random thoughts 3: classics

by cindy jane walker

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a curious but little known book that i chanced upon one day is “william shakespeare” by victor hugo. it concerns shakespeare to some extent but consists largely of hugo’s windy pronouncements about “genius” and “men of genius”. in the second chapter of the book hugo gives us a list of fourteen “men of genius” - in effect, his list of favorite authors. the book was published in 1864, when the author was 62 yeas old. the fourteen are: 2 greeks: homer and aeschylus 5 authors of books of the bible: the author of the book of job, the prophets ezekiel and isaiah, st paul, and “st john” (the author of the book of revelations) 3 romans: lucretius, tacitus, and juvenal dante, rabelais, cervantes and shakespeare round out the list. why he chose these particular authors over others - aeschylus rather than euripides, lucretius rather than vergil or ovid, rabelais instead of chaucer or ariosto, he does not say. the interesting thing to me is the ages of the books/authors relative to hugo’s own time, and the way he discusses them. the book of job is impossible to date. 9 of the remaining 13 date from 1700 to 2600 years before hugo’s life, and the other 4 between 250 and 600 years. but he writes about them very much the way a mid 20th century man of letters - somebody like auden or lionel trilling - might write about 18th and 19th century writers - goethe, balzac, tolstoi, henry james. to hugo in 1864 his “men of genius” from 2000 or so years ago were still living literature in the same way that melville or jane austen or dostoevski would be living literature to a writer or critic or literary minded reader in the mid 20th century. obviously, things have changed, and changed even more since the mid twentieth century - the last fading days of “serious” literature. when giants like hemingway and faulkner and beckett still walked the earth, when a writer like norman mailer enjoyed the same type of fame that movie directors like martin scorsese or quentin tarantino enjoy today, and the beat writers could provoke genuine outrage in the long vanished “literary establishment”. one obvious reason is the decline and virtual elimination of “classical education” - i e, teaching latin and greek to schoolboys - in the western world. i do not know if hugo read the old testament in the “original” hebrew ( he might have!) but he almost surely read the greek and roman authors in greek and latin, and maybe the new testament in greek too. he probably read shakespeare in english. did he read dante in italian, cervantes in spanish? maybe. again, the point is that it was all “living literature” to him, about a century and a half ago. in 1864, the industrial revolution had been in full flower and full blast for at least a century. empires had risen and fallen for millennia in a “cyclical” pattern, without “the world” changing much. empires - like the british empire, the soviet union, and the united states - would still rise and fall, but now the world really was changed, at least as it had not been since the agricultural revolution. but it was not that obvious, not only not to “the man in the street”*, but to classically educated literary gentlemen like hugo, who saw themselves as walking the same earth as aeschylus and juvenal. if history had progressed, to hugo, it was because of a belief in “liberty” (championed by “men of genius” like himself ) rather than from technology. now consider the 21st century. how many people, except literary scholars, really read anything, anything at all, from before the 19th century, from before the industrial revolution? in 2013, the bbc issued a list of “100 books to read before you die” unless i missed something, it included only two books from before the 19th century - the works of shakespeare , and the bible, i e, the king james bible written in english. my quick count showed 89 books in english, 6 in french, 3 in russian, and 2 in spanish. i have seen similar lists on line - i think this one is pretty typical. maybe a little extreme - most lists of this type would at least include homer and dante and cervantes.. as the technological/information revolution progresses, and assuming that “literature” survives at all in the immediate future, this trend will surely increase. i think it it is a natural development from technological change. technology has changed what it means to be human. the “humans” of the 21st century are not the humans of the 19th century., let alone the humans of pre-industrial times. in any time or place, there may be revered “classics” that almost nobody really reads, any more than they stop and look at statues in public parks or squares. but for something to be actually read it has to have something contemporary readers can identify with. well, that is enough on the classics, for now. *who was himself the product of the new age, as he at least “read the news” by the new electric light, instead of living completely outside of history, like the peasant telling time-honored tales in his hut, when the sun went down. (to be continued)

random thoughts 2: advanced civilization

by cindy jane walker

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the ideas of "civilization " and "advanced" exist in human perception. there could be all sorts of things "out there" or even "here" on earth that are beyond human perception and/or whose own perceptions do not register the existence of humans. take one example: some scientists studying dogs have concluded that dogs have a sense of smell "at least a trillion times" as strong as humans. not a hundred, not a thousand, but a trillion. i don't know what that indicates to you, but to me it indicates that the dog is living in a different universe than the human. or insects - ants or bees or termites or whatever. to human perceptions as registered in human language they are "mindless" and only "act on instinct" but what does that mean, except to humans? "aliens" in science fiction are always basically human - human enough for the humans to comprehend and communicate with at least - and to compete with on basically even terms (or else there would be no suspenseful science-fiction story). and if they are not basically human they can only be perceived as "dumb" or "blind". the science fiction idea of the "advanced" alien civilization is usually based on the vague ideas humans have of a utopia where all conflict has been abolished and where everybody lives more or less "forever" (another human concept) but these utopias remain very vague and unfocussed even in the human mind. (what is not so vague or unfocussed is the idea of the evil ones who stand in the way of the utopia and must be heroically fought and resisted). even if the aliens are out there and do not contact humans , it might be not because they are horrified by the "stupidity" and "savagery" of the humans (concepts which might mean nothing to them) or because the humans still tolerate the likes of donald trump or the koch brothers but because the humans are of absolutely no interest to them and do not even register on their advanced consciousness. finally, the idea of the advanced aliens contacting humans assumes that the advanced ones will have discovered interstellar travel or communication, which humans themselves have failed to master only because they are not "advanced" enough, rather than that it might be an impossibility in a human-perceived universe. random thoughts 3 - classics

random thoughts 1: censorship

by cindy jane walker

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humans, at least humans in the urban regions of the united states and “the west”, are taught as children that “censorship” is bad and that “book burning” is the worst thing that can be imagined, because “freedom of expression” is sacred. of course nobody really believes this. every human society takes for granted that certain things - many things - are beyond the pale and are not to be thought of, let alone expressed. well meaning librarians and teachers, whose goal it is to interest children in reading , promote things like “banned books week”, in which completely harmless or salutary (from their point of view) books like “the catcher in the rye” or “to kill a mockingbird”, or the harry potter books, which have occasionally run afoul of school boards in the christian fundamentalist wilds of kansas or mississippi, are held up as examples of books which have triumphed over the evils of “censorship” and “book burning” and survived to spread their light over a happy world. probably the best known expression of this attitude is ray bradbury’s novel fahrenheit 451, itself a book which is considered highly suitable for adolescent consumption, and continually reprinted. it is one of those books that “everybody knows” the basic idea of, even if they have never read it. if you read bradbury’s book today, it might not be quite what you expect. it was published in 1953. it presents a future in which books are burned, not in order to censor particular ideas or words, but because they present a threat to a soulless dystopia by offering a “human” alternative to movies and television, which are represented as being by their nature dehumanizing.. in 1953 television had been in widespread use for less than ten years, and talking pictures for less than thirty. now the human race was doomed because it was watching jackie gleason and dragnet instead of reading middlemarch and moby dick. so the book does not quite track with the modern idea of “banned books”. but it does embody two ideas. that “books” by their nature, are good, and spread good thoughts and attitudes, and that the evil heartless persons who rule, or aspire to rule, the earth, are against them and seek to suppress, if not literally burn them. and that books, especially well known or “classic” books, are permanent objects, which will last more or less forever unless they are deliberately destroyed. books are some of the most perishable objects on earth. they are made of words, and what is more perishable than words? humans spill forth trillions of words into the air every day. books are written in particular languages, and languages are continually mutating and dying out. books that are held up as having lasted for an appreciable amount of time must be continually annotated and edited (and their spelling and punctuation modernized) even in their original language. books that are held up as having lasted for really long periods, “last” only by being continually retranslated - into dozens or hundreds of languages - some of them, such as the iliad and the odyssey, seemingly every year. all of which is to say that there is nothing permanent or sacrosanct about any book - any book at all. not the bible, or any other ”sacred book” , or the works of shakespeare, or any other author. if you are killed or thrown in jail for writing something, that can fairly be called “censorship”. otherwise it can be said that all written and spoken language is subject to the great lottery of time and fate, in which 99.9999999999999999999999999 … percent of everything vanishes moments after it comes into being. random thoughts 2 - advanced civilization