A nail through the head

In Jack Vance's novel "Emphyrio", evil alien invaders execute the eponymous hero—who wanted to contact them in order to talk peace—by driving a nail through his head. For an author so disdainful of religion as Vance, the scene is remarkably Passion-like (as with the Passion, the death of Emphyrio is theatrically reenacted within the world of the novel).

The Old Testament features an example of death by nail through the head. Yael received Sisera into her house with feigned hopitality after the latter's armies were routed, only to push a tent peg through his temples when he laid asleep.

I'm not very partial to Yael's form of heroism. Its sneakiness precludes bravery, while still not requiring any particular cunning. You only need a modicum of hand-eye coodination, really. And slaughtering your guest in his sleep is unbecoming. At least Judith had to take the effort of infiltrating Holofernes' camp and seducing him.

Another example of these low-effort heroines is the portuguese Brites de Almeida, a baker who discovered in her furnace spanish soldiers seeking refuge from their defeat at Albujarrota, and dispatched them in a manner which almost suggested itself, given the circunstances. You have to admit that lighting a furnace and waiting for the screams to subside hardly constitutes the apex of heroic achievement.

Maybe I'm being parochial, but I much prefer local heroine María Pita, who helped defend A Coruña against the forces of Sir Francis Drake.

(later) Either I misremembered or there are several versions of Brites' legend. Internet says that she didn't bake the poor chaps, but instead silenced them forever by applying a number of vigorous shovel strikes. That's better I guess, but still not as meritorious a deed as besting a son of Albion in the throes of a honest-to-God battle like María Pita did.

reading while walking (3)

From Steven R. Fischer's A History of Reading:

The physical act of reading was anything but easy in the Middle Ages. This discouraged many.

Scribes often noted in the margins of their manuscripts the physical discomfort of reading and writing in dark, cold, draughty scriptoria. As one Florencio protested in the middle of the thirteenth century: "It is a painful task. It extinguishing the light from the eyes, it bends the back, it crushes the viscera and the ribs, it brings forth pain to the kidneys, and weariness to the whole body."

I hear you, Florencio.

What are examples of literary characters who got some kind of physical disability because of their excessive reading? Don Quixote doesn't count because it was the semantic content of the books he read what did him in. I'm thinking more among the lines of Clym Yeobright from Thomas Hardy's The Return of the Native, who ended up damaging his eyesight.

Also, are there accounts of members of a preliterate culture encountering for the first time a person engaged in reading? It must have seemed a puzzling and inscrutable activity...

reading while riding

Abraham Lincoln did it, at least judging from this equestrian statue:

John Wesley was also in the habit of reading while on horseback. In a journal entry for March 21, 1770 he writes:

Nearly thirty years ago, I was thinking, "How is it that no horse ever stumbles while I am reading?" (History, poetry, and philosophy, I commonly read on horseback, having other employment at other times.)

Myself, I would read while mounted on a camel and maybe even on a donkey, but not on a horse. It seems too unstable!

It must be an odd experience to read the Houyhnhnm section of Gulliver's Travels while on horseback.

reading while walking (2)

Today I saw a gentleman strolling undaunted around the park, book in hand, reading. He didn't seem to bump into benches, statues, or other people, and appeared to avoid ditches just fine. I guess the activity is not as risky as I supposed from passages like the following:

Ibn al-Abanusi reported that al-Khatib used to read while walking. This is a common habit among hadith masters. [...] The philologist imam Tha`lab (200-291) died one day after he was hit by a running horse while walking and reading at the same time as narrated by al-`Askari in al-Hathth `ala Talab al-`Ilm (p. 77).

In the city Oviedo there's a statue of a girl who is reading while walking. It's called Esperanza Caminando:

One can also read while on a treadmill, although to my mind it lacks charm compared to reading while walking outdoors:

When I last spoke with him, by telephone to his hospital bed, Adrian's warmth and sense of humor were undiminished. I told him that Arion Press was beginning the printing of James Joyce's Ulysses, and he replied that he had read that immense novel while walking on a treadmill. That was back in the forties, he said, while he was serving out his term of alternate service as a conscientious objector and had been assigned to a medical experiment.

(source)

The Ascian language

In The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe imagined a language called Ascian. Its speakers have very little grammatical leeway when producing speech. In fact, they may only choose from among a limited list of possible utterances which have been "approved" by a ruling, crushingly totalitarian camarilla. Those are the only valid utterances in the language. Some examples:

The people meeting in counsel may judge, but no one is to receive more than a hundred blows.

One is strong, another beautiful, a third a cunning artificer. Which is best? He who serves the populace.

The citizen renders to the populace what is due to the populace. What is due to the populace? Everything.

It's like Orwell's Newspeak carried to the ultimate limit. Not only particular words and concepts are prohibited, but linguistic creativity itself. Still, the novel recounts how an ascian captured in battle is able (with the help of an interpreter) to tell a story that criticizes the ruling camarilla. Gene Wolfe seems to be rebuking the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: even in the most restricted of languages, you can find workarounds to communicate (or at least insinuate) any idea you want. On the other hand, the story may have been more the product of the interpreter than of the ascian himself...

I was reminded of the Ascian language when I read the Wikipedia page for Lexis. Apparently, we too employ formulaic language most of the time:

The major finding of this research is that language users rely to a very high extent on ready-made language “lexical chunks”, which can be easily combined to form sentences. This eliminates the need for the speaker to analyze each sentence grammatically, yet deals with a situation effectively. Typical examples include “I see what you mean” or “Could you please hand me the …” or “Recent research shows that…”

Language usage, on the other hand, is what takes place when the ready-made chunks do not fulfill the speaker’s immediate needs; in other words, a new sentence is about to be formed and must be analyzed for correctness. Grammar rules have been internalized by native speakers, allowing them to determine the viability of new sentences. Language usage might be defined as a fall-back position when all other options have been exhausted.

return of "people I tend to get mixed up"

Previous installments in the series.

And here's the current batch:

• Germaine de Staël, George Sand and George Elliot.
• Joachim of Fiore and Cola di Rienzi.

powder is for cheaters

Happy the blest ages that knew not the dread fury of those devilish engines of artillery, whose inventor I am persuaded is in hell receiving the reward of his diabolical invention, by which he made it easy for a base and cowardly arm to take the life of a gallant gentleman; and that, when he knows not how or whence, in the height of the ardour and enthusiasm that fire and animate brave hearts, there should come some random bullet, discharged perhaps by one who fled in terror at the flash when he fired off his accursed machine, which in an instant puts an end to the projects and cuts off the life of one who deserved to live for ages to come. And thus when I reflect on this, I am almost tempted to say that in my heart I repent of having adopted this profession of knight-errant in so detestable an age as we live in now; for though no peril can make me fear, still it gives me some uneasiness to think that powder and lead may rob me of the opportunity of making myself famous and renowned throughout the known earth by the might of my arm and the edge of my sword.

—Miguel de Cervantes: Don Quixote.

the early introduction of firearms did its part in making war a democratic pursuit, not only because the strongest castles were unable to withstand a bombardment, but because the skill of the engineer, of the gunfounder, and of the artillerist—men belonging to another class than the nobility—was now of the first importance in a campaign. It was felt, with regret, that the value of the individual, which had been the soul of the small and admirably organized bands of mercenaries, would suffer from these novel means of destruction, which did their work at a distance; and there were Condottieri who opposed to the utmost the introduction at least of the musket, which had lately been invented in Germany. We read that Paolo Vitelli, while recognizing and himself adopting the cannon, put out the eyes and cut off the hands of the captured 'schioppettieri' (arquebusiers) because he held it unworthy that a gallant, and it might be noble, knight should be wounded and laid low by a common, despised foot soldier.

—Jacob Burckhardt: The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy.

(later)

Would to heaven that this accursed engine [the arquebus] had never been invented, I had not then received those wounds which I now languish under, neither had so many valiant men been slain for the most part by the most pitiful fellows and the greatest cowards...

—Blaise de Montluc.

reading while walking

Even if you subscribe to all the usual pieties about the benefits of reading, you have to admit that the physical act of reading, when considered by itself, is stultifying. There you are, sedentary and immobile, your attention fixated into a hinged accretion of quadrangular paper layers, straining your eyes while your muscles turn into mush. If you indulge in the habit for too long, you end up resembling one of H. G. Wells' martians: a pale, big-headed monstrosity with atrophied limbs.

It would be much better to read while performing some physical activity that plunged you back into the world, like walking... a nice blend of mental and physical exertion, a compromise between engaging the text and engaging your actual surroundings. It would involve some dangers, though, like not being able to concentrate enough on the book, or concentrating too much and wandering in front of a moving truck.

But, why not just turn to audiobooks instead, one might ask. Well, audiobooks are great, but listening to them is not exactly reading. If you want random access, or simply to find and re-read some previous passage, they are cumbersome. Plus, when wandering through noisy environments you would have to either cram up the volume—damaging your ears—or isolate yourself from external sounds—which, of course, is another way of not engaging with the world.

I, for one, have convinced myself! I will presently take a walk around the port of A Coruña, a pocket French grammar in hand. If I do not post again, assume I fell off the pier while rehearsing the irregular verbs.

placing into the abyss

R. A. Lafferty, commenting on a portrait of Stilicho (which I haven't been able to track down):

[the painting] It's in several of the old history books, and apparently dates from a century or more after the life of Stilicho. [...] He holds in one hand what appears to be a cucumber; but is probably a small fasces—the buldle of rods, the symbol of authority. In his other hand he holds a scepter with an eagle in the laterna part. On top of the scepter is a replica of himself in the same position, holding the same scepter, on which again is an expressive smudge which would be a still smaller replica of himself holding a still smaller scepter. The box within the box within the box trick is very old.

—R. A. Lafferty: The Fall of Rome.

The french have a wonderful name for this type of recursion in art, heraldry and literature: mise en abyme ("placing into the abyss"). Has Lafferty ever used this technique in his own work? Well... he does like to quote imaginary authorities, and to have the characters tell stories to each other (like in the "Liar's Paradise" episode of "The Devil is Dead"). Some of these may be commentary on the frame story, but I would have to reread them to be sure.

take a walk then write a letter

Two interesting bibliographies:

• Travel and Landscape.
• Secondary Studies of Epistolary Literature.

a copy of me is me

Pharyngula criticizes Ray Kurtzweil's intellectual sloppiness. But the real meat is to be found in the comments section, where one can find a lively discussion about the nature of personal identity.

Speech Acts

I'm trying to digest this essay on the Searle-Derrida controversy over the nature of parasitic speech acts. It is very interesting, and it mentions Humpty-Dumpty. There's glory for you!

The fact that Derrida disagrees with Searle has endeared the former to me as a philosopher. After all, is Searle manages to be so unflinchingly wrong on the subject of philosophy of the mind, he'll likely be wrong about philosophy of language too!

Not being very familiar with this latter field, I'm getting a bit lost. I wonder if the debate over speech acts is somehow related to Quine's indeterminacy of translation.

The Repugnant Conclusion (again)

In 2007 I made a post linking Derek Parfit's concept of the Repugnant Conclusion with the Neolithic Revolution. Here's a more recent post by none other than Matthew Yglesias which draws the same connection.

Inoculating Culture

In one apologetic work by Jaime Balmes, the following grim, Ecclesiastes-like passage can be found:

Man advances in nothing without painful toil; he never reaches the point he desires without many wanderings, which fatige him; in everything it is realised that the earth, instead of fruit, gives him briars and thistles. Has he to discover a truth? He shall not come at it except after many extravagant errors. Has he to bring an art to perfection? Hundreds and hundreds of useless attempts will fatige those who occupy themselves with it, and it is fortunate if the grandchildren reap the fruit of what their grandfathers sowed. Has the social and political organisation of a State to be improved? Bloody revolutions precede the desired regeneration; and the unfortunate country, after prolonged sufferings, is frequently left in a worse state than it groaned in before. Has the civilisation and culture of one people to be communicated to another? The inoculation must be effected with fire and sword; entire generations are sacrificed to obtain a result which but very distant ones shall see.

I was struck by the use of the word "inoculation". It seems oddly... technical, clinical. Incongruous in its context. Mark Twain experienced a similar reaction to clerical language (chapter XXVIII of The Innocents Abroad) when a Capuchin monk gave him a tour of an ossuary, all the while explaining the sad stories behind such-and-such bone:

This business-like way of illustrating a touching story of the heart by laying the several fragments of the lover before us and naming them, was as grotesque a performance, and as ghastly, as any I ever witnessed. I hardly knew whether to smile or shudder. There are nerves and muscles in our frames whose functions and whose methods of working it seems a sort of sacrilege to describe by cold physiological names and surgical technicalities, and the monk's talk suggested to me something of this kind. Fancy a surgeon, with his nippers lifting tendons, muscles and such things into view, out of the complex machinery of a corpse, and observing, "Now this little nerve quivers--the vibration is imparted to this muscle--from here it is passed to this fibrous substance; here its ingredients are separated by the chemical action of the blood--one part goes to the heart and thrills it with what is popularly termed emotion, another part follows this nerve to the brain and communicates intelligence of a startling character--the third part glides along this passage and touches the spring connected with the fluid receptacles that lie in the rear of the eye. Thus, by this simple and beautiful process, the party is informed that his mother is dead, and he weeps." Horrible!

That passage by Twain reminds me in turn of Socrates' stated distaste in the Phaedo for Anaxagoras' philosophy, which he considers too mechanistic:

What hopes I had formed, and how grievously was I disappointed! As I proceeded, I found my philosopher altogether forsaking mind or any other principle of order, but having recourse to air, and ether, and water, and other eccentricities. I might compare him to a person who began by maintaining generally that mind is the cause of the actions of Socrates, but who, when he endeavored to explain the causes of my several actions in detail, went on to show that I sit here because my body is made up of bones and muscles; and the bones, as he would say, are hard and have ligaments which divide them, and the muscles are elastic, and they cover the bones, which have also a covering or environment of flesh and skin which contains them; and as the bones are lifted at their joints by the contraction or relaxation of the muscles, I am able to bend my limbs, and this is why I am sitting here in a curved posture: that is what he would say, and he would have a similar explanation of my talking to you, which he would attribute to sound, and air, and hearing, and he would assign ten thousand other causes of the same sort, forgetting to mention the true cause, which is that the Athenians have thought fit to condemn me, and accordingly I have thought it better and more right to remain here and undergo my sentence

We resent when the coldness of scientific terminology intrudes in our lamentations. We dislike being reminded that we are but machines of flesh, sinew and bone.

(later) Apparently, inoculate also means "to imbue (a person), as with ideas". Maybe that's the meaning Balmes intended.

On the other hand, the book was written in the first half of the nineteenth century (couldn't find the exact date), and around that time there had already been vaccination campaigns against smallpox in Spain and the colonies. Perhaps the vaccination/conquest metaphor was suggested by the memory of the Balmis Expedition of 1803...

"sales engineer"

I haven't looked much into that job description but, on the face of it, it seems like an oxymoron.

Salespeople have emotional intelligence to spare; they go around shaking hands, smiling, and making eye contact. Meanwhile, engineers are barely funcional autists who toil away in their cubicles, happily employed in designing some contraption, disturbed only by the perspective of having to engage from time to time in dreaded human contact.

I conclude therefore that the "sales engineer" is the chimera of the IT world, a fictional creature whose hold on our imaginations is explained by the the shocking dissimilarity of its component parts.

Being Alone

So we live exclusively in relation to others, and what disappears from our lives is solitude. Technology is taking away our privacy and our concentration, but it is also taking away our ability to be alone. Though I shouldn't say taking away. We are doing this to ourselves; we are discarding these riches as fast as we can. I was told by one of her older relatives that a teenager I know had sent 3,000 text messages one recent month. That's 100 a day, or about one every 10 waking minutes, morning, noon, and night, weekdays and weekends, class time, lunch time, homework time, and toothbrushing time. So on average, she's never alone for more than 10 minutes at once. Which means, she's never alone. I once asked my students about the place that solitude has in their lives. One of them admitted that she finds the prospect of being alone so unsettling that she'll sit with a friend even when she has a paper to write. Another said, why would anyone want to be alone?

(William Deresiwwicz: The End of Solitude)

There was no concept of solitarieness among the Pacific islanders I traveled among that did not also imply misery or mental decline. Book-reading as a recreation was not indulged in much on these islands either—for that same reason, because you did it alone. Illiteracy had nothing to do with it, and there were plenty of schools. They knew from experience that a person who cut himself off, who was frequently seen alone—reading books, away from the hut, walking on the beach, on his own—was sunk in deep musu, and was contemplating either murder or suicide, probably both. Now and then people would mention that a place had a much higher suicide rate than I could possibly imagine, and in truth I was usually rather surprised to hear the figures. Then they would describe the method—nearly always taking a dive off the top of a palm tree.

(Paul Theroux: The Happy Isles of Oceania)

Reasons to Read Less

One fearfully cold afternoon not many weeks ago, I found myself at the bus stop, reading "The Mysteries of Udolpho" while waiting for my red, even-numbered conveyance to arrive. So enthralled was I by the eerie happenings narrated in the novel that I missed the bus when it at last came. Miffed, and unwilling to wait for the next one, I set out for home on foot, braving the the inclemency of the icy hiemal weather. The result? A bout -fortunately not too severe- of pneumonia. As you see, books can be dangerous to your health.

The worst thing is that, to tell the truth, I didn't even enjoy Ann Radcliffe's novel that much.

Another reason to read less is that during coffee break at work books are seldom discussed. Instead, conversation frequently drifts to the topic of noteworthy recent series on TV, none of which I have seen. (Mad Men does sound interesting).

Knowledge of soccer jargon would also improve my coffe break chit-chat prowess. In fact, not knowing how to talk about soccer games is considered a severe disability here in Spain, at least for the male citizen. There should exist publicly-funded academies where people not versed in soccer hermeneutics could learn the rudiments of the discipline.

Profundas observaciones sobre Madrid, con motivo de una visita

• En Madrid los bares suelen tener dos máquinas tragaperras, en Coruña tan sólo una.
• Hay una sala X activa en el centro de la ciudad, y eso que pensaba que Internet y el DVD habían acabado con todas. El título de la película en cartel era "Lozanas o veteranas".
• Más gente parece leer en el metro de Madrid que en los buses de A Coruña. No sé si se debe a una mayor afición a la lectura entre los usuarios madrileños de transporte público, o simplemente a que la vistas al exterior que ofrece un vagon de metro no son nada entretenidas.
• La catedral de Santiago le da mil vueltas a la de la Almudena.

Emma Bovary was a slut

"Sir," they say flatly, "she's a slut." (The women tend to be harder on Emma than the men are.) Subsequent class periods get even uglier. Many of the men admit that they're fearful of marrying and then having their stay-at-home wives cheat on them. For that reason, they say, "you've got to get her pregnant before you deploy." Emma is their worst nightmare. Emma should have been faithful to Charles! He loved her! He was a good provider! What more does she want?

—Bruce Fleming at The Chronicle Review: Leaving Literature Behind.

That is a pretty cogent analysis of Madame Bovary, except for one thing: Emma's pregnancy didn't do much to curtail her infidelities.

The hanging legs of the disappearing Christ

In the promotional leaflet of a certain publisher, I spotted the following:

I think it comes from Isabella of Castile's Book of Hours.

It seemed a little odd, this image of Christ during the Ascension, his upper body covered with a cloud, only his legs visible. More often, he is depicted with his full body in sight.

Then I remembered that I had read about this kind of iconography before. Apparently, it originated in eleventh-century England, and its motivation lies in biblical exegesis. They wanted to emphasize the idea that Christ ascended to heaven by his own means. Were he to be represented standing in the cloud, or enthroned in a mandorla carried away by angels, the misleading impression could be given that he needed some external help. Hence the hanging legs!

Here's an earlier example. The classic study of this iconography is Meyer Schapiro's "The Image of the Disappearing Christ: The Ascension in English Art around the Year 1000".