Excerpe itaque te volgo, Pauline carissime, et in tranquilliorem portum non pro aetatis spatio iactatus tandem recede. Cogita, quot fluctus subieris, quot tempestates partim privatas sustinueris, partim publicas in te converteris. Satis iam per laboriosa et inquieta documenta exhibita virtus est: experire, quid in otio faciat. Maior pars aetatis, certe melior reipublicae data est: aliquid temporis tui sume etiam tibi.
Nec te ad segnem aut inertem quietem voco: non ut somno et caris turbae voluptatibus, quicquid est in te indolis vividae, mergas. Non est istud adquiescere: invenies maiora omnibus adhuc strenue tractatis operibus, quae repositus et securus agites.
Tu quidem orbis terrarum rationes administras tam abstinenter quam alienas, tam diligenter quam tuas, tam religiose quam publicas. In eo officio amorem consequeris, in quo odium vitare difficile est: sed tamen, mihi crede, satius est vitae suae rationem quam frumenti publici nosse.
Istum animi vigorem, rerum maximarum capacissimum, a ministerio honorifico quidem sed parum ad beatam vitam apto revoca et cogita non id egisse te ab aetate prima omni cultu studiorum liberalium, ut tibi multa milia frumenti bene committerentur: maius quiddam et altius de te promiseras.
(Lucius Annaeus Seneca, De brevitate vitae ad Paulinum, XVIII)
And so, my dearest Paulinus, tear yourself away from the crowd, and, too much storm-tossed for the time you have lived, at length withdraw into a peaceful harbour. Think of how many waves you have encountered, how many storms, on the one hand, you have sustained in private life, how many, on the other, you have brought upon yourself in public life; long enough has your virtue been displayed in laborious and unceasing proofs—try how it will behave in leisure. The greater part of your life, certainly the better part of it, has been given to the state; take now some part of your time for yourself as well.
And I do not summon you to slothful or idle inaction, or to drown all your native energy in slumbers and the pleasures that are dear to the crowd. That is not to rest; you will find far greater works than all those you have hitherto performed so energetically, to occupy you in the midst of your release and retirement.
You, I know, manage the accounts of the whole world as honestly as you would a stranger's, as carefully as you would your own, as conscientiously as you would the state's. You win love in an office in which it is difficult to avoid hatred; but nevertheless believe me, it is better to have knowledge of the ledger of one's own life than of the corn-market.
Recall that keen mind of yours, which is most competent to cope with the greatest subjects, from a service that is indeed honourable but hardly adapted to the happy life, and reflect that in all your training in the liberal studies, extending from your earliest years, you were not aiming at this—that it might be safe to entrust many thousand pecks of corn to your charge; you gave hope of something greater and more lofty.
(Seneca, On the Shortness of Life, translated by John W. Basore, London, 1932)
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Friday, February 27, 2009
An Architect of Words
(I see poems as sounds
words architecture)
(shelters that take off)
(become catfish, pumas,
lizards, sparrowhawks,
rattlesnakes) (animals
on their own)
Franco Beltrametti, 15/IV/78
words architecture)
(shelters that take off)
(become catfish, pumas,
lizards, sparrowhawks,
rattlesnakes) (animals
on their own)
Franco Beltrametti, 15/IV/78
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
For a While
...we have everything and we have nothing.
some do it well enough for a while and
then give way. fame gets them or disgust
or age or lack of proper diet or ink
across the eyes or children in college
or new cars or broken backs while skiing
in Switzerland or new politics or new wives
or just natural change and decay...
(Charles Bukowski, Something For The Touts, The Nuns, The Grocery Clerks, And You...)
[PoemHunter]
some do it well enough for a while and
then give way. fame gets them or disgust
or age or lack of proper diet or ink
across the eyes or children in college
or new cars or broken backs while skiing
in Switzerland or new politics or new wives
or just natural change and decay...
(Charles Bukowski, Something For The Touts, The Nuns, The Grocery Clerks, And You...)
[PoemHunter]
Once and for All
Oui, l'enfer doit être ainsi: des rues à enseignes et pas moyen de s'expliquer. On est classé une fois pour toutes.
(Albert Camus, La Chute)
Yes, hell must be like that: streets filled with shop signs and no way of explaining oneself. One is classified once and for all.
(Albert Camus, The Fall)
(Albert Camus, La Chute)
Yes, hell must be like that: streets filled with shop signs and no way of explaining oneself. One is classified once and for all.
(Albert Camus, The Fall)
Monday, February 16, 2009
Materialist Magician
MY DEAR WORMWOOD,
I wonder you should ask me whether it is essential to keep the patient in ignorance of your own existence. That question, at least for the present phase of the struggle, has been answered for us by the High Command. Our policy, for the moment, is to conceal ourselves. Of course this has not always been so. We are really faced with a cruel dilemma. When the humans disbelieve in our existence we lose all he pleasing results of direct terrorism and we make no magicians. On the other hand, when they believe in us, we cannot make them materialists and sceptics. At least, not yet. I have great hopes that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalise and mythologise their science to such an extent that what is, in effect, belief in us, (though not under that name) will creep in while the human mind remains closed to belief in the Enemy. The "Life Force", the worship of sex, and some aspects of Psychoanalysis, may here prove useful. If once we can produce our perfect work—the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls "Forces" while denying the existence of "spirits"—then the end of the war will be in sight. But in the meantime we must obey our orders. I do not think you will have much difficulty in keeping the patient in the dark. The fact that "devils" are predominantly comic figures in the modern imagination will help you. If any faint suspicion of your existence begins to arise in his mind, suggest to him a picture of something in red tights, and persuade him that since he cannot believe in that (it is an old textbook method of confusing them) he therefore cannot believe in you.
I had not forgotten my promise to consider whether we should make the patient an extreme patriot or an extreme pacifist. All extremes, except extreme devotion to the Enemy, are to be encouraged. Not always, of course, but at this period. Some ages are lukewarm and complacent, and then it is our business to soothe them yet faster asleep. Other ages, of which the present is one, are unbalanced and prone to faction, and it is our business to inflame them. Any small coterie, bound together by some interest which other men dislike or ignore, tends to develop inside itself a hothouse mutual admiration, and towards the outer world, a great deal of pride and hatred which is entertained without shame because the "Cause" is its sponsor and it is thought to be impersonal. Even when the little group exists originally for the Enemy's own purposes, this remains true. We want the Church to be small not only that fewer men may know the Enemy but also that those who do may acquire the uneasy intensity and the defensive self-righteousness of a secret society or a clique. The Church herself is, of course, heavily defended and we have never yet quite succeeded in giving her all the characteristics of a faction; but subordinate factions within her have often produced admirable results, from the parties of Paul and of Apollos at Corinth down to the High and Low parties in the Church of England.
If your patient can be induced to become a conscientious objector he will automatically find himself one of a small, vocal, organised, unpopular society, and the effects of this, on one so new to Christianity, will almost certainly be good. But only almost certainly. Has he had serious doubts about the lawfulness serving in a just war before this present war of serving began? Is he a man of great physical courage—so great that he will have no half-conscious misgivings about the real motives of his pacifism? Can he, when nearest to honesty (no human is ever very near), feel fully convinced that he actuated wholly by the desire to obey the Enemy? If he is that sort of man, his pacifism will probably not do us much good, and the Enemy will probably protect him from the usual consequences of belonging to a sect. Your best plan, in that case, would be to attempt a sudden, confused, emotional crisis from which he might emerge as an uneasy convert to patriotism. Such things can often be managed. But if he is the man I take him to be, try Pacifism.
Whichever he adopts, your main task will be the same. Let him begin by treating the Patriotism or the Pacifism as a part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part. Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which the religion becomes merely part of the "cause", in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce in favour of the British war-effort or of Pacifism. The attitude which you want to guard against is that in which temporal affairs are treated primarily as material for obedience. Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing. Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades, matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he is ours—and the more "religious" (on those terms) the more securely ours. I could show you a pretty cageful down here.
Your affectionate uncle
SCREWTAPE
(Clive Staples Lewis, The Screwtape Letters: How a Senior Devil Instructs a Junior Devil in the Art of Temptation, Letter No. 7)
I wonder you should ask me whether it is essential to keep the patient in ignorance of your own existence. That question, at least for the present phase of the struggle, has been answered for us by the High Command. Our policy, for the moment, is to conceal ourselves. Of course this has not always been so. We are really faced with a cruel dilemma. When the humans disbelieve in our existence we lose all he pleasing results of direct terrorism and we make no magicians. On the other hand, when they believe in us, we cannot make them materialists and sceptics. At least, not yet. I have great hopes that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalise and mythologise their science to such an extent that what is, in effect, belief in us, (though not under that name) will creep in while the human mind remains closed to belief in the Enemy. The "Life Force", the worship of sex, and some aspects of Psychoanalysis, may here prove useful. If once we can produce our perfect work—the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls "Forces" while denying the existence of "spirits"—then the end of the war will be in sight. But in the meantime we must obey our orders. I do not think you will have much difficulty in keeping the patient in the dark. The fact that "devils" are predominantly comic figures in the modern imagination will help you. If any faint suspicion of your existence begins to arise in his mind, suggest to him a picture of something in red tights, and persuade him that since he cannot believe in that (it is an old textbook method of confusing them) he therefore cannot believe in you.
I had not forgotten my promise to consider whether we should make the patient an extreme patriot or an extreme pacifist. All extremes, except extreme devotion to the Enemy, are to be encouraged. Not always, of course, but at this period. Some ages are lukewarm and complacent, and then it is our business to soothe them yet faster asleep. Other ages, of which the present is one, are unbalanced and prone to faction, and it is our business to inflame them. Any small coterie, bound together by some interest which other men dislike or ignore, tends to develop inside itself a hothouse mutual admiration, and towards the outer world, a great deal of pride and hatred which is entertained without shame because the "Cause" is its sponsor and it is thought to be impersonal. Even when the little group exists originally for the Enemy's own purposes, this remains true. We want the Church to be small not only that fewer men may know the Enemy but also that those who do may acquire the uneasy intensity and the defensive self-righteousness of a secret society or a clique. The Church herself is, of course, heavily defended and we have never yet quite succeeded in giving her all the characteristics of a faction; but subordinate factions within her have often produced admirable results, from the parties of Paul and of Apollos at Corinth down to the High and Low parties in the Church of England.
If your patient can be induced to become a conscientious objector he will automatically find himself one of a small, vocal, organised, unpopular society, and the effects of this, on one so new to Christianity, will almost certainly be good. But only almost certainly. Has he had serious doubts about the lawfulness serving in a just war before this present war of serving began? Is he a man of great physical courage—so great that he will have no half-conscious misgivings about the real motives of his pacifism? Can he, when nearest to honesty (no human is ever very near), feel fully convinced that he actuated wholly by the desire to obey the Enemy? If he is that sort of man, his pacifism will probably not do us much good, and the Enemy will probably protect him from the usual consequences of belonging to a sect. Your best plan, in that case, would be to attempt a sudden, confused, emotional crisis from which he might emerge as an uneasy convert to patriotism. Such things can often be managed. But if he is the man I take him to be, try Pacifism.
Whichever he adopts, your main task will be the same. Let him begin by treating the Patriotism or the Pacifism as a part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part. Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which the religion becomes merely part of the "cause", in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce in favour of the British war-effort or of Pacifism. The attitude which you want to guard against is that in which temporal affairs are treated primarily as material for obedience. Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing. Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades, matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he is ours—and the more "religious" (on those terms) the more securely ours. I could show you a pretty cageful down here.
Your affectionate uncle
SCREWTAPE
(Clive Staples Lewis, The Screwtape Letters: How a Senior Devil Instructs a Junior Devil in the Art of Temptation, Letter No. 7)
Saturday, February 14, 2009
The Right to Tell
"Intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face...
"If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."
(George Orwell, Proposed Preface to Animal Farm)
"If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."
(George Orwell, Proposed Preface to Animal Farm)
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Readers and Advertising
Henry Luce, a co-founder of TIME, disdained the notion of giveaway publications that relied solely on ad revenue. He called that formula "morally abhorrent" and also "economically self-defeating." That was because he believed that good journalism required that a publication's primary duty be to its readers, not to its advertisers. In an advertising-only revenue model, the incentive is perverse. It is also self-defeating, because eventually you will weaken your bond with your readers if you do not feel directly dependent on them for your revenue.(Walter Isaacson, How to Save Your Newspaper, TIME Magazine)
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Twenty Years After Simenon's Death
Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness.(Georges Simenon, Paris Review)
Georges Joseph Christian Simenon was born on 13 February 1903 in Liege, Belgium. He began work as a reporter for a local newspaper at the age of sixteen, and at nineteen he moved to Paris to embark on a career as a novelist. He started by writing pulp fiction novels and novellas published, under various pseudonyms, from 1923 onwards. He went on to write seventy-five Maigret novels and twenty-eight Maigret short stories. Simenon died on 4 September 1989 in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he had lived for the latter part of his life.
[The official Maigret site]
Thursday, February 05, 2009
How Did It Happen?
"How did it ever happen that, when the dregs of the world had collected in western Europe, when Goth and Frank and Norman and Lombard had mingled with the rot of the old Rome to form a patchwork of hybrid races, all of them notable for ferocity, hatred, stupidity, craftiness, lust and brutality -- how did it happen that, from all this, there should come Gregorian chant, monasteries and cathedrals, the poems of Prudentius, the commentaries and histories of Bede, the Moralia of Gregory the Great, St. Augustine's City of God, and his Trinity, the writings of St. Anselm, St. Bernard's sermons on the Canticles, the poetry of Caedmon and Cynewulf and Langland and Dante, St. Thomas' Summa, and the Oxoniense of Duns Scotus?"
(Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain)
(Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain)
Atheist Bus
© Jon Worth / British Humanist Association, atheistbus.org.uk
The bus you will not see in Italy...
A column of mine (in Italian):
Misteri del trasporto pubblico. Gli autobus circolano rivestiti di donne spogliate e mercificate, di promozione agli innumerevoli giochi d'azzardo dello Stato biscazziere, di ogni altro rigurgito dell'invadente e onnipresente sciocchezzaio pubblicitario. Per lo slogan "Dio non esiste", invece, non c'è posto.
L'Uaar, profana congregazione di atei e agnostici razionalisti, ha dovuto ripiegare su un annuncio da ritirata. Si limita a comunicare l'esistenza di milioni di atei. Notizia clamorosa, come no, messaggio sconvolgente. L'altro, indubbiamente più efficace per le ruvide norme della comunicazione, avrebbe ferito - è stato detto - la sensibilità dei fedeli, che infatti esultano per la vittoria. Niente vero: è una sconfitta.
È un colpo al cuore per chi ha fede nel Dio del dialogo, del confronto, del rispetto per le opinioni altrui (perfino se irrispettose, provocatorie, fastidiose), per chi crede nel Padre invece che nel padrone. È il ferimento della visione conciliare, dello strabismo benefico di chi considera insieme il divino e l'umano, il sagrato e la piazza, la Bibbia e il giornale. È l'assassinio della fede moderata, di una religione libera e liberale che non teme di essere messa in discussione, di rispondere alla polemica, di contrastare con le proprie ragioni quelle degli altri: anche se colpiscono alle fondamenta o possono suonare assurde, paradossali.
Cancella l'ottica di relazione e afferma il dogmatismo: un successo della religione debole, incerta, tremula; un trionfo per chi preferisce non vedere e non sentire, rinchiudersi nel proprio tempio e nella propria sacrestia, non permettere contraddittorio magari perché non saprebbe come cavarsela, cosa rispondere.
Espone i credenti a critiche polverose: oscurantismo, assolutismo (che certo non manca neppure alla controparte), mancanza di libertà.
Non tutela la fede dei "semplici", perché anche questi si rafforzano quando si incrociano le spade. Piuttosto rinvia alla logica, che si vorrebbe superata, dell'Indice dei libri proibiti o delle santissime inquisizioni. Non salvaguarda la sensibilità, certifica la suscettibilità. Custodisce la permalosità del credo concentrato sul proprio ombelico, timoroso di sporcarsi le mani nel fango della realtà.
Grida "abbiamo paura". Come se i secoli non avessero già visto gli apologeti avversare il paganesimo, i Padri le eresie, i filofosofi altre filosofie, i polemisti gli illuminismi e gli scientismi. Come se le teorie della morte di Dio o dell'Aldilà inventato non riempissero archivi e scaffali. Come se non fossero esistiti fenomeni radicali del tipo "teologia della secolarizzazione" e "atei cristiani".
Qualcuno ha osservato che si può mettere in discussione l'esistenza di Dio ma non la sussistenza del bisogno religioso. Tuttavia, sulla necessità di sacro (che appare in ripresa, dopo "l'eclissi") serve intendersi bene. Non risulta indiscutibile l'origine soprannaturale. Alcuni, recentemente, si sono avventurati nel tentativo di attribuire una nascita evoluzionistica o addirittura genetica all'esigenza di credere. Più comunemente, sono in tanti a considerarla un frutto umano, troppo umano, creato per soddisfare richieste di conoscenza (come pensarono gli epicurei) o rispondere a questioni pratiche: l'insicurezza sul futuro, la malattia e il dolore, la morte.
Il sofista Crizia, uno dei trenta tiranni di Atene, per primo ha creduto alla fonte politica del fenomeno religioso, utile alle classi dominanti per prevaricare. Molti, successivamente, hanno condiviso questa lettura. Altri l'hanno avversata. Veder circolare qualche autobus con una forte negazione del divino e del suo bisogno avrebbe suscitato nuove domande, nuove risposte. Si è persa un'occasione.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
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