Our intentions are intangible and sweet

For much of our lives we are not living them but going through the motions like we were in a waking dream. Life, life as a routine: numb, orderly, devoid of passion, joy and serious thought, serious emotion, conformist and ever fearful. Our natural situation in the world is to lose connection to the essential by all the dead routines of this neutral, materialist Western society. (In the premodern times the same disconnection was accomplished by horrible physical want, by irrational and unjust creeds and hierarchies, false collective identities).

Our natural situation is not to be connected - but we can be, even here, we can have shorter or longer moments in this life: love, art, friendship, pursuit of understanding; my personal values, my escapes to seriousness. How easily lost in this word, how universally longed for: for our intentions really are intangible and sweet, and even if in history our typical state is this disconnectness, we still can escape it, even here, and can have, no matter how unrealistically, the end of history as our fundamental goal: the liberation of our better selves into timelessness, the liberation of our seriousness and warmth, our love and sympathy.

Matthew Arnold contemplating Shakespeare

I wonder why it is that the high literary seriousness of the Victorians seems somewhat funny to us, even slightly fake? Victorianism has gotten itself various revisionist defenders over the decades and is not thought about in such black and white terms any more which is naturally mostly a healthy developement. I'm not totally persuaded though: any era will be a polyphony and have much value and high cultural achievements. Even my real bête noire, that awful short 18th century had some real worth amidst all the scented savagery and fake finery of carefully simulated emotion (now talk about unfair descriptions...) And when one reads Matthew Arnold or even Leslie Stephens, there is clearly much that it valuable there. The really awful things you can find in any cultural era, they will always be there. This note is about a certain flaw in strength.

The chasm is likely historical: the 19th century could have next to no idea of the following one - whose shell shocked, scattered survivors we are, frivolous and materialist, amnesic. The Victorians did not know a significant part what they were talking about - from our perspective they are innocents, attempting serious postures without a sense of real historical tragedy. This is of course unfair too, anachronistic, but all eras will aim for conversation with all others, with what has been, what is and what is to come. So, it's not only unfair - and to say this is not to absolve our own era which likely will go down in civilizational memory (should such be preserved) as much more abysmal than the mid- and late 19th century, and justifiably so.

Liht mec heht gewyrcan

Have been going back to some early incluences. Good taste, I must say, it was not all stupidity: no harry potters or the equivalent for me, but the actual stuff, the good stuff. And what amazing sense of history, of centuries does shine so brilliantly from "The Dark Is Rising" - that really must have been one of the central things along with certain others: "The Sword at Sunset" comes to mind, and Tolkien of course, above all, those mad appendixes, reeking of history, of a magic sense of the long perspective - combined with such high adventure: tonight will be bad, and tomorrow will be beyond all imagining... Excellent fragments I did have even if needed to shore against such abundance of ruins.

Carry me to the cold

A dramatic wall of cloud to the south over the still open Gulf of Finland, kept away by the bitter northerly breeze, inland the blue afternoon sky already turning towards pale orange hues: winter has surprised us, coming late in mid-January with a full blast of Arctic air - reading George Eliot in the warm bus, keeping to the old sport of reconciling feeling and intelligence, with varying success, as always. Sometimes we do cross to the other side of silence and although the roar is deafening, it is necessary. We need to live with passion, with intelligence, with feeling. This is not the place nor time yet to fully address some private issues but during these last few years, imperceptibly, I did lose much of my connection to the essential. That has meant some impossibly bad failings in my private life too. Well, this blog has never been meant for any personal things but certain important truths should still be mentioned, just for the record.

Let us not speak for the love we bear one another (thoughts on Lauttasaari Bridge)

It might have seemed strange how much I have used the word love on this blog, how much I have relied on it as one of the most meaningful concepts in our scattered, random lives. Especially thinking that my worldview otherwise is based on dry reason and a rather high, esoteric concept of art. But it just seems to be that these all are connected: art, reason, love. And not only romantic love, but all it's forms (and reason and art) are a defiant cry of rebellion against the age old dark reflexes in all of us, individually and especially as a collective, for aggression and domination, for ignorance and control. And how brave it is to love, to give hostages to fortune, to gamble with one's person.

My long years in the desert were spent in the total absence of that daring: they were spent in panicky fear, outwardly presented as cynical resentment and detachment. But miraculously I changed, not giving up reason or art in the process, but seeing them more freshly, deeper. Without the courage to love they were empty gestures. So, these ideas have become my values, and I cannot regret the route that led me to them, even though it hasn't, even by now, become easy or painless. And even if it in fact does have, in these past months, changed into something quite searing indeed as regards some very central things in my personal life, I cannot regret the path.

Designs for living

I surely will never get over this mad, immediate, unmediated sense of being in the world. There are no safety nets here: the views are breathtakingly beautiful and breathtakingly cold - and so the men in the tunnels under Larch Wood will always be kicking men to death. Cold certainty will catch our breath, eventually, and all will be lost and, practically, to all intents and purposes, is already lost. And what we have to set against all this is love that is cruel and brutal and daring - so we balance our lives against other peoples' lives, giving and taking hostages and so losing ourselves like any swimmers into cleanness leaping. That is love.

But if nothing else I'm a pragmatist: whatever that works will be fine with me and whatever that I am, I will, even if kicking and screaming, acknowledge truths and live accordingly. That is what life demands of us and what we will have to give to life if we want to live, if we want to be alive.

On Congreve

I have admired Congreve from somewhat afar - his writing has felt so very glittering, so very polished to be not, maybe, wholly serious. But I might have been mistaken in this judgement, not having enough time to concentrate, just going for the obvious effects. This said after having encountered a very effective analysis of Congreve as one the central writers in the English canon. The era he so well reflected was perhaps even more unfortunate than most pre-modern times, such bizarre values connected with such corrupt elites.

It is always strange to think about Shakespeare in this selfsame historical context, and maybe thinking about Shakespeare leads to this belittlement of excellent, perceptive writers, but then again he wasn't, Shakespeare wasn't so attached to his particular era - to what was he attached, actually? Well, in any case as Austen shows us, there can be deadly moral seriousness behind a comedy of manners, and I am quite convinced that Congreve did observe the way of the world with a seriousness, purpose and immeasurable skill of a great artist.

Great expectations

There once was, I solemnly believe, a moment when literary culture, serious literary discussion, was self-confident, confident in some sense of better things to come, or, more accurately, of the possibility of better things, of a real civilization. Or even, at bleakest, there at least was a belief in serious literary discussion, civilizational-ethical conversation, bone to bone, within a living awareness of a very liberal, very robust tradition. I have located this moment, half-seriously, to a point near mid-20th century in an obscurish essay by Edmund Wilson. But actually these were the last years about which one could even claim something like this. A brief moment, and now so much ground is being lost and serious literature is becoming an odd minority interest, and pretty much not even attempted any more. Yes, there are good writers and good books, but no wide scopes, no cultural self-confidence any longer. By and large we are rehearsing comedies and tragedies of manners with no attempts to George Eliotian or Conradian reach. No passages to India these days.

This nostalgia certainly is partly that: grumpy complaints about the times and mores that has always been going on. But I think in this particular matter, something has qualitatively changed, ground has shifted and new landscapes, bleak landscapes are opening before this generation's eyes.

Cock and balls

I wonder at our innate, automatic tendency to idealize, to make palatable. It is such a strong urge: anything to tame the immediate experience which is not reducible to banalities or even the most intricate subtleties - nor as it concerns the subject of this post, to pornographic coarseness either. But what does cut through these things, these protections, is the immediate experience. And even when saying this, writing this, one realizes that it is not it all, not what one meant at all. One always is where one never, exactly, was - and, nevertheless, the memory is not false, or the experience once wasn't, not completely. And so I do remember, and remember essentially correctly, some sweet past things, and don't know if those will ever return, if one will ever return to that purest of possible states. And so it is true: sex is not all and not every trembling hand will return me there.

History lite

One has to admire the ruthless, even carnivalistic cynicism of the makers of Downton Abbey: history is sanitized in such an obsessively careful way to be just enough to be saved into some semblance of realism by excellent acting and sharpish dialogue. Some viewers have enough background knowlegde to understand the essential unreality of the show, most probably don't. The more distant the epoch the easier the task of being credible without being true. The audience for this type of show wants a whiff of actual history, but nothing too unpleasant, too uncomfortable. Resulting in rather strange combinations of much fiction and little fact.

And so the nest tree cried

I seem to be destined to introduce especially non-Anglo Saxon friendly Finnish novelists to the occasional native speakers reading this blog. Matti Pulkkinen is an inexplicably negleted writer of the post-war era - one of the absolute masters of Finnish prose. Probably it is this very singular greatness that has singled him out to this neglect and misunderstanding. A small country can't easily accommadate such artists, especially with such awkward (though admittedly largely mistaken) political views. Though of course I would also wonder whether his passionate summoning of the wilderness and the meagre, cruel North Karelian fields is enough to counter, to challenge the modern experience. In any case he is writing about the same subjects as T.S.Eliot, as Shakespeare was, about modern Western subjects though of course with such peculiarly eastern slant.

This will naturally remain a mystery to any non-Finnish speaker as there is no earthly way to translate the dialect filled text to any other language. Strange to think that such great, unlimited art will remain closed by language - I wonder what is the central cause here, maybe the precise relationship between the dialect (and its cultural context) and the official form of the language and the specific cultural context of this difference? (As you most certainly can in general translate great Finnish literature into other languages.)

Et in utopia ego

Iain Banks' voice will be much missed - a very Scottish voice: progressive, anti-tory, warm and passionate, a rational humane voice. As excellent and disturbing as his best "mainstream" novels are, for me the most philosophical impact had the Culture, an amazing creation which is the best description (including all of philosophy) of what, perhaps, is at best available for us, a realistic liberal utopia... It is interesting that some nevertheless insist seeing the Culture as a dystopia, and revealing: there is an emptiness there, a void which humans will never fill while remaining human. But that is not our concern: our concern is to remove the obvious barbarities, the horrors of history and power. The Culture is a utopia.

Technology, science, freedom from scarcity can conceivably enable us to construct an enlightened society where we would be able to control our panicky aggression, our predatory instincts for control and power and injustice. That is the best realistic, rational chance we have. Not even that much, in the end. But we are so desperately far from it: in the midst of the darkest of ages, only in the process of absurdly partially emerging into some remote semblance of civilization.

These were Iain Banks' concerns, the most serious concerns what we have.

Long live the February Revolution

One more sepia tinged loving portrait of "Nicky and Alix" and I'll be throwing up. That narrow, rigid, selfblind, stupid couple should not have been in charge of a post office, not to speak of an empire of 150 million people. Of course we are talking about the system, but they do embody its hatefulness, injustice and inherent cruelty. Yes, they really do.

There never was a revolution so justified as the February Revolution. And the fact that the liberals did not seize it but were terrified and disorganized opening the door for Lenin and Trotsky is a direct concequence of that system, of that particular personal rule. Nicky and Alix, accompanied by the bizarre high aristocracy and officialdom, opened the door for Lenin and so Stalin was a logical concequence of that sepia tinged reign of immense stupidity and casual cruelty.

If you like, art

It is always easy to be a Cassandra, often too easy: all ages have been cruel and crude, and this one (in these parts) is much less cruel and crude than most. I have lived much of my life in art, through art, have heard the rough tongued bell, from a distance, true, but very clearly even so. Not much has ever stopped me from that apart from the usual things (myself, first of all, to paraphrase Robertson Davies). It has been an era for peaceful living (in these parts), for living that is. It should be a dangerous enough business for all us, it is dangerous.

There are many dispiriting things and trends, too much totally displaced anger in the West with the sun perhaps slowly setting on our enlightenment and humanist-Christian values which are increasingly less supported by conviction and more by vague convention. But there have been much darker times which have been survived, and there are now also many encouraging things and trends, unimaginable in those darker times that we have survived: places for emancipation and progress and hope. And, moreover, art, always art.

I was reading Larkin yesterday, those few supreme poems among his sparse production and was elated, elevated: such beauty and seriousness - can we even have seriousness without beauty, morality, philosophy, without beauty?

I think it is a permanent aspect in us, this serious aesthetic dimension, this very long view, this open, limitless landscape.

The ghastly Tories

I must admit, despite of all my personal attempts to a sort of austerity on this blog, that I found the opening and closing ceremonies of the London Olympics absolutely great: the liberal, the progressive England, Britain that I love, materialized - no other nation could have accomplished that self-irony and humour hiding serious humane ends. I would not think that the huge Beijing robotics competed at all with that brilliant liberal celebration. It did make one forget the other side of England: the mean spirited, narrow, perverse middle-class morality, the utter depravity of the Daily Mail and the tabloids, the all-pervasive corruption of the City, the utter ghastliness of the modern Tories, the largely dominating reality of today's Britain...