Lars Iyer's Blog, page 69

What do you need to be a philosopher? You discover that y...

What do you need to be a philosopher? You discover that you are a philosopher: it is not something you ever become.

Not a logical mind, not argumentative brio: philosophy is a passion. Discover this passion as a lover and witness of Socrates. Read the Platonic dialogues, Phaedrus, Phaedo, and the Apology, and you will fall in love with Socrates. You imbibe his frenzy, the madness of lover inspired by Aphrodite and Eros. You feel you can reach out and touch the feathers that grow again from the roots all over the surface of the soul to ascend to divine beauty.

To be a philosopher you need only three things. First, infinite intellectual eros: endless curiosity about everything. Second, the ability to pay attention: to be rapt by what is in front of you without seizing it yourself, the care of concentration - in the way you might look closely, without touching, at the green lacewing fly, overwintering silently on the kitchen wall. Third, acceptance of pathlessness (aporia): that there may be no solutions to questions, only the clarification of their statement. Eros, Attention, acceptance.

Gillian Rose, Paradiso

Publisher's page for Exodus.

Publisher's page for Exodus.

AT One phrase you come back to again and again is “civil ...

AT One phrase you come back to again and again is “civil society.” Why did that concept capture your imagination? What does it mean to you?

RS I’m a writer, so I spend a lot of time alone at home, but I also spend a lot of time as an activist in the streets, in gatherings and things like that, and following revolutions around the world: the Velvet Revolution, Tiananmen Square, the Zapatistas . . . In those moments, I’ve discovered in myself and in others a deep happiness, an unknown desire that’s finally fulfilled to be purposeful, to be a part of history and society, to have a voice.

One of my arguments in A Paradise Built in Hell is that we have almost too much language for private needs and desires and not nearly enough for these other things. This need and desire is so profound that when it’s fulfilled, you find these weird moments of joy despite everything in disaster. The whole world is falling apart, but I am who I was meant to be: a citizen, a rescuer, a resourceful person who belongs to and is serving a community.

[...]

RS My running joke about Hope in the Dark is that it’s a book in which I snatch the teddy bear of despair from the loving arms of the left. There are ways in which people are very attached to these despairing narratives—a lot of people got very upset with me.

AT You were trying to disabuse them of their comfortable cynicism, which they didn’t like.

RS Yeah. I’d get attacked by old, middle-class liberals and leftists who felt that you can’t be hopeful while people are suffering. I’d be like, “Well, people who are suffering are hopeful.” Look at the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, or the Zapatistas, who speak so beautifully about hope, and keep going.

AT Maybe despair is a privileged position.

RS That’s exactly what I realized. For some people, the alternative to hope is to surrender to the horrible things that menace them. The alternative to hope for the upper-middle class is to stay home and watch television or whatever. These alternatives don’t involve death, torture, annihilation, starvation, exploitation, or slavery. So despair is easy, or at least low cost.

Rebecca Solnit, interviewed

British publisher Frederic Warburg (who published English...

British publisher Frederic Warburg (who published English editions of Kafka's novels during the heavy bombing of London in World War II) mentions in his book "All Authors are Equal" (he was also George Orwell's publisher) an anecdote involving Brod, Kafka and their manuscripts. He attributes this story ("for whose authenticity I do not vouch") to Hannah Arendt, but does not provide a source. In it, Brod is strolling down a Prague street, a few days after Kafka's death, and meets a literary editor ("Let's call him Rudi," writes Warburg):

Rudi: "You look sad, Max, indeed we are all sad at the shocking news of poor Kafka's death."

Max: "... my friend Franz placed on my shoulders a heavy burden. Franz has given me instructions that I am to burn all his unpublished work, all of it."

Rudi: "Well, you must burn it, then, as Franz wishes."

Max: "It is not so easy, my friend. I have read his work, his novels and stories, all of it. These are masterpieces. How can I burn them?"

Rudi: "Masterpieces, you say. Then you must not burn them, Max. You must have them published."

Max: "Against dear Franz's wishes, Rudi?"

Rudi (thinks hard, then in an emphatic voice): "I have it, Max. Publish Franz's work and burn all your own."

Via a piece in Haaretz. (Via Literary Saloon)

It is not events that disturb people, it is their judgeme...

It is not events that disturb people, it is their judgements concerning them. Death, for example, is nothing frightening, otherwise it would have frightened Socrates. But the judgement that death is frightening - now, that is something to be afraid of. So when we are frustrated, angry or unhappy, never hold anyone except ourselves - that is, our judgements - accountable. An ignorant person is inclined to blame others for his own misfortune. To blame oneself is proof of progress. But the wise man never has to blame another or himself.

Keep the prospect of death, exile and all such apparent tragedies before you every day - especially death - and you will never have an abject thought, or desire anything to excess.

[...] Try to influence your friends to speak appropriately by your example. If you find yourself in unfamiliar company, however, keep quiet. Keep laughter to a minimum; do not laugh too often or too loud[...] Avoid fraternising with non-philosophers. If you must, though, be bareful not to sink to their level; beacuse, you know, if a companion is dirty, his friends cannot help but get a little dirty too, no matter how clean they started out.

Never identify yourself as a philosopher or speak much to non-philosophers about your principles; act in line with those principles. At a dinner party, for instance, don't tell people the right way to eat, just eat the right way. Remember how Socrates so effaced himself that people used to approach him seeking an introduction to philosophers, and he would graciously escort them; that's how careless he was of the slight.

[...] Sheep don't bring their owners grass to prove them how much they've eaten, they digest it inwardly and outwardly bring forth milk and wool. So don't make a show of your philosophical learning to the unitiated, show them by your actions what you have absorbed. [...]

When faced with anything painful or pleasurable, anything bringing glory or disrepute, realize that the crisis is now, that the Olympics have started, and waiting is no longer an option; that the chance for progress, to keep or lose, turns on the events of a single day.

Lead me, Zeus, lead me Destiny, / To the goal I was long ago assigned . And I will follow without hesitation. Even should I resist, / In a spirit of perversity, I will have to follow nonetheless. / Whoever yields to necessity graciously. We account wise in God's ways.

Epictetus, Enchiridon

[...] Marina Tsvetayeva had always held her work between...

[...] Marina Tsvetayeva  had always held her work between herself and the reality of daily life; and when she found this luxury beyond her means, when she felt that for her son's sake she must, for a time, give up her passionate absorption in poetry and look round her soberly, she saw chaos, no longer screened by art, fixed, unfamiliar, motionless, and, not knowing where to run for terror, she hid in death, putting her head into the noose as she might have hidden her head under her pillow.

Pasternak, An Essay in Autobiography

No more painters, no more writers, no more musicians, no ...

No more painters, no more writers, no more musicians, no more sculptors, no more religions, no more republicans, no more royalists, no more imperialists, no more anarchists, no more socialists, no more Bolsheviks, no more politicians, no more proletarians, no more democrats, no more armies, no more police, no more nations, no more of these idiocies, no more, no more, NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING.

Thus we hope that the novelty which will be the same thing as what we no longer want will come into being less rotten, less immediately GROTESQUE.

Louis Aragon, Manifesto at the second Dada manifestation, 5 Feb 1920

The whole age can be divided into those who write and tho...

The whole age can be divided into those who write and those who do not write. Those who write represent despair, and those who read disapprove of it and believe that they have a  superior wisdom - and yet, if they were able to write, they would write the same thing. Basically they are all equally despairing, but when one does not have the opportunity to become important with his despair, then it is hardly worth the trouble to despair and show it. Is this what it is to have conquered despair?

Kierkegaard, Journals

The mark and attitude of the ordinary man: never look for...

The mark and attitude of the ordinary man: never look for help or harm from yourself, only from outsiders. The mark and attitude of the philosopher: look for help and harm exclusively from yourself.

And the signs of a person making progress: he never criticizes, praises, blames or points the finger, or represents himself as knowing or amounting to anything. If he experiences frustration or disappointment, he points the finger at himself.

If he's praised, he's more amused than elated. And if he's criticized, he won't bother to respond. He walks around as if he were an invalid, careful not to move a healing limb before it's at full strength. He has expunged all desire, and made the things that are contrary to nature and in his control the sole target of his aversion. Impulse he only uses with detachment. He does not care if he comes across as stupid or naive. In a word, he keeps an eye on himself as if he were his own enemy lying in ambush.

from Epictetus, Enchiridion

Sept 16, 1956: I have no compulsion to write or to do any...

Sept 16, 1956: I have no compulsion to write or to do anything except when I am possessed by routines, which can happen anytime. A lot of the time I just sit blank and narcotized letting sensations flow through me. I have a feeling that I might turn into somebody else, that I am losing my outlines.

Oct 13, 1956: I have entered a period of change more drastic than adolescence or early childhood. I am getting so far out one day I won’t come back at all. I can’t take time to go into all my mystic experiences which I have whenever  I walk out the door. There is something special about Tanger.

Oct 29, 1956: What I am writing now supersedes, in fact makes obsolete, anything I have written hitherto[....] I am really writing Interzone now, not writing about it.

Dec 20, 1965. I will send along 100 pages of Interzone, it is coming so fast I can’t hardly get it down, and shakes me like a great black wind through the bones ...

Jan 23, 1957. Interzone is coming like dictation. I can’t keep up with it.

Jan 28, 1957. Now my power’s really coming ...

Feb 14, 1957. Since sending MS. have written about fifty pages more, wilder than what you have. This is almost automatic writing. I often sit high on hash for as long as six hours typing at top speed.

August 28, 1957. I have always felt that the MS. To date was in a sense notes for a novel rather than the novel itself. This novel is now taking shape faster than I can write down.

Sep 20, 1957. As regards MS., I think any attempt at chronological arrangement extremely ill-advised[...] The MS. in present form does not hold together as a novel for the simple reason that it is not a novel. It is a number of connected – by theme – but separate short pieces. My feeling is that it will eventually grow into several novels all interlocking and taking place simultaneously as in a majoun dream. But I do not see organization as a problem.

Oct 28th, 1957. If anyone finds this form confusing, it is because they are accustomed to the historical novel form, which is a three-dimensional chronology of events happening to someone already, for purposes of the novel, dead. That is the usual novel has happened. This novel is happening.

The only way I can write narrative is to get right outside my body and experience it. This can be exhausting and at times dangerous. One cannot be sure of redemption.

Nov 10, 1957. I do nothing but work.... Given up liquor entirely. Writing the narrative now, which comes in great hunks faster than I can get it down. Changes in my psyche profound and basic. I feel myself not the same person.

Oct 10 1958. Brion Gysin living next door[....] He has undergone similar conversion to mine and doing GREAT painting[....] I see in his painting the psychic landscape of my own work. He is doing in painting what I try to do in writing. He regards his painting as a hole in the texture of so-called ‘reality’, through which he is exploring an actual place existing in outer space. That is, he moves into the painting and through it, his life and sanity at stake when he paints.

Late July 1959. Fact is I have become a megalomaniac, but with one essential difference and advantage. I have been outside. I have come up from the area of total humiliation and failure, climbed up cell by cell with a million set-backs and debacles.

William Burroughs, Letters vol. 1