Exclusivity

There are some writers who have hated Shakespeare, including some writers I admire such as Tolstoy and George Bernard Shaw. Voltaire was another of the Shakespeare haters, and I used to be a great admirer of Voltaire. However, the more Leibniz I read, the model for Voltaire's ridiculous and useless Dr Pangloss, the more difficult it becomes for me to summon any enthusiasm for Voltaire.

I do not share this loathing, but I think I understand it, or at least a major component of it: the attention given to Shakespeare's work is so extraordinarily great that it robs attention from other, worthy authors. 

 

In an episode of "Boardwalk Empire," there is a flashback showing Jimmy Darmody, played by Michael Pitt, in his time at Princeton, reading aloud from -- what?! What was that?! Immediately the viewer could hear that it was a play in English written around the time of Shakespeare, but not Shakespeare, and even if the language of the passage were not so beautiful in its own right, the fact of it not being Shakespeare would've made it interesting, because most of us never hear anything written in English near Shakespeare's time except Shakespeare. To be sure, we hear anecdotes about Ben Johnson and Christopher Marlowe, but only in connection with Shakespeare, and we never hear a passage read from one of their plays, let alone actually seeing one of their plays from start to finish.

Just that snippet of Webster in "Boardwalk Empire" made me extraordinarily curious. I am no expert on English literature --  I'm more of a dilettante: I have a very weak grasp of a very great many languages -- but I can very easily imagine how someone with a great and detailed knowledge of literature in English, someone like George Bernard Shaw, could have been driven quite deeply and regularly batty by the way that Shakespeare has blinded us to so many interesting writers in or near his time, like the sun hiding many interesting stars from view: Ah, so we're going to discuss an English masterpiece written around 1600? Let me guess: Shakespeare, for the 10,000th time in a row? 

The knowledge that it was going to be Shakespeare for the next 10,000 times as well, at least as far as any broad public was concerned -- yes, I can easily see how that would drive an expert crazy, quite apart from any appraisal of Shakespeare's own merits. 

I know a bit more about Latin literature, where Cicero is not only widely -- very widely -- considered to be the finest writer ever to have written it, often enough by readers who have read little enough Latin written by anyone else. Not only that, and not only that many people consider him the best Latin author to emulate. No, over and above that, for a number of centuries now, a not inconsiderable faction has insisted, with the unbending assurance of the blind art critic, that the ONLY correct way to write Latin is to imitate Cicero.

Even before I ever suspected that anyone had ever insisted such a strange thing, I was tired of Cicero. By volume, about one-fifth of all surviving Classical Latin literature is that written by Cicero. From its beginnings in the 3rd century BC to the end of the Classical era in the 5th century AD when it gave way to the Christian Medieval era, about one-fifth of all that people thought well enough of to hold on to, has been Cicero's rhetorical and philosophical works and his speeches and letters. From the 3rd century BC to the 5th century AD many fine Latin authors survive only in paltry scraps. Hundreds more we know only from the admiring comments contained in the surviving scraps of their contemporaries and colleagues, and who knows how many thoroughly deserving ancient Latin poets, historians, philosophers and others have disappeared so thoroughly that no one even knows their names, all to make more shelf space for, ugh, Cicero? 

I've come to grips with the possibility that I may have always drastically under-estimated Cicero. I'm not here to insult him, nor to insist that he's the last Latin author you should read. I've gained a little more humility than that, at last, and acknowledge that I may have been, and may remain, pretty much blinded in my assessment of Cicero's writings, because of all of those other, relatively neglected authors. 

I AM here to insist, gently but firmly, that Cicero is not the only Classical Latin author worth reading, nor even the only one worth emulating. Latin, just like English and French and other languages, offers a variety of ways to skin a cat.

The attention which Erasmus holds at the expense of his contemporaries may be even more extreme than Shakespeare versus other Renaissance authors in English and Cicero vs other Classical Latin authors. Just as wide swaths of the public, when asked to name as many luxury watch brands as they can, will say, "Rolex... Uhhhmmmm..." so many Latinists, when asked to name some of the finest Latin authors who lived after the Classical period, will reply, "Erasmus... Uhhhmmmm..."

I recall shaking with rage in the stacks of a major US university library, upon seeing that the several very large editions of Erasmus, plus the books about Erasmus, covered several times as much shelf space as the rest of ALL Latin literature past the Classical period: Medieval, Renaissance Latin except Erasmus, more recent Latin... I stood there with my dilettante's weak grasp of those other categories of Latin which I felt worthy of attention, and shook with the outsider's powerless rage. 

I'm less enraged now. Those other categories of Latin, as far as I can tell, have begun to rebound in the amount of attention paid to them. Or maybe not. Maybe it's just that I'm beginning to find the nooks and crannies where they're appreciated. And as far as Erasmus himself is concerned, I've found it impossible to dislike him nearly as much as before I stumbled across his dialogue "Ciceronianus," which pokes fun quite mercilessly at people convinced that the only proper way to speak Latin is to imitate Cicero.

I laughed until I fell off of my chair, and then I lay on the floor shaking with laughter. Laughter may be the best cure for rage over things like this, which aren't actually matters of life and death. 

There are circles in which Lingua Latina per se Illustrata (LLPSI), a Latin-language course by Hans Ørberg, is the favorite course for beginners, and the one most often recommended. 

There are circles in which it is the ONLY Latin course recommended to beginners, and in which those who mention other routes are angrily shouted down. What has been seen cannot be unseen, and just recently I suddenly saw the resemblance between this level of exclusive support for LLPSI, and those who insist that one must imitate Cicero, or who have never read anything written in English between Shakespeare and Swift, or in Latin between Gellius and Erasmus...

"Be angry at the sun for setting," Robinson Jeffers advised those of us who get all worked up over the way things are. "Yours is not theirs," he added. Like many others, I first read that poem because Hunter S Thompson reprinted it in one of his books.  I am not required to feel superior to the others who read it there and did not, like me, go on to read many more of Jeffers' poems. 

There are various forms of exclusivity, and if I am going to be consistent and regret that John Webster and Ausonius and the ENTIRE Carmina Burana and Jeffers' long poem Dear Judas and Leibniz are not more widely read, I must be consistent, and not resent Cicero and Erasmus and Shakespeare and Dr Thompson simply because they are more popular. For one thing, snobs are singularly unpleasant and make very bad advertisers. 

But more importantly, although Shaw may have been right to be exasperated at all the fine authors who go unread, he may have been wrong about Shakespeare. I may have been wrong about Cicero, and, as I have hinted, I'm already beginning to see that I was wrong about Erasmus. Let's not stop trashing Dan Brown. He deserves it. But not everyone who's extremely popular is a bad writer.

MB&F L’Epée 1839 Grant

This is Grant.

Grant can be moved into 3 different positions, and is about 7 inches wide and 8 inches long.

And, as you can see by this photo --

-- Grant is a clock, a joint venture between the companies MB&F, who make mostly somewhat out-there watches, and L’Epée 1839, who make mostly weird and playful clocks. Grant is named after a WWII tank which was named after Ulysses S Grant, was made in a limited edition of 150 pieces, and retails for a little over $20,000, which is a real bargain when you look at all of the high-quality craftsmanship and fine materials which have gone into this piece.

Can we talk about socialism? There are some socialists who hate wealth and money and want to do away with it. Then there are socialists such as myself and George Bernard Shaw. Shaw wrote, in the Preface to Major Barbara,

"To teach children that it is sinful to desire money, is to strain towards the extreme possible limit of impudence in lying, and corruption in hypocrisy. The universal regard for money is the one hopeful fact in our civilization, the one sound spot in our social conscience. Money is the most important thing in the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity and beauty as conspicuously and undeniably as the want of it represents illness, weakness, disgrace, meanness and ugliness. Not the least of its virtues is that it destroys base people as certainly as it fortifies and dignifies noble people. It is only when it is cheapened to worthlessness for some, and made impossibly dear to others, that it becomes a curse. In short, it is a curse only in such foolish social conditions that life itself is a curse. For the two things are inseparable: money is the counter that enables life to be distributed socially: it is life as truly as sovereigns and bank notes are money. The first duty of every citizen is to insist on having money on reasonable terms; and this demand is not complied with by giving four men three shillings each for ten or twelve hours’ drudgery and one man a thousand pounds for nothing. The crying need of the nation is not for better morals, cheaper bread, temperance, liberty, culture, redemption of fallen sisters and erring brothers, nor the grace, love and fellowship of the Trinity, but simply for enough money."

(My emphasis, lest some careless reader think that I or Shaw were telling the lazy poor to complain less and work harder.)

The other sort of socialist -- the Puritan sort, even though they often are atheists -- will point to things like Grant and say that they represent all that is wrong with the world. They may bite their tongues, if they were raised as Christians, to keep from saying "all that is wicked," but that's what they mean. Shaw and I favor universal basic incomes, that is: giving money to everyone, because everyone should have it. We see nothing wicked about Grant. What is wicked to us is that the world is arranged so that so very few people can afford to buy themselves something like a Grant, if they so choose. (Not everyone could buy a Grant even if everyone were rich, because there are only 150 of him, but there are many extravagant things like Grant.) And that other sort of socialist, the Puritan kind, ought to brush up on their Marx, especially Marx on the subject of leisure, if they think Marx is on their side, and not not mine and Shaw's.

It strikes me how many of these socialists who say they're against wealth are a lot wealthier than I've ever been. They have varying definitions about how wealthy is too wealthy, but, conveniently, it tends to be much wealthier than they are. Bernie Sanders may well be a millionaire, but billionaires really grind his gears. For them not to be much more focused on poverty requires, I think, both a lack of experience of it, and a lack of empathy. It happens now and then that a rich Puritan socialist will actually give away everything they have, to the point where they actually become poor on purpose, but it doesn't happen often. Shaw, as far as I know, was never close to being poor, but he was gifted with enormous empathy. He was able to spot suffering without having experienced something similar to it himself. And he was clever enough to see that one doesn't reduce the amount of misery in the world by becoming miserable.

Anyway, I just came here to say: lookit Grant, he's wicked cool!

Hillary Clinton And George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw wrote a play called Major Barbara about the Salvation Army, which premiered in London in 1905. Later he published the play along with one of his brilliant prefaces. I'm not the first to have expressed the opinion that Shaw's plays are brilliant and that the prefaces to them are even better. Shaw noted that some people not associated with the Salvation Army thought that the play was a dastardly attack upon that stalwart institution, while actual members of the Army tended to like it. From Shaw's preface:

Even the handful of mentally competent critics got into difficulties over my demonstration of the economic deadlock in which the Salvation Army finds itself. Some of them thought that the Army would not have taken money from a distiller and a cannon founder: others thought it should not have taken it: all assumed more or less definitely that it reduced itself to absurdity or hypocrisy by taking it. (The Salvation Army promotes promotes abstinence from alcohol and pacifism. --TWM) On the first point the reply of the Army itself was prompt and conclusive. As one of its officers said, they would take money from the devil himself and be only too glad to get it out of his hands and into God's. They gratefully acknowledged that publicans not only give them money but allow them to collect it in the bar—sometimes even when there is a Salvation meeting outside preaching teetotalism.

Good for Shaw and for the Salvation Army for being sensible about money, and good for Shaw too for appreciating the good that an organization did even though he was atheist and the organization was not.

I've been reminded of all of this by the ruckus raised by some of Bernard Sanders' more idiotic supporters over Hillary Clinton taking campaign money from Lehman Brothers. Hillary's answer to the question of why she took so much money from Lehman Brothers, almost a million dollars, was perfectly sensible: she said she took that much because that was how much they offered. Unless and until the naysayers can demonstrate that Lehman Brothers bought undue influence, or some particular favors, or anything at all, with that campaign contribution, they really should sit back and share a huge punchbowl full of STFU.

You say Hillary is practically a Republican? You say she's bought and paid for by big business? Show us what you're talking about in what Hillary has actually done and said and what she says she plans to do.

Like Shaw, and like the Salvation Army, Hillary would rather do good than waste time going sniffing around for wrongdoing by others.

George Bernard Shaw Is A Philosopher, Dammit!

Pardon my French, but this is important. And by important I mean fun.

Many people have thought of Shaw as a playwright. There are some signs that he may have thought of himself that way. For one thing, he often referred to himself as a playwright. For another thing, he wrote sixty plays. Sixty is a lot, I admit. And don't get me wrong, some of the plays are pretty good. The thing is, Shaw also wrote prefaces to all of those plays, and some of them are about as long as the plays they preface, and most of them are just effin brilliant. I'm not the only one thinks so. Volumes have been published containing only these prefaces, and not the plays. I say, after you read one of the longer, effin brilliant prefaces, go ahead and read or watch the play itself, because one, as I said, they're pretty good plays, but two, and more importantly, they tend to illustrate points made in the prefaces. Ya feel me, Dawg? The prefaces, the longer ones, are not about the plays; the plays are about the ideas in the prefaces. The prefaces overflow with uncommon good sense about how we can best evolve, they point out some of humanity's worst habits and most foolish assumptions and offer ways out of the traps we have habitually set for ourselves.

Doesn't sound like philosophy to you, you say? Maybe not, if you've read Plato or Hegel, as many high school and collage students have been forced to, and been told that these two turnips are the quintessence of philosophy, as many people unfortunately believe. I would characterize Hegel rather as the second-greatest impediment ever to have blocked the progress of the greatest of Western philosophy, while the greatest has been -- Plato. Ha, you thought I was gonna say Christianity, didn't you? But dig it, it's what's happening: Christianity is merely a subset of Platonic philosophy, adapted for mass conception by taking some of Plato's abstract concepts and dressing them in the stories of a miracle-working, suffering and dying but then resurrected Savior Of Th Whole Dang World. Platonism in its original form is more subtle than Christianity, but it's not more real or helpful. And Hegel -- ugh. Nuff said. Ignore those two, and Augustine and Aquinas. Git yr Aristotelianism from Aristotle, who is not constantly trying to harmonize himself with some silly religion the way Aquinas constantly tried to harmonize Aristotelianism and Christianity. (Guess who always lost in the case of a tie.) Check out Heraclitus and Epicurus and Lucretius and Nietzsche and Sartre. Look into Nietzsche's favorite authors, he's very generous with both praise and blame. Observe how little all those folks resemble Plato or Hegel. (Observe how Sartre wrote plays and the French didn't stop calling him a philosopher because they're not neurotically hung up on categories of writers like the Germans and English and Americans and also don't automatically associate "philosopher" with "professor.") Notice the complete lack of that dreariness characterizing those two fools, those two impediments.

And by all means include Shaw in that group of the good stuff. Notice, as I hinted above, how good philosophy is fun. Exhilarating even. Read the justly famous preface to Major Barbara,where Shaw mentions people not content with handsome house because they want whole handsome cities, people for whom it's not enough to eat and dress well when they're surrounded by poor people who do neither, people who have the temerity to want to improve the very air we all breathe -- and then goes about telling us step-by-step how to approach the fulfillment of such rather unusually-ambitious goals.

Shaw wants to change the world, that's all, and has some good ideas about how to do it. That's a philosopher, a really good one. Not someone who blathers on about how reality is something we can't see, and not someone in constant danger of breaking his own arm going on and on about how brilliant he is for having "uncovered the mechanisms of history and the true nature of greatness," who wouldn't recognize greatness if it gave up teaching after one try of scheduling lectures in the same university and at the same time as his and nobody came and spent half of the rest of its career pointing out what a jackass and fraud he was.

And besides the prefaces with plays explaining them Shaw also wrote a number of books going into still more detail -- practical realistic detail -- of how we can do all of this better. He's a genius who's interested in everyone's welfare because that's so much more fun and absorbing than merely enjoying wealth and luxury. Yeah, he was rich, and he enjoyed it, definitely, but that was just the beginning. And he didn't haven't to resort to squeezing people who were already poor to get rich, like a present-day Republican.