Her History Books Told Her That They Were Always So

Miss R. The gentleman neither looks nor talks like a bad man - Not a very bad man; as men go.  

As men go!- Poor Miss Rawlins, thought I - And dost thou know, how men go? 

Cl. Oh madam, you know him not! - He can put on the appearance of an angel of light; but has a black, a very black heart!- 

Poor I! - 

Miss R. I could not have thought it, truly!- But men are very deceitful nowadays!

Nowadays! - a fool! - Have not her history books told her that they were always so? 

Richardson, Samuel. Clarissa. New York: Penguin Classics, 2004, 790.

What emerges from this initial reading of Clarissa is how pessimistic Richardson is about human nature. There's so much rudeness, violence and indecency in this novel. It paints a picture of an ultimately corrupted humanity by means of the brutal ruination of its innocent title character. Lovelace, head corrupter, sums it up succinctly: "human nature is such a well-known rogue."

Helpful coincidence then that I've been reading so much John Gray recently. Perfect compliment to Richardson. 

On Proverbs

Proverbs . . . are the wisdom of nations and ages collected into a small compass.

Richardson, Samuel. Clarissa. New York: Penguin Classics, 2004, 606.

What the Justice of Heaven May Inflict

Who knows what the justice of Heaven may inflict on us in order to convince us that we are not out of the reach of misfortune?

Richardson, Samuel. Clarissa. New York: Penguin Classics, 2004, 333.

Uncertainty of Personal Hearsay

I fancy, my dear, however, that there would hardly be a guilty person in the world, were each suspected or accused person to tell his or her story, and be allowed any degree of credit.

Richardson, Samuel. Clarissa. New York: Penguin Classics, 2004, 136.

Clarissa the Cosmopolitan

And yet, in my opinion, the world is but one great family; originally it was so; what then is this narrow selfishness that reigns in us, but relationship remembered against relationship forgot?

Richardson, Samuel. Clarissa. New York: Penguin Classics, 2004, 62.

The Justifications of Le Bien Publique

[H]is intellect supplied him with grounds for moral comfort. The thought that reassured Rastoptchin was not a new one. Ever since the world has existed and men have killed one another, a man has never committed such a crime against his fellow without consoling himself with the same idea. That idea is le bien publique, the supposed public good of others. To a man not swayed by passion this good never seems certain; but a man who has committed such a crime always knows positively where that public good lies. And Rastoptchin now knew this.

Tolstoy, Leo (2015-08-24). War and Peace (Kindle Locations 24321-24326).  . Kindle Edition. 

All the Horrors of Terrorism

One has but to admit menace to public tranquility and every sort of action is justified. 

All the horrors of terrorism were based only on anxiety for public tranquility.

Tolstoy, Leo. War and Peace. Translated by Constance Garnett, Kindle edition.

How little things change. 

In Cases of Defense

In cases of defense, 'tis best to weigh/ The enemy more mighty than he seems. 

Shakespeare, William. Henry V. New York: Simon & Schuster Folger Shakespeare Library, 1995, 71.

Memory and Magic in the Early Portions of Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend

Blood. In general it came from wounds only after horrible curses and disgusting obscenities had been exchanged. That was the standard procedure. My father, though he seemed to me a good man, hurled continuous insults and threats if someone didn't deserve, as he said, to be on the face of the earth. He especially had it in for Don Achille. He always had something to accuse him of, and sometimes I put my hands over my ears in order not to be too disturbed by his brutal words. When he spoke of him to my mother he called him "your cousin" but my mother denied that blood tie (there was a very distant relationship) and added to the insults. Their anger frightened me, I was frightened above all by the thought that Don Achille might have ears so sensitive that he could hear insults even from far away. I was afraid that he might come and murder them. 

Ferrante, Elena. My Brilliant Friend. Translated by Ann Goldstein. New York: Europa Editions, 2012, 35.

That's a paragraph from the first book of Elena Ferrante's much lauded Neapolitan Novels. 

Believe the hype. 

So far I'm only about fifty pages deep into the novel and already I love it. This passage comes from a section of the book about childhood and Goldstein's translation expertly captures the evocative melancholy naturally associated with reminiscence on that subject. You can see it here with the narrator's attachment of supernatural qualities to a mysterious neighbor. This kind of piquant mixing of memory and magic is sprinkled throughout this opening section, though not so much as to shift the novel into boring melodrama. I assume that as the narrator grows older she'll begin to make more sense of the world and therefore adopt a more natural narrative style but I hope, through the sepia-toned, soft-focused filter of recollection, at least some hint of this kind of prose remains. 

Pobrecito Pierre the Pessimist

He suffered from an unlucky faculty - common to many men, especially Russians - the faculty of seeing and believing in the possibility of good and truth, and at the same time seeing too clearly the evil and falsity of life to be capable of taking a serious part in it. Every sphere of activity was in his eyes connected with evil and deception. Whatever he tried to be, whatever he took up, evil and falsity drove him back again and cut him off from every field of energy.

Tolstoy, Leo. War and Peace. Translated by Constance Garnett. New York: Modern Library Paperback Edition, 2002, 612.

What Epictetus Would Tell Rostov

Nikolay Rostov was standing meanwhile at his post waiting for the wolf. He was aware of what must be taking place within the copse from the rush of the pack coming closer and going further away, from the cries of the dogs, whose notes were familiar to him, from the nearness, and then greater remoteness, and sudden raising of the voices of the huntsmen. He knew that there were both young and also old wolves in the enclosure. He knew the hounds had divided into two packs, that in one place they were close on the wolf, and that something had gone wrong. Every second he expected the wolf on his side. He made a thousand different suppositions of how and at what spot the wolf would run out, and how he would set upon it. Hope was succeeded by despair. Several times he prayed to God that the wolf would rush out upon him. He prayed with that feeling of passion and compunction with which men pray in moments of intense emotion due to trivial causes. "Why, what is it to Thee," he said to God, "to do this for me?  I know Thou art great and that it's a sin to pray to Thee to do this, but for God's sake do make the old wolf come out upon me, and make Karay fix his teeth in his throat and finish him before the eyes of 'uncle,' who is looking this way." A thousand times over in that half-hour, with intent, strained, and uneasy eyes Rostov scanned the thickets at the edge of the copse with two scraggy oaks standing up above the undergrowth of aspen, and the ravine with its overhanging bank, and "uncle's" cap peering out from behind a bush on the right. "No, that happiness is not to be," thought Rostov, "yet what would it cost Him!" It's not to be! I'm always unlucky, at cards, in war, and everything!" Austerlitz, Dolohov flashed in distinct but rapid succession through his imagination. "Only once in my life to kill an old wolf; I ask for nothing beyond!" he thought, straining eyes and ears, looking from left to right, and back again, and listening to the slightest fluctuations in the sounds of the dogs. 

Tolstoy, Leo. War and Peace. Translated by Constance Garnett. New York: Modern Library Paperback Edition, 2002, 567. 

War and Peace is my favorite novel. I read it every year. One of the reasons is that it's the most human novel, the novel that best reflects upon the reader, with a simple clarity, the human spirit and condition. In this passage, for instance, we find an all too recognizable encounter one has with the self: that awful stress born of the gap between hope and reality. I find in Rostov's despair something very familiar. I'm also reminded of the stoic remedies offered for situations like this. Epictetus writes that, "The origin of distress is wishing for something that does not come about." Instead of engaging in such distressful desire, Epictetus counsels to, "Seek not for events to happen as you wish but rather for events to happen as they do and your life will go smoothly." 

Eventually Rostov chills out. I think it's in large part because he comes to understand this sentiment. If only we all could.

The One Truths

[T]he endless multiplicity of men's minds . . . leads to no truth ever being seen by two persons alike.

Tolstoy, Leo. War and Peace. New York: Random House Modern Library Paperback Edition, 2002 , 492.

Bolkonsky Goes a Little Bazarov

"“The one thing for which I thank God is that I didn't kill that man,” said Pierre. 

“Why so?” said Prince Andrey. “To kill a vicious dog is a very good thing to do, really.” 

“No, to kill a man is bad, wrong …” 

“Why is it wrong?” repeated Prince Andrey; “what's right and wrong is a question it has not been given to men to decide. Men are for ever in error, and always will be in error, and in nothing more than in what they regard as right and wrong.” “

What does harm to another man is wrong,” said Pierre, feeling with pleasure that for the first time since his arrival Prince Andrey was roused and was beginning to speak and eager to give expression to what had made him what he now was. 

“And who has told you what is harm to another man?” he asked. 

“Harm? harm?” said Pierre; “we all know what harms ourselves.” 

“Yes, we know that, but it's not the same harm we know about for ourselves that we do to another man,” said Prince Andrey, growing more and more eager, and evidently anxious to express to Pierre his new view of things. He spoke in French. “I only know two very real ills in life, remorse and sickness. There is no good except the absence of those ills. To live for myself so as to avoid these two evils: that's the sum of my wisdom now.”"

Tolstoy, Leo. War and Peace. Translated by Constance Garnett. Amazon Digital Services, Inc., August 24, 2015.

You Say You Want A Revolution?

The sum of his discourse was to this effect: “That about forty years ago, certain persons went up to Laputa, either upon business or diversion, and, after five months continuance, came back with a very little smattering in mathematics, but full of volatile spirits acquired in that airy region: that these persons, upon their return, began to dislike the management of every thing below, and fell into schemes of putting all arts, sciences, languages, and mechanics, upon a new foot. To this end, they procured a royal patent for erecting an academy of projectors in Lagado; and the humour prevailed so strongly among the people, that there is not a town of any consequence in the kingdom without such an academy. In these colleges the professors contrive new rules and methods of agriculture and building, and new instruments, and tools for all trades and manufactures; whereby, as they undertake, one man shall do the work of ten; a palace may be built in a week, of materials so durable as to last for ever without repairing. All the fruits of the earth shall come to maturity at whatever season we think fit to choose, and increase a hundred fold more than they do at present; with innumerable other happy proposals. The only inconvenience is, that none of these projects are yet brought to perfection; and in the mean time, the whole country lies miserably waste, the houses in ruins, and the people without food or clothes. By all which, instead of being discouraged, they are fifty times more violently bent upon prosecuting their schemes, driven equally on by hope and despair: that as for himself, being not of an enterprising spirit, he was content to go on in the old forms, to live in the houses his ancestors had built, and act as they did, in every part of life, without innovation: that some few other persons of quality and gentry had done the same, but were looked on with an eye of contempt and ill-will, as enemies to art, ignorant, and ill common-wealth’s men, preferring their own ease and sloth before the general improvement of their country.”

Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver's Travels. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994, 176-77.

A Brobdingnagian Question and Observation

Above all, he was amazed to hear me talk of a mercenary standing army, in the midst of peace, and among a free people. He said, if we were governed by our own consent, in the persons of our representatives, he could not imagine of whom we were afraid, or against whom we were to fight; and would hear my opinion, whether a private man’s house might not be better defended by himself, his children, and family, than by half-a-dozen rascals, picked up at a venture in the streets for small wages, who might get a hundred times more by cutting their throats? 

[...]

He was perfectly astonished with the historical account gave him of our affairs during the last century; protesting it was only a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments, the very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice, and ambition, could produce.

His majesty, in another audience, was at the pains to recapitulate the sum of all I had spoken; compared the questions he made with the answers I had given; then taking me into his hands, and stroking me gently, delivered himself in these words, which I shall never forget, nor the manner he spoke them in: My little friend Grildrig, you have made a most admirable panegyric upon your country; you have clearly proved, that ignorance, idleness, and vice, are the proper ingredients for qualifying a legislator; that laws are best explained, interpreted, and applied, by those whose interest and abilities lie in perverting, confounding, and eluding them. I observe among you some lines of an institution, which, in its original, might have been tolerable, but these half erased, and the rest wholly blurred and blotted by corruptions. It does not appear, from all you have said, how any one perfection is required toward the procurement of any one station among you; much less, that men are ennobled on account of their virtue; that priests are advanced for their piety or learning; soldiers, for their conduct or valour; judges, for their integrity; senators, for the love of their country; or counsellors for their wisdom. As for yourself, continued the king, who have spent the greatest part of your life in travelling, I am well disposed to hope you may hitherto have escaped many vices of your country. But by what I have gathered from your own relation, and the answers I have with much pains wrung and extorted from you, I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth. 

Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver's Travels. Oxford: Oxford World's Classics, 1994, 124-26.

Considering the Miseries

Their notions relating to the Duties of Parents and Children differ extremely from ours. For, since the Conjunction of Male and Female is founded upon the great Law of Nature, in order to propagate and continue the Species; the Lilliputians will needs have it, that Men and Women are joined together like other Animals, by the Motives of Concupiscence; and that their Tenderness towards their Young, proceedeth from the like natural Principle: For which Reason they will never allow, that a Child is under any Obligation to his Father for begetting him, or to his Mother for brining him into the World; which, considering the Miseries of human Life, was neither a Benefit in itself, nor intended so by his Parents, whose Thoughts in their Love-encounters were otherwise employed. 

Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver's Travels. Oxford: Oxford World's Classics, 1994, 47-8. 

Shakespeare and the Stream of Time

The stream of time, which is continually washing the dissoluble fabrics of other poets, passes without injury by the adamant of Shakespeare.

Johnson, Samuel. King Lear. By William Shakespeare. New York: Signet Classic, 1998, 182.

Men of Time

[M]en/ Are as the time is.

Shakespeare, William. King Lear. New York: Signet Classic, 1998, 132.

Why Newborns Cry

When we are born, we cry that we are come/ To this great stage of fools. 

Shakespeare, William. King Lear. New York: Signet Classic, 1998, 117.

Like Monsters of the Deep

Humanity must perforce prey on itself,/ Like monsters of the deep. 

Shakespeare, William. King Lear. New York: Signet Classic, 1998, 101.