Ecalpemos

Currently enjoying Ruth Rendell's fiction. At its best it certainly transcends all genres and is simply great literature. As the best writing in pretty much any subgenre does. I have been criticizing the mainstream bias earlier in the blog and even though things probably have marginally improved the silly snobbishness is still there. It is very frustrating but hopefully the situation keeps improving. In the meanwhile having Rendell's unsentimentality and non-cynicism as great, august, entertaining company as the year draws to its end.

Europe's sorrow

I have written earlier about the tragedy of the Russian nation. Such suffering, such gifts to humanity, such corrupt, sadistic rulers. And so today. Asymmetric, highly ingenious web warfare, injecting vile poison to liberal societies. To what purpose? What is the positive vision? There is none but impotent ethnic-gangsteric rage, nothing to aspire for, no progress imagined, an age old despotism wishing for its old glories of rape and conquest. An empty shell, the rulers of Russia, as always.

Butler's jihad

The decades seem to be getting more low and dishonest as they go. One thought the 00's were the low but they seem now only an innocent prelude. The social liberal settlement that has turned increasingly less social and more Victorian liberal seems to be shaking to its roots - and what are those roots now that the historical memory has waned? Rather shallow it seems. So one is left wondering what is to come.

I only wish for a more self-confident defence of the post-war West, the one and only exception from the slow holocaust of all other human history, as partial, as imperfect as it has been, and as reliant on injustices elsewhere. But the alternative to all this imperfection will not be anything better, only a full return to history and cruelty.

Those dying generations

Sailing to Byzantium is one of my key texts as probably has been clear from the multiple and constant references I have made during these years. I can't wait to have humanity to get out of nature and give up our natural forms and assume something better and more complete and more beautiful instead. As we now are we are not whole, not coherent.

And in the meanwhile we are all part of dying generations, briefly in each others' arms if that lucky. It is good for a person to lose his/her perspective for a while to regain it again perhaps slightly wiser, slightly gentler, having been taught a lesson about the ways of this world.

So, the tide has probably turned but this will be shortly seen.

A short note on Bloomsbury

I suppose they are now rather unfashionable, seen as lukewarm liberals at best and not certainly any fighters against oppression, and undeniably being rather a snobbish and incestuous ingroup. This said, and admitted, and despite many flaws and failings they were brilliant and even radical in their own way and did unflinchingly inflict strong blows against established ways, personal is political. I would never dismiss them easily or otherwise.

On seeing happy young people in the past and present

When young myself I often kept surreptiously looking at happy young people being myself desperately unhappy and unable to connect. I could not reach at the world, at my own experience, and, most importantly, at other people. A horrible failure and impotence of courage and character. So, I kept seeing happy young people and idealizing and misjudging them to a degree, not understanding their own incomplete happiness often interrupted by their own mistakes, weaknesses and occasions of bad luck.

Then it happened that finally I too became rather happy while being still youngish and I understood better lifes, and their imperfections including my own, and did connect with the world, experience, with amazing people justly loved by me. The issue seemed quite resolved then and I did not have time or inclination to rehearse the old regrets. Strangely enough though this fall I have restarted seeing happy young people and have felt that decades old pain again for no visible reason but, one supposes, due to certain unhappinesses of the present that manifest through these old traumas. Flashbacks in other words. I wonder even if therapy would be needed but it would seem rather pointless to analyze and grieve for the life my early 20's self so unhappily missed and wasted. Life is indeed a strange and slippery thing.

And if I should not have lost my way?

As I wrote earlier life regrets come in slow long intervals, reflecting undoubtedly the low tides of current life and raising to the surface old hurts, old failures. My youth was dominated by emotional trauma and lack of social courage and understanding. I fled to books and thinking, and there are worse hiding places, and partially through reading and thinking I did achieve a healing and I did return to the land of the living, to the world of acting and feeling, of touching and being touched. I started living, grievously late, yes, but I did start and still do despite the horrendously late beginning.

But deep old wounds never seem to heal completely and the past has a way of returning in bad times and moments taking the shape of regrets and obsessive analysis of what did go wrong and how much of my best years I really did lose, and how much even in these better times I have lost as the recovery has never been complete and I have never been completely free of my old inadequacies. It is curious how strong this reflex can be and how clearly I can both see the complete fruitlessness of going over these long past issues and nevertheless be unable not to do so.

So then, once again the awful, cul-de-sac of a question: if I should not have lost my away after a series of basically unrelated blows at various crucial stages of my development? How much less pain, how much more happiness and love? A stupid, pointless question.

The radiance of John Keats

I have now at hand one of the great treasures of the English literary tradition, the letters of Keats. His poetry touches me only at places, but in his short career he did touch perfection and one is left wondering as one always will be with him: what incredible brilliance there could have been if only some more years, not to think of decades of production? It's a bitter thought of loss.

But then there is his shining person; his marvellous, intelligent, joyful, loving and gentle, sharp and ironic letters. Not much at all in the whole majestic genre of letter writing in English to compare with this blinding young flame. As always with Keats as with Sorley I'm thinking of myself in the same early age: clumsy, insecure, fearful, blindly fleeing life and experience with not a trace of wisdom or compassion - a hideous emotional cripple. But illuminated at least by light even if at one remove, and gaining at least some grace and some wisdom with age having been led among others by these youths.

The words I did not say, the steps I did not take

This certain kind of feeling comes in immense slow waves, very slow, lazily reaching to the shore. And so, one is now here again leading me back to the thoughts I've already thought, the regrets I've already felt. And, yes, there is the old retort to counter it, of being not so much more deceived this way, for that other, never taken, would have also led to questions like this, there would still be words not said, steps not taken, touches not felt.

But at this moment, once again, it is a very cold comfort to know this, for that one unique time was already enough of deception, selfdeception, cowardice to last a lifetime. As it evidently will do.

The vast intelligence of Mary Ann Evans

Allegedly it has been said that if there is no God, George Eliot will do. I'm even more than usually inclined to be sympathetic to this view reading currently the extraordinarily good biographical study of her by Philip Davis. The sentiment of the anecdote is obviously ironic but not completely, not completely at all. She was much involved with the absence of God (as an empirical reality contained in the material universe) and brought a scary, scarily comprehensive intelligence and wisdom to the task of constructing a viable alternative world view to (protestant) Christianity.

I have several times remarked on this blog that one of the reasons why I find George Eliot to be such a profound writer and influence, is that in some way I actually mirror her background - coming from nonconformist protestant background (though one already turned to liberalism and pluralism unlike her far more rigid context). I find her concerns fundamental, but certainly not only because they are shared concerns but because they really are fundamental to our civilization that has lost so much of it's heart during the awful 20th century. We are hollow now, hedonistic, materialistic, and, yes, immoral.

The scale of her thought and human her sympathy and unsentimental clearsightedness is terrifying. If one compares her analysis of religion with, say, Richard Dawkins, it is to compare a clever 13 year old schoolboy who has freshly discovered logic and empirism to a several lifetimes worth of knowlegde and merciless, hard reflection. The brittle quality of thinkers like Dawkins or Lord Russell is put to cruelly sharp focus against such vast reach and depth - and human feeling. Though at least Bertrand Russell did largely know what he was talking about.

Frederick the Narrow

Frederick the Great has been among the historical figures that I have been profoundly uninterested in. I believe one of the core reasons for that has actually been reading Grimberg's Världshistoria (in Finnish translation) at an impressionable age - and that was very pro-Maria Theresa. In mature retrospect she is hardly much more inviting figure. Hard to think of any pre-modern autocratic or semi-autocratic monarch who would have been. In any case Frederick's curious mixture of (mostly) bad art and philosophy and rather Hitlerian gambling in warfare have not seemed very interesting.

Now reading Tim Blanning's excellent biography he emerges as marginally more sympathetic. I have been dimly aware of the main facets of his life, but had not for example realized just how dismally sadistic his father was and how awful his youth in the shadow of that abuse. In that sense even bad art and philosophy seem more fresh than expected. And he can be amusing in his cynicism and disregard of pieties (and the pieties of that disgusting age richly did deserve cynicism and disregard). His surprisingly open homosexuality - or homoeroticism - at least was a kind of a protest too.

But such rigidity and narrowmindedness in the heart of it all. I guess no monarch of that age could have escaped absurd and baseless haughtiness and sheer blindness to any decency and humanity (the whole ghastly era led the priviledged away from such values). And with his awful upbringing Frederick could surely not have escaped the inevitable concequences - thus many of his strengthts became disastrous failings. Speaking of the human being, that is, as a monarch he was not much worse than most.

Three cheers for Morgan Forster

I'm now re-reading Wendy Moffat's suberb life of Forster and noticed having read it rather cursorily the first time. I think I was reading modern day attitudes and journeys back into the past and saw the text through 21st century "Gay Icon" lenses. Being rather vary with group identities and loyalties Forster's attitudes seemed partially distancing and foreshadowing some unpleasant tendencies in the modern age - and some still do, like his suspicion of women and letting escape from his otherwise sharp vision their awful middle class shackles of respectability and "purity".

But his was a deadly serious moral pursuit, just the thing expected of us, of taking responsibility for our own beings and thinking hard and straight (puns unintended) about our bodies and souls and their various placements and the moral implications of those placements, those actions and impulses and their relations to the ever imperfect, cruel and unjust general society. In his seemingly timid and gentle person there was a lion's heart fighting unflinchingly terrible injustices around and terrible insufficiencies inside. A fighter's life.

Not the more deceived - on de Sade

I have never really looked into de Sade but I expected to reluctantly like and respect him. Not so it seems though - there are his madly irreverent early letters that really are charming and funny but his adult character is not exceedingly pleasant. Of course his actions are mostly nothing to object to if between consenting adults but concent in his 18th century context is really dubious, or largely non-existent, and no matter how rotten the society, he largely accepted it apart from some ideals mostly practiced in breach or in theory. Sexual fantasies are in any case usually best left unattempted in real life - they easily become ridiculous and/or unpleasant or worse. His certainly did, and not really awfully ridiculous at their worst.

His thinking was better and in some respects refreshing (as against the disgusting cant of this particular age, one of the more horrible eras) but even there he resided much in his own solipsist unreality (though creating some rather effective pornography in the process). So I suppose he too was deceived and betrayed but surely not nearly us much as his paid or even forced partners, those much truer victims of that cruel, sadistic age. And that cruel, sadistic person, however irreverent of the pretensions of that awful era.

"High politics" revisited

I never liked the catty reactionarism of the Peterhouse school but I loved much of their approach to politics: the political elite seen as a semidetached speech community, a subculture in many ways distanced from the general public and hiding that distance with very deceptive, rationalizing public speech that was in fact full of codes and nuances referring to rather cynical and irrational power struggles below the surface. I think it's still a rather illuminating approach to many dark and hidden corners of the political world. But even then I thought that the social dimension is missing or neglected, that it is not a totally closed or totally cynical world. So, today coming accross this article was rather encouraging - there seems to be at least some signs of a synthesis maybe approaching:

'High politics' and the 'New political history'

I prefer Tolkien - elen sila lumenn' omentielvo

But it was a surprisingly narrow contest: I still am rather excited about George R. R. Martin, his initial vision, his brutal but fundamentally only too realistic description of ravaging, raping knights without any conceivable honour, of the pretty actual Middle Ages. Unfortunately Martin got lost though, got gigantism, albeit there is much greatness in that bizarrely complicated narrative even if ever less and less coherence.

Tolkien on the other hand, is all coherence: a beautiful, sad, nostalgic epic thought out to the last exhaustive detail. Leaf by Niggle. The great anti-modernist - so much of criticism simply misses his intentions, his majestic, traditional Christian vision of a fallen world, a true conservative vision. As little as I actually agree with this unreal world view, it is such a coherent view of the traditional Christian spiritus mundi. I still have the books in my bookshelf, ordered and bought decades ago when I was only 11 - he was my religion those early times: the magical, magically imagined world, the history, the languages, the breath taking adventure... And I still have them in my heart.

Two obsessed, odd, freak writers, the best of the genre showing what can be achieved by it. All amidst the spiritless, visionless counterfeits and bad copies that unfortunately dominate it.

Sveriges rikes lag

It has been a rather strange experience to witness this modern and so newly re-established Finnish national radicalism of these past few years, this present wave of only recently so safely retro sentiments. And how familiar they are for a long time history student: still going along the well trodden path of us not being a Nordic land, not being a Western liberal nation - in the 1930's the promised anti-enlightenment land was Germany and today it's Russia. Always orientating towards the strongest contemporary anti-liberal, anti-humanist, disgusting centre.

Well, fine, let us then really rehearse this battle once again: for we are a Nordic country, a country of laws and liberties, centuries old, a country of citizens, not subjects or pre-determined categories of people. There is a patriotic vision of hope and progress and there is a national-radical vision of hatred, ignorance and regression, so let us then rehearse this battle again.

As constant as the Northern Star

It does feel like such a privilege having burned and crashed, having braved, having unflinchingly confronted. At the nadir of my fortunes, I could not have believed it possible to have one day emerged into life. These might seem as rather pitifully small things to ask for, but I don't know: I don't believe it's that pitifully small at all in the final analysis. And in any case I did finally succeed in my endevours: finally burned, finally crashed, finally lived and continued living. A very twisted tale, but a tale of success, and with not totally favourable odds at all. No small thing.

The glory days of the Empire are over

I have been having an interesting debate with a friend about the Trump phenomenon - he thinks it's not much of a change for: a) the republic will endure in any case and b) it has always been corrupt. Well, I don't think so: there was much prudent leadership during the Cold War, much good will and patient wisdom in building the post-wars structures in the 40's and 50's that ended up defeating the state Stalin built. Corruption too, of course, but corruption held in check with many countering forces.

Now those forces have weakened, some becoming corrupt themselves. Now we have a large section of the media sowing hatred and ignorance, large religious movements that have forgotten what traditional Christianity is about, fractured, defensive and declining system of public education. Virtue not rewarded, greed and shortsightedness gifted with ever greater profits to ever fewer people.

Yes, the glory days are over and the federal government itself is now in the hands of a corrupt, ignorant thug and rabble rouser. Things have changed and centre is ever less holding.

To have kissed any person behind the fence where the nettles wither

To age is a weird experience: any perspective you gain might not be that trustworthy as it skews the original experience. And the regret you thus accumulate might be quite or partially mistaken. Well, in any case, there certainly were no kisses with no boys, almost no boys, no girls, in my early years, and there probably should have been many I now gather with this benefit of hindsight, this wisdom only too expensively earned surely. Though still thinking perhaps it was not only a loss - or is this too esoteric or elegiac a point to entertain? The absence in some respects being more meaningful than the presence at the time would have realistically been?

Of course talking in much wider sense than mere relationships - rather of that long life denying period of my late teens and early 20's, and, no, I well know that it wasn't a total loss and much was earned, even with a high price. Oh well, a rather beautiful song in the early morning hours led to this mostly fruitless observation.