Time for reflection

In contrast to loneliness – the experience of the absence of being with others – solitude demands that one actually be alone; and yet, in the being alone of solitude, there is the possibility for the activity of thinking. Alone with myself, I can collect my thoughts, mull things over, and talk with myself. The space of solitude – the space for conversing with myself – is the necessary prerequisite for the activity of thinking. Indeed, it is solitude that nurtures and fosters thoughtfulness and thus prepares individuals for the possibility of political action. Some today celebrate the loss of solitude and the rise of the wiki-like hive mentality of the web. They scorn the myth of the autonomous individual who thinks and acts as an independent and rational being. And they are right to be skeptical of the classic stereotype of an independent person. At the same time, when one is always on, always connected, the time for reflection and thought that distinguishes us from a computer and makes us human is compressed.

Totul stă

"Astfel de documente pun intr-o balanta periculoasa mizeriile unui regim totalitar cu mizeria umana transistorica, aia marunta, a prietenilor cei mai buni. Si nu stii niciodata cum mai poti judeca, cum mai poti iesi intreg dintr-o astfel de confruntare cu trecutul tau."

• The future is unknowable, but the past should give us hope.

Dacă intuitiv putem înţelege, nu putem defini obiectele contemplate, prin predicatele lor negative sau pozitive, cu toate că şi intuiţia discerne calităţile lor specifice. Noi afirmăm şi negăm, mişcîndu-ne raţional înăuntrul legii contrariilor. Deocamdată nu putem formula adevărul în sensul unei “ştiinţe imediate şi pure” deci, spre neconsolarea noastră, trăirea si inspiraţia, oricît de subtile ar fi, nu ne pot scoate din anticamera cunoaşterii.

Eureka

...his biggest contribution is the prose-poem “Eureka,” published shortly before his death. “I design to speak of the Physical, Metaphysical and Mathematical — of the Material and Spiritual Universe:- of its Essence, its Origin, its Creation, its Present Condition and its Destiny,” he wrote before then pondering such things as Olbers’ Paradox, which argues that the night sky should be so full of stars as to appear as bright as day. It can be hard to read but is truly fascinating.

“No thinking being lives who, at some luminous point of his life of thought, has not felt himself lost amid the surges of futile efforts at understanding, or believing, that anything exists greater than his own soul,” Poe writes in “Eureka.” He was more than a bit of philosopher as well, it seems.

gustatory sense

"Flavor is what we call a hedonic sense in that it is really a combination of several different senses, the five tastes, but also in a very important contribution from your olfactory or smell system. In fact, it’s estimated that about 85% of what we perceive of as flavor is really olfactory,"

Another mystery regarding our sense of taste that continues to confound the scientific community is that of the so called Proustian experience — or taste and smell's curious ability to conjure both good and bad memories. "One of the things we can note about those memories is they’re always emotionally latent somehow or another. You don’t smell something and remember a page of text or an equation or a phone number or something useful like that...

• "The other is that they are long lasting. We recall things from many, many years ago and they’re extremely vivid."

ideas

fortnightlyreview.

Worldly temptations

Yet the real early modern masters of a thousand arts seem to have come from parts farther north. Peter Paul Rubens was famously both a student of philosophy and a diplomat as well as painter, but no artist may have diversified his talents as widely as the elder Lucas Cranach (1472-1553), mayor of Wittenberg, tavern keeper, and, more than incidentally, court painter for more than half a century to the Electors of Saxony. Cranach is best known now, as he was in his own day, for his paintings of women—impossibly long-legged coquettes with catlike eyes and purring expressions, one of whom, a Venus clad in nothing but a red velvet hat and a gossamer veil, is the centerpiece of a special exhibition being staged this winter within the permanent collection of Rome’s Borghese Gallery.

incapabil de a voi

"...Dar nu merge. În opt ani de când m-am întors în România, decepţiune a urmat după decepţiune, şi mă simt atât de bătrîn şi atât de obosit, încât degeaba pun mâna pe condei să-ncerc a scrie ceva. Simt că nu mai pot, mă simt că am secat moraliceşte şi că mi-ar trebui un lung, lung repaus ca să-mi vin în fire..."

De L'échange

...De même que dans un concerto la valeur du violon ou de l'alto est provoquée, poussée à son plein exercice, par le dialogue de l'autre violon et du violoncelle. Et le mot Echange aurait plutôt dans ce drame une valeur musicale (...) Les quatre personnages sont inséparables l'un de l'autre, aucun d'eux n'a été conçu séparément, mais en fonction des autres ; par lui-même il serait difficile de savoir ce qu'il est et ce qu'il vaut. II ne vaut et il n'existe que par comparaison avec les trois autres. (...) Alors, dans ce temps artificiel que constitue l'unité classique, les quatre personnages sont ensemble et quoi qu'ils fassent, ils ne peuvent pas éviter d'être ensemble pendant la courte durée du lever du soleil à son coucher, où ils sont réunis. Ce que leur tempérament les obligerait à faire, ils sont emprisonnés, pour ainsi dire, dans la nécessité dramatique, c'est là l'intérêt de la pièce justement. Une idée que j'ai développée plus tard, c'est que dans l'histoire, aussi bien dans l'histoire réelle que dans l'histoire fictive, les personnages sont provoqués par la situation ; ce n'est pas une situation qu'il s'agit de développer au moyen de personnages, ce n'est pas des personnages qui trouvent leur illustration dans une situation, comme c'est le cas dans Shakespeare, c'est une situation donnée comme dans nos classiques qui provoque les personnages eux-mêmes.

Excerpt

It is clear now that his infatuation with the singer — the word is not too strong — has been no passing fancy but constitutes an all-consuming passion. With his new book, Ricks reminds us, on virtually every page, that the word ‘fan’ derives from ‘fanatic.’ All of Ricks’s impressive analytical strengths are on display in Dylan’s Visions of Sin. There is no song, no lyric, no mumbled comment from an interview with Bob Dylan, all cited here with excruciating exactitude, that does not elicit from this most acute of auditors some elaborate and, at times, almost comically inflated gloss. Shakespeare, Milton, Donne, Keats, Larkin, and many others are adduced to shore up his case. While Ricks’s learning and range of reference remain as impressive as always, the very scale of the enterprise overwhelms its subject. It is hard to think of any singer or composer, however brilliant or original, whose work could stand up to the claims Ricks makes for Dylan: Schubert would have quailed with dismay, Noel Coward would for once have been speechless.

first autumn

Can I learn from what they taught the disheveled nature of mourning?
These images press together the very thing they are, the evening star

encouraging thought, an address where the ageless assemble,
that perfumed perfection mirrored in a spring rain

settling now on the limestone quarried near this spot. Their sweet
society sings and avows presence; though far off they are ever nigh.

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Winter Afternoons

“No philosopher has ever influenced the attitudes of even the street he lived on,” Voltaire was reputed to have said. That’s not what I believe. With deep winter upon us and the weather growing colder, even the wood smoke out of the neighbors’ chimneys could be described as philosophizing. I can see it move its lips as it rises, telling the indifferent sky about our loneliness, the torment of our minds and passions which we keep secret from each other, and the wonder and pain of our mortality and of our eventual vanishing from this earth. It’s a kind of deep, cathedral-like quiet that precedes a snowfall. One looks with amazement at the bare trees, the gray daylight making its slow retreat across the bare fields, and inevitably recalls that Emily Dickinson poem in which she speaks of just such a winter afternoon—windless and cold,...

Arrangements settled

..We are very fond of pine-apple, all three of us. We looked at the picture on the tin; we thought of the juice. We smiled at one another, and Harris got a spoon ready. Then we looked for the knife to open the tin with. We turned out everything in the hamper. We turned out the bags. We pulled up the boards at the bottom of the boat. We took everything out on to the bank and shook it. There was no tin-opener to be found. Then Harris tried to open the tin with a pocket-knife, and broke the knife and cut himself badly; and George tried a pair of scissors, and the scissors flew up, and nearly put his eye out. While they were dressing their wounds, I tried to make a hole in the thing with the spiky end of the hitcher, and the hitcher slipped and jerked me out between the boat and the bank into two feet of muddy water, and the tin rolled over, uninjured, and broke a teacup. Then we all got mad. We took that tin out on the bank, and Harris went up into a field and got a big sharp stone, and I went back into the boat and brought out the mast, and George held the tin and Harris held the sharp end of his stone against the top of it, and I took the mast and poised it high up in the air, and gathered up all my strength and brought it down. It was George’s straw hat that saved his life that day. He keeps that hat now (what is left of it), and, of a winter’s evening, when the pipes are lit and the boys are telling stretchers about the dangers they have passed through, George brings it down and shows it round, and the stirring tale is told anew, with fresh exaggerations every time.

New Year’s Day

Among varieties of religious experience, games rarely rank first, yet what we feel in the final moments of a unique collective experience (like the last Eagles/Giants game) could qualify as transcendent. And the transcendent qualifies for philosophical attention. In this sense, New Year’s Day represents a chance not only for deep personal reflection, but also for transformative, shared emotion. Harvard philosophy Professor Sean Dorrance Kelly has a cool blog. He writes posts on things like the relation between what’s right and what matters. And, is there a phenomenon of the sacred now?

Un an mai bun !