In “The Gods,” the book’s coda, Pavese converses with himself about “how grueling it must have been for people living in a time when everything they touched was mortal,” when the world was filled with the presences of unseen beings. “Do you believe in monsters, believe in animal people, in living stones, divine smiles, and in words that annihilate?” The poet, Pavese implies, is a creature of Chaos—that anarchic state in which good is mixed with bad and monsters mingle with men and gods. Something, in other words, a bit like the war and its aftermath.
Second, Tolkien understood that the more powerful the tool, the less likely that an ordinary user could use it effectively, rather than being shaped or controlled by it. Thus, when Pippin looks into the palantir of Orthanc, he is almost immediately captivated by it and wholly under the domination of Sauron’s will operating through it. Only Aragorn, the rightful possessor of the stone and a man hardened by battle and seasoned with wisdom, is able to “wrench the stone to his own will,” and that only through “a bitter struggle.” Similarly, a recurrent theme in discussions of the Ring is that it gives power to the wearer “in proportion to his stature.” Pathetic little Gollum is unable to make much more use of this most powerful of all earthly creations than to enable him to catch fish or steal more easily; the Ring degrades him rather than expanding his powers. Only those already very strong can bend it to their will, but even they should dare not, knowing that it will bend them to its: “Its strength,” declares Elrond to Boromir, “is too great for anyone to wield at will, save only those who have already a great power of their own. But for them it holds an even deadlier peril. The very desire of it corrupts the heart.” Thus both Gandalf and Galadriel, each powerful enough to bear one of the three rings, refuse the gift of the One Ring when it is offered them, fearing the tyrant that each might become.
The Craft of Living is mostly a set of literary notes, like Leopardi’s Zibaldone, with almost no mention of the history going on all around him. (Pavese’s lively letters, by contrast, are full of talk, gossip, and the quotidian; he comes across as a magisterial man of letters, an efficient manager, and a generous friend.) The diary is, instead, a document of a writer’s intellectual and emotional life, which you can see him process into material. It’s most interesting when Pavese tries to write his way out, simultaneously, of literary and life problems, which he carefully interweaves. “That one must live tragically, and not voluptuously, is proved by all I have suffered,” he wrote in April 1936, the day after Tina’s wedding. “The fault lies in daydreaming, the distant enemy of good art, and in my need to avoid responsibility, to feel without paying the price.” The “lesson,” he concludes, is to “build in art and life, banish voluptuousness from both, and exist tragically.”
To ask this question is to answer it—at least for any attentive reader of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy classic The Lord of the Rings. Although set in a pre-technological mythical world of wizards and dragons, Tolkien’s trilogy is, more than anything else, a profound meditation upon technology. Nor should this surprise us; for as C.S. Lewis has argued, the modern enterprise of “technology” and the medieval pursuit of “magic” are two versions of the same quest: to manipulate the world through the discovery of hidden knowledge, the perfection of arcane techniques. In Tolkien’s tale there are two types of “magic”: one represents a kind of creative creaturely participation in the supernatural that depends on loving attention to the shape of nature, while the other serves as a metaphor for modern technology as the quest for mastery by reshaping nature to our wills. It is represented chiefly by the “Rings of Power” and the palantiri or “Seeing Stones.”
European resistance to air conditioning is often framed as a story of puritanical self-flagellation, as an insistence on managing energy crises by a regime of perpetual austerity rather than building out clean, abundant energy sources. But I think this is an over-generous framing driven by pundits who have never had a frivolous bone in their effectively altruistic bodies. Some of us just really hate looking at ugly things, and we’re willing to make you suffer so that we don’t have to.
Auspicious Reverence! Hush all meaner song, Ere we the deep preluding strain have poured To the Great Father, only Rightful King, Eternal Father! King Omnipotent! To the Will Absolute, the One, the Good! The I AM, the Word, the Life, the Living God! Such symphony requires best instrument. Seize, then, my soul! from Freedom’s trophied dome The Harp which hangeth high between the Shields Of Brutus and Leonidas! With that Strong music, that soliciting spell, force back Man’s free and stirring spirit that lies entranced. For what is Freedom, but the unfettered use Of all the powers which God for use had given? But chiefly this, him First, him Last to view Through meaner powers and secondary things Effulgent, as through clouds that veil his blaze. For all that meets the bodily sense I deem Symbolical, one mighty alphabet For infant minds; and we in this low world Placed with our backs to bright Reality, That we may learn with young unwounded ken The substance from its shadow. Infinite Love, Whose latence is the plenitude of All, Thou with retracted beams, and self-eclipse Veiling, revealest thine eternal Sun. But some there are who deem themselves most free When they within this gross and visible sphere Chain down the wingéd thought, scoffing ascent, Proud in their meanness: and themselves they cheat With noisy emptiness of learnéd phrase, Their subtle fluids, impacts, essences, Self-working tools, uncaused effects, and all Those blind Omniscients, those Almighty Slaves, Untenanting creation of its God. But Properties are God: the naked mass (If mass there be, fantastic guess or ghost) Acts only by its inactivity. Here we pause humbly. Others boldlier think That as one body seems the aggregate Of atoms numberless, each organized; So by a strange and dim similitude Infinite myriads of self-conscious minds Are one all-conscious Spirit, which informs With absolute ubiquity of thought (His one eternal self-affirming act!) All his involvéd Monads, that yet seem With various province and apt agency Each to pursue its own self-centering end. Some nurse the infant diamond in the mine; Some roll the genial juices through the oak; Some drive the mutinous clouds to clash in air, And rushing on the storm with whirlwind speed, Yoke the red lightnings to their volleying car. Thus these pursue their never-varying course, No eddy in their stream. Others, more wild, With complex interests weaving human fates, Duteous or proud, alike obedient all, Evolve the process of eternal good. And what if some rebellious, o’er dark realms Arrogate power? yet these train up to God, And on the rude eye, unconfirmed for day, Flash meteor-lights better than total gloom. As ere from Lieule-Oaive’s vapoury head The Laplander beholds the far-off Sun Dart his slant beam on unobeying snows, While yet the stern and solitary Night Brooks no alternate sway, the Boreal Morn With mimic lustre substitutes its gleam, Guiding his course or by Niemi lake Or Balda Zhiok, or the mossy stone Of Solfar-kapper, while the snowy blast Drifts arrowy by, or eddies round his sledge, Making the poor babe at its mother’s back Scream in its scanty cradle: he the while Wins gentle solace as with upward eye He marks the streamy banners of the North, Thinking himself those happy spirits shall join Who there in floating robes of rosy light Dance sportively. For Fancy is the power That first unsensualises the dark mind, Giving it new delights; and bids it swell With wild activity; and peopling air, By obscure fears of Beings invisible, Emancipates it from the grosser thrall Of the present impulse, teaching Self-control, Till Superstition with unconscious hand Seat Reason on her throne. Wherefore not vain, Nor yet without permitted power impressed, I deem those legends terrible, with which The polar ancient thrills his uncouth throng: Whether of pitying Spirits that make their moan O’er slaughter’d infants, or that Giant Bird Vuokho, of whose rushing wings the noise Is Tempest, when the unutterable Shape Speeds from the mother of Death, and utters once That shriek, which never murderer heard, and lived. Or if the Greenland Wizard in strange trance Pierces the untravelled realms of Ocean’s bed Over the abysm, even to that uttermost cave By mis-shaped prodigies beleaguered, such As Earth ne’er bred, nor Air, nor the upper Sea: Where dwells the Fury Form, whose unheard name With eager eye, pale cheek, suspended breath, And lips half-opening with the dread of sound, Unsleeping Silence guards, worn out with fear Lest haply ’scaping on some treacherous blast The fateful word let slip the Elements And frenzy Nature. Yet the wizard her, Arm’d with Torngarsuck’s power, the Spirit of Good, Forces to unchain the foodful progeny Of the Ocean stream; — thence thro’ the realm of Souls, Where live the Innocent, as far from cares As from the storms and overwhelming waves That tumble on the surface of the Deep, Returns with far-heard pant, hotly pursued By the fierce Warders of the Sea, once more, Ere by the frost foreclosed, to repossess His fleshly mansion, that had staid the while In the dark tent within a cow’ring group Untenanted. — Wild phantasies! yet wise, On the victorious goodness of high God Teaching reliance, and medicinal hope, Till from Bethabra northward, heavenly Truth With gradual steps, winning her difficult way, Transfer their rude Faith perfected and pure. If there be Beings of higher class than Man, I deem no nobler province they possess, Than by disposal of apt circumstance To rear up kingdoms: and the deeds they prompt, Distinguishing from mortal agency, They choose their human ministers from such states As still the Epic song half fears to name, Repelled from all the minstrelsies that strike The palace-roof and soothe the monarch’s pride. And such, perhaps, the Spirit, who (if words Witnessed by answering deeds may claim our faith) Held commune with that warrior-maid of France Who scourged the Invader. From her infant days, With Wisdom, mother of retired thoughts, Her soul had dwelt; and she was quick to mark The good and evil thing, in human lore Undisciplined. For lowly was her birth, And Heaven had doomed her early years to toil That pure from Tyranny’s least deed, herself Unfeared by Fellow-natures, she might wait On the poor labouring man with kindly looks, And minister refreshment to the tired Way-wanderer, when along the rough-hewn bench The sweltry man had stretched him, and aloft Vacantly watched the rudely-pictured board Which on the Mulberry-bough with welcome creak Swung to the pleasant breeze. Here, too, the Maid Learnt more than Schools could teach: Man’s shifting mind, His vices and his sorrows! And full oft At tales of cruel wrong and strange distress Had wept and shivered. To the tottering Eld Still as a daughter would she run: she placed His cold limbs at the sunny door, and loved To hear him story, in his garrulous sort, Of his eventful years, all come and gone. So twenty seasons past. The Virgin’s form, Active and tall, nor Sloth nor Luxury Had shrunk or paled. Her front sublime and broad, Her flexile eye-brows wildly haired and low, And her full eye, now bright, now unillumed, Spake more than Woman’s thought; and all her face Was moulded to such features as declared That Pity there had oft and strongly worked, And sometimes Indignation. Bold her mien, And like an haughty huntress of the woods She moved: yet sure she was a gentle maid! And in each motion her most innocent soul Beamed forth so brightly, that who saw would say Guilt was a thing impossible in her! Nor idly would have said — for she had lived In this bad World, as in a place of Tombs, And touched not the pollutions of the Dead. ’Twas the cold season when the Rustic’s eye From the drear desolate whiteness of his fields Rolls for relief to watch the skiey tints And clouds slow-varying their huge imagery; When now, as she was wont, the healthful Maid Had left her pallet ere one beam of day Slanted the fog-smoke. She went forth alone Urged by the indwelling angel-guide, that oft, With dim inexplicable sympathies Disquieting the heart, shapes out Man’s course To the predoomed adventure. Now the ascent She climbs of that steep upland, on whose top The Pilgrim-man, who long since eve had watched The alien shine of unconcerning stars, Shouts to himself, there first the Abbey-lights Seen in Neufchætel’s vale; now slopes adown The winding sheep-track vale-ward: when, behold In the first entrance of the level road An unattended team! The foremost horse Lay with stretched limbs; the others, yet alive But stiff and cold, stood motionless, their manes Hoar with the frozen night-dews. Dismally The dark-red dawn now glimmered; but its gleams Disclosed no face of man. The maiden paused, Then hailed who might be near. No voice replied. From the thwart wain at length there reached her ear A sound so feeble that it almost seemed Distant: and feebly, with slow effort pushed, A miserable man crept forth: his limbs The silent frost had eat, scathing like fire. Faint on the shafts he rested. She, meantime, Saw crowded close beneath the coverture A mother and her children — lifeless all, Yet lovely! not a lineament was marred — Death had put on so slumber-like a form! It was a piteous sight; and one, a babe, The crisp milk frozen on its innocent lips, Lay on the woman’s arm, its little hand Stretched on her bosom. Mutely questioning, The Maid gazed wildly at the living wretch. He, his head feebly turning, on the group Looked with a vacant stare, and his eye spoke The drowsy calm that steals on worn-out anguish. She shuddered; but, each vainer pang subdued, Quick disentangling from the foremost horse The rustic bands, with difficulty and toil The stiff cramped team forced homeward. There arrived, Anxiously tends him she with healing herbs, And weeps and prays — but the numb power of Death Spreads o’er his limbs; and ere the noon-tide hour, The hovering spirits of his Wife and Babes Hail him immortal! Yet amid his pangs, With interruptions long from ghastly throes, His voice had faltered out this simple tale. The Village, where he dwelt an husbandman, By sudden inroad had been seized and fired Late on the yester-evening. With his wife And little ones he hurried his escape. They saw the neighbouring hamlets flame, they heard Uproar and shrieks! and terror-struck drove on Through unfrequented roads, a weary way! But saw nor house nor cottage. All had quenched Their evening hearth-fire: for the alarm had spread. The air clipt keen, the night was fanged with frost, And they provisionless! The weeping wife Ill hushed her children’s moans; and still they moaned, Till Fright and Cold and Hunger drank their life. They closed their eyes in sleep, nor knew ’twas Death. He only, lashing his o’er-wearied team, Gained a sad respite, till beside the base Of the high hill his foremost horse dropped dead. Then hopeless, strengthless, sick for lack of food, He crept beneath the coverture, entranced, Till wakened by the maiden. — Such his tale. Ah! suffering to the height of what was suffered, Stung with too keen a sympathy, the Maid Brooded with moving lips, mute, startful, dark! And now her flushed tumultuous features shot Such strange vivacity, as fires the eye Of Misery fancy-crazed! and now once more Naked, and void, and fixed, and all within The unquiet silence of confuséd thought And shapeless feelings. For a mighty hand Was strong upon her, till in the heat of soul To the high hill-top tracing back her steps, Aside the beacon, up whose smouldered stones The tender ivy-trails crept thinly, there, Unconscious of the driving element, Yea, swallowed up in the ominous dream, she sate Ghastly as broad-eyed Slumber! a dim anguish Breathed from her look! and still with pant and sob, Inly she toiled to flee, and still subdued, Felt an inevitable Presence near. Thus as she toiled in troublous ecstasy, A horror of great darkness wrapt her round, And a voice uttered forth unearthly tones, Calming her soul, — ‘‘O Thou of the Most High Chosen, whom all the perfected in Heaven Behold expectant — ’’ [The following fragments were intended to form part of the poem when finished.] ‘‘Maid beloved of Heaven! (To her the tutelary Power exclaimed) Of Chaos the adventurous progeny Thou seest; foul missionaries of foul sire, Fierce to regain the losses of that hour When Love rose glittering, and his gorgeous wings Over the abyss fluttered with such glad noise, As what time after long and pestful calms, With slimy shapes and miscreated life Poisoning the vast Pacific, the fresh breeze Wakens the merchant-sail uprising. Night An heavy unimaginable moan Sent forth, when she the Protoplast beheld Stand beauteous on Confusion’s charméd wave. Moaning she fled, and entered the Profound That leads with downward windings to the Cave Of Darkness palpable, Desert of Death Sunk deep beneath Gehenna’s massy roots. There many a dateless age the Beldame lurked And trembled; till engendered by fierce Hate, Fierce Hate and gloomy Hope, a Dream arose, Shaped like a black cloud marked with streaks of fire. It roused the Hell-Hag: she the dew-damp wiped From off her brow, and through the uncouth maze Retraced her steps; but ere she reached the mouth Of that drear labyrinth, shuddering she paused, Nor dared re-enter the diminished Gulph. As through the dark vaults of some mouldered Tower (Which, fearful to approach, the evening hind Circles at distance in his homeward way) The winds breathe hollow, deemed the plaining groan Of prisoned spirits; with such fearful voice Night murmured, and the sound through Chaos went. Leaped at her call her hideous-fronted brood! A dark behest they heard, and rushed on earth; Since that sad hour, in Camps and Courts adored, Rebels from God, and Tyrants o’er Mankind!’’ From his obscure haunt Shrieked Fear, of Cruelty the ghastly Dam, Feverous yet freezing, eager-paced yet slow, As she that creeps from forth her swampy reeds, Ague, the biform Hag! when early Spring Beams on the marsh-bred vapours. ‘‘Even so (the exulting Maiden said) The sainted Heralds of Good Tidings fell, And thus they witnessed God! But now the clouds Treading, and storms beneath their feet, they soar Higher, and higher soar, and soaring sing Loud songs of triumph! O ye Spirits of God, Hover around my mortal agonies!’’ She spake, and instantly faint melody Melts on her ear, soothing and sad, and slow, Such measures, as at calmest midnight heard By agéd Hermit in his holy dream, Foretell and solace death; and now they rise Louder, as when with harp and mingled voice The white-robed multitude of slaughtered saints At Heaven’s wide-open’d portals gratulant Receive some martyred patriot. The harmony Entranced the Maid, till each suspended sense Brief slumber seized, and confused ecstasy. At length awakening slow, she gazed around: And through a mist, the relict of that trance Still thinning as she gazed, an Isle appeared, Its high, o’er-hanging, white, broad-breasted cliffs, Glassed on the subject ocean. A vast plain Stretched opposite, where ever and anon The plough-man following sad his meagre team Turned up fresh sculls unstartled, and the bones Of fierce hate-breathing combatants, who there All mingled lay beneath the common earth, Death’s gloomy reconcilement! O’er the fields Stept a fair Form, repairing all she might, Her temples olive-wreathed; and where she trod, Fresh flowerets rose, and many a foodful herb. But wan her cheek, her footsteps insecure, And anxious pleasure beamed in her faint eye, As she had newly left a couch of pain, Pale Convalescent! (Yet some time to rule With power exclusive o’er the willing world, That blessed prophetic mandate then fulfilled — Peace be on Earth!) An happy while, but brief, She seemed to wander with assiduous feet, And healed the recent harm of chill and blight, And nursed each plant that fair and virtuous grew. But soon a deep precursive sound moaned hollow: Black rose the clouds, and now, (as in a dream) Their reddening shapes, transformed to Warrior-hosts, Coursed o’er the sky, and battled in mid-air. Nor did not the large blood-drops fall from Heaven Portentous! while aloft were seen to float, Like hideous features looming on the mist, Wan stains of ominous light! Resigned, yet sad, The fair Form bowed her olive-crownéd brow, Then o’er the plain with oft-reverted eye Fled till a place of Tombs she reached, and there Within a ruined Sepulchre obscure Found hiding-place. The delegated Maid Gazed through her tears, then in sad tones exclaimed; — ‘‘Thou mild-eyed Form! wherefore, ah! wherefore fled? The Power of Justice like a name all light, Shone from thy brow; but all they, who unblamed Dwelt in thy dwellings, call thee Happiness. Ah! why, uninjured and unprofited, Should multitudes against their brethren rush? Why sow they guilt, still reaping misery? Lenient of care, thy songs, O Peace! are sweet, As after showers the perfumed gale of eve, That flings the cool drops on a feverous cheek; And gay thy grassy altar piled with fruits. But boasts the shrine of Dæmon War one charm, Save that with many an orgie strange and foul, Dancing around with interwoven arms, The Maniac Suicide and Giant Murder Exult in their fierce union! I am sad, And know not why the simple peasants crowd Beneath the Chieftains’ standard!’’ Thus the Maid. To her the tutelary Spirit said: ‘‘When Luxury and Lust’s exhausted stores No more can rouse the appetites of kings; When the low flattery of their reptile lords Falls flat and heavy on the accustomed ear; When eunuchs sing, and fools buffoonery make, And dancers writhe their harlot-limbs in vain; Then War and all its dread vicissitudes Pleasingly agitate their stagnant hearts; Its hopes, its fears, its victories, its defeats, Insipid Royalty’s keen condiment! Therefore uninjured and unprofited (Victims at once and executioners), The congregated Husbandmen lay waste The vineyard and the harvest. As along The Bothnic coast, or southward of the Line, Though hushed the winds and cloudless the high noon, Yet if Leviathan, weary of ease, In sports unwieldy toss his island-bulk, Ocean behind him billows, and before A storm of waves breaks foamy on the strand. And hence, for times and seasons bloody and dark, Short Peace shall skin the wounds of causeless War, And War, his strainéd sinews knit anew, Still violate the unfinished works of Peace. But yonder look! for more demands thy view!’’ He said: and straightway from the opposite Isle A vapour sailed, as when a cloud, exhaled From Egypt’s fields that steam hot pestilence, Travels the sky for many a trackless league, Till o’er some death-doomed land, distant in vain, It broods incumbent. Forthwith from the plain, Facing the Isle, a brighter cloud arose, And steered its course which way the vapour went. The Maiden paused, musing what this might mean. But long time passed not, ere that brighter cloud Returned more bright; along the plain it swept; And soon from forth its bursting sides emerged A dazzling form, broad-bosomed, bold of eye, And wild her hair, save where with laurels bound. Not more majestic stood the healing God, When from his bow the arrow sped that slew Huge Python. Shriek’d Ambition’s giant throng, And with them hissed the locust-fiends that crawled And glittered in Corruption’s slimy track. Great was their wrath, for short they knew their reign; And such commotion made they, and uproar, As when the mad Tornado bellows through The guilty islands of the western main, What time departing from their native shores, Eboe, or Koromantyn’s plain of palms, The infuriate spirits of the murdered make Fierce merriment, and vengeance ask of Heaven. Warmed with new influence, the unwholesome plain Sent up its foulest fogs to meet the morn: The Sun that rose on Freedom, rose in Blood! ‘‘Maiden beloved, and Delegate of Heaven! (To her the tutelary Spirit said) Soon shall the Morning struggle into Day, The stormy Morning into cloudless Noon. Much hast thou seen, nor all canst understand — But this be thy best omen — Save thy Country!’’ Thus saying, from the answering Maid he passed, And with him disappeared the heavenly Vision. ‘‘Glory to Thee, Father of Earth and Heaven! All-conscious Presence of the Universe! Nature’s vast ever-acting Energy! In will, in deed, Impulse of All to All! Whether thy Love with unrefracted ray Beam on the Prophet’s purgéd eye, or if Diseasing realms the Enthusiast, wild of thought, Scatter new frenzies on the infected throng, Thou both inspiring and predooming both, Fit instruments and best, of perfect end: Glory to Thee, Father of Earth and Heaven!’’ And first a landscape rose More wild and waste and desolate than where The white bear, drifting on a field of ice, Howls to her sundered cubs with piteous rage And savage agony.
Throughout much of Mallarmé’s adult life, he yearned quixotically to create a magnum opus that could encompass the entire world and render it into words. He wanted to collapse the gap between representation and what is represented.
The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.
The other reason people doubt that art can be good is that there doesn’t seem to be any room in the art for this goodness. The argument goes like this. Imagine several people looking at a work of art and judging how good it is. If being good art really is a property of objects, it should be in the object somehow. But it doesn’t seem to be; it seems to be something happening in the heads of each of the observers. And if they disagree, how do you choose between them?
The solution to this puzzle is to realize that the purpose of art is to work on its human audience, and humans have a lot in common. And to the extent the things an object acts upon respond in the same way, that’s arguably what it means for the object to have the corresponding property. If everything a particle interacts with behaves as if the particle had a mass of m, then it has a mass of m. So the distinction between “objective” and “subjective” is not binary, but a matter of degree, depending on how much the subjects have in common. Particles interacting with one another are at one pole, but people interacting with art are not all the way at the other; their reactions aren’t random.
Beleaguered professors, who are largely poorly paid adjunct instructors at this point, will now have to not just contend with essay mills and good old-fashioned cut-and-paste plagiarism, but also the undetectable autograph of the robotic hand.
Ed Simon, The Perilous Allure of Machine-Generated Writing Has a Surprisingly Long History source
Homay King argues in Virtual Memory: Time-Based Art and the Dream of Digitality that the epistle’s “tangled mash-up of sentimentality bespeaks a twinge of longing…Like the wooden puppet in search of the Blue Fairy, the computer longs to be human; like Snow White fleeing into the forest, it longs to be admitted into the company of those who are capable of care and affection.”
Ed Simon, The Perilous Allure of Machine-Generated Writing Has a Surprisingly Long History source
They’re all witty, intelligent critics who have become adept at diagnosing the cultural ills of contemporary society over the course of fairly brief tenures in the public eye, but they also all belong to the demographic perhaps most afflicted by the modern crisis of form: young elites who have been exposed since their teenage years to the full brunt of the internet content deluge, untethered from though perhaps yearning for a self-contained and tradition-rich literary scene in which to make their way.
In literate society, engagement with novels, poetry and criticism has always helped people form groups and differentiate themselves along lines of class and politics. With the newfound dominance of the internet, this is no longer the case: our extreme interconnectedness seems to preclude the need for rich subcultures grounded in the shared appreciation of art and writing— these have been replaced almost universally by shareable soundbites that require no labor other than attention.
The room was very full and who were they all?
Gertrude Stein, Selected Writings, p. 12
But O, what damned minutes tells he o’er Who dotes, yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves.
William Shakespeare, Othello, 3.3
And that is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say “We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven,” and the Lost, “We were always in Hell.” And both will speak truly.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 69
And just as the mother feels acutely the slightest criticism of her child, so any criticism of her book even by the most negligible nitwit gave Virginia acute pains.
Leonard Woolf, Downhill All the Way, p. 57
———(…) Look! the massy trunks Are cased in the pure crystal; each light spray, Nodding and tinkling in the breath of heaven, Is studded with its trembling water-drop, That glimmers with an amethystine light.
They’re so far off by now that they could never think of coming to the bus stop at all.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 11
Strange thing, time. It weighs most on those who have it least.
Time is the very lens through which ye see—small and clear, as men see through the wrong end of a telescope—something that would be otherwise too big for ye to see at all. That thing is Freedom: the gift whereby ye most resemble your Maker and are yourselves parts of eternal reality. But ye can see it only through the lens of Time, in a little clear picture, through the inverted telescope.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, pp. 140-1
There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.”
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 75
‘You have gone far wrong. Thirst was made for water; inquiry for truth. What you now call the free play of inquiry has neither more nor less to do with the ends for which intelligence was given you than masturbation has to do with marriage.’
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 41
The air was thin and clear, stringent with wood smoke and the tang of fallen apples, sharp with the hint of early frost.
You will have to grow accustomed to it. The world will indulge you just so long, Asher Lev. Then it will stop. You will simply have to grow accustomed to that truth.
Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev, p. 232
‘It depends on the way ye’re using the words. If they leave that grey town behind it will not have been Hell. To any that leaves it, it is Purgatory. And perhaps ye had better not call this country Heaven. Not Deep Heaven, ye understand.’ (Here he smiled at me.) ‘Ye can call it the Valley of the Shadow of Life. And yet to those who stay here it will have been Heaven from the first. And ye can call those sad streets in the town yonder the Valley of the Shadow of Death: but to those who remain there they will have been Hell even from the beginning.’
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 68
You can do anything you want to do. What is rare is this actual wanting to do a specific thing: wanting it so much that you are practically blind to all other things, that nothing else will satisfy you.
Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev, p. 194
I still count the little preamble that begins as the houselights go down and the footlights glow and goes on to accompany the slow rise of the curtain on the opening scene of Carmen as the most cunningly contrived passage of descriptive music I have ever heard.
Charles W. Morton, It Has Its Charm, p. 71
The last screw came out, the whole lock case slid down, freeing the bolt.
David Wagoner, The Escape Artist, p. 244
The inner door, which led to the passage, which in turn led to the storm door, was beside the stone.
John Steinbeck, The Moon Is Down, p. 122
Then there will be no you left to criticise the mood, nor even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself going on forever like a machine.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 78
When we choose to be the gardener, we make a deal with nature: we will abide by certain rules in growing plants, and the plants will accede to our shaping them somewhat to our needs and pleasures. We will supply water, loamy soil, a modicum of nutrients, and moderate temperature, and the impatiens will bloom brightly from May to October.
And when his hours are numbered, and the world Is all his own, retiring, as he were not, Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work, The frolic architecture of the snow.
The five-foot 2-inch dynamo has piloted her career with dazzling audacity.
Anne Stockwell, “Salma Hayek” (“I Act Tall,” She Says), p. 33
But if you are trying to leap on into eternity, if ye are trying to see the final state of all things as it will be (for so ye must speak) when there are no more possibilities left but only the Real, then ye ask what cannot be answered to mortal ears.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 140
But he was at least intelligent: one could get some criticism worth hearing from him, even if he was a failure on the creative side. But now he seems to have nothing left but his self-conceit.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 5
I walked the streets and tasted the golden sun that lay across the city.
Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev, p. 274
They were in town now. Streets, houses, buildings shuttled past.
Ross Lockridge, Jr., Raintree County, p. 872
Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.
He felt quite certain that he was going where, at last, his finely critical spirit would no longer be outraged by an uncongenial environment—where he would find ‘Recognition’ and ‘Appreciation.’
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 9
Garish in her dress, eccentric in her habits, chaste in her conduct, coarse in her speech, she succeeded in her lifetime in drawing upon herself the ridicule of the great and the applause of the learned.
Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader, p. 70
Reality is harsh to the feet of shadows. But will you come?
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 39
“At present I would prefer not to be a little reasonable,” was his mildly cadaverous reply.
My first emotions had been those of pure melancholy and sincerest pity; but just in proportion as the forlornness of Bartleby grew and grew to my imagination, did that same melancholy merge into fear, that pity into repulsion. So true it is, and so terrible too, that up to a certain point the thought or sight of misery enlists our best affections; but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it does not. They err who would assert that invariably this is owing to the inherent selfishness of the human heart. It rather proceeds from a certain hopelessness of remedying excessive and organic ill. To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain. And when at last it is perceived that such pity cannot lead to effectual succor, common sense bids the soul rid of it.
I am going to teach you that painting is not storytelling. If you want to tell stories, become either an illustrator or a writer. If you want to be a painter, you will learn to use line and color and shape and texture to create paintings, not stories.
Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev, p. 204
‘Only the Greatest of all can make Himself small enough to enter Hell. For the higher a thing is, the lower it can descend—a man can sympathise with a horse but a horse cannot sympathize with a rat. Only One has descended into Hell.’
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 139
‘He will be, Pam. Everything will be yours. God Himself will be yours. But not that way. Nothing can be yours by nature.’
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 103
Sometimes I think it is not wise to grow too old,.. […] But I am not aware that we are given a choice in this matter.
Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev, p. 272
In his youth, however, though too imbecile for study or for business, he was not incapable of being amused.
What’s the trouble about this place? Not that people are quarrelsome—that’s only human nature and was always the same even on Earth. The trouble is that they have no Needs. You get everything you want (not very good quality, of course) by just imagining it. That’s why it never costs any trouble to move to another street or build another house. In other words, there’s no proper economic basis for any community life.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 13
We shall have no need for one another now: we can begin to love truly.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 126
Every natural love will rise again and live forever in this country: but none will rise again until it has been buried.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 105
‘What you have seen in the Guthries is what natural affection turns to in the end if it will not be converted.’
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 101
But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.
They snipped the ribbon in 1915, they popped the cork, Miami Beach was born.
A life is measured by how it is lived for the sake of heaven.
Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev, p. 184
But what we called love down there was mostly the craving to be loved.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 125
I looked at him steadfastly. His face was leanly composed; his gray eye dimly calm. Not a wrinkle of agitation rippled him. Had there been the least uneasiness, anger, impatience or impertinence in his manner; in other words, had there been any thing ordinarily human about him, doubtless I should have violently dismissed him from the premises. But as it was, I should have as soon thought of turning my pale plaster-of-paris bust of Cicero out of doors.
Light fell through the colors of the stained glass beyond the altar. Through the windows ajar on the side aisle came the sweetness of blossom, of bruised grass, of river mud.
Robert Penn Warren, Flood, p. 78
Life he saw as a ceaseless and courageous contest.
Jerry Allen, The Thunder and the Sunshine, p. 233
Into this grey lake plopped the thought, I know that man, don’t I?
Doris Lessing, Children of Violence, p. 264
I feel—and the anxiety is still vivid to me—that I might easily have failed before I began.
V. S. Naipaul, Literary Occasions, p. 195
You have been in Hell: though if you don’t go back you may call it Purgatory.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 35
‘The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven.’
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 135
‘Not at all,’ said my neighbor. ‘The trouble is that they’re so quarrelsome. As soon as anyone arrives he settles in some street. Before he’s been there twenty-four hours he quarrels with his neighbour. Before the week is over he’s quarrelled so badly that he decides to move. Very likely he finds the next street empty because all the people there have quarrelled with their neighbors—and moved. If so he settles in. If by any chance the street is full, he goes further. But even if he stays, it makes no odds. He’s sure to have another quarrel pretty soon and then he’ll move on again. Finally he’ll move right out to the edge of the town and build a new house. You see, it’s easy here. You’ve only got to think a house and there it is. That’s how the town keeps on growing.’
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 10
They say of some temporal suffering, “No future bliss can make up for it,” not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 69
Hell is a state of mind—ye never said a truer word. And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its mind—is, in the end, Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 70
Ah, happiness courts the light, so we deem the world is gay; but misery hides aloof, so we deem that misery there is none.
They were all fixed faces, full not of possibilities but impossibilities…
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 17
His glasses are thick, magnifying, and his eyes, puffed and swimming, seem not to miss a thing.
Lorrie Moore, Birds of America, p. 51
Ye can not know eternal reality by a definition. Time itself, and all acts and events that fill Time, are the definition, and it must be lived.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 141
If you want to know how to do a thing you must first have a complete desire to do that thing. Then go to kindred spirits—others who have wanted to do that thing—and study their ways and means, learn from their successes and failures, and add to your quota.
Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev, p. 194
Did you think joy was created to live always under that threat? Always defenseless against those who would rather be miserable than have their self-will crossed? For it was real misery. I know that now. You made yourself really wretched. That you can still do. But you can no longer communicate your wretchedness. Everything becomes more and more itself. Here is joy that cannot be shaken. Our light can swallow up your darkness: but your darkness cannot now infect our light.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 132
Billet spied, Bolt sped. Across field Crows fled, Aloft, wounded, Left one dead.
Robert Graves, The White Goddess, p. 18
I hate how sad Poo is. I can’t stand how poor and pathetic he is, and because of that I am cruel to him.
There’s nothing wrong with [being excited about the interesting contrast of colors]… But that’s the kind of thing you enjoy when playing around with colors on your palette! It is not a finished work of art.
Nancy Pearcey, Saving Leonardo, p. 166
There have been men before now who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God Himself… as if the good Lord had nothing to do but exist! There have been some who were so occupied in spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ. Man! Ye see it in smaller matters. Did ye never know a lover of books that with all his first editions and signed copies had lost the power to read them? Or an organiser of charities that had lost all love for the poor? It is the subtlest of all the snares.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, pp. 73-4
It is a very dull, wearisome, and lethargic affair. I can readily imagine that to some sanguine temperaments it would be altogether intolerable. For example, I cannot credit that the mettlesome poet Byron would have contentedly sat down with Bartleby to examine a law document of, say five hundred pages, closely written in a crimpy hand.
There’s something in natural affection which will lead it on to eternal love more easily than natural appetite could be led on. But there’s also something in it which makes it easier to stop at the natural level and mistake it for the heavenly. Brass is mistaken for gold more easily than clay is.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 105
…beasts from a private mythology.
Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev, p. 204
Bad as this article was, and time has proved it to be utter nonsense, the second article he wrote was probably even worse, and why I printed it I don’t recall.
Charles Angoff, The Tone of the Twenties, p. 127
Like a very ghost, agreeably to the laws of magical invocation, at the third summons, he appeared at the entrance of his hermitage.
He made the emperor laugh and the horse couldn’t better him, so he stayed. And I stayed. And we became friends.
And Giovanni fell—back into the room, the streets, the world, into the presence and the shadow of death.
James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room, p. 320
That is an eye drawing, Anna. Hands alone do not draw this way.
Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev, p. 207
‘Yes. All Hell is smaller than one pebble of your earthly world: but it is smaller than one atom of this world, the Real World.’
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 138
It was all dry: all withered: all spent.
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, p. 224
[I painted for] a truth I did not know how to put into words. For a truth I could only bring to life by means of color and line and texture and form.
Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev, p. 264
It is a stronger angel, and therefore, when it falls, a fiercer devil.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 105
“Millions of people can draw. Art is whether or not there is a scream in him [Asher] wanting to get out in a special way.” “Or a laugh,” she said. “Picasso laughs, too.” “Or a laugh,” he said.
Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev, p. 202
What went unsaid, but clearly implied, was that they had a right but not a reason to be proud of me.
Percival Everett, Erasure, p. 3
I do not speak it in vanity, but simply record the fact, that I was not unemployed in my profession by the late John Jacob Astor; a name which, I admit, I love to repeat, for it hath a rounded and orbicular sound to it, and rings like unto bullion.
The question is whether she is a grumbler, or only a grumble.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 77
In the morning, one might say, his face was of a fine florid hue, but after twelve o’clock, meridian—his dinner hour—it blazed like a grate full of Christmas coals; and continued blazing—but, as it were, with a gradual wane—till 6 o’clock, P.M. or thereabouts, after which I saw no more of the proprietor of the face, which gaining its meridian with the sun, seemed to set with it, to rise, culminate, and decline the following day, with the like regularity and undiminished glory.
My friend Trost, who is no optimist as to the state of the universe hitherto, but is confident that at some future period within the duration of the solar system, ours will be the best of all possible worlds—a hope which I always honour as a sign of beneficent qualities—my friend Trost always tries to keep up my spirits under the sight of the extremely unpleasant and disfiguring work by which many of our fellow-creatures have to get their bread, with the assurance that “all this will soon be done by machinery.” But he sometimes neutralises the consolation by extending it over so large an area of human labour, and insisting so impressively on the quantity of energy which will thus be set free for loftier purposes, that I am tempted to desire an occasional famine of invention in the coming ages, lest the humbler kinds of work should be entirely nullified while there are still left some men and women who are not fit for the highest.
Especially, when one considers the perfunctory way in which some of the most exalted tasks are already executed by those who are understood to be educated for them, there rises a fearful vision of the human race evolving machinery which will by-and-by throw itself fatally out of work. When, in the Bank of England, I see a wondrously delicate machine for testing sovereigns, a shrewd implacable little steel Rhadamanthus that, once the coins are delivered up to it, lifts and balances each in turn for the fraction of an instant, finds it wanting or sufficient, and dismisses it to right or left with rigorous justice; when I am told of micrometers and thermopiles and tasimeters which deal physically with the invisible, the impalpable, and the unimaginable; of cunning wires and wheels and pointing needles which will register your and my quickness so as to exclude flattering opinion; of a machine for drawing the right conclusion, which will doubtless by-and-by be improved into an automaton for finding true premises; of a microphone which detects the cadence of the fly’s foot on the ceiling, and may be expected presently to discriminate the noises of our various follies as they soliloquise or converse in our brains—my mind seeming too small for these things, I get a little out of it, like an unfortunate savage too suddenly brought face to face with civilisation, and I exclaim—
“Am I already in the shadow of the Coming Race? and will the creatures who are to transcend and finally supersede us be steely organisms, giving out the effluvia of the laboratory, and performing with infallible exactness more than everything that we have performed with a slovenly approximativeness and self-defeating inaccuracy?”
“But,” says Trost, treating me with cautious mildness on hearing me vent this raving notion, “you forget that these wonder-workers are the slaves of our race, need our tendance and regulation, obey the mandates of our consciousness, and are only deaf and dumb bringers of reports which we decipher and make use of. They are simply extensions of the human organism, so to speak, limbs immeasurably more powerful, ever more subtle finger-tips, ever more mastery over the invisibly great and the invisibly small. Each new machine needs a new appliance of human skill to construct it, new devices to feed it with material, and often keener-edged faculties to note its registrations or performances. How then can machines supersede us?—they depend upon us. When we cease, they cease.”
“I am not so sure of that,” said I, getting back into my mind, and becoming rather wilful in consequence. “If, as I have heard you contend, machines as they are more and more perfected will require less and less of tendance, how do I know that they may not be ultimately made to carry, or may not in themselves evolve, conditions of self-supply, self-repair, and reproduction, and not only do all the mighty and subtle work possible on this planet better than we could do it, but with the immense advantage of banishing from the earth’s atmosphere screaming consciousnesses which, in our comparatively clumsy race, make an intolerable noise and fuss to each other about every petty ant-like performance, looking on at all work only as it were to spring a rattle here or blow a trumpet there, with a ridiculous sense of being effective? I for my part cannot see any reason why a sufficiently penetrating thinker, who can see his way through a thousand years or so, should not conceive a parliament of machines, in which the manners were excellent and the motions infallible in logic: one honourable instrument, a remote descendant of the Voltaic family, might discharge a powerful current (entirely without animosity) on an honourable instrument opposite, of more upstart origin, but belonging to the ancient edge-tool race which we already at Sheffield see paring thick iron as if it were mellow cheese—by this unerringly directed discharge operating on movements corresponding to what we call Estimates, and by necessary mechanical consequence on movements corresponding to what we call the Funds, which with a vain analogy we sometimes speak of as “sensitive.” For every machine would be perfectly educated, that is to say, would have the suitable molecular adjustments, which would act not the less infallibly for being free from the fussy accompaniment of that consciousness to which our prejudice gives a supreme governing rank, when in truth it is an idle parasite on the grand sequence of things.”
“Nothing of the sort!” returned Trost, getting angry, and judging it kind to treat me with some severity; “what you have heard me say is, that our race will and must act as a nervous centre to the utmost development of mechanical processes: the subtly refined powers of machines will react in producing more subtly refined thinking processes which will occupy the minds set free from grosser labour. Say, for example, that all the scavengers work of London were done, so far as human attention is concerned, by the occasional pressure of a brass button (as in the ringing of an electric bell), you will then have a multitude of brains set free for the exquisite enjoyment of dealing with the exact sequences and high speculations supplied and prompted by the delicate machines which yield a response to the fixed stars, and give readings of the spiral vortices fundamentally concerned in the production of epic poems or great judicial harangues. So far from mankind being thrown out of work according to your notion,” concluded Trost, with a peculiar nasal note of scorn, “if it were not for your incurable dilettanteism in science as in all other things—if you had once understood the action of any delicate machine—you would perceive that the sequences it carries throughout the realm of phenomena would require many generations, perhaps aeons, of understandings considerably stronger than yours, to exhaust the store of work it lays open.”
“Precisely,” said I, with a meekness which I felt was praiseworthy; “it is the feebleness of my capacity, bringing me nearer than you to the human average, that perhaps enables me to imagine certain results better than you can. Doubtless the very fishes of our rivers, gullible as they look, and slow as they are to be rightly convinced in another order of facts, form fewer false expectations about each other than we should form about them if we were in a position of somewhat fuller intercourse with their species; for even as it is we have continually to be surprised that they do not rise to our carefully selected bait. Take me then as a sort of reflective and experienced carp; but do not estimate the justice of my ideas by my facial expression.”
“Pooh!” says Trost (We are on very intimate terms.)
“Naturally,” I persisted, “it is less easy to you than to me to imagine our race transcended and superseded, since the more energy a being is possessed of, the harder it must be for him to conceive his own death. But I, from the point of view of a reflective carp, can easily imagine myself and my congeners dispensed with in the frame of things and giving way not only to a superior but a vastly different kind of Entity. What I would ask you is, to show me why, since each new invention casts a new light along the pathway of discovery, and each new combination or structure brings into play more conditions than its inventor foresaw, there should not at length be a machine of such high mechanical and chemical powers that it would find and assimilate the material to supply its own waste, and then by a further evolution of internal molecular movements reproduce itself by some process of fission or budding. This last stage having been reached, either by man’s contrivance or as an unforeseen result, one sees that the process of natural selection must drive men altogether out of the field; for they will long before have begun to sink into the miserable condition of those unhappy characters in fable who, having demons or djinns at their beck, and being obliged to supply them with work, found too much of everything done in too short a time. What demons so potent as molecular movements, none the less tremendously potent for not carrying the futile cargo of a consciousness screeching irrelevantly, like a fowl tied head downmost to the saddle of a swift horseman? Under such uncomfortable circumstances our race will have diminished with the diminishing call on their energies, and by the time that the self-repairing and reproducing machines arise, all but a few of the rare inventors, calculators, and speculators will have become pale, pulpy, and cretinous from fatty or other degeneration, and behold around them a scanty hydrocephalous offspring. As to the breed of the ingenious and intellectual, their nervous systems will at last have been overwrought in following the molecular revelations of the immensely more powerful unconscious race, and they will naturally, as the less energetic combinations of movement, subside like the flame of a candle in the sunlight Thus the feebler race, whose corporeal adjustments happened to be accompanied with a maniacal consciousness which imagined itself moving its mover, will have vanished, as all less adapted existences do before the fittest—i.e., the existence composed of the most persistent groups of movements and the most capable of incorporating new groups in harmonious relation. Who—if our consciousness is, as I have been given to understand, a mere stumbling of our organisms on their way to unconscious perfection—who shall say that those fittest existences will not be found along the track of what we call inorganic combinations, which will carry on the most elaborate processes as mutely and painlessly as we are now told that the minerals are metamorphosing themselves continually in the dark laboratory of the earth’s crust? Thus this planet may be filled with beings who will be blind and deaf as the inmost rock, yet will execute changes as delicate and complicated as those of human language and all the intricate web of what we call its effects, without sensitive impression, without sensitive impulse: there may be, let us say, mute orations, mute rhapsodies, mute discussions, and no consciousness there even to enjoy the silence.”
“Absurd!” grumbled Trost.
“The supposition is logical,” said I. “It is well argued from the premises.”
“Whose premises?” cried Trost, turning on me with some fierceness. “You don’t mean to call them mine, I hope.”
“Heaven forbid! They seem to be flying about in the air with other germs, and have found a sort of nidus among my melancholy fancies. Nobody really holds them. They bear the same relation to real belief as walking on the head for a show does to running away from an explosion or walking fast to catch the train.”
George Eliot, Impressions of Theophrastus Such, ch. XVII, “Shadows of the Coming Race” source