Volpone‘s tunic is in fact VERY large, many pockets here and there hiding so many things one can never tell where this man will bring us. But in any case. *Grinning*. Source
By Volpone (aka MoR)
Hearts sometimes do skip a beat
[I am late with my post, MoR]
And in fact weird things occurring
And emerging disconcerting
It’ll be the matter elsewhere.
“Where, where, where, where”
[say the buds et li lettori enchanted]
Well, beloved friends, should you be there
Id est the 14th day after the previous writing …
“Inviting, exciting, so much reuniting”
[the buds in truth are restless, perturbed] *He pauses. Reflects, and scratches a bit his perrwige. Then takes a deep breath*
Ψ
Now, luck yet send us, and a little wit
Will serve, to make our Play hit,
According to the palates of the season
Here is rhyme, not empty of reason.
This you were bid to credit, from our Poet,
Whose true scope, if you would know it,
In all his Poems, still, hath been this measure,
To mix profit, with your pleasure.
Not as some (whose throats their envy failing)
Cry hoarsely: all he writes is railing!
L’Aretino, subverting the system in Renaissance Italy. Source
Flavia & Fulvia:“Basta!”
Old Man [a bit from Arezzo, like L’ Aretino, incidentally]: “Why on earth?”
Flavia [Fulvia does not know whether to leave or to stay, her boobs dancing, no matter what] :
“Because – Flavia’s smile is strange – you’ll never write that novel c’mon.
You are sadistic. Checking your exchanges it turns Andreas once wrote: “Ah, Man of Roma, you finally got Anglo-Saxons just need to be spanked.” Therefore, with a story that never starts … you keep them walking on thin ice ”
Old Man: “Or on a razor’s edge, my domina. Although, your words making me upset, I will leave this room right now.”
[Exit]
*Flavia and Fulvia pale. They’ve caught a glimpse of a paddle’s (or of a whip’s) handle flashing from MoR’s large tunic*
*The buds look unaffected. But Cyberqwil the Austrian is snickering & Pavlos the Greek merchant too, although his eyes are lost in the sees where he belongs*
Ψ
The Anglo-Saxons, ça va sans dire, control their emotions much better than we Latin do – *MoR is thinking* – also because (despite their virtues and staggering achievements) showing and accepting emotions is not their forte.
Which makes them even more addictive.
And yet, MoR’s probing mind – he always lived with women, incidentally – is sensing like glimmers in their eyes (the men and the women alike.)
No, no no, mamma mia!
If THAT is what they need (Andreas is always right, he’s German no kidding) my novel will make them blush.
Ψ
At the other end of Europe, on a rainy island, Erika Leonard aka E. L. James is paling too.
For reasons nobody can fathom.
So far.
Related stuff:
[ I’ll take my time, although I’ll start with:
i.Andreas Kluth aka Hannibal Man in a TED conference on ‘failure and success in life’ as impostors (see If, by R. Kipling)
[Draft. We’ll stop posting for a few days, this blog crying badly for graphical renovation]
A Berber jeweler,
in today’s Subura
Not far from our house and from Rome’s ancient Subura there’s a little shop where a Berber Tuareg – a tall, dark-skinned man of a majestic beauty – makes splendid jewels that perpetuate a multimillenial tradition – married, inter alia, with an equally beautiful woman from Northern Italy.
ψ
The Samnite: “An ‘acquired’ Roman, one might say.” The Tobacconist *nodding, with a radiant smile*
A Berber metaphysician
2,000 years ago
Saint Augustine and Saint Monica, his mother. 1846 painting by French Ary Scheffer (Wikipedia, click for credits and larger image)
Another ‘acquired’ Roman – born almost 2000 years earlier (and Berber too from his mother’s side) was Augustine of Hippo.
More precisely, Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis (354 – 430 CE,) his family having been legally Roman for more than a century.
Augustinus didn’t make jewels but he almost certainly wore some very similar to those made in the small shop of the Monti rione.
The African sage ruminated, instead, his vast soul tormented.
Augustine praying in his study, by Sandro Botticelli, 1480 (detail.) Chiesa di Ognissanti, Florence, Italy. Credits and entire painting
From such torment stemmed The Confessions and most of all The City of God – two visionary works that only a Berber-Punic Algerian could conceive.
The myth of Rome was nearly destroyed – the City of God, metaphysically celestial, going way beyond the Urbs beacon of the Orb (though Rome adapted and survived, licking her wounds.)
Governess of a billion souls (of nations no more), with a Pontifex Maximus, Francesco, shepherd at last and close to the poor (like Augustine), Rome the eternal looks today at the greatest intellectual of the first millennium CE (on this side of the planet.)
With deep love and profound respect.
ψ
We, in our lowest pochezza, nurture the same feelings.
Without forgetting, allow us, that our roots are, and remain, pagan.
Nota. L’idea mistico terrena di Roma, cemento ideologico dell’Impero Romano, venne indebolita, e l’impero con essa, dall’esplosione creativa di Agostino.
Ma l’idea non morì (e mai morirà).
ψ
Si pensi solo che gli ultimi due imperi del continente europeo dissoltisi con la prima guerra mondiale erano guidati da uno Zar, russo, e da un Kaiser, tedesco. Sia Zar che Kaiser significano Cesare, ovvero:
Gaius Julius Caesar, Pontifex Maximus e iniziatore dell’impero romano.
[We’ll stop posting for a few days, this blog crying badly for graphical renovation]
Gioiellere berbero,
nella Suburra, oggi
Non lontano da casa nostra e dalla Suburra c’è un negozietto dove un berberoTuareg – uomo alto, dalla pelle scura e di maestosa bellezza – fa gioielli meravigliosi che continuano una tradizione plurimillenaria (tra l’altro essendosi unito a una donna anch’essa molto bella, del Nord Italia).
ψ
The Samnite: “Un romano ‘acquisito’, si potrebbe dire”. The Tobacconist *annuendo, un sorriso luminoso*
Pensatore Berbero,
2000 anni fa
Saint Augustine and Saint Monica, his mother. 1846 painting by French Ary Scheffer (Wikipedia, click for credits and larger image)
‘Acquisito’ lo fu un altro romano di quasi 2000 anni fa, berbero anch’egli da parte di madre, Agostino d’Ippona. Per la precisione, Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis (354 – 430 d.C), di famiglia legalmente romana, appunto, da più di un secolo.
Augustinus non faceva gioielli (ne avrà solo indossati di simili a quelli del Tuareg di Monti).
Augustinus in verità pensava. E si travagliava.
Augustine praying in his study, by Sandro Botticelli, 1480 (detail.) Chiesa di Ognissanti, Florence, Italy. Credits and entire painting
Da tale travaglio nacquero Le Confessioni e soprattutto La Città di Dio, due libri geniali che solo un punicoberbero algerino poteva scrivere.
ll mito di Roma ne fu quasi distrutto – la Città di Dio metafisicamente celeste andava oltre l’urbe faro terreno dell’orbe (ma Roma si adattò e sopravvisse, leccandosi le ferite).
Governatrice di un miliardo di anime (non più di popoli), con un Pontifex Maximus, Francesco, finalmente pastore e vicino alla povera gente (come Augustinus), Roma l’eterna guarda oggi al più grande intellettuale del primo millennio d.C.
Con amore profondo, e con rispetto.
ψ
Noi, nella nostra infima pochezza, proviamo gli stessi sentimenti.
Pur non dimenticando, ci sia concesso, che le nostre radici sono erestano pagane.
Nota. L’idea mistico terrena di Roma, cemento ideologico dell’Impero Romano, venne indebolita, e l’impero con essa, dall’esplosione creativa di Agostino.
Ma l’idea non morì (e mai morirà).
ψ
Si pensi solo che gli ultimi due imperi del continente europeo dissoltisi con la prima guerra mondiale erano guidati da uno Zar, russo, e da un Kaiser, tedesco. Sia Zar che Kaiser significano Cesare:
Giulio Cesare, Pontifex Maximus e iniziatore dell’impero.
“Now that I am finishing the damned thing I realise that diary-writing isn’t wholly good for one, that too much of it leads to living for one’s diary instead of living for the fun of living as ordinary people do.”
What is said above applies equally to blog-writing / writing tout court since, when dealing with passions the challenge is always the right measure.
The ancient Romans developed the fine art of cuisine so that the delights of life were augmented, but there was undeniably gluttony in some milieus.
I remember that, much younger, I stopped composing music since it had become an obsessive pastime that basically swallowed me up.
Life should be harmonious. A single part should not devour the rest (as Benedetto Croce, master of harmony, reminds us.)
Benedetto Croce (1866 – 1952), filosofo italiano
Christopher: You wrote: “Life should be harmonious. A single part should not devour the rest”
If everyone lived according to this precept there would be no civilisation and we would all be living short and brutish lives.
MoR: “Hard to say, although my post regards happiness more than creativity in the arts & sciences. Besides, creativity seems related to both balance and unbalance (take Vincent van Gogh etc.).
You possibly suggest that big creators lived disharmony in their life. Frank Lloyd Wright devoted *most* of his time to architecture, Einstein to physics etc.
Ok, but one has to see how these people actually spent their days.
I remember a Roman top advertising agency, at the end of the 80’s, where extremely well-paid copywriters and art directors were walking around in robes and were sunbathing on an elegant terrace overlooking the Parioli district’s skyline (where the rich and famous live, or lived).
I was puzzled at first because these creativi seemed to do everything except what they were paid for. The agency’s output was though brilliant and rivalled Milan’s creativi (the best we’ve got in this country).
One often needs quiet and relaxation to produce ideas, which suggests ‘balance’.
Moving to bigger examples, Beethoven’s music conveys to me the image of an unhappy person.
There are many elements of anger, of obsession, in his music. His life was almost certainly disharmonious: Beethoven’s father was an alcoholic; Karl, the composer’s nephew, whose custody Beethoven had obtained, attempted suicide. And so forth.
Johann Sebastian Bach aged 61 (1685 – 1750). Click for source
Bach’s music on the contrary (with its powerfully abstract architectures that unfold like a majestic river flowing) is much more enriching consoling, imo, and well fits the image of the patient German artisan, whose methodical, quiet work was conceived as a service to God. Bach was a musician but also a good Christian, a good father, a good husband and a good teacher – which suggests harmony of life.
Which doesn’t mean many breakthroughs weren’t the product of unbalanced lives. The commonplace of the deranged genius is more than a commonplace imo, though it’s not my post’s point.
Cheri: “Your point is well taken. My grandfather always told me that moderation is the key to a balanced and contented life.”
MoR: “Hi Cheri! I like roots (as you probably like your Jewish or whatever roots), this blog being a search for roots from a past that, I believe, is still working on us Latins, though not only on us.
Enjoying the pleasures of life without excess, drinking without getting drunk, a life outside compulsions or obsessions – I am often obsessing / obsessed – is not only wise, it is part of a lifestyle, and an element of grace.
To me this is particularly evident in the French, the Latin people I possibly love most.
Neapolitan Benedetto Croce, ‘master of harmony’ …
Incidentally, the Olympian beauty seeping through his works is probably of Hellenic origin, and, like the Hellenic miracle arose from formidable difficulties (if we may compare a huge thing to a small one) Croce’s serene attitude and sharp mind came at a hard price: at 17, on vacation with his parents and his sole sister, their house being wiped out by an earthquake he barely survived and remained alone.
Potsoc: “I agree with Cheri. Many creators were, indeed, unhappy people but as many had a relatively simple and happy life. The examples given speak by themselves.”
MoR: “Someone must have already done it, Potsoc le Canadien, but it’d be interesting to systematically analyse the biographies of creators (in both arts & sciences) in search of a correlation between creative intelligence and lifestyles.
My post was more about the gratification from a life with nicely distributed, non compulsive, activities, but one can blabber a bit and wonder if Balzac, for example, was compulsive in his writing.
He may have been, but his work – so vital, energetic & rich with an immense number of vividly depicted characters – suggests a life not spent exclusively on a desk with a pen in his hand.
A correlation between scientists’ lifestyles and their innovation level seems much harder to establish. They (seem to me to) reveal less about themselves.
ALL this, in any case, is a-blowing in the wind, Paul.”
Potsoc: “I guess nobody wrote a Ph.D thesis on the subject and I will not write it.”
MoR: “Ah ah ah, right Paul 🙂 Getting stuffy, I know.”
Sledpress: “The need for quiet and mental space in which to be creative can’t be denied, but does that support an argument against being too obsessional as a creative person?
I can only write fiction (or songs, or music) when I’m in an obsessional fugue, and it is bitter for me, because I want to have at least something of a life otherwise — probably few people are willing to have their spouse or friend snarl “GO AWAY!” should they be so unfortunate as to come ask about dinner or the water bill when one is creating.
But if I put the chisel down, it’s cold when I pick it back up, and what I wrote mocks me. (Blog posts and so on don’t count; those are five finger exercises.) I can’t start the fire again if I’ve let myself be jollied into putting it out so as to make nice on the rest of the human race. And if I don’t create something, who cares if I lived? It won’t matter.
I’ve already lost the thread of so many good ideas (maybe not lightning genius, but worth something) that I could spend the rest of my life in mourning, and for what in the end? People who really were only bored or wanted me to do them something. I vote for the obsessed people, myself.”
MoR: “You say, Sled:
“I can only write fiction (songs, music) when I’m in an obsessional fugue, and it is bitter for me, because I want to have at least something of a life otherwise …”
“If I don’t create something, who cares if I lived? It won’t matter”
Well, if creation & obsession necessarily go together with us, and creativity is our top priority, let us embrace obsession, why not.
Besides, obsession, as far as I can tell, may produce compellingly emotional results etc.
As for my experience, the insignificant (though much important to me) things I have written or composed were produced in both situations: within a quiet, balanced routine of life; or via obsession, pain, sacrificing the rest.
I sometimes think that, had I more discipline, I’d be able to kill two birds with a stone and reach a synthesis.
What I mean, I’m witnessing an example of creative discipline in my neighborhood, where a certain Paolo Buonvino is leaving a couple of blocks away from my home (it, en wikies.)
Italian from Sicily, conductor, composer of film scores, Buonvino’s music is extremely good, Sicilian-sunny and much appreciated. I exchanged a few words with him. He gave me some inspired advice on related-to-music stuff. Flavia and I have visited him once at his home.
In short, he’s the classic example of one who, compelled to compose scores at appalling speed, is nonetheless able to enhance productivity by finding the right breaks, walking about the rione, enjoying something at a bar (an ice-cream, a coffee, a cake) or watching trees or the sky on a park bench.
You see him around, always relaxed, a mobile at his ear, talking quietly with loads of people (this amazing ease with human relationships being typical of many Italian from the Mezzogiorno.)
So Paolo Buonvino, despite high productivity rates, manages to live quite well. A gift from heaven? Hard to say but some creative discipline should be taught when very young, I believe.”
Sledpress: “There is a trapdoor when someone has asked a creative person to produce something. I say this from experience.
Somehow it frees you to be both creative and human. I don’t know how this works. Only that knowing someone *wants* what you can create substitutes for the energy that otherwise only comes from obsession and a sort of rage against the people who don’t understand why you are working so hard to produce a composition or poem or story, however minor.”
Potsoc: “I moderate a group called “Imaginations”, each week we meet around a theme, different each week, and we write a short piece on the week’s theme that we will read to the group the following week. It’s much fun…and work but we all enjoy it and it has been going for most of ten years with a core of 5 steady participants and another 5 or 6 that come and go.”
MoR: “Sledpress, Paul, you two imply that creating for someone ‘waiting’ for your production can release the pressure?
I agree, an act of communication, then, almost always good. When I was writing the Manius so-to-say novel my motivation were you, the bloggers of my circle, ‘waiting’ (so I felt) for each new installment and the resulting fun, as Paul says, the jokes that we shared etc.
When a publisher told me one day that he was interested, the magic vanished. I tried to continue, but felt only the obsession (plus depression for my failure, lack of discipline.) I quit writing.
Potsoc: “Being approached by a publisher is an altogether other proposition, I agree. Sharing with friends is just plain fun.”
Sledpress: “Yes! You are touching on something that I meant.
If a publisher dangled money in front of me I might still be motivated. Because money is something squeezed out of one’s bloodstream (unless one is one of the one-per-cent who wallow in it), so it is like enthusiasm.
However the biggest fun was an experience like yours, of people hanging on for the next installment to find out what happened!!!
Stephen King writes of something like this in his classic novella “The Body” which became the film Stand By Me.
The pathetically young kid with the gun in this clip — earlier the film shows him telling stories around a kids’ camp fire with everyone asking him what comes next, what comes next. King later called this “the *gotta.*” “I gotta find out what happens.”
I miss having people who cared about that, which happened to me for five minutes.”
MoR: “You’ve said, Sled:
“the biggest fun was an experience like yours, of people hanging on for the next installment to find out what happened!!! I miss having people who cared about that, which happened to me for five minutes.”
When was that and where? Can we reach it?”
Sledpress: “Oh, that was my silly detective novel, an inner circle read every chapter as I wrote it — the way Dickens used to work, releasing installments before the story was all set down. Then as I wrote, with caricatures of everyone who is politically active around here, I looked forward to the public consternation it would cause, another incentive.
And oh yes, I made it look as if the author was a local newspaper editor who had been a real jerk to me a couple of times — it was easy to lift little quirks of style from his editorials. People pestered him about it for years.
Along the way it let me say and even discover a lot about my outlook on the whole “res publica”, the “public thing” that constitutes local political life, which both attracts and repels me — so many people trying to be important, yet actually doing important things despite their flaws. It is really the only thing I ever finished.
Everything else I ever did disappointed me and I threw it over or put it in the drawer, but I had people asking for this, so I had to finish it, amateurish as it may be. I wrote like hell for two months and was burned-out for two more but I wish I could do it again. Only I’m afraid to yell GO AWAY at the few friends I really have.”
MoR: “Wow. Quite a good review. I’ll read the book as soon as I can, or rather buy it (I also missed your poems over at your blog: my next comment)
In the meanwhile, a portion of the review, to the benefit of readers:
“Is this story (MURDER ACROSS THE BOARD by *******) of local interest? Sure. But the writing here is so good it is irrelevant. This is just as good a murder mystery as you will find anywhere, with a compelling story and clever writing to match. The story is truly twisted […] and the murder-mystery here is fun and energetic. No one is who they seem in this fast read, and as the story unfolds, the plot rolls along like a freight-train. What may have started as a goof on some friends or a dig at local politics has turned into a clever, engaging page-turner.”
Sledpress: “Mind you, another reader said it was cliched and awful. Then again, the point was to throw every trope of gritty detective stories into a story about local politics. Looking back I thought it needed tightening, but I’ve always hugged that one rave review to my heart.
I’m editing the pseudonym in your comment just because it really did piss off a number of people, one of whom is a habitual troll, and I’d prefer they didn’t find this blog too easily.”
Sledpress: “Oops, I was on a dashboard when I wrote the above reply and thought we were talking on my page. Oh well — if you wouldn’t mind “asterisking” the author name. Trolls shouldn’t find you either. ”
MoR: “Well, there are good and there are bad reviews, always. Who the hell cares?
I have ‘asterisked’ the author’s name, as you asked me.
And, tell this troll I am ready here waiting.”
Monday’s child is fair of face, Tuesday’s child is full of grace; Wednesday’s child is full of woe, Thursday’s child has far to go; Friday’s child is loving and giving, Saturday’s child works hard for its living; But the child that is born on the Sabbath day Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.
Samnite soldiers, from a tomb frieze in Paestum, Lucania, 4th century BCE. Click to enlarge
“You must be kidding”
“I am not”
ψ
Motivated people will acquire decorous-enough wings that will progressively and placidly take them way up high to Greek Old and New Testament, Aesop’s Fables, Strabo and so forth up to many Greek poems and Aristotle (Plato is hard, albeit the apex.)
Two Bengali sisters are though important here from a certain angle.
Mario: “Don’t get it. Bengali Indians and NOT all Indians?” Manius: “Sir Rabindranath Tagore is Bengali: a genius polymath shedding light, in his sublime way, on harmonious Love, among the rest. Giovanni btw knows only two Bengali bloggers.”
[whose parents being ‘harmonious’ were though man and woman, ie different]
Let us start.
Nikos Kazantzakis’
Twin Currents of Blood
Nikos Kazantzakis, a modern Greek genius. Click for attribution and additional infos
How do children from ‘struggling’ loves react?
In his spiritual autobiography (Report to Greco) Greek Nikos Kazantzakis from Crete (Νίκος Καζαντζάκης, 1883 – 1957) mentions several times this crucial relationship that shaped his life (and work.)
Two quotes.
1. “The influence of this [….] hoax – Kazantzakis writes -, of this delusion (if it is a delusion) that twin currents of blood, Greek from my mother and Arab from my father, run in my veins, has been positive and fruitful, giving me strength, joy and wealth. My struggle to make a synthesis of these two antagonistic impulses has lent purpose and unity to my life.”
2. “Both of my parents circulate in my blood, the one fierce, hard, and morose, the other tender, kind, and saintly.
I have carried them all my days; neither has died. As long as I live they too will live inside me and battle in their antithetical ways to govern my thoughts and actions.”
“My lifelong effort is to reconcile them so that one may give me their strength, the other their tenderness to make the discord between them, which breaks out incessantly within me, turn to harmony inside their son’s heart.”
ψ
Reconcile them … eg the discord which breaks out incessantly turning to harmony. How can one not adore Kazantzakis (also for making dialectics clearer, I hope?)
রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর
Sir Rabindranath Tagore, Rabīndranātha Thākura, রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর. Public domain. Click for source. Majestic and sweet
“Tagore (রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর) was possibly the greatest writer in modern Indian literature, “Bengali poet, novelist, educator, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Tagore was awarded the knighthood in 1915, but he surrendered it in 1919 as a protest against the Massacre of Amritsar, where British troops killed some 400 Indian demonstrators protesting colonial laws.”
“The path of true love never did run smooth” by Talbot Hughes, English Painter (1869–1942). Many paintings from the Victorian era referred to literary quotes, like this one, whose title is from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I, 1, 134
“Mai al mondo fu piano e senza ostacoli il sentiero dell’Amore”
Uomo e donna, complementarietà discordante, sopravvivono meglio in perenne dissonanza.
[Magister-διδάσκαλος; see his ikon, if not his face, below]
Olaf Stapledon.
“Like two close trees whose trunks …”
“ONE night when I had tasted bitterness I went out on to the hill … Overhead, obscurity. I distinguished our own house, our islet in the tumultuous and bitter currents of the world. There, for a decade and a half, we two, so different in quality, had grown in and in to one another, for mutual support and nourishment, in intricate symbiosis […]
True, of course, that as a long-married couple we fitted rather neatly, like two close trees whose trunks have grown upwards together as a single shaft, mutually distorting, but mutually supporting. Coldly I now assessed her as merely a useful, but often infuriating adjunct to my personal life. We were on the whole sensible companions. We left one another a certain freedom, and so we were able to endure our proximity.”
Tough material (for the writer as well as the reader.)
If it’s any consolation: even though thanks to my work with Magister, 40 years ago, I was able to absorb (in only a few months) tiny bits of the essence of Plato, Croce, Gramsci – in other words, various sides of the weird dialectics possibly invented 24 centuries ago in Athens (we’ll need to skip Indian dialectics here) …
… despite I mean this past history of sudden germination – I ran up against “Hegel’s block.”
My Mentor kept telling me Hegel was no inferior to Plato and Aristotle. Magister being Magister, I was frustrated.
ψ
In later years I absorbed Hegel a bit by reading some Gramsci and Croce, although I sensed that Hegel’s deep core, plus the capacity (far more important) to have fun reading this Master’s works – I never quite fathomed.
A New διδάσκαλος
Now one year ago it turned (in only a few months, again!) that reading Hegel though still hard was suddenly exhilarating …
Moreover, Hegel plus evolution – eg biological science plus philosophy – were unexpectedly, rocket-like, jostling me around in outer space (from my puffy armchair, I mean) towards infinite cosmos, or κόσμος τὸ πᾶν, should one prefer.
What had happened? Another Μέντωρ-διδάσκαλος had shown himself?
ψ
Well, yes.
A shy, decent (and brilliantly creative) English philosopher from the Wirral Peninsula:
Man of Roma 