like a cuttlefish spurting out ink…

…when there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms.

📙 Politics and the English Language

The purpose of “Politics and the English Language,” it is said, is to inform people of how language used in ‘political writing’ is vague and incompetent so as to be abstract for the listener/reader. You see, ‘political language,’ according to George Orwell, is designed to make “lies sound truthful” and, “murder seem respectable.” As Joshua Castle says, Orwell’s classic essay, Politics and the English Language, should be any writers’ gold standard and that, “Orwell’s Six Rules should be hung from a wall in the office of every journalist, editor and academic; not to mention, every business consultant and political assistant.” He goes on to note, “alas my wishes will never materialise.” Nevermind (said with Leonard Cohen in mind), I’ll preface the essay below—served to you in both audio and type format—with those 1/2 dozen rules nevertheless:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.

3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.

5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Politics and the English Language — Orwell

Nevermind — Cohen

REFERENCE

Orwell, G. (1946). Politics and the English Language. Horizon, vol. 13(76), pp. 252–265.

📘 Politics and the English Language (PDF)

George Orwell
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
POLITICS AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language – so the argument runs – must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. I will come back to this presently, and I hope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have become clearer. Meanwhile, here are five specimens of the English language as it is now habitually written.

These five passages have not been picked out because they are especially bad – I could have quoted far worse if I had chosen – but because they illustrate various of the mental vices from which we now suffer. They are a little below the average, but are fairly representative examples. I number them so that I can refer back to them when necessary:

1.

I am not, indeed, sure whether it is not true to say that the Milton who once seemed not unlike a seventeenth-century Shelley had not become, out of an experience ever more bitter in each year, more alien (sic) to the founder of that Jesuit sect which nothing could induce him to tolerate.

— Professor Harold Laski (Essay in Freedom of Expression).

2.

Above all, we cannot play ducks and drakes with a native battery of idioms which prescribes egregious collocations of vocables as the Basic put up with for tolerate, or put at a loss for bewilder.

— Professor Lancelot Hogben (Interglossia).

3.

On the one side we have the free personality: by definition it is not neurotic, for it has neither conflict nor dream. Its desires, such as they are, are transparent, for they are just what institutional approval keeps in the forefront of consciousness; another institutional pattern would alter their number and intensity; there is little in them that is natural, irreducible, or culturally dangerous. But on the other side, the social bond itself is nothing but the mutual reflection of these self-secure integrities. Recall the definition of love. Is not this the very picture of a small academic? Where is there a place in this hall of mirrors for either personality or fraternity?

— Essay on psychology in Politics (New York).

4.

All the ‘best people’ from the gentlemen’s clubs, and all the frantic Fascist captains, united in common hatred of Socialism and bestial horror at the rising tide of the mass revolutionary movement, have turned to acts of provocation, to foul incendiarism, to medieval legends of poisoned wells, to legalize their own destruction of proletarian organizations, and rouse the agitated petty-bourgeoise to chauvinistic fervor on behalf of the fight against the revolutionary way out of the crisis.

— Communist pamphlet.

5.

If a new spirit is to be infused into this old country, there is one thorny and contentious reform which must be tackled, and that is the humanization and galvanization of the B.B.C. Timidity here will bespeak canker and atrophy of the soul. The heart of Britain may be sound and of strong beat, for instance, but the British lion’s roar at present is like that of Bottom in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream – as gentle as any sucking dove. A virile new Britain cannot continue indefinitely to be traduced in the eyes or rather ears, of the world by the effete languors of Langham Place, brazenly masquerading as ‘standard English’. When the Voice of Britain is heard at nine o’clock, better far and infinitely less ludicrous to hear aitches honestly dropped than the present priggish, inflated, inhibited, school-ma’amish arch braying of blameless bashful mewing maidens!

— Letter in Tribune.

Each of these passages has faults of its own, but, quite apart from avoidable ugliness, two qualities are common to all of them. The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house. I list below, with notes and examples, various of the tricks by means of which the work of prose-construction is habitually dodged.

Dying metaphors. A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically ‘dead’ (e. g. iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples are: Ring the changes on, take up the cudgels for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, on the order of the day, Achilles’ heel, swan song, hotbed. Many of these are used without knowledge of their meaning (what is a ‘rift’, for instance?), and incompatible metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is saying. Some metaphors now current have been twisted out of their original meaning without those who use them even being aware of the fact. For example, toe the line is sometimes written as tow the line. Another example is the hammer and the anvil, now always used with the implication that the anvil gets the worst of it. In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way about: a writer who stopped to think what he was saying would avoid perverting the original phrase.

Operators, or verbal false limbs. These save the trouble of picking out appropriate verbs and nouns, and at the same time pad each sentence with extra syllables which give it an appearance of symmetry. Characteristic phrases are: render inoperative, militate against, prove unacceptable, make contact with, be subject to, give rise to, give grounds for, have the effect of, play a leading part (role) in, make itself felt, take effect, exhibit a tendency to, serve the purpose of, etc. etc. The keynote is the elimination of simple verbs. Instead of being a single word, such as break, stop, spoil, mend, kill, a verb becomes a phrase, made up of a noun or adjective tacked on to some general-purposes verb such as prove, serve, form, play, render. In addition, the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active, and noun constructions are used instead of gerunds (by examination of instead of by examining). The range of verbs is further cut down by means of the -ize and de- formations, and banal statements are given an appearance of profundity by means of the not un- formation. Simple conjunctions and prepositions are replaced by such phrases as with respect to, having regard to, the fact that, by dint of, in view of, in the interests of, on the hypothesis that; and the ends of sentences are saved from anticlimax by such resounding commonplaces as greatly to be desired, cannot be left out of account, a development to be expected in the near future, deserving of serious consideration, brought to a satisfactory conclusion, and so on and so forth.

Pretentious diction. Words like phenomenon, element, individual (as noun), objective, categorical, effective, virtual, basic, primary, promote, constitute, exhibit, exploit, utilize, eliminate, liquidate, are used to dress up simple statements and give an air of scientific impartiality to biassed judgements. Adjectives like epoch-making, epic, historic, unforgettable, triumphant, age-old, inevitable, inexorable, veritable, are used to dignify the sordid processes of international politics, while writing that aims at glorifying war usually takes on an archaic colour, its characteristic words being: realm, throne, chariot, mailed fist, trident, sword, shield, buckler, banner, jackboot, clarion. Foreign words and expressions such as cul de sac, ancien régime, deus ex machina, mutatis mutandis, status quo, Gleichschaltung, Weltanschauung, are used to give an air of culture and elegance. Except for the useful abbreviations i.e., e.g., and etc., there is no real need for any of the hundreds of foreign phrases now current in English. Bad writers, and especially scientific, political and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like expedite, ameliorate, predict, extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, sub-aqueous and hundreds of others constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon opposite numbers.^[1] The jargon peculiar to Marxist writing (hyena, hangman, cannibal, petty bourgeois, these gentry, lackey, flunkey, mad dog, White Guard, etc.) consists largely of words translated from Russian, German, or French; but the normal way of coining a new word is to use a Latin or Greek root with the appropriate affix and, where necessary, the -ize formation. It is often easier to make up words of this kind (deregionalize, impermissible, extramarital, non-fragmentatory and so forth) than to think up the English words that will cover one’s meaning. The result, in general, is an increase in slovenliness and vagueness.

Meaningless words. In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.^[2] Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality, as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in the sense that they not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly even expected to do so by the reader. When one critic writes, ‘The outstanding feature of Mr. X’s work is its living quality’, while another writes, ‘The immediately striking thing about Mr. X’s work is its peculiar deadness’, the reader accepts this as a simple difference opinion. If words like black and white were involved, instead of the jargon words dead and living, he would see at once that language was being used in an improper way. Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’. The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice, have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of régime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Pétain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.

Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Here it is in modern English:

Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

This is a parody, but not a very gross one. Exhibit 3 above, for instance, contains several patches of the same kind of English. It will be seen that I have not made a full translation. The beginning and ending of the sentence follow the original meaning fairly closely, but in the middle the concrete illustrations – race, battle, bread – dissolve into the vague phrase ‘success or failure in competitive activities’. This had to be so, because no modern writer of the kind I am discussing – no one capable of using phrases like ‘objective considerations of contemporary phenomena’ – would ever tabulate his thoughts in that precise and detailed way. The whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness. Now analyse these two sentences a little more closely. The first contains 49 words but only 60 syllables, and all its words are those of everyday life. The second contains 38 words of 90 syllables: 18 of its words are from Latin roots, and one from Greek. The first sentence contains six vivid images, and only one phrase (‘time and chance’) that could be called vague. The second contains not a single fresh, arresting phrase, and in spite of its 90 syllables it gives only a shortened version of the meaning contained in the first. Yet without a doubt it is the second kind of sentence that is gaining ground in modern English. I do not want to exaggerate. This kind of writing is not yet universal, and outcrops of simplicity will occur here and there in the worst-written page. Still if you or I were told to write a few lines on the uncertainty of human fortunes, we should probably come much nearer to my imaginary sentence than to the one from Ecclesiastes.

As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. It is easier – even quicker, once you have the habit – to say In my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think. If you use ready-made phrases, you not only don’t have to hunt about for the words; you also don’t have to bother with the rhythms of your sentences, since these phrases are generally so arranged as to be more or less euphonious. When you are composing in a hurry – when you are dictating to a stenographer, for instance, or making a public speech – it is natural to fall into a pretentious, latinized style. Tags like a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind or a conclusion to which all of us would readily assent will save many a sentence from coming down with a bump. By using stale metaphors, similes and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself. This is the significance of mixed metaphors. The sole aim of a metaphor is to call up a visual image. When these images clash – as in The Fascist octopus has sung its swan song, the jackboot is thrown into the melting pot – it can be taken as certain that the writer is not seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming; in other words he is not really thinking. Look again at the examples I gave at the beginning of this essay. Professor Laski (1) uses five negatives in 53 words. One of these is superfluous, making nonsense of the whole passage, and in addition there is the slip alien for akin, making further nonsense, and several avoidable pieces of clumsiness which increase the general vagueness. Professor Hogben (2) plays ducks and drakes with a battery which is able to write prescriptions, and, while disapproving of the everyday phrase put up with, is unwilling to look egregious up in the dictionary and see what it means. (3), if one takes an uncharitable attitude towards it, is simply meaningless: probably one could work out its intended meaning by reading the whole of the article in which it occurs. In (4) the writer knows more or less what he wants to say, but an accumulation of stale phrases chokes him like tea-leaves blocking a sink. In (5) words and meaning have almost parted company. People who write in this manner usually have a general emotional meaning – they dislike one thing and want to express solidarity with another – but they are not interested in the detail of what they are saying. A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you – even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent – and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connection between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear.

In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions, and not a ‘party line’. Orthodoxy, of whatever colour, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestos, White Papers and the speeches of Under-Secretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, home-made turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases – bestial atrocities, iron heel, blood-stained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder – one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker’s spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favourable to political conformity.

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, ‘I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so’. Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

While freely conceding that the Soviet régime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigours which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.

The inflated style is itself a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics’. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find – this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify – that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship.

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should and do know better. The debased language that I have been discussing is in some ways very convenient. Phrases like a not unjustifiable assumption, leaves much to be desired, would serve no good purpose, a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind, are a continuous temptation, a packet of aspirins always at one’s elbow. Look back through this essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against. By this morning’s post I have received a pamphlet dealing with conditions in Germany. The author tells me that he ‘felt impelled’ to write it. I open it at random, and here is almost the first sentence that I see: ‘(The Allies) have an opportunity not only of achieving a radical transformation of Germany’s social and political structure in such a way as to avoid a nationalistic reaction in Germany itself, but at the same time of laying the foundations of a co-operative and unified Europe.’ You see, he ‘feels impelled’ to write – feels, presumably, that he has something new to say – and yet his words, like cavalry horses answering the bugle, group themselves automatically into the familiar dreary pattern. This invasion of one’s mind by ready-made phrases (lay the foundations, achieve a radical transformation) can only be prevented if one is constantly on guard against them, and every such phrase anaesthetizes a portion of one’s brain.

I said earlier that the decadence of our language is probably curable. Those who deny this would argue, if they produced an argument at all, that language merely reflects existing social conditions, and that we cannot influence its development by any direct tinkering with words and constructions. So far as the general tone or spirit of a language goes, this may be true, but it is not true in detail. Silly words and expressions have often disappeared, not through any evolutionary process but owing to the conscious action of a minority. Two recent examples were explore every avenue and leave no stone unturned, which were killed by the jeers of a few journalists. There is a long list of fly-blown metaphors which could similarly be got rid of if enough people would interest themselves in the job; and it should also be possible to laugh the not un- formation out of existence,^[3] to reduce the amount of Latin and Greek in the average sentence, to drive out foreign phrases and strayed scientific words, and, in general, to make pretentiousness unfashionable. But all these are minor points. The defence of the English language implies more than this, and perhaps it is best to start by saying what it does not imply.

To begin with it has nothing to do with archaism, with the salvaging of obsolete words and turns of speech, or with the setting up of a ‘standard English’ which must never be departed from. On the contrary, it is especially concerned with the scrapping of every word or idiom which has outworn its usefulness. It has nothing to do with correct grammar and syntax, which are of no importance so long as one makes one’s meaning clear or with the avoidance of Americanisms, or with having what is called a ‘good prose style’. On the other hand it is not concerned with fake simplicity and the attempt to make written English colloquial. Nor does it even imply in every case preferring the Saxon word to the Latin one, though it does imply using the fewest and shortest words that will cover one’s meaning. What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way about. In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is to surrender them. When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualising, you probably hunt about till you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one’s meanings as clear as one can through pictures and sensations. Afterward one can choose – not simply accept – the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round and decide what impression one’s words are likely to make on another person. This last effort of the mind cuts out all stale or mixed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally. But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:

i.

Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

ii.

Never use a long word where a short one will do.

iii.

If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

iv.

Never use the passive where you can use the active.

v.

Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

vi.

Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

These rules sound elementary, and so they are, but they demand a deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing in the style now fashionable. One could keep all of them and still write bad English, but one could not write the kind of stuff that I quoted in those five specimens at the beginning of this article.

I have not here been considering the literary use of language, but merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought. Stuart Chase and others have come near to claiming that all abstract words are meaningless, and have used this as a pretext for advocating a kind of political quietism. Since you don’t know what Fascism is, how can you struggle against Fascism? One need not swallow such absurdities as this, but one ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language – and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists – is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one’s own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase – some jackboot, Achilles’ heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno or other lump of verbal refuse – into the dustbin where it belongs.

— § —

NOTES

[1] _^ (return) An interesting illustration of this is the way in which the English flower names which were in use till very recently are being ousted by Greek ones, snapdragon becoming antirrhinum, forget-me-not becoming myosotis, etc. It is hard to see any practical reason for this change of fashion: it is probably due to an instinctive turning-away from the more homely word and a vague feeling that the Greek word is scientific.

— § —

[2] _^ (return) Example: ‘Comfort’s catholicity of perception and image, strangely Whitmanesque in range, almost the exact opposite in aesthetic compulsion, continues to evoke that trembling atmospheric accumulative hinting at a cruel, an inexorably serene timelessness… Wrey Gardiner scores by aiming at simple bullseyes with precision. Only they are not so simple, and through this contented sadness runs more than the surface bitter-sweet of resignation’. (Poetry Quarterly.)

— § —

[3] _^ (return) One can cure oneself of the not un- formation by memorizing this sentence: A not unblack dog was chasing a not unsmall rabbit across a not ungreen field.

— § —

n.b. The word Orwellian has turned the author’s own name into a capacious synonym for everything he hated and feared.

a♡bibliography

calculated in terms of the passage of time.

01. — 📕 Beautiful “&” Sublime (n.d.)

This is a book of a sort that due to its evolving nature is best described as being of indeterminate in length and nebulous in type. Take one look and we’ll wager you’ll be hooked. But then again, as it’s no more and no less nefarious to its very core (its innermost heart & sanctum sanctorum soul), possibly this kind of gift horse will be seen as but an ass in your esteemed estimation, dear fraternal fellowship of feminine readers (oh Jay! Where are you this day?).

02. — 📕 The Kama Sutra (c. 369 B.C.E.)

The Kama Sutra (कामसूत्र / Kāmasūtra in its Sanskrit original) is an ancient Indian text on sexuality, eroticism and, the emotional fulfillment in life. It ain’t just (or indeed predominantly) a sex manual on positions. The Kama Sutra is a guide to the art of living happily alongside a treatise on the nature of love. Of interest (to me anyway) is that one of the first to translate this into any European language was Sir Richard Burton—Oh the Devil does Drive, and on its merry rounds, the said driven one (Richard Burton) inter alia slipped into Mecca and tracked in the sands of the lands that were later traversed by the Don of the Desert and the hauntingly daunting and deeply enrapturing Rub’ al Khali (a.k.a., ٱلرُّبْع ٱلْخَالِي‎ a.k.a., the “Empty Quarter”), the venerable Wilfred Thesiger.

03. — 📕 The Art of Love (2 C.E.)

The Art of Love (Ars Amatoria in its Latin original) was written by the Roman poet Ovid (who’s probably most famous for having written: Metamorphoses, tellingly said: “love is a kind of warfare” and was born in 43 B.C.E. [♟] and died circa 18 C.E. [☠] and whose full name was in fact Publius Ovidius Naso). The Art of Love is an instructional elegy series in three books. It was written in 2 C.E. (or as we may wanna say 2 AD). The first part/book deals with how men can ‘find’ women; the second part is on Ovid’s ways of ‘keeping’ her (once found) and the third—penned two years after the first two were put to the public—gives women advice on how to win and keep the love of a man.

04. — 📕 The Arabian Nights (10^th c. onward)

The Arabian Nights or, ‘One Thousand and One Nights’ ( أَلْفُ لَيْلَةٍ وَلَيْلَةٌ‎ / Alf laylah wa-laylah in its Arabic original) is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled during the so-called Islamic Golden Age. Of interest (to me anyway) is that one of the first to translate this into any European language was Sir Richard Burton—Oh the Devil does Drive, and on its merry rounds the said driven one slipped into Mecca and tracked in the sands of the lands that were later traversed by the Don of the Desert and the hauntingly daunting and deeply enrapturing Rub’ al Khali (a.k.a., ٱلرُّبْع ٱلْخَالِي‎ a.k.a., the “Empty Quarter”), the venerable Wilfred Thesiger. Déjà vu, anyone? From Hindustan (^ see entry 02, above) we’re now in Arabia (think: Sand City / Date grove) and this high art of CTRL + C and CTRL + V continues in the listing that follows (see entry 05, below) when we traverse the Arabian/Persian Gulf and wend our way to Isfahan and its environs. Many of the tales in The Arabian Nights have erotic undertones, from the stories of wives and their lovers to those of kings and their conquests, to the overarching story of Shahrazad and Shahryar. However, so as not to hide it, Burton did add colour, many say he took the poetic license granted to translators of poetic text a few furlongs too far. Take for one example this note he made to an aspect of one tale’s plot: Debauched Arab women show a particular lust for black men on account of the size of their parts. “I measured one man in Somalia who, when quiescent, numbered nearly six inches … No honest Moslem would take his womenfolk to Zanzibar on account of the huge attractions and enormous temptations there.” (Burton had a habit of measuring ‘quiescent’ male members and was frank enough to say Europeans were only average but those of ‘pure’ Arabs and the menfolk of Hindustan were well below average.)

05. — 📕 The Perfumed Garden (15^th c.)

Giving it its full title, The Perfumed Garden of Sensual Delight (الروض العاطر في نزهة الخاطر‎ / Al-rawḍ al-ʿāṭir fī nuzhaẗ al-ḫāṭir in its Arabic original) is a 15^th c. sex manual and work of erotic literature by Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Nefzawi. The book gives advice on sexual techniques, recipes to remedy sexual maladies and, among other things, gives lengthy lists of names for the penis and vagina. Yep, our man in the Orient, Sir Richard Burton, was the first to translate this treatise on the birds ‘n’ bees into English too. Oh! The Devil does Drive, and on its merry rounds drove Burton to dip himself into a bath of crushed walnut and Rose water to dye himself in preparation for penetrating Mecca and Medina (not content to undertake this mendacious act as a common man, he adopted an Afghan lilt to his near fluent Arabic and posed as a Sheikh who happened to have acquired near magical Eastern gynecological skills; permitting him not only VIP entry into the confines of Mecca but also the tents of the wives of the dignitaries of some of the fiercest Wahhabi subscribers to Ḥanbalite law that ever did live and breath [upon gaining this rarefied, no wholly ‘exclusive’ realm of the Bedouin tent, he promptly made b-lines to the a-lines beneath the petticoats worn under the puritanical black abaya {worth noting too that Burton, whilst posted to Bombay and tiring of the tedium of stockpiling loot from the subcontinent in the warehouses of Naval Dockyard for the East India, took it entirely upon himself to carry out, first-hand, so-to-speak, a comprehensive and exhaustive anthropological study of Bombay’s red light district ((Lal Bazaar))}]) and track in the sands of the lands that were later traversed by the Don of the Desert and the hauntingly daunting and deeply enrapturing Rub’ al Khali (a.k.a., ٱلرُّبْع ٱلْخَالِي‎ a.k.a., the “Empty Quarter”), the venerable Wilfred Thesiger. From Hindustan (^ see entry 02, above) by way of Dhow sail (داو dāw) to Arabia (^ see entry 04, above), we’re now in Persia (think: of the patter of decorated feet on the cool marble floors of Purdah in cahoots with the hubbub of the market rising from the streets beyond the palace walls) and this high art of CTRL + C and CTRL + V, now concludes. Freud considered the theory of repression to be: “the corner-stone on which the whole structure of psychoanalysis rests…” the extent to which this links in with déjà vu is up to you, I’m just saying don’t go confusing Freud the elder with Freud the younger (i.e., I’m here on about Sigmund not Lucian).

06. — 📕 The Carnal Prayer Mat (1696)

The Carnal Prayer Mat (Rouputuan in simplified Chinese) has a controversial status in Chinese history and its literary canon. It has long been banned and censored. It was written by Li Yu (who was born in 1610 [♟] and died in 1680 [☠] and was also known as Li Liweng) who was a playwright and a publisher in addition to a writer of prose. Today The Carnal Prayer Mat is considered by some to have used unabashed pornographic tracts to attack Confucian puritanism. Prophetically, the book’s prologue declares that sex is healthy when taken as if it were a drug, but not as if it were ordinary food. As literary critic Danny Yee wrote in 2004, although this text is “pretty raunchy in places” it should be applauded far more for its “brilliant comedy and satire.”

07. — 📕 Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1748)

Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1748), known too as Fanny Hill (possibly an anglicisation of the Latin mons veneris, mound of Venus), is an erotic work by Englishman John Cleland (born [♟] 1709, died [☠] 1789). It was first published in London in 1748 whilst Cleland was in debtors’ prison. It is considered to be the first original English prose pornography and thus has been one of the most prosecuted and banned books in history. Being as from where I’m from I’m compelled, yes compelled in an utterly unstoppable way to write in support or as a retort: camel toe. In sum, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (Fanny Hill) details the coming of age and subsequent shenanigans of one Frances Hill who was orphaned at the age of 15. With no money at hand she leaves her villages and travels to London where she gets a cleaning job at Mrs. Brown’s brothel. At first Fanny believes her new job to be legitimate, but her curiosity and sensuality are aroused when the prostitute with whom she shares a room introduces her to sex. Mrs. Brown then tricks Fanny into ‘servicing’ a client. She thereafter leaves Mrs. Brown and falls for a man called Charles but this is a short-lived respite from her engagement with the world’s so-called oldest trade, because he’s sent of to sea never to be seen again (or does he return ;))… Fanny then finds work at an upper-class brothel, where she experiences a multitude of sexual acts and discovers that sex for money is not as satisfying as sex for love…

08. — 📕 120 Days of Sodom (1785, published: 1904)

120 Days of Sodom (Les 120 Journées de Sodome ou l’école du libertinage in its French original) was Sade’s masterwork; the manuscript was lost for a period during the French Revolution and was not published until the 20th c. Marquis de Sade’s unfinished drafts are nowadays described as being both erotic and pornographic (born [♟] 1740, died [☠] 1814; Donatien Alphonse François [Marquis de Sade] was a French nobleman who was/is famous for his libertine sexuality and writing on sex and infamous for his sexual abuse of adolescents). In sum, the tale of 120 Days of Sodom is about four wealthy male who embark upon a quest to experience the ultimate sexual gratification by conducting a string of orgies. They do this by sealing themselves away for four months in an remote castle deep in the heart of the Black Forest (in today’s Germany; think/don’t think: Black Forest gâteau [Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte]) with a harem of 36 victims.

09. — 📕 Flowers of Evil (1857)

Flowers of Evil (Les Fleurs du mal in its French original) is said to be a real masterpiece of French literature (it is a collection of poems that are sometimes of an erotic nature/bent). Upon publication Charles Baudelaire (born [♟] 1821, passed [☠] 1867; was a French essayist, poet [his poems are widely considered to show a mastery of rhyme and rhythm and combine neatly Romantic exoticism with realistic observations of everyday life] and, an early translators of Edgar Allan Poe into French.) was prosecuted by way of an ‘outrage aux bonnes mœurs’ (‘an insult to public decency’) and fined 300 francs. Six of the book’s poems were then suppressed for almost 100 years: “Lesbos,” “Women Doomed (In the pale glimmer…),” “Le Léthé,” “To Her Who Is Too Joyful,” “The Jewels” and, “The Vampire’s Metamorphoses.” Thanks to Alan Turing and Tim Berners-Lee we now have the internet and we have uninhibited, unabridged and unexpurgated access to this sextet, Flowers of Evil in full and indeed, every line of every work in this selected♡bibliography.

10. — 📕 Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928)

Lady Chatterley’s Lover is one of the more famous novels by D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Lawrence was born [♟] in September of 1885 and expired [☠] in March of 1930, his collected works, inter alia, can be seen as a reflection on the dehumanising effects of modernity, industrialisation and ‘The Great War’ [WWI] [within this reflection he explores vitality, spontaneity, sexuality and emotional well-being]). It was first published privately in 1928 in Italy and in 1929 in France—its explicit descriptions of sex, and Lawrence’s use of then-unprintable (in the United Kingdom at least) four-letter words rendered it a liber non grata in England. An unexpurgated edition was not published openly in the U.K. until 1960, when it was the subject of a watershed obscenity trial against the publisher Penguin Books. Penguin won the case and quickly sold three million copies. In sum, Lady Chatterley’s Lover is a story of the physical (and emotional) relationship between a working-class man and an upper-class woman.

11. — 📕 Story of the Eye (1928)

Story of the Eye (Histoire de l’œil in its French original) is the 1928 novella written by Georges Bataille (whose full name was/is Georges Albert Maurice Victor Bataille, a gentleman who was born [♟] in 1897 and broke on through to the other side [☠] in July of 1962 and whilst alive was interested in many things including the history of art and wrote on an array of subjects in various forms including: eroticism surrealism and transgression)). In sum, Story of the Eye, details the increasingly bizarre sexual perversions of a pair of teenage lovers. It is narrated by the young man looking back on his exploits. The work contains several vignettes, centered around the sexual passion existing between the unnamed late adolescent male narrator and Simone, his primary female partner. Within this episodic narrative two secondary figures emerge: Marcelle, a mentally ill sixteen-year-old girl who comes to a sad sticky end, and Lord Edmund, a voyeuristic English émigré aristocrat of the debauched (we’d say) debonair (he’d say) kind.

12. — 📕 Tropic of Cancer (1934)

Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller (Henry Valentine Miller, [♟] December 26, 1891 – [☠] June 7, 1980, was an American writer noted for developing a new type of literary format, a semi-autobiographical one that blended character study, philosophical reflection, stream of consciousness, explicit sex scenes and mysticism), has been described as both ‘notorious’ for its realistic descriptions of sex and ‘responsible’ for the free speech that is now considered as a given in literature. Although published in Paris in 1934, it was long banned in the United States. When finally Tropic of Cancer was published in America in 1961 the publisher, Grove Press, was taken to court and it took until 1964 for the U.S. Supreme Court to decide that it wasn’t too obscene to be added to the higher up bookshelves of bookshops.

13. — 📕 Delta of Venus (1940s, published: 1977)

Delta of Venus, by Anaïs Nin (or, as spelled out in her passport, Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell, was born [♟] in 1903 and passed away [☠] in 1977, she was a French-Cuban American diarist, essayist, nwho was born to Cuban parents in France where she spent her formative years in Paris [La Ville Lumière], beforehand it was Spain and Cuba and after that it was all lived out in the U. S. of A.), is a book of fifteen erotic stories mostly written in the 1940s. It was not made available to the general public until 1977. Nin wrote these stories for a long anonymous individual known as ‘The Collector.’ (The Collector also paid Henry Miller (^ see entry 12, above) and English poet George Granville Barker [1913–1991—who I can reveal to be the person that penned ‘The True Confession of George Barker’] to produce erotic fiction for their private consumption). We today know the identity of this pornographic patron, one Roy M. Johnson of Healdton Oil, Oklahoma, You. S. Ayy (Roy’s now made it on to Oklahoma’s ‘Hall of Fame’ that is maintained diligently by the Gaylord-Pickens Museum [who deftly omit all mention of his interest in erotica, instead focusing on the patronage he bestowed upon church and state]).

14. — 📕 The Story of O (1954)

The Story of O (Histoire d’O in its French original) is an erotic novel published in 1954 by French author Anne Desclos (Anne ‘Cécile’ Desclos, born [♟] 1907, died [☠] 1998) under the pen name ‘Pauline Réage.’ Desclos was bisexual. She had a long-term relationship with her employer Jean Paulhan, the director of the prestigious Nouvelle Revue Française, who was 23 years her senior and a long-term liaison with historian and novelist Édith Thomas, who may have been an inspiration for the character of Anne-Marie (The Story of O’s protagonist). In sum, The Story of O is the tale of female submission involving a beautiful Parisian fashion photographer named O, who is taught to be constantly available for oral, vaginal, and anal intercourse, offering herself to any male who belongs to the same secret society as her lover. She is regularly stripped, blindfolded, chained, and whipped (and even gets her bum cheeks branded with a hot rod).

15. — 📕 Lolita (1955)

Lolita was written by a Russian-American novelist who, in his later years, preferred to reside in a serviced Swiss chalet appended to a swish swanky hotel resort and engage in caustic trysts [sic] with literary critics and, is known to us today as, Vladimir Nabokov (born [♟] 1899, died [☠] 1977 and who famously wrote, ‘it was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight’). This work is notable for both its controversial subject matter and the crafting of the English language. The book soon became a literary classic and remains one to this day not least because of its style and its precise portrayal of the banality of postwar America. In sum, in Lolita, we follow the protagonist-cum-narrator, a middle-aged literature professor under the pseudonym Humbert Humbert. Humbert is obsessed with a 12-year-old girl, Dolores Haze, with whom he becomes sexually involved after using both hook and crook, he becomes her stepfather.

The Art of Love may have been written in the days of gladiators and emperors, but Ovid remains the smartest teacher on the subject of love in all of history, and his advice is enduringly useful and entertaining. Between these covers you’ll find all you need to know about where to meet a new beau, how to handle illicit affairs and how to maintain your allure. This edition also contains the companion volume The Cure for Love – in case things don’t work out.

The word ‘kama’ means the desire for sensual pleasure in Sanskrit, and was considered an essential part of the well-rounded education of a young, urbane gentleman. Treating pleasure as an art, Kama Sutra is a handbook covering every aspect of love and relationships. Its seven sections are devoted to the social life, courtship and marriage, extra-marital relations, the conduct of courtesans and prescriptions for enhancing attractiveness, as well as systematic, detailed instruction on sex.

Shocking, banned and the subject of obscenity trials, Henry Miller’s first novel Tropic of Cancer is one of the most scandalous and influential books of the twentieth century — new to Penguin Modern Classics with a cover by Tracey Emin Tropic of Cancer redefined the novel. Set in Paris in the 1930s, it features a starving American writer who lives a bohemian life among prostitutes, pimps, and artists. Banned in the US and the UK for more than thirty years because it was considered pornographic, Tropic of Cancer continued to be distributed in France and smuggled into other countries. When it was first published in the US in 1961, it led to more than 60 obscenity trials until a historic ruling by the Supreme Court defined it as a work of literature. Long hailed as a truly liberating book, daring and uncompromising, Tropic of Cancer is a cornerstone of modern literature that asks us to reconsider everything we know about art, freedom, and morality. ‘At last an unprintable book that is fit to read’ Ezra Pound ‘A momentous event in the history of modern writing’ Samuel Beckett ‘The book that forever changed the way American literature would be written’ Erica Jong

Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita is one of the best-known novels of the 20th century. Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged, frustrated college professor. In love with his landlady’s twelve-year-old daughter Lolita, he’ll do anything to possess her. Unable and unwilling to stop himself, he is prepared to commit any crime to get what he wants. The questions we, the readership will ask are: Is he in love or insane? A silver-tongued poet or a pervert? A tortured soul or a monster? Or is he all of these?

Every night for three years the vengeful King Shahriyar sleeps with a different virgin, executing her the next morning. To end this brutal pattern and to save her own life, the vizier’s daughter, Shahrazad, begins to tell the king stories of adventure, love, riches and wonder – tales of mystical lands peopled with princes and hunchbacks, the Angel of Death and magical spirits, tales of the voyages of Sindbad, of Ali Baba outwitting a band of forty thieves and of jinnis trapped in rings and in lamps. The sequence of stories will last 1,001 nights.

In Delta of Venus Anaïs Nin conjures up a glittering cascade of sexual encounters. Creating her own ‘language of the senses’, she explores an area that was previously the domain of male writers and brings to it her own unique perceptions. Her vibrant and impassioned prose evokes the essence of female sexuality in a world where only love has meaning. Anaïs Nin (1903-1977), born in Paris, was the daughter of a Franco-Danish singer and a Cuban pianist. Her first book – a defence of D. H. Lawrence – was published in the 1930s. Her prose poem, House of Incest (1936) was followed by the collection of three novellas, collected as Winter of Artifice (1939). In the 1940s she began to write erotica for an anonymous client, and these pieces are collected in Delta of Venus and Little Birds (both published posthumously). During her later years Anaïs Nin lectured frequently at universities throughout the USA, in 1974 and was elected to the United States National Institute of Arts and Letters. ‘Anaïs Nin excites male readers and incites female readers … and she comes against life with a vital artistry and boldness’ The New York Times Book Review

Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure -- Book cover

Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1748), known too as Fanny Hill (possibly an anglicisation of the Latin mons veneris, mound of Venus), is an erotic work by Englishman John Cleland (born [♟] 1709, died [☠] 1789). It was first published in London in 1748 whilst Cleland was in debtors’ prison. It is considered to be the first original English prose pornography and thus has been one of the most prosecuted and banned books in history. Being as from where I’m from I’m compelled, yes compelled in an utterly unstoppable way to write in support or as a retort: camel toe. In sum, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (Fanny Hill) details the coming of age and subsequent shenanigans of one Frances Hill who was orphaned at the age of 15. With no money at hand she leaves her villages and travels to London where she gets a cleaning job at Mrs. Brown’s brothel. At first Fanny believes her new job to be legitimate, but her curiosity and sensuality are aroused when the prostitute with whom she shares a room introduces her to sex. Mrs. Brown then tricks Fanny into ‘servicing’ a client. She thereafter leaves Mrs. Brown and falls for a man called Charles but this is a short-lived respite from her engagement with the world’s so-called oldest trade, because he’s sent of to sea never to be seen again (or does he return ;))… Fanny then finds work at an upper-class brothel, where she experiences a multitude of sexual acts and discovers that sex for money is not as satisfying as sex for love…

The Story of O relates the progressive willful debasement of a young and beautiful Parisian fashion photographer, O, who wants nothing more than to be a slave to her lover, René. The test is severe—sexual in method, psychological in substance… The artistic interest here has precisely to do with the use not only of erotic materials but also erotic methods, the deliberate stimulation of the reader as a part of and means to a total, authentic literary experience.

The 120 Days of Sodom is the Marquis de Sade’s masterpiece. A still unsurpassed catalogue of sexual perversions and the first systematic exploration of the psychopathology of sex, it was written during Sade’s lengthy imprisonment for sexual deviancy and blasphemy and then lost after the storming of the Bastille during the French Revolution in 1789.

A masterpiece of transgressive, surrealist erotica, George Bataille’s Story of the Eye was the Fifty Shades of Grey of its era.

Written in 1928 and subsequently banned, Lady Chatterley’s Lover is one of the most subversive novels in English Literature.

Flowers of Evil (Les Fleurs du mal in its French original) is said to be a real masterpiece of French literature (it is a collection of poems that are sometimes of an erotic nature/bent). Upon publication Charles Baudelaire (born [♟] 1821, passed [☠] 1867; was a French essayist, poet [his poems are widely considered to show a mastery of rhyme and rhythm and combine neatly Romantic exoticism with realistic observations of everyday life] and, an early translators of Edgar Allan Poe into French.) was prosecuted by way of an ‘outrage aux bonnes mœurs’ (‘an insult to public decency’) and fined 300 francs. Six of the book’s poems were then suppressed for almost 100 years: “Lesbos,” “Women Doomed (In the pale glimmer…),” “Le Léthé,” “To Her Who Is Too Joyful,” “The Jewels” and, “The Vampire’s Metamorphoses.” Thanks to Alan Turing and Tim Berners-Lee we now have the internet and we have uninhibited, unabridged and unexpurgated access to this sextet, Flowers of Evil in full and indeed, every line of every work in this selected♡bibliography.

Written in 1928 and subsequently banned, Lady Chatterley’s Lover is one of the most subversive novels in English Literature.

Not typical in European erotica, of the 1700s or since is a lot of discussion of the importance of and details about attending to the sexual satisfaction of the female. Men are judged by their stroke count. That count tending to be from a few to many thousands. The ladies will speak directly with each other about who is better and make their preferences clear to a lover. Overall there is a remarkable lack of restraint on a variety of matters sexual. Penis size counts, as does the ladies relative willingness to be active. Virginity is discounted as a thing to be preferred over experience. Side note: There is a rather modern anticipation of turning to surgical techniques to enhance male size. There is a case made for the curvier female as one who has better strength to bare the weight of her lover and as have being in general more desirable than a thin weak woman. Again, one has to be careful as the author may be making fun rather than speaking to common prejudice.

The Perfumed Garden of Sensual Delight presents opinions on what qualities men and women should have to be attractive and gives advice on sexual technique, warnings about sexual health, and recipes to remedy sexual maladies. It gives lists of names for the penis and vagina, has a section on the interpretation of dreams, and briefly describes sex among animals. Interspersed with these there are a number of stories which are intended to give context and amusement.

A masterpiece of transgressive, surrealist erotica, George Bataille’s Story of the Eye was the Fifty Shades of Grey of its era.

references (upon request)

Al Nafzawi, M. (1989 [15^th c.]). The Perfumed Garden: First illustrated edition of Sir Richard Burton’s translation. London: Hamlyn/Octopus Publishing Group/Hachette Livre/Lagardère Publishing.

Bataille, G. (2001 [1928]). Story of the Eye. London: Penguin Classics.

Baudelaire, C. (2016 [1857]). Flowers of Evil (duel text edition). London: Alma Classics.

Bidoonism, A. (n.d.). Beautiful “&” Sublime. Anotherland: The Openbook Duet.

Cleland, J. (2000 [1748]). Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. Ware, Hertfordshire, England: Wordsworth Classics.

De Sade, M. (2016 [1785/1904]). 120 Days of Sodom. London: Penguin Classics.

Desclos, A. [Réage, P.] (1994 [1954]). The Story of O. London: Corgi Books/Transworld Publishers Ltd./Penguin Random House/Bertelsmann.

Haksa, A. N. D. (Translator). (2012 [369 B.C.E.]). Kama Sutra: A Guide to the Art of Pleasure. London: Penguin Classics.

Irwin, R., Lyons, M. &, Lyons, U. [Translators] (2010 [10^th c.]a). The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1,001 Nights (Volume I). London: Penguin Classics.

Irwin, R., Lyons, M. &, Lyons, U. [Translators] (2010 [10^th c.]b). The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1,001 Nights (Volume II). London: Penguin Classics.

Irwin, R., Lyons, M. &, Lyons, U. [Translators] (2010 [10^th c.]c). The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1,001 Nights (Volume III). London: Penguin Classics.

Lawrence, D. H. (2006 [1928]). Lady Chatterley’s Lover. London: Penguin Classics.

Li, Y. (1991 [1657]). The Carnal Prayer Mat. Ware, Hertfordshire, England: Wordsworth Classic Erotica.

Miller, H. (2005 [1934]). Tropic of Cancer. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics.

Nabokov, V. (2005 [1955]). Lolita: 50^th anniversary edition. London: Vintage Books/Knopf Doubleday Publishing.

Nin, A. (2000 [1940s/1977]). Delta of Venus. London: Penguin Classics.

Ovid (2012 [2 C.E.]). The Art of Love. London: Vintage Publishing/Alfred A. Knopf.

to eternity m’dear

📙 Sophie’s World

— by Jostein Gaarder (1991).

Do please allow me to introduce to you, Sophie’s World, by Jostein Gaarder (by the by, it was published in Norwegian in 1991 and then in English in 1994). It is a novel of sorts that seems to align with Bertrand Russell’s 1945, History of Western Philosophy. I say “of sorts” because essentially I see it as a way — one of many, see e.g.: “Put simply” — of making the key philosophers and their main ideas more accessible to the likes of me.

📙 Sophie’s World
inspired by Bertrand Russell’s:
📙 History of Western Philosophy

REFERENCE

Gaarder, J. (1994). Sophie’s World. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

The novel centres on Sophie Amundsen, who is introduced to the history of philosophy by one Alberto Knox, a lecturer in philosophy by way of a number of letters and various other, often somewhat cryptic, mediums.

Sophie’s World “But when these basic needs have been satisfied—will there still be something that everybody needs? Philosophers think so. They believe that man cannot live by bread alone. Of course everyone needs food. And everyone needs love and care. But there is something else—apart from that—which everyone needs, and that is to figure out who we are and why we are here.”

Sophie’s World “The universe would have been equally incomprehensible if it had only consisted of that one stone the size of an orange. The question would be just as impenetrable: where did this stone come from?”

Sophie’s World “A philosopher knows that in reality he knows very little. That is why he constantly strives to achieve true insight. Socrates was one of these rare people. He knew that he knew nothing about life and the world. And now comes the important part: it troubled him that he knew so little.”

Sophie’s World “Basically there are not many philosophical questions to ask. We have already asked some of the most important ones. But history presents us with many different answers to each question. So it is easier to ask philosophical questions than to answer them.”

يا صوفيا 🍉 هلا و غلا

Every day, a letter comes to Sophie’s mailbox that contains a few questions and then later in the day a package comes with some typed pages describing the ideas of a philosopher who dealt with the issues raised by that morning’s questions. The philosopher, Alberto Knox, sends her these packages via his aptly named dog, ‘Hermes.’

Lets delve, together you and I, into the rabbit hole.

Sophie’s World, by Jostein Gaarder (1st ed. 1991) — Lets delve, together you and I, into the rabbit hole.

Alberto first tells Sophie that philosophy is extremely relevant to life and that if we do not question and ponder our very existence we are not really living. Then he proceeds to go through the history of Western philosophy. Sophie (and us readers) gets a reasonably coherent extended review from the Pre-Socratics to Jean-Paul Sartre. We get by way of Alberto, key points regarding the Renaissance, Romanticism, and Existentialism, as well as Darwinism and the ideas of Karl Marx. I thought it might be interesting to consider his categorisation, it is stated as being focused on ‘Western’ philosophy so the omission of the other canons is an acknowledged one.

Ancient Philosophy

— The Pre-Socratics
Including: Thales, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles & Democritus
— Socrates, Plato & Aristotle
— Ancient Philosophy after Aristotle
Including: the Cynics, the Epicureans, the Stoics & Plotinus

Catholic Philosophy

— The Fathers
Including: St Augustine & Pope Gregory
— The Schoolmen
Including: St Thomas Aquinas

Modern Philosophy

— From the Renaissance to Hume
Including: Machiavelli, Erasmus, More, Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Locke & Hume
— From Rousseau to the Present Day
Including: Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Byron, Nietzsche, the Utilitarians, Marx & William James.

I don’t like to paraphrase the following remarks but life ain’t always gunna b nice to you so, here goes, a reviewer at Publishers Weekly (familiarly known in the book world as PW and, they say, “the bible of the book business” has been printing out literary reviews since 1872 and somewhere along the timeline decided to drop the apostrophe) did write something along the lines of this: Regardless of age many readers will be tempted to skip over the somewhat “dryly written” philosophical lessons — which are not particularly integrated with the “more engaging” meta-fictional story line. This reminds me of something Li Yu is said to have said in his Carnal Prayer Mat.

❝
How low contemporary morals have sunk! But if you write a moral tract exhorting people to virtue, [you] will you get no one to buy it.
❞

Which is akin to the marketing adage/joke:

❝
SEX—
— Ah! Now that I have your attention, let me tell you about something completely different. . .
❞

Providing a polar opposite perspective is Steven Gambardella. He writes that Sophie’s World has changed the lives of millions of people and is the “red pill of literature.” It is “the best place to start reading about philosophy” and “eloquently captures the wonder of philosophy, the giddiness you feel when you realise you are floating in space.” The rabbit is sketched to be representative of the universe. In the book, we humans are compared to tiny insects in the rabbit’s fur. Some of us burrow down into the warmth of the fur, while the philosophers among us climb to the tops of the hairs “to stare right into the magician’s eyes.” As Gambardella states, it was written by a high school teacher with a passion for the subject, became a bestseller and has now “sold over 40 million copies.”

The red pill and blue pill is a meme representing a choice between taking either a “red pill” that reveals an unpleasant truth, or taking a “blue pill” to remain in blissful ignorance. The terms and concept are taken verbatim from a scene in the 1999 film The Matrix.

rabbit-hole — Run rabbit run, take me into the abyss — the deep and bottomless midnight zone of eye & ur innermost consciousnesses.

Going [reaching || falling] down the rabbit hole — Falling / Going / Reaching down the rabbit hole, is a metaphor for something that transports someone into a ‘troublingly’ (or possibly too ‘wonderfully’) surreal state or situation.

**“The Persistence of Memory”**
By Salvador Dalí (1931). One of the most recognisable works of Surrealism [Spanish title: La persistencia de la memoria].

By hook or by crook, let them — these contemporaries of Sappho and idols of Catullus — reach down into your rabbit hole; let Freud & co. sweet-talk you there, bent over, cowering under or splayed out on the psychologist’s faux-leather, mock-Chesterfield couch.

On a tangent of his own Gambardella says that philosophy is the pursuit of wisdom — knowledge is merely instrumental and is applied to get us by — it is thought about thought. Knowledge of philosophy, he argues, allows us to enhance our pleasures and diminish our pains of our own accord. He quotes Seneca as saying:

❝
Without [Philosophical pondering] no one can lead a life free of fear or worry. Every hour of the day countless situations arise that call for advice, and for that advice we have to look to [it].
❞

Me, well I’m a dipper (skinny I wish) and this applies to all that I read and my writings and musings too. The chalice or urn is neither overflowing or bone dry. It is, I submit to you, bang in the middle. The purpose of this book in my view is to encourage us to think for ourselves, question things that are taken as given and doubt dogmas, as Gaarder writes, “my concern [, dear Sophie,] is that you do not grow up to be one of those people who take the world for granted.” I’d take the red over the blue, politically and metaphorically speaking and in relation to the pleasures and pains of love too.

I’ll end with a nod to who I’m guessing was an influence on Gaarder: Bertrand Russell. Russell was an English philosopher and campaigner for freedom (of expression and from authoritarian control). Reassuringly — to me anyway — he said do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once seen as being eccentric.

The History of Western Philosophy

❝
Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.
❞
— Bertrand Russell

“Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.”

❝
The fundamental cause of trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.
❞
— Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell

p.s.
Consider visiting Bidoonism’s page on Philosophy and/or reading her recent reviews of the following works:

Eldridge, R. T. (Ed.). (2009). The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gottlieb, A. (2000). The Dream of Reason: a History of Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance. New York: W. W. Norton & Co.

Gottlieb, A. (2016). The Dream of Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Philosophy. London: Penguin.

Grayling, A. C. (2019). The History of Philosophy. London: Penguin.

Kenny, A. (1998). An Illustrated Brief History of Western Philosophy. New York: John Wiley & Sons

Russell, B. (1945). A History of Western Philosophy. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd.

Put simply

&|| succinctly

There is a book which says a fair bit about me — I went a bit ‘Radio Rentals’ (you know what I mean, a stint of, or a stretch at, ‘doolally’) and frenetically purchased the whole series. Of the set, there was this particular one that, for a bit, I totally cherished — it became my bible & my constant companion, my succour & my sanctum sanatorium (sic.[k]) — but after a time and in a cathartic act of getting-the-fuck-over-him, I dispensed with it (alongside its fellow brethren to the large green municipality garbage (no: ‘rubbish’; no “GARBAGE”) skip (bin or tin) beside the house in which I’m obligated to reside in). However, it found its way back to me and I, once more (“for better or for worse”), took it in again. You see, he’d ‘magically’ found high resolution electronic versions of it and all the other titles and sent them to me, as is his way, with artfully articulated apologies and long letters of regret and remorse for, amongst many other things, his self-destructive ways in which I all too often bare the brunt. He too, by the way, is a flipping expert in throwing everything away and beginning anew — he takes so-called “cleansing baths,” the idea being that baptism-like, he’ll rise from the waters shorn of sin and shed of snake oil (he being phoenix-like; the ashes, the lives of those he messes around with). But the things he throws out (with the bath water, so to speak) soon get reintroduced: for escape, he says — and I concur — is a fallacy because, one cannot escape one’s self (he and I both give short shrift to things like near death experiences being anything other than wholly imagined phenomena).

Thomas De Quincey on Opium — **“Thou only givest these gifts to man, and thou hast the keys of Paradise, O just, subtle, and mighty opium!”** — he’d quote such things to me. . . O Blackest Spot! Are you musing? Yours, your muse.

This is the book:

(DK) The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained — DK. (2011) The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained. London: Dorling Kindersley Limited.

As I seek context for its cover quotes, by way of organic light-emitting diodes, it stares luridly back at me, unblinkingly and unrelentingly. It, in my sore eyes, acts as a testament to the truism that knowledge rarely begets bliss. n.b., I’ll be heading out into the dunes real soon.

❝
Mind has no gender.
❞
— Mary Wollstonecraft
An English writer and philosopher (1759–1797) who, inter alia, advocated for gender neutrality in all domains of society. “She” alas (not a lass) is almost unique in this anthology. Yet, maybe this whole endeavour is both infantile and futile; and thus a forte of man. But no! The millennia old quest to definitively discover, determine and frame consciousness is too important to be left to mankind alone. That we evidently aren’t represented in this field doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t seek and strive to become so: per ardua ad astra & all a dat.

❝
I think therefore I am.
❞
— René Descartes
A French thinker (1596–1650) who is considered one of the instigators of modern (Western) philosophy (and a key member of La Ville Lumière), his most noted line: “Cogito, ergo sum,” penned in Latin, is quoted above. I can confirm to you here and now that I am very much alive and mulling over my abject melancholy tonight. Whether or, whether not, you too are thinking thoughts now in the dead of night, one can only speculate.

❝
We only think when we are confronted with problems.
❞
— John Dewey
An American philosopher and psychologist (1859–1952) who believed profoundly in democracy, be it in e.g., politics, education or media communication; he once said that is was synonymous with the “ultimate, ethical ideal of humanity.”

❝
Humans are born free, yet everywhere they are in chains.
❞
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau
A French/Swiss philosopher (1712–1778) who had great influence on the progress of the Enlightenment throughout Europe by way of e.g., his works: “Discourse on Inequality” and “The Social Contract” — cornerstones still of contemporary political and socioeconomic thinking (Rousseau was a member of La Ville Lumière). I am chained to memories of u; i am chained too by patriarchy and an increasingly bellicose and jingoistic society.

❝
Imaginations decide everything.
❞
— Blaise Pascal
A French mathematician, physicist, inventor and philosopher (1623–1662). Pascal made important contributions to the study of fluids, concepts of pressure and vacuum as well as writing in support of the scientific method.

❝
To be is to be perceived.
❞
— George Berkeley
An Irish philosopher (&c.) (1685–1753) who put forth a a theory which he called “immaterialism” which denies the existence of material substance, instead contending that things like books and pens are only ideas in our minds and exist only because we perceived them to be.

❝
The universe has not always existed.
❞
— Thomas Aquinas
An Italian philosopher (1225–1274) who is considered to be the most famous of all medieval Christian philosophers. English philosopher Anthony Kenny contends that Aquinas is amongst the dozen “greatest philosophers of the western world.”

❝
Humans are animals that make bargains.
❞
— Adam Smith
A Scottish philosopher and pioneer of political economy (1723–1790). known by some as “The Father of Economics” he is perhaps most famous for his work, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), and the concept of ‘the invisible hand.’

❝
Humans are machines.
❞
— Thomas Hobbes
An English philosopher (1588–1679) who’s considered to be one of the founders of modern political philosophy in large part because of his 1651 book Leviathan. This work was seminal in terms of setting out social contract theory.

❝
Humans are the measure if all things.
❞
— Protagoras
An Ancient Greek philosopher (c. 490–420 BCE) who is said also to have said, “many things prevent knowledge, including the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life.”

❝
Happy is the one who has overcome their ego.
❞
— Siddhartha Gautama
An Indian philosopher (c. 563–483 BCE) who was later lionised as the Buddha, he’s said to have said the following string of words: The mind is everything. What you think, you become.

❝
The human is an invention of a recent date.
❞
— Michel Foucault
A French social theorist and philosopher (1926-1984) Foucault saw himself as a critic of modernity (see: la-ville-lumiere). Interestingly he was convinced that the study of philosophy must begin through a close and ongoing study of history.

❝
The ends justifies the means.
❞
— Niccolò Machiavelli
An Italian thinker (1469–1527) who famously submitted the following: while it would be best to be both loved and feared, the two rarely coincide, and thus, greater security is found in the latter.

❝
There is nothing outside of the text.
❞
— Jacques Derrida
A French philosopher (1930–2004), who is considered by some to be rather controversial in relation to his concept of “deconstruction” — a complex and nuanced approach to how we read and understand the nature of written texts. In an egalitarian kind of way he believed that we are all, “mediators and translators.” He said too that he never gave in to, “the temptation to be difficult just for the sake of being difficult.”

❝
Act as if what you do makes a difference.
❞
— William James
An American philosopher and psychologist (1842–1910) who is said now to be the “Father of American psychology.” In a seminal work for the field of psychology — Pragmatism (1907, p. 45) — he wrote, “there can be no difference that doesn’t make a difference.”

❝
Life will be lived all the better if it has no meaning.
❞
— Albert Camus
A French philosopher (1913–1960) who said, “fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.” Even more interestingly, in my humble view, he argued that (hu)man(kind) is the only creature who refuses to be what they are. I dunno m8 but i fink he means we are but animals (dressed in garments) but we seek to act and pretend we are more higher than our baser instincts and our animistic (sum times cannibalistic) tendencies.

❝
Over one’s own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.
❞
— John Stuart Mill
An English philosopher (1806–1873) who said the following: “Under whatever conditions, and within whatever limits, men are admitted to the suffrage, there is not a shadow of justification for not admitting women under the same.” He’s pretty bloody amazing actually. Not only was he for equality between the genders but he was also an advocate of free speech and the limiting of the powers of authority over the citizenry. . .

❝
The life which is unexamined is not worth living.
❞
— Socrates
An Ancient Greek philosopher (469–399 BCE) who is considered to be one of the founders of Western philosophy. Interestingly so because he himself wrote nothing. What he did do, however, was persistently ask challenging questions.

❝
Humans are something to be surpassed.
❞
— Friedrich Nietzsche
A German philosopher (1844–1900), who amongst other things, believed that so-called religious morality, with its emphasis on kindness, meekness, subservience to a greater good, and a focus on the afterlife rather than the present condition, did not reflect how the world actually works.

❝
The soul is distinct from the body.
❞
— Plato
An Ancient Greek philosopher (c.428 – c.348 BCE) and was one of Socrates’ muses. In terms of, “the soul is distinct from the body”. . . I ask: is it though? I mean, like I said about them near death-experiences, you kind of know what to imagine, floating up off of the bed, your life flashing by condensed to a dozen at most vivid events splatters in stark relief. I mean who’s managed to can a soul? Who has actually continued bereft of their blinking body?

❝
Reason lives in language.
❞
— Emmanuel Levinas
A French philosopher (1906–1995) known for his inquiries into existentialism, ethics and ontology.

❝
Truth resides in the world around us.
❞
— Aristotle
An Ancient Greek philosopher (384–322 BCE) who said too: “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence. We should know tat it is from Aristotle’s writings and teachings that the West inherited its intellectual lexicon, as well as the key problems to ponder and moreover, methods of inquiry. As the polymath did make clear: “The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.”

❝
Knowledge is power.
❞
— Francis Bacon
An English philosopher (1561–1626) whose work is credited with developing the scientific method hence sometimes being called “the father of empiricism.” For me it is the following words of his that I feel most affinity too: “In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.”

❝
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
❞
— Voltaire
A French Enlightenment era philosopher (1694–1778) famous for his wit as well as his criticism of religion and his advocacy of freedom of speech. He was a founding member of La Ville Lumière. Tellingly he was fond of saying the following: Those who can make you believe absurdities (e.g., the supernatural) can make you commit atrocities (e.g., coercive indoctrination). This was especially the case, I’ve somewhere read, as an encore to peach soufflé.

“Aptenodytes Antarctica” illustration from ‘Cimelia Physica. Figures of rare and curious quadrupeds, birds…’ published 1796 (hand coloured engraving) by Miller, John Frederick (1759-96); Private Collection; The Stapleton Collection; English, out of copyright.

Now that’s a question to ponder…

❝
The fundamental cause of trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.
❞
— Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell

RELATED READINGS

Eldridge, R. T. (Ed.). (2009). The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gottlieb, A. (2000). The Dream of Reason: a History of Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance. New York: W. W. Norton & Co.

Gottlieb, A. (2016). The Dream of Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Philosophy. London: Penguin.

Grayling, A. C. (2019). The History of Philosophy. London: Penguin.

Kenny, A. (1998). An Illustrated Brief History of Western Philosophy. New York: John Wiley & Sons

Russell, B. (1945). A History of Western Philosophy. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd.

End (is nigh) notes
This post ^ is a consequence of summer recess and purdah.

Beached

On McEwan’s ‘On Chesil Beach’

REFERENCE

McEwan, I. (2007). On Chesil Beach. London: Jonathan Cape.

I’ll say this: don’t watch it, read it. It will not take you too long, the book is very readable — there are no long detours and, the succinct character background building and scene setting (especially of the coastline from the vantage of the bridal suite’s balcony) add volumes to the pent up (and long repressed) desires that constitute the heart and soul of Chesil Beach. You kind of know something bloody bad’ll happen from the blurb and from the opening lines and yeah, there’s a ‘tragedy’ of sorts…

I use single quotation marks around the word tragedy because I’m not saying it is one; strictly speaking it wasn’t one at all. Typically, single quotation marks are used to mark a quote within a quote or a direct quote in a newspaper story’s headline. However, single ( ‘.’ ) or double ( “.” ) ((علامات تنصيص‎)) can be used to imply consternation, disagreement or emphasis… it’s all in the context: ‘all’ in the bloody ducking con–text m8.

…but it’s not that that moved me, it’s the frank realisation and the matter of fact way in which it – the frankly acknowledged ‘realisation’ — is put in the page or two, within a single sentence, after the novella’s climax that truly moved me and’s stuck with me since. True love, you see, is infinite, you’ll only ever know if you know and I guess until you die or ‘lose’ your mind (your faculties ‘loosen’) you’ll not be able to prove the premise. Cum the fuck on though, you sometimes just do flipping well know.

Reviewer of books, Jonathan Yardley — who won a Pulitzer Prize for his art — placed On Chesil Beach on his top ten for 2007; the year Ian McEwan published this book. He (Yardley) said that even when he (McEwan) is in “minor mode … he is nothing short of amazing.” Minor mode because of the novel’s length. It is, according to the author, more of a novella than a novel. I felt that the paragraphs given to Edward’s mother’s erratic behavior and unstated mental illness were very telling, he’d endured a lot and suppressed a lot; there was little he wouldn’t have done for Florence who’s prudishness most surely have had a deeper, darker — unwritten about — founding stroy.

McEwan, I. (2007). On Chisel Beach. London: Jonathan Cape. “The course of true love never did run smooth.” – William Shakespeare

❝
The course of true love never did run smooth.
– William Shakespeare
❞

Daniel Zalewski (The New Yorker) states that, “all novelists are scholars of human behavior, but Ian McEwan pursues the matter with more scientific rigor than the job strictly requires.” He went on to point out that after discussing his many duplicitous characters — such as Briony Tallis, the precocious adolescent of his 2001 novel, Atonement, who one reviewer claims: “ruins two lives when she makes a false accusation of rape” — McEwan pointed to a “study in cognitive psychology” suggesting that “the best way to deceive someone is first to deceive yourself.” After all one is more convincing when they are being sincere (irrespective of whether they are delusional or not). The accidental slip — the penned words, ‘I want to kiss your see you en tea’ were not supposed to be read — elementally underscores the potential portent of the flap of the butterfly’s wing analogy to chaos theory.

McEwan, I. (2001). Atonement. London: Jonathan Cape.

I’ll point you now to this post for a reason I’ll leave unstated:

↘
“✍🏻 100’s (#01)”
Written in red and underlined twice for emphasis.

& this one too because I just somehow don’t rest easy with the false claim of rape ^ because yeah, it happens, but, so too — and far more frequently I submit to you — do falsely dismissed cases of actual rape:

↘
“Lust and Lambast”
A hand left poignantly unshaken; a republican party, quite unstirred.

All that glitters

Pyrite / an iron sulfide / FeS₂

Please allow me to introduce to you, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, by James Frazer (1^st ed. 1890; 2^nd ed. 1913). (📙 The Golden Bough.)

William Blake’s The Ancient of Days

Christ Pantocrator mosaic @ Hagia Sophia

Mephisto in front of God and the three archangels, drawn by August von Kreling in Goethe’s Faust.

Michelangelo’s God @ the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican

You know, when we English Lit. students dream of being writers, we somehow think we’ve something to add to the canon, in some ways, we all have, but the more I dig, the more I scan Project Gutenberg (e t c .),* the more I realise that countless thousands who’ve lived (read, thought, written) and died before I was pushed out into this world, have probably (no ‘definitely’) thought what I think (far more deeply), have set out to articulate what I abstractedly and dreamily plan to one day articulate (& they’ve actually done so in concrete codex form). I feel I’m in the dead calm at the very centre of a tropical vortex –((( it’s wondered off course, North, for I reside in The Pearl; a multi-story complex built beside an artificial lagoon on a peninsula that juts out into the tepid seawater of the Arabian Gulf. Languid in largesse the panoramic view is beset by an unrelenting, near blinding, shimmer — the sun bleaches and becalms vigour. Maritime scenes are confused by midday mirages, mercury in colour — oil money stymies gainful endevour. )))– for I’ve scedules and to-do-lists, ambitions and passions, but I’m laying here listless. And while all is swirling tumultuously around me I’m strapped down by paralysis, I want to write, I want to let it bleed, I so dearly want “writing to be my therapy” as we’d say to each other it would be. We’d say such things in abstract ways mulling over a potential future parting of ways that neither you or I, back then, could seriously contemplate as a possible eventuality. // The whirlpool’s walls tower up indeterminately, they seem to be leaning in, this could be an optical illusion, but more likely it is nature’s way via the force of gravity; you sea, once I had it all; now I’ve nothing at all. \\ They’d say things like “he’s a man of letters” — I’ve read it said — and I’ll update that to be s/he, but yes, in the days before swiping right and switching swiftly between screens, writers on their typewriters (or with paper and gravity aloof pencils), would certainly have been better readers and thus better writers. I was born less than half a dozen years before the millennium, iPads were out before I was into my teenage years. I can’t compare the past to now from knowledge of both, but I’m confident that reading (in say the Victorian/Edwardian way/day) is increasingly a rarity today. On my bloody fucking university campus most key text books are only supplied to us as eBooks (I ain’t even lying . . . I will walk and I will talk).

The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion

Here’s an extract — the Preface to a follow-on work The Aftermath (1936) the language, I think, is sublime:

When I first put pen to paper to write The Golden Rough I had no conception of the magnitude of the voyage on which I was embarking ; I thought only to explain a single rule of an ancient Italian priesthood. But insensibly I was led on, step by step, into surveying, as from some specular height, some Pisgah of the mind, a great part of the human race ; I was beguiled, as by some subtle enchanter, into inditing what I cannot but regard as a dark, a tragic chronicle of human error and folly, of fruitless endeavour, wasted time, and blighted hopes. At the best the chronicle may serve as a warning, as a sort of Ariadne’s thread, to help the forlorn wayfarer to shun some of the snares and pitfalls into which his fellows have fallen before him in the labyrinth of life. Such as it is, with all its shortcomings, I now submit The Golden Bough in its completed form to the judgment of my contemporaries, and perhaps of posterity.

Here is another one:

The advance of knowledge is an infinite progression towards a goal that for ever recedes. We need not murmur at the endless pursuit:

Fatti non foste a viver come bruti
Ma per seguir virtute e conoscenza.**

Great things will come of that pursuit, though we may not enjoy them. Brighter stars will rise on some voyager of the future—some great Ulysses of the realms of thought—than shine on us. The dreams of magic may one day be the waking realities of science. But a dark shadow lies athwart the far end of this fair prospect. For however vast the increase of knowledge and of power which the future may have in store for man, he can scarcely hope to stay the sweep of those great forces which seem to be making silently but relentlessly for the destruction of all this starry universe in which our earth swims as a speck or mote. In the ages to come man may be able to predict, perhaps even to control, the wayward courses of the winds and clouds, but hardly will his puny hands have strength to speed afresh our slackening planet in its orbit or rekindle the dying fire of the sun. Yet the philosopher who trembles at the idea of such distant catastrophes may console himself by reflecting that these gloomy apprehensions, like the earth and the sun themselves, are only parts of that unsubstantial world which thought has conjured up out of the void, and that the phantoms which the subtle enchantress has evoked to-day she may ban to-morrow. They too, like so much that to common eyes seems solid, may melt into air, into thin air.

Foot notes

* Project Gutenberg is the world’s oldest digital library. It places books into the public domain — most are older works that are thus out of copyright. This altruistic endevour began with the efforts of American writer Michael S. Hart in 1971. See for example: 📙 The Golden Bough. A similar project is called The Internet Archive. It provides free access to researchers and the general public. It’s mission is none other than to provide universal access to all knowledge thus far accumulated by human kind. See for example: 📙 Aftermath, a Supplement to the Golden Bough

** “You were not made to live as brutes / But to follow virtue and knowledge.”
— From Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri

The Love that moves the sun and the other stars.

Bittersweet

~ ~ ~ irony
Symphony

At the outset of the 2015 BBC documentary Bitter Lake, Adam Curtis suggests that,

❝
We live in a world where nothing makes any sense and those in power tell stories to help us make sense of the complexity of reality, but those stories are increasingly unconvincing.

❞

The contention argued in Bitter Lake is that Western politicians have manufactured a simplified story about militant Islam into a “good” vs. “evil” argument. This argument, which is informed by and a reaction to Western society’s increasing chaos and disorder, is neither really understood by the governments and think-tanks that have manufactured it or the people (the citizenries) to which it is being peddled.

📹 Bitter Lake (2015)

“The Nightmare” by John Henry Fuseli.

“The Nightmare”

“I have a suspicion that the politicians’ revival of the old behaviourist ideas and techniques will be helped and reinforced by a powerful ally – the machines we have built. The computers.” — Adam Curtis”

↘
Bidoonism’s Adam Curtis collection

Post Script

1. Eric Hobsbawm
Hobsbawm focused on the rise of industrial capitalism, socialism and nationalism. His best-known work is his trilogy about what he called the “long 19th century” (The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789–1848, The Age of Capital: 1848–1875 and The Age of Empire: 1875–1914). Read on …

2. Edward Saïd
Saïd focused on the history and nature of Western attitudes towards the East, and contends that “orientalism” is a powerful European ideological creation that is the key source of the inaccuracy in cultural representations that form the foundations of Western thought and perception of the Eastern world {نحن نعيش ، نموت}. Read on …

Orientalism

Western Conceptions of the Orient

Edward W. Said

3. Horses for courses 🐎
Proverb • British
— Different people are suited to different things.

4. Bidoonism ❱ Politics &c. ❱❱ History
According to me, “history’s basically histrionics… because, to attract attention, we inevitably state it melodramatically. Read on …

Mayday, ((m’aider))

venez m’aider (“come and help me”)

The Handmaid’s Tale stresses the importance of reading to our freedom…

This book is usually, and quite rightly, placed in the same category of dystopian fiction as Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World, but has a particular focus on the tyranny of patriarchy (the Aunt’s being the lapdogs so to speak). **I do though get confused by Offred because, well, yes you’ve gotta adapt to survive, but she seems somehow accommodated to her trysts with Commander fRed and in to her dalliances with the driver. What happens to Molly? how exactly did her daughter get wrested from her bosom up by the cold river?** The book’s ending pleasingly open-ended, because come on — dear J — there ain’t no such thing as black — 000000 — and white — FFFFFF. __Context — our sub-text & reading in between the lines my Only.One — is everything; ain’t it m8? Atwood stresses this by emphasising how changes in context impact upon behaviours and attitudes. We read the phrase “Context is all” in the book several times: Think scramble. And yeah, I loved it how our Ofred believed that she’d won round one and let him take the second, but after several “games nights” realised his superiority at this particular board game.__

… it also stresses the trap that academics may fall into: the risk of misreading and misunderstanding historical texts.

Snippets

❝
There is more than one kind of freedom. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy it was freedom to, now you are being given freedom from. (p. 24)
❞
⁓Total Control⁓

❝
Men are sex machines, said Aunt L, and not much more. They only want one thing, you must learn to manipulate them. Lead them around by the nose, this is a metaphor. This is nature’s way. (p. 143)
❞
⁓Total Control⁓

❝
So there it was. Out in the open: his wife didn’t understand him. That was what I was there for then. The same old thing. It was too banal to be true. (p. 156)
❞
⁓Total Control⁓

❝
The moment of betrayal is the worst, the moment when you know beyond any doubt that you’ve been betrayed: that some other human being has wished you that much evil. (p. 193)
❞
⁓Total Control⁓

❝
“Nature demands variety, for men” he says. “It stands to reason, it’s part of the procreational strategy. … Women know this instinctively … they buy so many clothes to trick the men into thinking they are several different women.” (p. 239)
❞
⁓Total Control⁓

B02BACD9-6C87-42CC-AA9A-FA6A6FCA7008 — George Orwell’s *“1984”* is often juxtaposed with fellow English author, Aldous Huxley’s *“Brave New World”*

Who controls the past controls the future /
Who controls the present controls the past.

p. s.

“Mayday, mayday, mayday”
Mayday is an emergency procedure word used internationally as a distress signal in voice-procedure radio communications. The “mayday” procedure word was originated in 1921, by a senior radio officer at Croydon Airport in London. The radio officer—one Frederick Stanley Mockford—opted for “mayday” from the French m’aider (“help me”)—a shortened form of venez m’aider (“come and help me”)—because he had a thing at that time for a fine young thing from Paris.

My hero: George Orwell by Margaret Atwood
I grew up with George Orwell. I was born in 1939, and Animal Farm was published in 1945. I read it at age nine. It was lying around the house, and I mistook it for a book about talking animals. I knew nothing about the kind of politics in the book – the child’s version of politics then, just after the war, consisted of the simple notion that Hitler was bad but dead. To say that I was horrified by this book would be an understatement. The fate of the farm animals was so grim, the pigs were so mean and mendacious and treacherous, the sheep were so stupid. Children have a keen sense of injustice, and this was the thing that upset me the most: the pigs were so unjust. The whole experience was deeply disturbing, but I am forever grateful to Orwell for alerting me early to the danger flags I’ve tried to watch out for since. As Orwell taught, it isn’t the labels – Christianity, socialism, Islam, democracy, two legs bad, four legs good, the works – that are definitive, but the acts done in their names. Read on…

Lust and Lambast
A hand left poignantly unshaken; a republican party, quite unstirred.

Strong

Weak

Writing concisely is not my style yet, as column inches for anything other than celebrity gossip, consumer reviews and self-help are now such a precious commodity, I must be succinct. Even if I were allowed to go wild with the word count, it would probably demonstrate only the validity of the Law of Diminishing Returns. Nowadays smartphone shortened attention spans need to be taken into account. In order to gain wide readership on matters of current affairs, being parsimonious with prose is a necessity. Gone are the days when waxing lyrical in verbose flowery language on issues of international political economy was considered a mark of distinction. Read on…

📙 Song of Solomon

REFERENCE
Morrison, T. (1977). Song of Solomon. New York: Alfred Knopf, Inc.

Oh. My. Word! We’ve Toni Morrison’s 1977 Song of Solomon

and, The Old Testament’s “Song of Solomon” c. 700 BC.

Gustave_Moreau_-_Song_of_Songs_(Cantique_des_Cantiques)_-_Google_Art_Project

Egon Tschirch, Song of Solomon (picture cycle 1923)

A coincidence? I don’t think so.

The title’s linkage to the Bible’s chapter of the same name may serve to underscore the fact that Morrison’s novel addresses age-old themes — underscoring this contention is the fact that there is a lot of allusion to Homer’s Odyssey in Song of Solomon as well. The biblical book “Song of Solomon” by the way, depicts a conversation between two lovers, Solomon and a beautiful, dark-skinned Shulamite lady.

Furthermore, not only is Morrison’s Song of Solomon full of characters with biblical names but also, “Song of Solomon,” a.k.a. “song of songs,” happens to be the most erotic section of the Bible; indeed it champion’s the majesty of lovemaking (elsewhere in the bible sex is treated as a sinful act unless it is for the express purpose of reproduction). In Morrison’s Song of Solomon sexual gratification, lack of sexual satisfaction, and sexual rejection are key subtexts: one female protagonist for example is bereft of conventional sexual pleasure leading to a hinted at, somewhat unconventional, form of self-pleasure (think titillation from breastfeeding — according to the Ministry of Happiness: “A lactating mother may become sexually aroused during breastfeeding […] and this is not abnormal”).

Some say Song of Solomon is designed to spell S.O.S. (Save Our Soul) this too could equally be true — they are not mutually exclusive. (In terms of word play, just see how Morrison so expertly disects “cannon fodder” in her 1988 essay, Unspeakable Things Unspoken.)

In this summary and analysis of Song of Solomon, I’ll point to the following:

01. — Key facts & Characters
02. — Synopsis
03. — Analysis
04. — Chapter by chapter

But first I shall dwell a bit on “Song of Solomon,” the otherwise austere, erotica-wise, Bible’s momentary lapse into Arabian Nights, Carnal Prayer Mat, Karma Sutra, Perfumed Garden -style poetry & prose. I say austere erotica-wise but let’s be frank! remember what Lot and his daughters got up to 😉 Never mind that though because we can more categorically say this: within this Hebrew and Greek tome, the pleasures of sex are rarely celebrated; all too often sex is equated with depravity, not ecstasy.

“Song of Solomon” is the anomaly. According to Ben Christian (2016), it contains, “unbridled horniness.” Examples include, “Going down to the nut orchard” (Song of Solomon, 6:11) and, spooning etc. (Song of Solomon, 2:6-7, 3:4-5 & 8:3-4). In one part of the Song, one can clearly visualise the progression as a lover progresses up the body of their beloved:

❝
[feet & legs]
How graceful are your feet in sandals, O queenly maiden!
Your rounded thighs are like jewels / the work of a master hand.
[between the legs & belly]
Your navel is a rounded bowl / that never lacks mixed wine.
Your belly is a heap of wheat / encircled with lilies.
[breasts]
Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle.
[neck & face]
Your neck is like an ivory tower.
Your eyes are pools in Heshbon, / by the gate of Bath-rabbim.
Your nose is like a tower of Lebanon, / overlooking Damascus.
[head & hair]
Your head crowns you like Carmel,
and your flowing locks are like purple; a king is held captive in the tresses.
❞
— Song of Solomon, 7:1-3

In it, lovers spend a night among flowers that are blooming and blossoms that are opening. Part of the song is about pomegranates, which are swollen and red when ripe, and about mandrakes, which were considered the strongest aphrodisiac in the ancient world (O’Neal, 2018). Think the implication of the image of doors opening to every delicacy:

❝
[4]
Your neck is like a tower of ivory,
your eyes like pools in Heshbon
by the gate of Bath-rabbim.
Your nose is like the tower of Lebanon
looking toward Damascus.
[5]
Your head crowns you like Mount Carmel,
the hair of your head like purple cloth—
a king could be held captive in your tresses.
[6]
How beautiful you are and how pleasant,
my love, with such delights!
[7]
Your stature is like a palm tree;
your breasts are clusters of fruit.
[8]
I said, “I will climb the palm tree
and take hold of its fruit.”
May your breasts be like clusters of grapes,
and the fragrance of your breath like apricots.
❞
— Song of Solomon, 7:4-8

She responds following the “W” in verse 9, completing his sentence and echoing her mutual desire:

❝
[9]
Your mouth is like fine wine—
W flowing smoothly for my love,
gliding past my lips and teeth!
[10]
I belong to my love,
and his desire is for me.
❞
— Song of Solomon, 7:9-10

In verse 11, according to Coogan (n.d.), the act of lovemaking has begun:

❝
[11]
Come, my love,
let’s go to the field;
let’s spend the night among the henna blossoms.
[12]
Let’s go early to the vineyards;
let’s see if the vine has budded,
if the blossom has opened,
if the pomegranates are in bloom.
There I will give you my love.
[13]
The mandrakes give off a fragrance,
and at our doors is every delicacy—
new as well as old.
I have treasured them up for you, my love.
❞
— Song of Solomon, 7:11-13

The imagery contained in those verses penned two and a half millennia ago are eloquent and enchanting; a world away from puritanical absenteeism.

“Song of Solomon” Digested

01. — Key facts & Characters

Genre
Fiction; a mix of social commentary, magical realism and bildungsroman (a novel dealing with one person’s formative years and/or spiritual education).

Narrator
Omniscient narration (a literary technique of writing a narrative in third person, in which the narrator knows the feelings and thoughts of all the story’s characters).

Setting
Most of the story unfolds between 1931 and 1963 in an unnamed city in the State of Michigan and in (Part II) the States of Pennsylvania and Virginia.

Main protagonists
“Milkman” (Macon Dead III) & “Pilate” (Milkman’s paternal aunt — his dad’s sister).

Opening Action
Milkman’s mum witnesses the death of a delusional man — Mr Smith — who thinks he can fly… he jumps from a hospital roof but instead of flying with his homemade blue silk wings, he falls to his death.

Major theme
Milkman wants to be independent and leave the family home [he wants to ‘fly’] but this is difficult because he’s used to his luxury lifestyle at home.

Rising Action
Wanting to escape his restrictive family home, Milkman plots to rob the gold he thinks his Aunt Pilate has… she doesn’t have gold.

The Climax
After traveling from Michigan to Pennsylvania, Milkman finds a cave in which there was meant to be gold… there isn’t.

Falling Action
After finding no gold, Milkman focuses on a journey of personal self-discovery. He travels to Shalimar, Virginia, and unearths his family history.

Final Action
Milkman himself (we are led to think) jumps from a cliff and tries himself to fly… does he live or die? That’s left up to us to decide…

Characters

Milkman’s family tree; his roots; his origin story.

“Milkman” *
The main protagonist (a.k.a. Macon Dead III), born into a sheltered, privileged life, “Milkman” lacks compassion, is full of self-pity, and alienates himself from the African-American community. However, his discovery of his family history gives his life some purpose.

“Pilate” *
Milkman’s paternal aunt and the novel’s secondary protagonist. Born without a bellybutton, “Pilate” is physically and psychologically unlike the novel’s other characters. She is fearless and always cares for and looks after others (she as responsible for Milkman’s safe birth — his dad wanted him aborted).

“Macon Jr.”
Milkman’s father (a.k.a. Macon Dead II) is obsessed with money and emotionally dead; he dislikes his sister Pilate and is never sexually intimate with his wife.

“Guitar Bains”
Milkman’s best mate (in Part I of the novel) grew up in poverty and hates white people — whom he sees as responsible for all evil in the world. In Part II “Guitar” becomes Milkman’s enemy and seeks to murder him.

“Hagar”
Pilate’s granddaughter and Milkman’s lover (for a while). “Hagar” devotes herself to Milkman, even though he loses interest and frequently rejects her. Like her biblical namesake — a servant who, after bearing Abraham’s son is thrown out of the house by his barren wife, Sarah — Hagar is used and then abandoned by Milkman (she ends up dying of a broken heart). Her plight demonstrates a central theme in Song of Solomon: the inevitable abandonment of women who love their man too much.

“Macon Dead I”
Milkman’s grandfather (a.k.a, Jake) was abandoned as a small boy when his father, Solomon, flew back to Africa and his mother, Ryna, as a result went insane. Macon Dead I’s story ends up motivating Milkman’s quest for self-discovery.

“Ruth Foster Dead”
Milkman’s mum. “Ruth” feels unloved by everyone except her deceased father, Dr. Foster (she’s accused of being sexually intimate with him) and was also rather fond of breastfeeding Milkman way past the age of three — hence his nickname.

“Dr. Foster”
The first black doctor in the novel’s unnamed city (the father of “Ruth”). He was a self-hating racist who called other African-Americans “cannibals” and checks to see how light-skinned his granddaughters are when they were born.

“Reba”
Pilate’s daughter (a.k.a. Rebecca) she has a strong sexual drive but is attracted to abusive men.

“First Corinthians Dead”
Milkman’s sister.

“Magdalene”
Milkman’s sister (a.k.a. Lena).

“Circe”
A maid who worked for the wealthy Butler family and acted as the Midwife to delivered Macon Jr. and Pilate. In her later encounter with Milkman, Circe plays the same role as her namesake in Homer’s Odyssey — the Ancient Greek account of a lost mariner’s ten-year voyage home. Just as Homer’s Circe helps Odysseus find his way back to Ithaca, Morrison’s Circe provides crucial information that reconnects Milkman with his family history.

“Sing”
Milkman’s ‘grandmother’ who helps him connect the missing links of their family history through Solomon’s song.

“Solomon”
Milkman’s great-grandfather, who supposedly flew back to Africa but dropped his son Jake (“Macon Dead I”) shortly after taking off. Solomon’s flight is a physical demonstration of the liberation that is felt when a person escapes confining circumstances. However, Solomon’s crying wife, Ryna, and traumatised children (including Milkman’s grandfather) show that such escapism tends to have negative consequences also.

“Sweet”
A prostitute with whom Milkman linked up with off and on; demonstrate that the most gratifying relationships are those in which both partners treat each other as equals.

02. — Synopsis

Song of Solomon (SOS) is about searching for one’s origins.

Based on the African-American folktale about enslaved Africans who escape slavery by flying back to Africa (in an era before airplanes ✈️ were invented), SOS tells the story of “Milkman,” a young man alienated from himself and estranged from his family, his community, and his historical and cultural roots. He later goes on an odyssey to find these roots; ‘his’ roots.

The moral of this novel seems to be this:

One should know one’s roots, but should not get too fixated on the past at the expense of the here and now.

According to Toni Morrison, SOS is about the ways in which we discover who and what we are. She also suggests that fathers are integral to the survival of black families and the black community, “Fathers need to be physically and emotionally present in their children’s lives.” She points out however, that in contemporary American society, black fathers are often absent, leaving the demanding job of raising children to the mothers. Interestingly, to a certain degree, she depicts these men not as traitors or deserters but as strong, adventurous spirits responding to a powerful urge to move on and be free even if their children must ultimately pay the price for their fathers’ wandering ways [fly away, be free… mothers need not apply].

As Morrison said in a New York Times interview that touched upon SOS:

❝
The fathers may soar, they may leave, but the children know who they are; they remember, half in glory and half in accusation.
❞

Indeed, this is one of the points or main themes of SOS:

All the men have left someone, and it is the children who remember it, sing about it, mythologise it and, make it a part of their identity.

The novel’s narration comprises two distinct sections:

Part I — Chapters 01-09
Set in an unnamed town in the State of Michigan, It traces Milkman’s life from birth to the age of 32 and focuses on his aimless life as a young man. Mailman is caught between his father’s materialistic lifestyle and his Aunt Pilate’s traditional values. These chapters have a number of flashbacks for various of the book’s characters. We read that Milkman’s father, Macon, and Macon’s sister, Pilate, ran away from home after their father was murdered for protecting his land. However, after a disagreement between them, they each went their own way. Although both Macon and Pilate eventually end up in the same unnamed Michigan town, Macon refuses to speak to his sister, whom he feels is an embarrassment to his social position in the town. Part 1 ends with Milkman’s decision to leave Michigan in search of Pilate’s illusory gold — Milkman’s “inheritance” — which Macon is sure his sister hid in one of the many places she lived prior to coming to Michigan [including a cave].

Part II — Chapters 10-15
The second part of the book starts with Milkman’s arrival in Pennsylvania, where his paternal grandfather had built Lincoln’s Heaven, a prosperous farm for which he was killed. Unable to find Pilate’s gold there and prompted by the mysterious stories surrounding his ancestors, Milkman traces his ancestry to Virginia, where he meets his father’s “people” and discovers the true spiritual meaning of his inheritance. The novel’s ambiguous ending centers on Milkman’s “flight” across Solomon’s Leap — does he die like the delusional guy who thought he could fly in SOS’s opening lines… ?

In a nutshell:

1^st

Song of Solomon opens with the death of Robert Smith, who jumps of off the hospital roof (that Milkman was born in the following day) believing he could fly… Smith’s attempt at flight and his subsequent death function as the symbolic heralding of the birth of “Milkman.” A crowd of people had gathered to watch the attempted flight, including Milkman’s mother, his two sisters, his aunt Pilate, and his friend, later in life, Guitar.

2^nd

Milkman is now four years old. He is disinterested in family life and that of the community around him too. Also, at four years of age, Macon is given his nickname, “Milkman.” This is a result of his mother still breastfeeding him at this age — she seemingly gets a form of pleasure and/or escape – when she gets caught in the act, the nickname results.

3^rd

Discovering at age four that humans cannot fly, Milkman loses all interest in himself and others. He grows up nourished by the love of his mother and his aunt, Pilate. He is taken care of by his sisters, First Corinthians and Magdalene, and adored by his lover and cousin, Hagar. Milkman does not reciprocate their kindness and grows up bored and privileged. In his lack of compassion, Milkman resembles his father, Macon Dead II, a ruthless landlord who pursues only the accumulation of wealth.

4^th

Milkman’s grandfather, Macon Dead, received his odd name when a drunk Union soldier erroneously filled out his documents (his grandfather’s given name remains unknown to Milkman). Eventually, his grandfather was killed while defending his land. His two children — Milkman’s father and his Aunt Pilate — were irreversibly scarred by witnessing the murder of their father and became estranged from each other. Pilate has become a poor but strong and independent woman; Milkman’s father on contrast spends his time acquiring more and more money.

5^th

By the time Milkman reaches the age of 32, he feels stifled living with his parents and wants to escape to somewhere else. Macon Jr. informs Milkman that Pilate may have millions of dollars in gold wrapped in a green tarp suspended from the ceiling of her rundown shack. With the help of his best friend, Guitar Bains, whom he promises a share of the loot, Milkman robs Pilate. Inside the green tarp, Milkman and Guitar find only some rocks and a human skeleton. We later learn that the skeleton is that of Milkman’s grandfather, Macon Dead I. Guitar is especially disappointed not to find the gold because he needs the funds to carry out his mission for the Seven Days, a secret society that avenges injustices committed against African-Americans by murdering innocent whites.

6^th

Thinking that the gold might be in a cave near Macon’s old Pennsylvania farm, Milkman leaves his hometown in Michigan and heads south, promising Guitar a share of whatever gold he finds. Before he leaves, Milkman severs his romantic relationship with Hagar, who is driven mad by his rejection and tries to kill Milkman on multiple occasions. After arriving in Montour County, Pennsylvania, Milkman discovers that there is no gold to be found. He looks for his long-lost family history rather than for gold. Milkman meets Circe, an old midwife who helped deliver Macon Jr. and Pilate. Circe tells Milkman that Macon’s original name was Jake and that he was married to an Indian girl, Sing.

7^th

Encouraged by his findings, Milkman heads south to Shalimar, his grandfather’s ancestral home in Virginia. Milkman does not know that he is being followed by Guitar, who wants to murder Milkman because he believes that Milkman has cheated him out of his share of the gold. Milkman finds that Jake’s father, his great-grandfather, was the legendary flying African, Solomon, who escaped slavery by flying back to Africa. Although Solomon’s flight was miraculous, it left a scar on his family that has lasted for generations. After an unsuccessful attempt to take Jake, his youngest son, with him on the flight, Solomon abandoned his wife, Ryna, and their 21 children. Unable to cope without a husband, Ryna went insane, leaving Jake to be raised by Heddy, an Indian woman whose daughter, Sing, he married.

8^th

Milkman’s findings give him profound joy and a sense of purpose. Milkman becomes a compassionate, responsible adult. After surviving an assassination attempt at Guitar’s hands, Milkman returns home to Michigan to tell Macon Jr. and Pilate about his discoveries. At home, he finds that Hagar has died of a broken heart and that the emotional problems plaguing his family have not gone away. Nevertheless, Milkman accompanies Pilate back to Shalimar, where they bury Jake’s bones on Solomon’s Leap, the mountain from which Solomon’s flight to Africa began. Immediately after Jake’s burial, Pilate is struck dead by a bullet that Guitar had intended for Milkman.

9^th

At the end of the book, Milkman re-enacts his great grandfather Solomon’s escape by choosing to fly [jump off a cliff] — whether his flight is successful depends on whether one judge’s his great grandfather’s escape as successful or mere whimsical myth.

03. — Analysis

THEMES

Themes are the key ideas explored in a given literary work.

Theme #1: Flight as a Means of Escape

While flight can be an escape from difficult circumstances, it may also harm and traumatise those who are left behind.
–
➥ Solomon’s flight allowed him to leave slavery in the Virginia cotton fields to go back to Africa was to fly Eastward across the Atlantic Ocean, but it also meant abandoning his wife and children.
–
➥ Milkman’s flight frees him from his depressive home environment, but it is selfish because it causes Hagar to die of heartbreak.
–
➥ Smith’s flight (or suicidal jump); the metaphorical flight of Pilate, who transcends the arbitrary boundaries of society.
–
➥ Other allusions include references to birds (hens, chickens, ravens, peacocks) and to characters whose names allude to birds (Singing Bird, Susan Byrd, Crowell Byrd).
–
*** Song of Solomon’s Epigraph — Morrison’s non-fictional philosophical introduction — seeks to break the connection between flight and abandonment: Pilate is able to fly without ever lifting her feet off the ground, she has mastered flight, managing to be free of subjugation without leaving anyone behind [she does end up being shot dead but, never mind that].

Theme #2: Abandoned Women

The repeated abandonment of women by men in SOS highlights how the book’s female protagonists suffer a double burden: oppressed by racism and paying the price for men’s freedom [their flights of fancy]. e.g., after suffering slavery, Solomon flew home to Africa without warning anyone of his departure… his wife, Ryna, who was also a slave, was forced to remain and raise the children.
–
*** In Song of Solomon, Milkman is told that black ‘men’ are the unappreciated workhorses of humanity, but the novel’s events demonstrate that black women more correctly fit this description.

SYMBOLS

Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colours used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

Symbol #1: Artificial Roses

First Corinthians and Lena — Milkman’s two sisters — make artificial roses that represent the stifling life of the upper class and the oppression of women. The roses do not bring in much money; the true purpose of the activity is to provide a mindless distraction from their boredom.
–
➥ Typically in literature, living roses symbolise love, thus the artificial roses symbolise the absence of love in Macon Jr.’s household.

Symbol #2: Gold

Gold represents Macon Jr.’s obsessive pursuit of wealth — he spends a lifetime pursuing gold without any greater goal than getting more of it.
–
➥ Typically in literature gold is depicted as being irresistible to man. Gold makes them forget right from wrong: Milkman robs his aunt, Pilate, because of Gold; Guitar’s desire for gold motivates him to try and murder Milkman.

MOTIFS

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.

Motif #1: Biblical Allusions

Toni Morrison gives her characters biblical names. Various characters in SOS carry with them not only their own personal history as described in the novel, but also the history of a biblical namesake. A good example is the biblical Hagar. She was is Sarah’s handmaiden, who bears Sarah’s husband Abraham a son and is then banished from his sight. In a similar way, Hagar in SOS is used by Milkman.

Motif #2: Names

In SOS, names show the effects of both oppression and liberation. Before Milkman uncovers his grandfather’s true name, he is known as Macon “Dead,” the same name that white oppressors gave his grandfather. When Milkman finds out his grandfather’s true name he begins to feel proud of himself and his family.
–
➥ “Milkman” shows (1) the connection of the son to the mother — breastfeeding — and (2) that the family live off of the rent of others, they, as landlords, milk others…
–
➥ “Circe,” for instance, shares her name with an enchantress in Homer’s Odyssey who provides Odysseus with crucial help for his voyage homeward. Likewise, Morrison’s Circe directs Milkman toward his ancestral home and allows him to bridge a gap in his family history.
–
➥ Guitar’s last name, “Bains,” which is a homonym for “banes,” or sources of distress. His name suggests both the oppression he has suffered and his profession as an assassin.
–
➥ “Pilate” is a homonym for “pilot.” She guides Milkman along his journey to spiritual redemption.

Motif #3: Songs

In SOS, singing and songs are shown to be an important way to link the present with the past in terms of one’s roots and family history.
–
➥ For Milkman, Solomon’s song contains the secrets to his inheritance, the path back to his “people.”
–
➥ The songs Milkman hears about Solomon and Ryna inform him of the mysterious fate of his ancestors and keep him on the path to self-discovery.
–
*** Understanding the significance of Solomon’s song is a key to understanding the novel. This is because it is the language of the song that eventually reveals the secrets of Milkman’s past. Once Milkman understands this he is able to view his life not simply as a series of random, disconnected events but as part of a vital link between the past and future.

LANGUAGE

Throughout Song of Solomon, characters’ abilities to manipulate language reveal their abilities to cope with reality. Note, for example, Pilate’s language, which incorporates puns, proverbs, parables, and folk sayings, and which flows freely from standard English, to black vernacular, to the poetic/sermonic language of the Bible, as opposed to Macon’s language, which is marked by literal statements, nonstandard English, and racial epithets.

Homeric epithets are compound adjectives, such as “wine-dark sea,” “bright-eyed Athena,” and “rosy-fingered dawn.”

Morrison’s use of Homeric epithets, underscore the message that this story of one young man’s quest for identity is part of the universal quest for identity common to all humanity. Examples used in SOS include: “the cat-eyed boy” and “the baked-too-fast sunshine cake.”

SUBTEXT

Toni Morrison expects us readers to note not only what is being said but what is left unsaid in Song of Solomon. As she points out in here 1988 essay, Unspeakable Things Unspoken:

❝
Invisible things are not necessarily ‘not there,’ [and] a void may be empty, but it is not a vacuum… Certain absences are so stressed, so ornate, so planned, they call attention to themselves.
❞

➥ Think of Pilate’s missing belly button, which is conspicuous by its absence.

↘
See more analysis here
📙 Song of Solomon (in depth)

04. — Chapter by chapter

Chapter 1

The first chapter of Song of Solomon sets the stage for the rest of the novel and points out its central elements: the theme of flight; the complex interplay of class, race, and gender; the significance of (Biblical) names and main characters.

— Also, the narrative’s unique structure: a mixing of the present, the past, and the future and presents numerous stories from various characters’ perspectives is introduced to us readers. Because the narrator functions only as a detached observer who simply reports things as they happen, the characters tell their own stories, and the community comments on or responds to these characters’ actions. This call-and-response pattern between the characters’ individual voices and the community’s collective voice originates in the African oral tradition.

— Moreover, we readers learn that Morrison demands ‘participatory reading.’ Readers of SOS are expected to fill-in the spaces of the narrative, connecting various seemingly unrelated details as they are revealed. [as a consequence, readers get apparently disjointed fragments of stories that are understandable only in retrospect — by additional information in later chapters.

↘
See the remainder of the chapter by chapter analysis here
📙 Song of Solomon (in depth)

The One And The Only

U R the Only 1

❝
Set me like a seal on your heart,
like a seal on your arm.
For love is as strong as Death,
passion as harsh as Sheol:
its sparks are sparks of fire,
flames of the divine.
❞
— Song of Solomon, 8:6

END NOTES

Christian, B. (2016). Biblical Foreplay. Card Play.
Coogan, M. (n.d.). Sex in the Song of Songs. Bible Odyssey.
O’Neal, S. (2018). The Sexiest Chapter in the Bible. Learning Religions.
SparkNotes Editors. (2002). SparkNote on Song of Solomon. SparkNotes.
Washington, D. A. (n.d.). Song of Solomon. CliffsNotes.

Fiction as truth

or, vice versa?

This is a review of sorts of Robert Lane Fox’s 1991 The Unauthorized Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible.

REFERENCE
Fox, R. L. (1991). The Unauthorized Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible. London: Viking.

Robin Lane Fox, in The Unauthorized Version, sets out to discover how far biblical descriptions of people, places and events are confirmed or contradicted by historical fact: external written and archaeological evidence. As Penguin the publishers do say, “the bible is inspirational and endlessly fascinating but, is it true? From a rather different viewpoint Richard Dawkins — author of The God Delusion (2006) — says that “the God of the [bible’s] Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” Dawkins also says:

❝
We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in.
❞

With regard to The Unauthorized Version, Barton (1993) writes, anyone who hopes that this book will totally ridicule the bible and mock the religious establishment for continuing to propagate its stories as ‘gospel truths’ will be in for disappointment. I would say that Fox does his best to be objective and not offend those who still believe in religion. Another reviewer wrote that Fox’s work, “brings many examples that will help neophytes to probe the historical veracity of the bible” and that, “it is clear that there are lots of contradictions within and in between the bible’s stories.” I note that various reviews of this book consider that it is poorly organised — I myself would have liked a clearer chronology and for chapters of the book to follow the chapters of ‘The Book.’ Joel Swagman (2013) in his review of The Unauthorized Version provides the following sound advice to all wannabe book reviewers (a.k.a., me, Anna, Anna Bidoonism) and it is this:

❝
The cardinal rule of book reviewing is to review the book you’ve read, not the book you want/wish to have read.
❞

Now, I won’t even pretend that I’ve read all of this book and I am defiantly new to all of this (I’m a neophyte). I have tried a few times and I have dipped in and out. But what I see from this book is that a lot of the Bible is actually from stories that occurred well before Christianity itself was born. In fact, I am fascinated by the subject of this book because so much art and literature is based upon biblical stories. As an English Literature student, I see no alternative but to gain a good working knowledge of the bible, as it has become — for the Western canon — the most influential work of scripture… I mean, I mean, ‘literature.’ As they say, don’t shoot the messenger…

❝
Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.
❞
— John Locke

Knowledge is key (and need not be value-laden)…

❝
The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.
❞
— Anaïs Nin

In light of this, here are some interesting audios (along with partial transcripts, hats off to Yale) — I am talking well over 50 hour’s worth. I’ll say this, these audios are organised in a fully chronological way, not that Fox’s work was ever designed or meant to be. However, for me to one day be able to actually appreciate The Unauthorized Version and critique it in any meaningful way, I must first listen to, and read along with, these:

THE OLD TESTAMENT
39 parts: c. 1200–165 B.C.
• • • • • •
Divided into three groups: (A) ‘The Law’ or ‘Pentateuch’ which covers ‘Genesis’ to ‘Deuteronomy’ (B), ‘The Prophets’ and (C), ‘The Writings’ which includes ‘the Psalms’ (songs and prayers), ‘the Proverbs’ (sayings of wisdom) and ‘Job’ (the nature of suffering).

THE NEW TESTAMENT
27 parts: c. 50–100 A.D.
• • • • • •
Divided into two groups: (A) ‘The Letters’ or ‘The Epistles’ and (B), ‘The Gospels’ which includes the story of Jesus, ‘Revelation, ‘the Battle of Armageddon’, the tale of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the tale of the ‘Hideous Beast no. 666’ and, ‘the End of Days…’

THE OLD TESTAMENT
01. — The Parts of the Whole
02. — The Hebrew Bible in Its Ancient Near Eastern Setting
03. — The Hebrew Bible: Genesis 1–4
04. — Doublets and Contradictions: the Historical-Critical Method
05. — Critical Approaches
06. — Stories of the Patriarchs
07. — Israel in Egypt
08. — From Egypt to Sinai
09. — Cult and Sacrifice
10. — Biblical Law: JE (‘Exodus’), P (‘Leviticus’ & ‘Numbers’) & D (‘Deuteronomy’)
11. — On the Steps of Moab: Deuteronomy
12. — Deuteronomistic History: Life in the Land (‘Joshua’ & ‘Judges’)
13. — Deuteronomistic History: Prophets and Kings (1 & 2 ‘Samuel’)
14. — Deuteronomistic History: Response to Catastrophe (1 & 2 Kings)
15. — Hebrew Prophecy
16. — Literary Prophecy: ‘Amos’
17. — Literary Prophecy: ‘Hosea’ & ‘Isaiah’
18. — Literary Prophecy: ‘Micah,’ ‘Zephaniah,’ ‘Nahum’ & ‘Habbakuk’
19. — Literary Prophecy: Perspectives on the Exile
20. — Suffering and Evil
21. — Biblical Poetry: Psalms and Song of Songs
22. — The Restoration: 1 & 2 Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah
23. — Visions of the End: ‘Daniel’ and Apocalyptic Literature
24. — Alternative Visions: Esther, Ruth, and Jonah

THE NEW TESTAMENT
01. — Why Study the New Testament?
02. — From Stories to Canon
03. — The Greco-Roman World
04. — Judaism in the First Century
05. — The New Testament as History
06. — The Gospel of Mark
07. — The Gospel of Matthew
08. — The Gospel of Thomas
09. — The Gospel of Luke
10. — The Acts of the Apostles
11. — Johannine Christianity: the Gospel
12. — Johannine Christianity: the Letters
13. — The Historical Jesus
14. — Paul as Missionary
15. — Paul as Pastor
16. — Paul as Jewish Theologian
17. — Paul’s Disciples
18. — Arguing with Paul?
19. — The “Household” Paul: the Pastorals
20. — The “Anti-household” Paul: Thecla
21. — Interpreting Scripture: Hebrews
22. — Interpreting Scripture: Medieval Interpretations
23. — Apocalyptic and Resistance
24. — Apocalyptic and Accommodation
25. — Ecclesiastical Institutions: Unity, Martyrs, and Bishops
26. — The “Afterlife” and Postmodern Interpretation

More books by Robin Lane Fox:

Alexander the Great

The Classical World: An Epic History of Greece and Rome

Travelling Heroes: Greeks and their myths in the epic age of Homer

Other books & ephemera:

Martin, D. B. (2004). Inventing Superstition. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Martin, D. B. (2010). Sex and the Single Savior: Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Interpretation. Louisville: John Knox Press.

Hayes C. (2015). What’s Divine about Divine Law? Early Perspectives. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

divine intervention

REFERENCES
Barton, J. (1993). The Good Book and True. The New York Review of Books.
Dawkins, R. (2006). The God Delusion. London: Bantam Books.
Dawkins, R. (2011). The Magic of Reality: How We Know What’s Really True. London: Bantam Press.
Fox, R. L. (1973). Alexander the Great. London: Allen Lane.
Fox, R. L. (1991). The Unauthorized Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible. London: Viking.
Fox, R. L. (2005). The Classical World: An Epic History from Homer to Hadrian. London: Allen Lane.
Fox, R. L. (2008). Travelling Heroes: Greeks and Their Myths in the Epic Age of Homer. London: Allen Lane.
Hayes C. (2015). What’s Divine about Divine Law? Early Perspectives. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Martin, D. B. (2004). Inventing Superstition. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Martin, D. B. (2010). Sex and the Single Savior: Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Interpretation. Louisville: John Knox Press.
Swagman, J. (2013). The Unauthorized Version. Random Book Reviews.

POST SCRIPT

Bloodthirsty
Having or showing a desire to kill and maim. — “He really was nothing more than a bloodthirsty dictator.”

Capricious
To have sudden and unaccountable changes of mood or behaviour. — “A capricious and often brutal administration.”

Filicidal
The killing of one’s son or daughter.

Genocidal
Relating to or involving the deliberate killing of a large group of people of a particular nation or ethnic group. — “He really was nothing more than a genocidal dictator.”

Homophobic
Having or showing a dislike of or prejudice against homosexual people. — “Most religious texts contain homophobic tracts.”

Infanticide
A person who kills an infant, especially their own child.

Malevolent
To have or show a desire to do evil to others. — “There was a flash of dark malevolence in his eyes.”

Megalomaniac
A person who has an obsessive desire for power. [and/or] A person who suffers delusions of their own power or importance.

Misogynist
A person who dislikes, despises, or is strongly prejudiced against women. — “Donald Trump is a renowned and unrepentant misogynist.”

Neophyte
A person who is new to a subject or activity.

Pestilential
Relating to or tending to cause infectious diseases. — INFORMAL: annoying — “What a pestilential man!”

Sadomasochistic
Characterised by or deriving sexual pleasure from both sadism (the tendency to derive pleasure, especially sexual gratification, from inflicting pain, suffering, or humiliation on others) and masochism (the tendency to derive sexual gratification from one’s own pain or humiliation).