Summer XIX. Literary associations

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: Summer XVIII. English class character

On my breakfast table there is a pot of honey. Not the manufactured stuff sold under that name in shops, but honey of the hive, brought to me by a neighbouring cottager whose bees often hum in my garden. It gives, I confess, more pleasure to my eyes than to my palate; but I like to taste of it, because it is honey.

There is as much difference, said Johnson, between a lettered and an unlettered man as between the living and the dead; and, in a way, it was no extravagance. Think merely how one’s view of common things is affected by literary associations. What were honey to me if I knew nothing of Hymettus and Hybla? -- If my mind had no stores of poetry, no memories of romance? Suppose me town-pent, the name might bring with it some pleasantness of rustic odour; but of what poor significance even that, if the country were to me mere grass and corn and vegetables, as to the man who has never read nor wished to read. For the Poet is indeed a Maker: above the world of sense, trodden by hidebound humanity, he builds that world of his own whereto is summoned the unfettered spirit...

Alpha.

I do wish he wouldn't use the word "cottager" quite so much. I suppose the word didn't then have it's current "urban" sense.

This section is particularly truncated because his literary references happen to not mean much to me. But I take his point. I might substitute The Cobb at Lyme Regis -- which plays such a crucial role in Jane Austen’s Persuasion. It would be worth a visit, if you were at Lyme, in any case but the association with Austen would make it much more than just a quaint construction of old stone extending into the sea. Not only is there the association with the novel, but one assumes Miss. Austen herself must have been there at some point.

But honey... I rather think honey, and especially local honey, can stand on it’s own. I have a hard time imagining a poem that could make pesto or a buttery, garlicky pasta sauce taste any better. The descriptions of food in Hotel Paradise by Martha Grimes inevitably make me hungry, but I can’t say they “inform” my experience of foods similar to the ones she describes. Though that is not entirely fair since there is too much of a difference between what she describes and what I can actually find. It would also help if I were twelve.

That tree falling in the woods.

This morning I was thinking about the old question of the unobserved philosophical tree falling in the woods. The original idea was that what we mean by “a sound” is not sound waves generated by a tree falling but the perception of those sound waves by a brain connected to the right kind of sound wave detection equipment. Without that equipment and the right connections, you won’t hear the sound. It is also possible to “hear” a sound without sound waves being involved if your brain is playing tricks with you or, presumably, if it was directly stimulated in the proper way. Richard Dawkins, in The God Delusion, mentions, without going into much detail, his theory that bats “see” sound. He also writes about the astonishing ability of dogs to distinguish slightly different chemical molecules with their sense of smell. What if an animal could “see” with it’s nose? Synesthesia teaches us that the correlation of our senses and what they sense is not as direct as we usually think. We now know that our senses are limited -- Dawkins likens our vision to the slit in a burka with almost all of the electromagnetic spectrum being invisible to us -- and that what we do see is filtered by our brains. What we see is, to a large extent, what we need to see to survive, not what is really “there.”

Once again the perceptions that we call colours are tools used by our brains to label important distinctions in the outside world. Perceived hues -- what philosophers call qualia -- have no intrinsic connection with lights of particular wavelengths. They are internal labels that are available to the brain, when it constructs its model of external reality, to make distinctions that are especially salient to the animal concerned. In our case, or that of a bird, that means light of different wavelengths. In a bat’s case, I have speculated, it might be surfaces of different echoic properties or textures, perhaps red for shiny, blue for velvety, green for abrasive. And in a dog’s or a rhino’s case, why should it not be smells? The power to imagine the alien world of a bat or a rhino, a pond skater or a mole, a bacterium or a bark beetle, is one of the privileges science grants us when it tugs at the black cloth of our burka and shows us the wider range of what is out there for our delight.

Suppose this is true. Suppose a bat experienced a tree falling as a flash of light either illuminating everything around it or temporarily blinding the bat. Would the tree have made a sound? Which brings us back to Phenomenology and Quantum Idealism again. From the perspective of Quantum Idealism, we have to ask a different question: Does the un-perceived tree in the forest even exist? From Husserl’s perspective we can’t say anything about the tree anyway. I suspect Husserl would say the falling “tree” does not make “a sound”.

But if the universe is, in a very real sense, consciousness, then there is no such thing as an unperceived tree falling. The particles (strings?) of the tree are linked to everything else in an essential way. The universe registers, in a small way, the falling of the tree. But does that falling tree make a sound?

This is why people ask me, “What are you thinking about?” at their peril.

Next: Summer XX. Jubilee + The Cat.

Spring III. Botany + Dawkins

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: Spring II. Home

I am no botanist, but I have long found pleasure in herb-gathering. I love to come upon a plant which is unknown to me, to identify it with the help of my book, to greet it by name when next it shines beside my path. If the plant be rare, its discovery gives me joy. Nature, the great Artist, makes her common flowers in the common view; no word in human language can express the marvel and the loveliness even of what we call the vulgarest weed, but these are fashioned under the gaze of every passer-by. The rare flower is shaped apart, in places secret, in the Artist’s subtler mood; to find it is to enjoy the sense of admission to a holier precinct. Even in my gladness I am awed...

It matters not how long I wander. There is no task to bring me back; no one will be vexed or uneasy, linger I ever so late. Spring is shining upon these lanes and meadows; I feel as if I must follow every winding track that opens by my way. Spring has restored to me something of the long-forgotten vigour of youth; I walk without weariness; I sing to myself like a boy, and the song is one I knew in boyhood....

Alpha.

I appreciate flora, and nature in general, in a vague and offhand way. I've never found that knowing the name of a flower makes me appreciate it more. My fault, I'm sure.

Interestingly, I am in fact as independent (or isolated) as Gissing wasn't, but he wanted Ryecroft to be. My parents have been dead for over 10 years and I have no siblings, children, mate, or even close extended family. If I had an Alsatian I would have to share Bridget Jones's concern that her singleton corpse would be discovered, half eaten, days or weeks after her death. But I don't even have a pet. It's the rare day when I couldn't walk for a few extra hours or even, on a whim, catch a train to some other town for dinner or for the night, and no one would be the wiser or wonder where I was. There is a freedom to it but also the feeling of being rather ephemeral.

Beta.  

Beta content will be random, not a direct response to the original text. But in this instance it is at least suggested by the use of the word "Artist" above. I've just finished reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and I need to say something about Intelligent Design (ID).

Some religious people point to the breathtaking complexity and beauty to be found in nature as a sign that Creation is in fact created by an Intelligent Designer (God). Dawkins shoots this belief down in any number of ways, but I think he overlooks at least one interesting counter argument. It occurred to me that even the most spectacularly designed human artifacts lack a true “designer” -- a single person responsible for the appearance and functioning of the artifact. In every case I can think of, the creation of the artifact is in fact the end result of a long, evolutionary process in which many people contributed to, or combined the work of, previous designers and inventors.

Dawkins counter argument, by the way, rests on the fact that a sudden creation of something of such complexity is far less reasonable than that it slowly took shape, as human artifacts do. And, just as unreasonable, is the idea that something (God), with the mind-blowing creative intelligence to create any of the things the ID people point to, could have magically proceeded all the rest.

Next: Spring IV. Priviledge and tranquility

Spring VIII. Nature and society + special moments

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: VII. Roots of philosophy

The early coming of spring in this happy Devon gladdens my heart. I think with chill discomfort of those parts of England where the primrose shivers beneath a sky of threat rather than of solace. Honest winter, snow-clad and with the frosted beard, I can welcome not un-cordially, but that long deferment of the calendar’s promise, that weeping gloom of March and April, that bitter blast outraging the honour of May -- how often has it robbed me of heart and hope. Here, scarce have I assured myself that the last leaf has fallen, scarce have I watched the glistening of hoar-frost upon the evergreens, when a breath from the west thrills me with anticipation of bud and bloom. Even under this grey-billowing sky, which tells that February is still in rule: --

Mild winds shake the elder brake,

And the wandering herdsmen know

That the whitethorn soon will blow.

I have been thinking of those early years of mine in London, when the seasons passed over me unobserved, when I seldom turned a glance toward the heavens, and felt no hardship in the imprisonment of boundless streets. It is strange now to remember that for some six or seven years I never looked upon a meadow, never traveled even so far as to the tree-bordered suburbs. I was battling for dear life; on most days I could not feel certain that in a week’s time I should have food and shelter. It would happen, to be sure, that in hot noons of August my thoughts wandered to the sea; but so impossible was the gratification of such desire that it never greatly troubled me... I remember afternoons of languor, when books were a weariness, and no thought could be squeezed out of the drowsy brain; then would I betake myself to one of the parks, and find refreshment without any enjoyable sense of change. Heavens, how I laboured in those days! And how far I was from thinking of myself as a subject for compassion! That came later, when my health had begun to suffer from excess of toil, from bad air, bad food, and many miseries; then awoke the maddening desire for countryside and sea-beach -- and for other things yet more remote... Sound sleep (often in places I now dread to think of) sent me fresh to the battle each morning, my breakfast, sometimes, no more than a slice of bread and a cup of water. As human happiness goes, I am not sure I was not then happy.

Most men who go through a hard time in their youth are supported by companionship... Of my position, the peculiarity was that I never belonged to any cluster... The truth is that I have never learnt to regard myself as a “member of society.” For me, there have always been two entities -- myself and the world, and the normal relation between these two has been hostile. Am I not still a lonely man, as far as ever from forming part of the social order?

This, of which I once was scornfully proud, seems to me now, if not a calamity, something I would not choose if life were to live again.

Alpha.

One of the things I like best about Henry Ryecroft is that he is even more of an anti-social misanthrope than I am. I find myself thinking I tire of, and eventually avoid, the people I meet because they are mostly so much younger. That it is a conflict of generations. But then I remember I’m not much better pleased with the “friends” I’ve known for decades.

Society and friendship can be a wonderful thing, but it is often more wonderful in theory or in expectation than in reality.  One of the mixed blessings of belonging to an online community is that you learn how many people’s lives are racked by depression or anxiety. As a person who enjoys “fixing” or solving problems, I find people who are overwhelmingly depressed or anxious for no particular reason very frustrating. And since, in the long run, we are all alone anyway, I prefer Ryecroft’s peaceful isolation to the doubtful consolations of friendship.

And suppose you do achieve that perfect connection with another person. It is a wonderful thing, I don't know that anything is better, but what if you then lose that connection. Joyce Carol Oates was devastated by the death of her first husband who had been, I think she would have said, the better part of her self. Within a year she had found a new "better part of her self," and had moved on.

It puzzles me how few (male) characters in fiction achieve or even seek this sort of a connection. Faust (Goethe) is all about the Eternal-Feminine but seems to care very little about actual women. I could say the same for the male protagonists of The Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq and for Bernard Marx in Brave New World. Marcel, in In Search of Lost Time, while usually consumed by a very particular sort of fetish that (in the novel) focuses on one female or another, is at least interested in women and ends up in some sort of a relationship with Gilbert. Christopher Tietjens, in Parade's End, for all his other failings, does form a connection with Valentine.

I try to tell my young online friends that, in the long run, and in the end, you are on your own, but I don't press it because no one wants to hear that, and in some cases I will be wrong... at least for a time.

Beta.

This section also reminds me of one of my favorite passages from Proust -- favorite because it resonates so well with my own feelings. Frustratingly, I can’t find the passage (although I’m almost certain it's in the 2nd volume).

Imagine the perfect quote here. Perhaps a taste of madeleine with a splash of tisane will help you with this. Adopt a French accent in your mind. You are a young, hyper-sensitive, young man on your first holiday at the beach in Brittany. You are overwhelmed by an aesthetic feeling as you contemplate some transitory view. You long to share this moment with another person but then you realize that if you had company the moment would quite possibly be ruined. You would be too involved in conversation to fully attend to the marvel before you (especially if your company was in any way connected to the Guermantes dynasty). The extent to which you were engaged with your friend would necessitate a compensatory disengagement from the very thing you wish to share. And it would be even worse if your friend was in a “mood,” and utterly impossible if your friend was the Baron.

The longing to share special moments with people close to you is so often spoiled, even when such a person is at hand, by our inability to comprehend another’s experience. Their experience of our “special moment” is not the same as ours. At best it may be a sort of translation. Worse, our “special moment” may be undermined by the mere presence of the other person.

Art -- painting, photography, literature, film, even music -- may be a better attempt to share those special moments with others. Within art we can control their experience and curate their impressions. We can try to bring to the experience the emotion we feel.

For Proust, in this passage, you need to keep in mind the character’s youth and delicate health; for Ryecroft, his lifetime of travail and his surprising respite and new found sense of peace.

And it gets worse... If our special moment is based on the evidence of our senses, as it most probably is, we have to consider the very real possibility that our friend does not perceive the world quite the way we do. Synesthesia is, in itself, freakish enough, but once you are aware of it you have to think that Synesthetes only know they are Synesthetes because their condition is so extreme. If it was less extreme, who would know? Just recently I took an online color test and discovered I can distinguish fewer colors than is normal. I'm not color blind, but where I see a shade of blue or red or green, most people can distinguish several shades of that color. I can't imagine any way this detracts from my life, but it does mean that I see the world slightly differently than others do.

If what I know as "red" is what other's know as "blue" is an entirely different question and one no one can answer.

Here's a fascinating passage from The God Delusion that Richard Dawkins really should contemplate some more:

What we see of the real world is not the unvarnished real world but a model of the real world, regulated and adjusted by sense data -- a model that is constructed so that it is useful for dealing with the real world. The nature of that model depends on the kind of animal we are. A flying animal needs a different kind of world model from a walking, a climbing or a swimming animal... I've speculated, in The Blind Watchmaker and elsewhere, that bats may 'see' colour with their ears. The world-model that a bat needs, in order to navigate through three dimensions catching insects, must surely be similar to the model that a swallow needs in order to perform much the same task... Once again, the perceptions that we call colours are tools used by our brains to label important distinctions in the outside world. Perceived hues -- what philosophers call qualia -- have no intrinsic connection with lights of particular wavelengths. They are internal labels that are available to the brain, when it constructs its model of external reality...

Next: Spring IX. Independence, forsooth!