and their ideas, A Terrible Beauty: The People and Ideas that Shaped the Modern Mind (Phoenix Press, 2000). Watson's book does not focus on events but on ideas and the people that mattered. It has extensive sections dealing with technological and scientific advances, unusual for a general history. And this is a congenial book, easy to read and like, almost an encyclopedia. This is a tremendous work - tremendous for the extent of coverage, from the invention of the unconscious and discovery of the quantum to black holes, Freud to Hawking. It's tremendous for the amount of research that went into it.
It helps that Watson is not very opinionated. It's his main strength as it enables him to present people and ideas quickly, with very little fuss. It's also the main weakness. There are sections, which because of the lack of philosophical or political bias, look like a recitation of items from a dictionary of ideas, giving the impression that this history is but a huge summary. Still, this is an impressive summary. The bibliography alone can populate an impressive inquiring mind's Delicious Library.
The writing of history can be in grand sweeps like Toynbee's. When it is, it often becomes an academic exercise which the rest of us poor folks read only in abridged editions. Or it may focus on plain folk and plain guilds like Huizinga's and the Annales school's. Histories often read well if written in this gear. Or histories may be pseudo-histories written specifically for the initiated few to demonstrate particular philosophical positions like Michel Foucault's demonstration of society's exercise of power in sexual or mind matters.
Often, though, they're now written with the hope of making the bestseller lists. Here, the focus is on persons who make history, the more notorious being more attractive.
Occupying a middle ground is Peter Watson's history of the 20th century trailblazers and their ideas, A Terrible Beauty: The People and Ideas that Shaped the Modern Mind (Phoenix Press, 2000). Watson's book does not focus on events but on ideas and the people that mattered. It has extensive sections dealing with technological and scientific advances, unusual for a general history. And this is a congenial book, easy to read and like, almost an encyclopedia. This is a tremendous work - tremendous for the extent of coverage, from the invention of the unconscious and discovery of the quantum to black holes, Freud to Hawking. It's tremendous for the amount of research that went into it.
It helps that Watson is not very opinionated. It's his main strength as it enables him to present people and ideas quickly, with very little fuss. It's also the main weakness. There are sections, which because of the lack of philosophical or political bias, look like a recitation of items from a dictionary of ideas, giving the impression that this history is but a huge summary. Still, this is an impressive summary. The bibliography alone can populate an impressive inquiring mind's Delicious Library.
Hamlet in Limbo
One of the most innovative interpretations of Shakespeare's Hamlet, more specifically Hamlet's father's ghost is provided towards the end of Stephen Greenblatt's Hamlet in Purgatory (Princeton University Press) , a book from three years ago. The book is not carried by many stores even in the U.S. and I got my copy from a Borders store in Washington DC only late last year, though it's on Amazon.
This book provides a long but satisfying discussion of medieval belief in Purgatory, the violent power politics of Catholicism and Protestantism in 16th century England and the written narratives of ghostly apparitions from an individual perspective. In short, this is as much a history as a book of literary criticism - which is Greenblatt's innovation, sustained in his later work of Shakespearian biography, Will in the World (W.Norton).
It works because of concrete examples that buttress Greenblatt's psychologically inclined arguments which would have fallen by the wayside where there not sufficient data from the period's historical and narrative literature that he provides. Ghostly haunting equals memory of the dead - though there's more to the equation as he discusses the ups and downs of purgatorial fires, communication with dead loved ones and the role of both institutional and individual beliefs.
In the middle of the book, you wonder where Hamlet is and think he is probably in Limbo instead of Purgatory, but it builds chapter by chapter towards the end when he finally discusses Shakespeare's stage, Hamlet and his ghostly father in a manner worthy of praise.
After finishing the book, I kept wondering how medieval beliefs are sustained in the present. Having lived all my life in a traditional Catholic country, much of what he discusses is still around me, part of my culture, even part of my current religion. I kept wondering whether his secular premise is true, and whether belief in Purgatory should be sustained as a matter of hope, as a matter of love for the departed, or even as a matter of fact or fiction. I guess, then, that Hamlet is a peripheral consideration in this work, and the play serves merely as a stage for a discussion of Purgatory built on a premise.
This book provides a long but satisfying discussion of medieval belief in Purgatory, the violent power politics of Catholicism and Protestantism in 16th century England and the written narratives of ghostly apparitions from an individual perspective. In short, this is as much a history as a book of literary criticism - which is Greenblatt's innovation, sustained in his later work of Shakespearian biography, Will in the World (W.Norton).
It works because of concrete examples that buttress Greenblatt's psychologically inclined arguments which would have fallen by the wayside where there not sufficient data from the period's historical and narrative literature that he provides. Ghostly haunting equals memory of the dead - though there's more to the equation as he discusses the ups and downs of purgatorial fires, communication with dead loved ones and the role of both institutional and individual beliefs.
In the middle of the book, you wonder where Hamlet is and think he is probably in Limbo instead of Purgatory, but it builds chapter by chapter towards the end when he finally discusses Shakespeare's stage, Hamlet and his ghostly father in a manner worthy of praise.
After finishing the book, I kept wondering how medieval beliefs are sustained in the present. Having lived all my life in a traditional Catholic country, much of what he discusses is still around me, part of my culture, even part of my current religion. I kept wondering whether his secular premise is true, and whether belief in Purgatory should be sustained as a matter of hope, as a matter of love for the departed, or even as a matter of fact or fiction. I guess, then, that Hamlet is a peripheral consideration in this work, and the play serves merely as a stage for a discussion of Purgatory built on a premise.
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