Keynes - The emancipation of the mind

"For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still."

"The day is not far off when the economic problem will take the back seat where it belongs, and the arena of the heart and the head will be occupied or reoccupied, by our real problems - the problems of life and of human relations, of creation and behavior and religion." 

"The importance of money flows from it being a link between the present and the future." 
  

"A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind"

John Maynard Keynes. 

At least in the Western World, we seem to be stuck in the middle of an irritating never-ending economic crisis; and it has been so for a good five to six years. Economics as a branch of culture and knowledge is the great topic of the day, in terms of media, politics or academics. And economists have become nearly celebrities. John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) is one of the classic gods of the economic firmament. He has traditionally been regarded by the general public as an author somewhat half way between the two extreme social and economic positions: rough liberalism and socialism. But actually he saved capitalism in the second post war with his policies. 

Interested as well in other such topics like philosophy and literature, aside from economics, in the 1920s he was a member of the famous Bloomsbury group, that fascinating bunch of writers, philosophers and thinkers, together with Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey or EM Forster. 

Keynes is considered by many to be the "savior" of capitalism after the Depression and WW II. After the disaster and destruction caused by the war, Keynes´s theories (if controversial) seemed to show the right path in the decades to come. Public spending was to fuel the economy. His main work, General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money first published in 1935, became some sort of Bible among many economists. His influence was huge, and Keynes´s approach was dominant well until the 1970s. 

He was later replaced by a strong revival of liberalism in the 1980s. But now again, at this time of near depression that we are in, this economic doom that we constantly fail to leave behind, Keynes is once more vindicated. In Europe austerity and budget control reign supreme these days, even if those do not seem to fully work, according to some. Here is, in any case, another good chance to read what he had to say. Not only as an economist, but also as a thinker, in the deepest sense. 

Perhaps one day, technology will be so powerful, economics so well managed, resources so abundant, that humankind will be at last, as J M Keynes himself suggested, to finally devote its energies to the "real problems" of our condition.  But as that day is still far away, our real problems, we fear, are still what they have always been. 

Deanna Durbin (1921-2013)

Having learnt of Deanna Durbin's death (yesterday, april 20th), something immediately comes to mind (to memory): this little movie Every Sunday. A legendary tiny musical piece released in 1936, in which Deanna (then 14) played alongside Judy Garland (13).

That year the two girls were under contract by MGM, arguably the classiest Hollywood studio at the time. But the studio executives thought it was perhaps not entirely reasonable having two little girl singers in stand by, that is, two possible or potential stars in the making, being of the same profile. So, in theory, only one of them should be kept. But which one? Not an easy decision to make, given the undeniable talent of both.

Every Sunday was to decide. This short movie, of little more than 10 minutes, was to serve as a kind of screen test to evaluate Judy and Deanna, sort of to establish which one was the "better", or rather the better for the studio's purposes. The two girls' quite different singing styles are on display on Every Sunday. Deanna's operatic voice (like that of a "miniature diva" so to speak) versus the more "natural"/"pop", more of the jazz baby type, of Judy's. Well, finally, perhaps surprisingly, Deanna was the one MGM decided to let go. They would be keeping Judy.

Deanna and Judy, Judy and Deanna

14 year-old Judy, already full as she was of complexes and insecurities (and in a way always would be), in spite of her enormous talent, could not help wondering why exactly she had been the one the studio decided to retain. Judy, "the ugly duckling" or the "little hunchback", as Meyer supposedly once called her. In theory Deanna was the "better looking" of the two, with more glamorous potential. At least it was so in 1936, a few years before Judy would receive. her too (in 1942-43), the glamour treatment, which would turn her into one of the most beautiful creatures to have ever appeared on a movie screen. At least for a handful of years. Before (prescription) drugs and alcohol started eating up her liver.

After leaving the MGM, Deanna started a very successful career with Universal, her new studio. This of course left the ever insecure Judy wondering even more obsessively why she had been chosen over Deanna. Also with Universal, Deanna was to have leading roles almost straight away, while Judy on her part would not get her first adult/leading role until 1942. Only after having been the supporting girl of big box office draw Mickey Rooney in no less than seven movies, between 1937 and 1941. So for a while it was Deanna who appeared to be the "successful" one after all, despite her dropping by MGM, Then Oz came along to Judy. And Vincente Minnelli. And a meteoric star was born: Judy Garland. (Later, in 1954, even re-born).

Deanna and Judy. Of them, it was then Judy who would become a true movie legend, while Deanna would slip off into obscurity as the 1940s, her decade of brilliance, were moving away into the past. As early as 1948, after only a few years of stardom (and being only 27) Deanna would give up Hollywood for good. At the same time, Judy Garland was to become a huge, if tormented, star. She died in 1969 of an accidental overdose of pills (barbiturates), those she could never get rid of, and in a state of personal distress.

Deanna, that minor light next to the huge Garland myth, died peacefully (so we imagine) yesterday, april 20th, 2013. That is, being a year older, almost half a century later than the stunning little girl of Oz. 

Arthur Rimbaud: A poet makes himself a visionary...

"A poet makes himself a visionary through a long, boundless, and systematized disorganization of all the senses. All forms of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he exhausts within himself all poisons, and preserves their quintessences. Unspeakable torment, where he will need the greatest faith, a superhuman strength, where he becomes all men the great invalid, the great criminal, the great accursed--and the Supreme Scientist! For he attains the unknown! 

Because he has cultivated his soul, already rich, more than anyone! He attains the unknown, and if, demented, he finally loses the understanding of his visions, he will at least have seen them! So what if he is destroyed in his ecstatic flight through things unheard of, unnameable: other horrible workers will come; they will begin at the horizons where the first one has fallen."

Arthur Rimbaud

Between 1871 and 1873 Rimbaud attained the unknown. He was that visionary with all senses disorganized which he himself described, the ultimate poet, having seen all visions. And with great talent he managed to put those visions on paper for future ecstasy of poetry lovers, of those longing to see the other side of reality or explore other realities. Which even if they are only product of the mind and human culture, they are no less magic and fascinating. 

Rimbaud: a true magician of the art of poetry, a master of revealing parallel universes; a great artist of language, who turned his visions into words with impressive skill. Setting in stone intangible spiritual marvels. But something happened in 1873. Suddenly (at 19!), he abandoned his talent altogether, his splendid art, and turned himself into a vulgar inhabitant of planet Earth. He had to earn a living, true, and there is little to do about that, we agree. But where did all that magic go? It simply vanished for good, to never return. There is not a glimpse of poetry in his future letters and writings, only arid material stuff. In the name of God, what happened? 

Pavese: The Business of Living

"The thing most feared in secret always happens.

I write: oh Thou, have mercy. And then?

All it takes is a little courage.
The more the pain grows clear and definite, the more the instinct for life asserts itself and the thought of suicide recedes.

It seemed easy when I thought of it. Weak women have done it. It takes humility, not pride.

All this is sickening.
Not words. An act. I won't write any more."

Cesare Pavese - The Business of Living (August 17, 1950)

In a previous post we spoke about first lines. How about last lines?

These last lines of Pavese's diaries The Business of Living ("business" in the sense of a job or task for which skill and learning is needed) are among the most shocking of all literature. Mainly if we consider what came immediately afterwards, if we consider that this is literature and also unbearable reality. These desperate lines impregnate the full text (all the pages of the diary) with a sense of honesty. The book is and appears before us the way it does because of the combination between the painful ending (Not words. An act. I won't write any more) and this final act that followed it.

In other words, The Business of living is made of a number of pages written throughout 1935-1950 and the final act that rubricated it, without which the book would be another. Less poignant or devastating.

Pavese failed in the"business of living". But his diary is the deepest and most potent dissection of that failure. And of course, many will find in it teachings most valuable for life and its trades.

The Business of Living: Diaries 1935-50 (Amazon)

Javier Marías: The Infatuations

Javier Marias´s latest novel has come out in English in March 2013. For the title of this version the translator has chosen The Infatuations. The original Spanish title is Los Enamoramientos. It is not quite the same. I suppose that there is not an English word that translates the original with full accuracy. An infatuation is a kind of obsession of some sort or an all-absorbing interest for something, and a rather unusual or uncommon something in most cases. When you are infatuated you can be totally attracted and engulfed, but love is not usually in the equation. We could describe an enamoramiento as a sort of infatuation with love within it.

That said: with The Infatuations, Marías creates another smart novel in a similar style as his 1992 A Heart so White. There is a violent murder here and a riddle, together with the characteristic Marias philosophical stream. Again, here is a page-turning noir plot filled with reflections on life, love, death, obsession or guilt; and again the author manages to succeed in such a difficult balance.

Here is the The Guardian review by Robert McCrum.

Now there is one thing I can tell you...

"Now there is one thing I can tell you: you will enjoy certain pleasures you would not fathom now. When you still had your mother you often thought of the days when you would have her no longer. Now you will often think of days past when you had her. 

When you are used to this horrible thing that they will forever be cast into the past, then you will gently feel her revive, returning to take her place, her entire place, beside you. At the present time, this is not yet possible. Let yourself be inert, wait till the incomprehensible power ... that has broken you restores you a little, I say a little, for henceforth you will always keep something broken about you. Tell yourself this, too, for it is a kind of pleasure to know that you will never love less, that you will never be consoled, that you will constantly remember more and more."

Marcel Proust

Remembrance is truly an art, an unlimited feast. Pleasure and suffering are equals in remembrance. All emotions and experiences have all become something purely aesthetic when finally long slipped into the past. The Present could be lived intensely; alternatively it can be just used as a tool to create a beautiful past in that canvas of your mind. For that purpose, it must be lived intensely, no matter how irrelevant it might appear. 

Irresistible beginnings: Javier Marías

"I did not want to know but I have since come to know that one of the girls, when she wasn’t a girl anymore and hadn’t long been back from her honeymoon, went into the bathroom, stood in front of the mirror, unbuttoned her blouse, took off her bra and aimed her own father’s gun at her heart, her father at the time was in the dining room with the other members of the family and three guests."

Heart So White (1992), first lines. 

"No one ever expects that they might one day find themselves with a dead woman in their arms, a woman whose face they will never see again, but whose name they will remember."

Tomorrow in the Battle, Think on Me (1994), first lines

  

Those among us who have ever tried to write fiction are well aware of how important it is to create a good beginning. The story´s development is essential to be sure, but managing to create an irresistible start -one that gets hold of the reader and will not let him/her go- is something crucial. You have to get the reader to start reading, otherwise the bet is likely lost. 

After those magnificent first lines of A Heart so White or Tomorrow in the Battle, you simply cannot put the book down. Marias is a true master of beginnings; a master to ignite the reader´s interest. And keep it going, of course. 

Gatsby and Bill Gates

"And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter....tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning.....

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

Francis Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby 

Let´s highlight this one: 

(...) He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him. (...)

This is a lovely line in a superb fragment, the most lovely ending of a book. So much so that Bill Gates engraved this very line ("He had come a long way...), on the ceiling of the library of his magnificent 100 million dollar home!

Obviously Gates liked The Great Gatsby, and loved this fragment, but it feels as if he did not quite grasp the true meaning of the line, or at least its most obvious meaning. Or did he? Maybe it is just that a book has a life of its own, and interpretations are absolutely free, each one adapting it into his or her peculiar circumstance: a book is a set of symbols, a code each individual understands his/her way. Yes, that is. 

Or also it could well be that Bill Gates wanted to let us know that...he did not actually reach his dream, this having been passed by just the moment it seemed so much within his reach?. Perhaps his identification with Gatsby was such that he decided to engrave in the ceiling of his dream house the futility of all human dreams? 

Hell, no. The phrase "He did not know that it was already behind him" was not included in the ceiling engraving. 

Be Drunken

 
"Be always drunken.
Nothing else matters:
that is the only question.

If you would not feel
the horrible burden of Time
weighing on your shoulders
and crushing you to the earth,
be drunken continually.

Drunken with what?
With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will.
But be drunken."

Charles Baudelaire - Paris Spleen 

Yes, be drunk(en). Find the passion to inebriate you, the passion of your choice. And drain it. Make sure you have a good supply at all times. Be drunken, no matter the drug: Art, poetry, work, knowledge, travel, people. Otherwise you will feel the horrible burden of Time. Which may (will) crush you. 

It has made me better loving you

"It has made me better loving you...it has made me wiser, and easier, and brighter. I used to want a great many things before, and to be angry that I did not have them. Theoretically, I was satisfied. I flattered myself that I had limited my wants. But I was subject to irritation; I used to have morbid sterile hateful fits of hunger, of desire. 

Now I really am satisfied, because I can’t think of anything better. It’s just as when one has been trying to spell out a book in the twilight, and suddenly the lamp comes in. I had been putting out my eyes over the book of life, and finding nothing to reward me for my pains; but now that I can read it properly I see that it’s a delightful story"

Henry James - Portrait of a Lady 

James was not an actor of life, not an actor within life, I mean, he did not truly live. His life was socially exhausting, true, even if it only developed in the surfaces. The "intangibility of his life", as one critic once defined it.  But he was a splendid spectator of life, the most subtle of its commentators. Usually, James encapsulates his deepest knowledge of existence (a knowledge he acquired through observation, that is) with a very personal somewhat languid language, highly intellectual. Most times this makes his brilliance: his powers of penetration expressed in a beautiful literary way. A few times it could be irritating (what does this mean exactly, really it cannot be expressed in a simpler way?). 

And quite a few times more, he is simply crystal-clear, his intelligence being most transparent. His psychological skill exploding before the reader without exigence. As if the world unexpectedly, all of a sudden freely revealed its well-kept mysteries.

                                     

St. John of The Cross / Dark Night of the Soul

St. John of the Cross, born in Fontiveros (Ávila, near Madrid), in 1542, is perhaps, along with Quevedo, the best Spanish poet of the Golden Age (probably also of all ages), the poet who achieved the most sophisticated and elevated heights in the Spanish verse. St John of the Cross has been considered throughout the centuries the ultimate mystical and religious (catholic) poet, and this has perhaps led some to refrain from reading and enjoying his poetry. One of his most known poems, Dark Night of the Soul, is also among his best. It is a mystical poem telling us about one journey: that of the Soul towards her Beloved (God or Jesus); here the Lover (the Soul) and the Beloved (Jesus, God) consummate their union among the lilies. And that, to the author and his devout 16th century audience, is a burning moment of communion.

But as it has been noted more than once, Dark Night of the Soul could also be read not only in this traditional mystic sense, but also in a new torrid, erotic sense. Physical rather than Mystical. The Lover (not the "Soul" in this case, but, say, a female, any female, a young woman) leaves her home now at rest, to greet her Beloved, waiting for her outside. She will walk the night which guides her, a night more lovely than the dawn, and she will recline her face on him, abandoning herself and leaving her cares forgotten among the lilies. With such a suggestive re-framing, the poem opens up to new sensual dimensions, and a richer reality.

Canadian Celtic singer and composer Loreena McKennit in her 1994 album The Mask and The Mirror, recreated St John of the Cross´s poem and as she herself explained, this erotic retelling was precisely the basis of her version.

Con a dark night, Kindled un love with yearnings

--oh, happy chance!--
I went forth without being observed, 
My house being now at rest. 
(...)
Oh, night that guided me, 
Oh, night more lovely than the dawn,
Oh, night that joined 
Beloved with lover, 
Lover transformed in the Beloved!
(...)
I remained, lost in oblivion; 
My face I reclined on the Beloved.
All ceased and I abandoned myself, 
Leaving my cares 
forgotten among the lilies."

Borges, drawing the world

"A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face."

Yes, we built up our reality, and we do so with all objects, physical or spiritual, we come across and which we personally process. Borges is truly a literature of thoughts, smart speculations with an aesthetic taste and a flavor of truth, unconceivably more than in any other writer. The amount of insights that we can find in any single borgesian page is simply astonishing. He famously stated that 

"Writing long books is a laborious and impoverishing act of foolishness: expanding in five hundred pages an idea that could be perfectly explained in a few minutes. A better procedure is to pretend that those books already exist and to offer a summary, a commentary."

In a material sense, Borges did not write much, he was not a very "prolific" author. The number of pages he left behind was not huge. He did not manage to write a novel, assuming he ever attempted to. Only short stories and essays (with the line between the two blurred). But if we consider his richness, the complex fascinating ideas with which he constantly filled his texts (to such an extent that full volumes could be forged out of many a single of his ideas!), then Borges is among the most "prolific" authors to ever have existed. A spiritual giant. A vast author, where it is possible to dissolve oneself in a sea of infinitude. 

He also reinvented a language, reverting a literary tradition. The language of Castile which one would have told only valid for an arid realism, was after him turned into a splendid key to a great intellectual universe. And those colorful supernatural realms of contemporary Latin American literature would be unthinkable without Borges. In some way, they all sprang out of him.

Whitman: Full of Life Now

"Full of life now, compact, visible,
I, forty years old the eighty-third year of the States,
To one a century hence or any number of centuries hence,
To you yet unborn these, seeking you.

When you read these I that was visible am become invisible,
Now it is you, compact, visible, realizing my poems, seeking me,

Fancying how happy you were if I could be with you and become your comrade;

Be it as if I were with you. (Be not too certain but I am now with you.)"

Walt Whitman (1859)

A favorite Whitman poem. In  the year of 1859 (83rd of the States) Whitman, then a physical presence, a man in Time, addresses someone still non existent, but who will be, in the course of one century, or two centuries, as living and sentient as he, the poet, is now.

Whitman speaks from a distant past, one century and a half away from the reader. Whitman speaks to a ghost, as if the ghost were with him in the room. And now, in the present, when his word finally reaches us, he is the ghost, talking to a tangible reader, now taking their place in time. That place Whitman left so long ago.

Sometimes a poem can make the perception of reality tremble. Sometimes a poem, a simple poem, can truly make you understand your essential condition: that you, thinking yourself so tangible, are just a dream, a mere image in the fabric of Time. A vague presence in a quick process of vanishing, in the very same way as that voice now talking to you also vanished.

Montaigne: So it is with minds...

"So it is with minds. Unless you keep them busy with some definite subject that will bridle and control them, they throw themselves in disorder hither and yon in the vague field of imagination... And there is no mad or idle fancy that they do not bring forth in the agitation."

Michel de Montaigne

Harold Bloom is his extraordinary The Western Canon (1994), claimed that Freud was our Montaigne, that is, the Montaigne of our chaotic contemporary Time.

True. Freud, once a scientific figure, has become Literature. In the good sense, of course. In the best sense. We now read his texts as great artistic (and of course tremendously clever) pieces. A kind of aesthetic intelligence, which is the highest form of intelligence. A reborn Montaigne, for our (ir)rational Time.

That said, how about reading the original? Montaigne is less structured than Freud, as the Frenchman did not have "scientific" pretensions. But he may well be even bigger, reaching even more distant horizons. Which means that he is some sort of giant, an immense field full of gems. Like this one preceding this note.

Retiring to these deserts...

Retiring to these deserts now in peace,
with few but learned volumes to be read,
I live in conversation with the dead,
and listen with my eyes to those deceased.


Though sometimes impenetrable they seem,
they mend or they enrich all that I own;
and they, in quiet counterpointed tonesawake, address this life which is a dream.

Francisco de Quevedo 

Quevedo, perhaps the greatest poet in the Spanish language, is also the author of a most beautiful praise of literature and books. Those dead ones that you live in conversation with and whom you listen to with the eyes.