Thursday, December 03, 2020

The Inscription Over a Modern Gate to Hell

Philip Terry is a writer who works in the oulipian tradition.  He is the author of a novel, The Book of Bachelors (1995) (which was published in its entirety in an issue of The Review of Contemporary Fiction), which consists of nine chapters, each a lipogram on a different letter of the alphabet. He wrote a book of versions of Shakespeare's Sonnets, each modified by a different oulipian constraint (the results are predictably mixed).  And he did a... you can't really call it a translation... adaptation of Dante's Inferno.

For comparison, here are the opening five stanzas of Alan Mandlebaum's translation of the Inferno, Canto III:

THROUGH ME THE WAY INTO THE SUFFERING CITY,
THROUGH ME THE WAY TO THE ETERNAL PAIN,
THROUGH ME THE WAY THAT RUNS AMONG THE LOST.

JUSTICE URGED ON MY HIGH ARTIFICER;
MY MAKER WAS DIVINE AUTHORITY,
THE HIGHEST WISDOM, AND THE PRIMAL LOVE.

BEFORE ME NOTHING BUT ETERNAL THINGS
WERE MADE, AND I ENDURE ETERNALLY.
ABANDON EVERY HOPE, WHO ENTER HERE.

These words—their aspect was obscure—I read
inscribed above a gateway, and I said:
“Master, their meaning is difficult for me.”

And he to me, as one who comprehends:
“Here one must leave behind all hesitation;
here every cowardice must meet its death.

And now, here are the opening lines of Philip Terry's Canto III:

THROUGH ME THE WAY TO THE DOLEFUL CAMPUS,

THROUGH ME THE WAY TO ETERNAL DEBT,

THROUGH ME THE WAY TO THE FORSAKEN GENERATION.

 

FREEDOM OF THOUGHT INSPIRED MY FOUNDERS;

POLITICAL EXPEDIENCY RUINED ME,

COUPLED BY BETRAYAL OF PRINCIPLE AND PLEDGE.

 

BEFORE ME NOTHING BUT ETERNAL THINGS WERE MADE,

NOW I SHALL MARK YOU ETERNALLY.

ABANDON ALL HOPE, YOU WHO ENTER HERE.

 

I saw these words spelled out on a digital display

Above the entrance to the Knowledge Gateway.

‘Master,’ I said, ‘this is scary.’

 

He answered me, speaking with a drawl:

‘Now you need to grit your teeth,

This isn’t the moment to shit yourself.

It's quite funny— the first nine lines are, I think, a very good joke.

But I am rather uncertain, having read (thanks to Amazon's "see inside" feature) the opening two and a half cantos, whether it's a joke that can be sustained over an entire book.  So I am hesitant to plunk down $16 to get a copy.

Anyone know if the whole thing works at all?

Thursday, November 26, 2020

The Same Thanksgiving Post I Have Put Up Every Year Since 1621

Serve the LORD with gladness: come before his presence with singing.... Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.

-- Psalm 100: 2, 4

ANYA: I love a ritual sacrifice.
BUFFY: It's not really a one of those.
ANYA: To commemorate a past event, you kill and eat an animal. It's a ritual sacrifice. With pie.

-- Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "Pangs" by Jane Espenson

The title of this post is false, of course: after an unbroken streak from 1621-2013, I have not posted it in seven years. But a friend of mine said he looked forward to it, so, in honor of the day, I am resuming, at least for this year, the ritual. There are so many rituals we will lack this year; this is one I can reclaim.

If you are reading this, I am thankful that you have (to borrow from another tradition) been granted life, been sustained, and been enabled to reach this occasion.  Too few of us have.  I hope you are being safe today; for even fewer will have by next year, or even by New Year's.

The Buffy the Vampire Slayer quote above comes from the Thanksgiving episode Pangs; you can watch the clip of it here:


And another, bonus quote from the same episode is here:


It's a fun episode; but for those of you reading this who aren't familiar with the show (hi Jon), not really the best place to start. Hit me up if you want more advice along these lines.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

A Longer-Term Problem

 

I know we're all (rightly) paralyzed with fear and anxiety about the next few months, but allow me a moment for a longer-term worry.

I heard some of Biden's speech on climate change this morning. And I had two thoughts. First, it was (as far as a Democratic candidate goes) superb: a level of alarm and seriousness which is very welcome (and, yes, long over due). I doubt that Bernie could have done better.

But I fear he fell into a trap not specific to him, but broadly arising out of liberal politics. He said that if we reelect a "climate arsonist" (great term), more of America will burn, more will flood. But he seemed to imply that if we elect him instead, this won't happen. The horrible truth, of course, is that at this point 20-30 years of ever-increasing climate misery are already baked in. We're going to spend the next three decades paying for the last three decades of emissions (you know, the 50% of all emissions throughout history which were produced after we were thoroughly warned & had supposed begun to react).

This doesn't mean that reducing our emissions rapidly is not a priority; it has to be. But that's because if we don't act now things will be unimaginable—perhaps literally unendurable—in the second half of the century. We need to ensure a future for later generations. But the near-term present will be increasingly worse regardless. — Of course, there are things we can and should do to help the next few decades, adaptation and social strengthening of all sorts. But those are to live through the climate misery, not avert it.

Again: nothing Biden said was wrong, precisely. Certainly a vote for the climate arsonist is as immoral as it is possible to imagine—solely on these grounds, even aside from everything else. But he hasn't done anything to prepare people for the longer-term struggles ahead. I don't think that's a failure of Biden's; I think it's a problem with liberal democracy, which must sell people the idea that they will have a better life if they vote for us. Whereas now we have reduced ourselves to choosing between bad and worse for the rest of our natural lives.

Not now, not in the next two months, but soon, we're going to have to learn, as a political movement, as a society, to talk about these things. We don't want Joshua Hawley or Tucker Carson or Don Jr to get up and say in 2024, "you said you'd fix this!". We need to communicate to people the urgency, but also the length of the storm. This won't be fixed in four years, nor even in forty, although in forty we will make some serious strides (or else have dug our own graves). We need to learn to speak of care; of struggling together to survive the damage already done; of preparing for the long term. Because that's what we need to do, now.
 
Housekeeping: this is reposted from FB. Preparing it for blog publication, it occurs to me I've been nattering about this long enough that the tag is "global warming" and not the more up-to-date "climate change" — or the currently trending "climate emergency". What will we call it in a decade?  Just ordinary life, I suppose.  Or perhaps our long twilight struggle.

Sunday, March 08, 2020

A Pesitlence Isn't a Thing Made to Man's Measure

"Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky. There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.… When a war breaks out, people say: 'It's too stupid; it can't last long.' But though a war may well be 'too stupid', that doesn't prevent its lasting.…

"In this respect our townfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words they were humanists; they disbelieved in pestilences. A pestilence isn't a thing made to man's measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn't always pass away and, from one dream to another, ti is men who pass away...

"They went on doing business, arranged for journeys, and formed views. How should they have given a thought to anything like plague, which rules out any future, cancels journeys, silences the exchange of views. They fancied themselves free, and no one will ever be free, so long as there are pestilences."

— Albert Camus, The Plague