Robert Silverberg: Roma Eterna, an SF Novel

I'm not a great fan of alternate history works, but there are a few exceptions. One is Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt. Of course, I'm a great fan of Robinson, so that might partially account for it. Maybe. Another exception is this one: Robert Silverberg's Roma Eterna. The basic theme is that Rome didn't fall but remained the pre-eminent power into the 20th century, or at least until the late 1960's when the novel ends.

Spoiler Warning: I will reveal significant events and themes in the work.

The significant turning points in the novel, at least as I see them, are as follows.

The Hebrews never escaped from Egypt. The Pharaoh's army reached them before they got to the Reed Sea, killed most of them, and returned the rest to slavery in Egypt. Consequently they never reached the Promised Land and established their own homeland. Christ, therefore, never appeared and Christianity did not emerge as the dominant religion in Europe. Rome managed to defeat the Vandals, and the Roman Empire did not fall in the 455 AD as it did in our world. Finally, Islam, like Christianity, never materialized to become the dominant power that it did in our world.

The novel is a series of 9 short stories and one novella-length story, "Getting to Know the Dragon." I had read the novella in an collection of short works and that's what tipped me off about this work.

One interesting aspect of the work is the way Silverberg frequently manages to tie in his fictional world with our world. Part of the fun in reading the work was searching for these links. Some I will mention below, but there's others that I missed. If any of you have identified some that I missed, I would appreciate hearing about them.

Silverberg adopts the convention of using the Roman calendar and therefore using the Roman notation for the years. Since the Romans began counting the years approximately 754 years before the Christian era, all one needs to do is subtract 754 from the dates to convert to our calendar. I will use the Roman years--AUC-- but will place the Christian Era year in brackets--754 AUC [1 AD]

THE SECTIONS OF THE NOVEL:

PROLOGUE: 1203 AUC [449 AD]

Two historians get into a discussion of their topics--one is researching religious cults and in this way, Silverberg tells us of the failure of the Hebrews to escape. There is also some discussion of what might have happened if the Hebrews had escaped.

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WITH CAESAR IN THE UNDERWORLD: 1282 AUC [528 AD]

This takes place some 70+ years after Rome had fallen in our world. An ambassador from the Byzantine half of the Empire is in Rome to arrange a political marriage between the son of the Roman Empire and the daughter of the Byzantine Empire. Since the Emperor is dying and the eldest son is away hunting, it falls to Maximilianus, the second son, and his drinking and carousing friend, Faustus, to entertain and negotiate with the ambassador. During the visit, the Emperor dies and the eldest son dies in an hunting accident. Maximilianus now is the emperor, something he always claimed he had no interest in becoming.

For an interesting comparison, you might read Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Pt 2. In Shakespeare's play, Prince Hal, heir to the throne associates with bad companions, especially Falstaff. When Henry IV dies, Falstaff thinks he will become a powerful person for he is Prince Hal’s (now Henry V) drinking buddy. When he meets Henry and acts as he always did with Prince Hal, Henry says, ‘ I know thee not, old man.”

Similarly, when Faustus meets Maximilianus after he becomes Emperor, he begins to talk to him as they did in the past. But, Maximilianus responds: “You speak as though you know me. Do you? And do I know you?”

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A HERO OF THE EMPIRE: 1365 AUC [611 AD]

A member of the Roman Emperor's court has incurred the Emperor's wrath and is sent to Mecca, which is actually not even a part of the Roman Empire at that time. He is to keep watch on the economic maneuverings of the Byzantine Empire and to protect the economic interests of Roma. However, his overriding goal is to get back to Roma. Shortly after he arrives in 1365 AUC [611 AD], he meets an idealistic and charismatic religious teacher and eventually begins to see him as a future threat to the Empire.

In our world, Mohammad, who was born c.570 was in Mecca in 611 AD. In 1364 AUC [610 AD], he had a vision and believed that God has called him to be a prophet and to begin preaching the word of God. Around 615 AD, Muhammad flees to Medina, for he has made numerous converts and more powerful enemies. By 622 AD, he has converted most of Medina, and within a decade of so he has conquered much of Arabia. This never happens in Roma Eterna.

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THE SECOND WAVE: 1861 AUC [1107 AD]

This is the story of the second attempt to conquer the Mexican and Peruvian empires in the western hemisphere, and the second attempt ends even more disastrously for Roma, both economically and militarily. Roma is so weakened by the second failure that the Byzantine

Empire is now considerably stronger by comparison

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WAITING FOR THE END 1951 AUC [1197 AD]

This takes place some ninety years after the previous story and details the consequences of the failure to conquer Mexico and Peru. Roma has been so weakened by the failure, that the Byzantine Empire is now much stronger and is poised to conquer Roma. The story is told from the point of view of an official in the Roman government and his mistress. With Byzantine armies approaching from two directions and a Byzantine fleet in place to land another army where it chooses, the two attempt to decide just what they should do--remain in Rome and be subject to the Byzantine Empire or flee, and if they flee, where should they go?

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AN OUTPOST OF THE REALM 2206 AUC [1452 AD]

Some two hundred and fifty years later, the fortunes of the two empires have been reversed. Decadent rulers of the Byzantine Empire allowed Roma to break away and once again become independent. Then in 2196 AUC [1443 AD], Roma defeats the Byzantine army and conquers Constantinople, thus bringing about the fall of the Byzantine Empire and reuniting the two halves under Roma. In our world, the Byzantine Empire fell in 1453 when the Turks captured Constantinople.

This tale is told from the point of view of a wealthy and attractive widow in Venice and focuses on her changing views of the Roman conquerors, especially those who are rich and powerful.

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GETTING TO KNOW THE DRAGON: 2543 AUC [1789 AD]

Draco is an accomplished painter, sculptor, poet, architect, engineer, and historian. His patron is the son of the ailing Emperor. Draco is Latin for Dragon. In this story we learn about Draco, and his illustrious ancestor, Emperor Trajan VII. At one point he feels he was born too late; he is now the last Renaissance Man. Draco, I think, is loosely based on Leonardo da Vinci, who was also a painter, architect, sculptor, and an engineer, with journals and notebooks that were hard to read. Draco lived about three hundred years after da Vinci, who was considered to be an ideal Renaissance Man.

At one point Draco wonders what his legacy will be. Perhaps his notebooks, if anybody could read them, may save his name for posterity. The Wikipedia entry about da Vinci's journals point out that they are difficult to read and explains: “The journals are mostly written in mirror-image cursive. The reason may have been more a practical expediency than for reasons of secrecy as is often suggested. Since Leonardo wrote with his left hand, it is probable that it was easier for him to write from right to left.”

Draco's dream is to write a history about the Emperor Trajan VII and his epic journey around the world. Trajan was sufficiently confident about the stability of the Empire at this time that he saw no problem in leaving Rome for several years.

Trajan's journey around the globe began in 2278 AUC [1524 AD] and ended in 1529 AUC [1529 AD] In our world, Ferdinand Magellan began his trip in 1519 AD and ended in 1522 AD. Trajan and Magellan both began their journeys in Seville, Spain. Trajan ended his in Seville 5 years later, while one of Magellan's three ships also returned to Seville. Magellan, of course, died along the way while Trajan survived.

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THE REIGN OF TERROR 2568 AUC [1814 AD]

Two consuls initiate a reign of terror in their attempt to prevent the overthrow of the emperor by democratic forces within the empire.

In our world, the French Reign of Terror lasted from 1789-1799 AD, bringing about the fall of the French monarchy. In 1799 Napoleon initiates a coup and declares himself First Consul.

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VIA ROMA: 2603 AUC [1849 AD]

A visitor from the province of Britain comes to the heart of the Empire. In his naivete, he completely misses the political intrigue about him and is shocked when the Emperor is overthrown by democratic forces who establish, or rather claim that they are re-establishing the Roman Republic as it was thousands of year ago.

In our world, the 1840s were years of unrest in Europe as numerous popular uprisings attempted to overthrow various monarchies and principalities and establish republics--all were unsuccessful at that time. Italy itself was in turmoil as several competing factions attempted to gain political control.

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TALES FROM VENIA WOODS: 2650 AUC [1896 AD]

Several children discover an old man living in an abandoned hunting lodge that once belonged to the emperor. Those who were responsible for the overthrow of the emperor thought they had killed every member of the family, but rumors persisted that one child had survived. If he had survived, he would be in great danger for the new government could not allow any member of the emperor's family to live and possibly become a focal point for a counter-revolution. This is sort of a male version of the Anastasia legend that came out of the Russian revolution.

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TO THE PROMISED LAND 2723 AUC [1969 AD]

In our world, Apollo 11, the first manned mission to the moon, took place in 1969. In a way, Silverberg ends Roma Eterna the way he began it, with the Hebrews.



Overall Rating: Very good. The central character is the Roman Empire, and it is what unites the various short works. The focus is upon the stories of the characters which is set against the background of the Empire.

Carl Sandburg: "Wilderness"

This is a very strange poem I just discovered. Perhaps it's strangeness is mostly because I didn't expect something like this from Carl Sandburg--which shows that forming expectations before I've read a considerable amount of a writer's work is risky. I think of Sandburg as being a poet of urban life, of industry, and of agriculture. This poem, I think, is quite different.



WILDERNESS

"There is a wolf in me . . . fangs pointed for tearing gashes
. . . a red tongue for raw meat . . . and the hot lapping
of blood--I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it
to me and the wilderness will not let it go.

There is a fox in me . . . a silver-gray fox . . . I sniff and
guess . . . I pick things out of the wind and air . . . I
nose in the dark night and take sleepers and eat them and
hide the feathers . . . I circle and loop and double-cross.

There is a hog in me . . . a snout and a belly . . . a machinery
for eating and grunting . . . a machinery for sleeping
satisfied in the sun--I got this too from the wilderness and
the wilderness will not let it go.

There is a fish in me . . . I know I came from salt-blue water-
gates . . . I scurried with shoals of herring . . . I blew
waterspouts with porpoises . . . before land was . . . before
the water went down . . . before Noah . . . before
the first chapter of Genesis.

There is a baboon in me . . . clambering-clawed . . . dog-
faced . . . yawping a galoot's hunger . . . hairy under
the armpits . . . here are the hawk-eyed hankering men
. . . here are the blond and blue-eyed women . . . here
they hide curled asleep waiting . . . ready to snarl and
kill . . . ready to sing and give milk . . . waiting--I keep
the baboon because the wilderness says so.

There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird . . . and the eagle
flies among the Rocky Mountains of my dreams and fights
among the Sierra crags of what I want . . . and the
mockingbird warbles in the early forenoon before the dew
is gone, warbles in the underbrush of my Chattanoogas of
hope, gushes over the blue Ozark foothills of my wishes
--And I got the eagle and the mockingbird from the
wilderness.

O, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my
bony head, under my red-valve heart--and I got something
else: it is a man-child heart, a woman-child heart:
it is a father and mother and lover: it came from God-
Knows-Where: it is going to God-Knows-Where--For I
am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and
kill and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from the
wilderness."


I think I have to rethink my Sandburg.

You?

In Memoriam: Edward FitzGerald--March 31, 1809 to June 14, 1883

Following are the last two quatrains of the Second Edition of Edward FitzGerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

Quatrain CIX

But see! The rising Moon of Heav'n again--
Looks for us, Sweet-heart, through the quivering Plane:
How oft hereafter rising will she look
Among those leaves--for one of us in vain!




Quatrain CX

And when Yourself with silver Foot shall pass
Among the Guests Star-scatter'd on the Grass,
And to your joyous errand reach the spot
Where I made One--turn down an empty Glass!

TAMAN

Lin Yutang: Human Dignity and the Scamp

The following quotation gives us some idea of Lin Yutang's thinking about two seemingly different concepts: dignity and the scamp. They seem opposed, but as usual with Yutang, he doesn't see things the way most do.


To me, spiritually a child of the East and the West, man's dignity consists in the following facts which distinguish man from the animals. First, that he has a playful curiosity and a natural genius for exploring knowledge; second that he has dreams and a lofty idealism (often vague, or confused, or cocky, it is true, but nevertheless worthwhile); third, and still more important, that he is able to correct his dreams by a sense of humor, and thus restrain his idealism by a more robust and healthy realism; and finally, that he does not react to surroundings mechanically and uniformly as animals do, but possesses the ability and the freedom to determine his own reactions and to change surroundings at his will. This last is the same as saying that human personality is the last thing to be reduced to mechanical laws; somehow the human mind is forever elusive, uncatchable and unpredictable, and manages to wriggle out of mechanistic laws or a materialistic dialectic that crazy psychologists and unmarried economists are trying to impose upon him. Man, therefore, is a curious, dreamy, humorous and wayward creature.

In short, my faith in human dignity consists in the belief that man is the greatest scamp on earth. Human dignity must be associated with the idea of a scamp and not with that of an obedient, disciplined and regimented soldier. The scamp is probably the most glorious type of human being, as the soldier is the lowest type, according to this conception. In in my last book, My Country and My People, the net impression of readers was that I was trying to glorify the "old rogue." It is my hope that the net impression of the present one will be that I am doing my best to glorify the scamp or vagabond. I hope I shall succeed. For things are not so simple as they sometimes seem. In this present age of threats to democracy and individual liberty, probably only the scamp and the spirit of the scamp alone will save us from becoming lost as serially numbered units in the masses of disciplined, obedient, regimented and uniformed coolies. The scamp will be the last and most formidable enemy of dictatorships. He will be the champion of human dignity and individual freedom, and will be the last to be conquered. All modern civilization depends entirely upon him.

. . . . .

Speaking as a Chinese, I do not think that any civilization can be called complete until it has progressed from sophistication to unsophistication, and made a conscious return to simplicity of thinking and living, and I call no man wise until he has made the progress from the wisdom of knowledge to the wisdom of foolishness, and become a laughing philosopher, feeling first life's tragedy and then life's comedy. For we must weep before we can laugh. Out of sadness comes the awakening and out of the awakening comes the laughter of the philosopher, with kindliness and tolerance to boot.



One of the most common characters found in myths and legends and folklore is the Trickster. The following quotations come from the Wikipedia entry on the Trickster, and the Trickster sounds a lot like Yutang's scamp.


"In mythology, and in the study of folklore and religion, a trickster is a god, goddess, spirit, man, woman, or anthropomorphic animal who plays tricks or otherwise disobeys normal rules and conventional behavior."

"In later folklore, the trickster/clown is incarnated as a clever, mischievous man or creature, who tries to survive the dangers and challenges of the world using trickery and deceit as a defense."

"Modern African American literary criticism has turned the trickster figure into one example of how it is possible to overcome a system of oppression from within."


The quotations come from Lin Yutang's The Importance of Living which was first published in 1937. It's almost 75 years later, and his warning still seems relevant today, even though the threats are internal rather than external. For a short story which best exemplifies Yutang's theme, I would recommend Harlan Ellison's "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman."

Who or what is our best defense against the threats to freedom and civil liberty--the Soldier or the Scamp/Trickster?

Gwendolyn Brooks: June 7, 1917--Dec. 3, 2000

The following poem by Gwendolyn Brooks is stark and bare. Some poems may match, but I doubt any can surpass it. The speakers look at their future with a cold, unblinking eye. Even the name of the pool hall is prophetic.



WE REAL COOL

The Pool Players
Seven at the Golden Shovel.

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

At first I thought it was a sad poem. But, now . . . I think it goes beyond sadness.

Thomas Mann: June 6, 1875-- August 12, 1955

Thomas Mann is one of my favorite writers, and The Magic Mountain would be one of the ten desert island books that I would choose to take with me.


It begins quietly:

An unassuming young man was travelling, in midsummer, from his native city of Hamburg to Davos-Platz in the Canton of the Grisons, on a three weeks' visit.



The novel ends:

Farewell--and if thou livest or diest! Thy prospects are poor. The desperate dance, in which thy fortunes are caught up, will last yet many a sinful year; we should not care to set a high stake on thy life by the time it ends. We even confess that is is without great concern we leave the question open. Adventures of the flesh and in the spirit, while enhancing thy simplicity, granted thee to know in the spirit what in the flesh thou scarcely couldst have done. Moments there were, when out of death, and the rebellion of the flesh, there came to thee, as thou tookest stock of thyself, a dream of love. Out of this universal feast of death, out of this extremity of fever, kindling the rain-washed evening sky to a fiery glow, may it be that Love one day should mount.


Castorp plans to visit Joachim, his cousin, who is in a TB sanitarium in Switzerland, but the projected three week visit lasts seven years for Castorp is discovered to have a "moist spot" that could be dangerous. His journey, therefore, has one more stage: from visitor to patient. His visit ends only with the beginning of World War I, when Castorp feels he must answer his country's call. He leaves and enlists in the army.

But during those seven years, Hans Castorp, manages to experience the various ideas, philosophies, and attitudes, along with issues of life, death, and love, prevelant in Western Civilization and, still prevalent today. Much of this is possible through the presence of two of the most unique mentors found in literature: Prof Settembrini and Herr Naptha. Their long-ranging debates? monologues? arguments? cover every possible topic, from the existence of God to politics to art to history to . . . Sometimes I think that by the end of one of their impassioned debates, the two have switched positions and now argue vehemently against their former positions


Overall reaction: What happens between the two quoted paragraphs can be tedious and also frustrating at times, but still it is one of the most fascinating novels I've ever read and reread and reread . . . and I will take it up again. It's well worth the time spent.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: Quatrain XLI

This is the third quatrain in a set of six that are linked together by the mention of wine or the grape in various ways.


First Edition: Quatrain XLI

For "Is" and "Is-not" though with Rule and Line
And "Up-and-down" without, I could define,
I yet in all I only cared to know,
Was never deep in anything but--wine.



Second Edition: Quatrain LVIII

For "Is" and "Is-not" though with Rule and Line
And "Up-and-down" by Logic I define,
Of all that one should care to fathom, I
Was never deep in anything but--wine.


Fifth Edition: Quatrain LVI

For "Is" and "Is-not" though with Rule and Line
And "Up-and-down" by Logic I define,
Of all that one should care to fathom, I
Was never deep in anything but--wine.


FitzGerald has made some interesting changes, but none that really affects the basic theme of the quatrain--that he was very familiar with Logic and Reason, but all that he really cared for was wine.

In the first line, the only change in the second and fifth editions, I can detect is that "with" is no longer in italics, as it is in the first edition, and the same is true for "without" in the second line. The addition of "by Logic" in the second and fifth editions might be made to clarify the meaning. I suspect there were many who didn't understand what he was referring to by "Is" and "Is-not" and "Rule and Line," so he provided the phrase to make his point more accessible to readers.

In the third line, he plays a little game with a word that has disparate, but related meanings. "Fathom" has several definitions: one, when a noun, is that of a measurement of marine depths, while another, when a verb, is "to get to the bottom of" or to "penetrate to the meaning of." In the second and fifth editions, "cared to know" is replaced by "care to fathom. So, what he was most interested in (care to fathom) was getting to the bottom or or meaning of is wine, for he "Was never deep in anything but--wine," a reference to nautical depth.

Again the theme of the uselessness of logic or reason makes its appearance--another attack on the long-winded, sometimes acrimonious, and fruitless discussions about issues we can know nothing about: where we came from, why we are here, and where we are going.

Thomas Hardy: June 2, 1840 to Jan. 11, 1928

The following poem is titled "Nature's Questionings." But, of course, Nature doesn't question, it exists and leaves the questionings to us. Sometimes I wonder if that isn't the reason why we are here--to ask the questions that the universe can't or is too busy to ask. Hmmm--another question.


Nature's Questionings

When I look forth at dawning, pool,
Field, flock, and lonely tree,
All seem to gaze at me
Like chastened children sitting silent in a school:

Their faces dulled, constrained, and sore,
As though the master's ways
Through the long teaching days
Had cowed them till their early zest was overborne.

Upon them stirs in lippings mere
(As if once clear in call,
But now scarce breathed at all)--
"We wonder, ever wonder, why we find us here!

"Has some Vast Imbecility,
Mighty to build and blend,
But impotent to tend,
Framed us in jest, and left us now to hazardry?

"Or come we of an Automaton
Unconscious of our pains? . . .
Or are we live remains
Of Godhead dying downwards, brain and eye now gone?

"Or is it that some high Plan betides,
As yet not understood,
Of Evil stormed by Good,
We the Forlorn Hope over which Achievement strides?"

Thus things around . No answerer I. . .
Meanwhile the winds, and rains,
And Earth's old glooms and pains
Are still the same, and Life and Death are neighbours nigh.


These are what some have called the Perennial Questions--first asked thousands, if not tens of thousands of years ago and while some know they have the answers, others still ask.

Ono No Komachi, a poem

I sometimes read something--an aphorism, a part of a novel, someone's comment, or a poem-- that causes me to stop and reread it again, and sometimes several times. Frequently I don't know why that particular utterance intrigues me, and sometimes I'm not even sure what it means. But, it happens, and this poem is one that caused me to halt when I read it yesterday. And, I'm not even sure of what it means. Perhaps it's an illustration of the last lines of Archibald MacLeish's "Ars Poetica"

A poem should not mean
But be.



Perhaps. But here is the poem, a short one:

A thing which fades
With no outward sign--
Is the flower
Of the heart of man
In this world!

-- Ono No Komachi --
from The World's Best Poems
Mark van Doran and Garibaldi M. Lapolla, eds.


Is the poet sad here, or resigned?

Walt Whitman: May 31, 1819 to March 26, 1892

From Song of Myself, Stanza 50


There is that in me--I do not know what it is--but I know it is in me.

Wrench'd and sweaty--calm and cool then my body becomes,
I sleep--I sleep long.

I do not know it--it is without name--it is a word unsaid,
It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol.

Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on,
To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me.

Perhaps I might tell more. Outlines! I plead for my brothers and sisters.

Do you see O my brothers and sisters?
It is not chaos or death--it is form, union, plan-- it is eternal life--it is Happiness.



From China, over 2000 years ago:

The Tao that can be told of
Is not the Absolute Tao;
The Names that cannot be given
Are not Absolute Names.

The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth;
The Named is the Mother of all Things.

From The Wisdom of Laotse (The Tao Te Ching)
Trans. Lin Yutang


Some ideas don't arise and die out; they linger, perhaps ignored for centuries, but they arise here and there sporadically. I think Laotse and Walt Whitman might well understand each other, far more than I can understand each. At best I get a glimpse of what they are hinting at, but only a glimpse, and also the feeling that I'm missing something here.

Whitman, of course, contradicts himself, as most do when they attempt to speak of that which cannot be spoken of. He says that there is something within him that is unknowable, save for its existence, and without name. And, then the last line:

It is not chaos or death--it is form, union, plan-- it is eternal life--it is Happiness.

Perhaps through writing about it, he is able to give it a name?

Hermann Hesse: Steppenwolf

Warning: I will discuss significant plot elements and the endings of various works.

It’s been several decades since I last read Hesse’s Steppenwolf, so I was curious as to how well it would hold up and how I would understand it now, a half century later. At the end, I thought it still a very interesting and intriguing work, but my understanding of it now is quite different from what I understood the first time I read it. When I first read it, I saw it as a novel in isolation, something unique. Now, I see that Steppenwolf has its relatives; it does not exist in isolation.

Steppenwolf has essentially a two-part structure. Part One consists of defining Harry Haller’s personality, his conflicts, and his relationship to post-war society in Germany. Haller reveals himself and learns even more from a remarkable “free pamphlet” he is given —Treatise on the Steppenwolf: Not for Everybody.

In the second part, Harry meets the classic prostitute with a heart of gold who makes it her goal to teach Harry how to live and enjoy himself. Her lessons involve sex, drugs, and the fox trot. At the end, in the Magic Theater, Harry embarks on a trip of self-discovery with a rather unique goal—he is to learn to laugh.

Harry Haller can be seen in several different ways. One is that of the respected academic who is torn by conflicting feelings about himself and his relationship to society--a sense of isolation or alienation. Another would be that of a seeker who is searching for enlightenment. Yet, another would be that of a man undergoing a severe depression. One more might be what is called a “mid-life crisis” in pop psychology. The work would support any of these views, but the ending seems to support the second theory—that of the seeker searching for enlightenment, in a Buddhist sense, that is. This would give it ties to another work of his, Siddhartha, about which I posted a short commentary a short time ago.

Harry, though, sees himself as two conflicted beings: the respected academic and the Steppenwolf, the outsider, the free creature who is outside civilization. Frankly, however, Haller comes across, to me anyway, more like an wolf/dog who has run away, but who also clings to the outskirts of human society, fearing to enter, but unable to leave.

While reading it the second time, I was reminded throughout of several works which seemed, to me at least, to share common themes: Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground (1863), Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy ( 1872), and Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice (1911). Steppenwolf was the latest of the four, first published in 1927.

I think Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy serves as a unifier of all three works. Nietzsche’s definition of the Apollonian and Dionysian tendencies in human culture is exemplified by the three main characters: the German Gustave Aschenbach, the respected professor in Mann’s Death in Venice, the Russian underground man in Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground, and Harry Haller..

Nietzsche describes the Apollonian mind as possessing “that measured restraint, that freedom from the wilder emotions, that calm . . .” It is characterized by an intellectual, reasonable, temperate, and controlled life. The Dionysian is characterized as “chaos,” “a terror,” “blissful ecstasy,” or “intoxication,” “complete self-forgetfulness,” or ”union with nature.” It is the unpredictable, the irrational, the “uncivilized.” In other words, it is the two sides of human nature, antithetical but both necessary to art, to society and to culture—control and restraint civilization versus excess and extravagance and nature—the yin and yang of the Taoists.

The Notes from Underground has a structure that is similar to Steppenwolf. The first part consists of an extended passage in which the underground man (UM) reveals himself. He is a civil servant who has come into a small inheritance and has retired. He is an outsider with no friends or relatives. He lives in isolation. He sneers at society, but at the same time longs to join them, to be one of them, just as Harry mocks the bourgeoisie, but always lives among them and gains honor and respect as an academic.

In the second part, the UM forces himself upon some former student acquaintances who are giving a going-away party for one of the students. It is here we see, just as in Steppenwolf, the protagonist in action. The UM insists on attending the party, while mocking himself and eventually the others. He desires to be one with them, but actively works to make this impossible.

In the second part of Steppenwolf, Harry Haller meets Hermine who introduces him to a life of pleasure and sensuality drugs, music—especially dance music, alcohol, and sex—most of which Harry has sneered at in the past. Like the UM, Harry is immersed in society, but can’t really join them. Hermine is necessary to help him break out of his straitjacket, before he can move on.

The UM also meets a prostitute in the second part, but his encounter is quite the opposite of Harry’s. Where Harry is induced to join the pleasure seekers, the UM persuades Liza to escape from the life of a prostitute. However, when Liza appears at his apartment the next day, telling him that she wants to escape, he rejects her and sends her away.

Like Harry Haller, Thomas Mann’s Gustave Aschenbach is a respected academic. Unlike Haller, Aschenbach has dedicated his life to research and writing, with no contrary thoughts. Being a Steppenwolf is something Aschenbach has never considered throughout his life. However, at the beginning of Death in Venice, Aschenbach is tired, overworked, and sleeping badly. He decides to go for a walk, in hopes of reviving himself for another evening of productive work.

During the walk, he sees a traveler bearing a rucksack on his back, and this produces a most surprising emotional response: “the most surprising consciousness of a widening of inward barriers, a kind of vaulting unrest, a youthfully ardent thirst for distant scenes—a feeling so lively and so new, or at least so long ago outgrown and forgotten that he stood there rooted to the spot . . . a longing to travel. . . such suddenness and passion as to resemble a seizure . . .”

He ”imaged the marvels and terrors of the manifold earth. He saw. He beheld a landscape, a tropical marshland, beneath a reeking sky, steaming, monstrous, rank—a kind of primeval wilderness-world of islands, morasses, and alluvial channels. Hairy palm trunks rose near and far out of lush brakes of fern, out of bottoms of crass vegetation, fat, swollen, thick with incredible bloom. There were trees , misshapen as a dream . . .”

Nietzsche would recognize this as a Dionysian seizure, emerging from decades of a controlled life of mental activity. Unlike Haller though, Aschenbach has not led a tormented life of struggle between the two tendencies but had successfully suppressed that aspect of his personality. Now the desire to travel, actually more of an escape from his life of dedication to the intellect, has taken over and he flees to Venice. It is in Venice that he sees the Polish youth Tadzio and forgetting all restraint, becomes obsessed with him. Like Haller, he puts aside his Apollonian measured and controlled existence for the chaos and excesses of the Dionysian.

The three works conclude quite differently and, in fact, cover the possible spectrum of endings. The UM apparently is trapped in his self-induced isolation, with no exit seemingly possible. Aschenbach’s obsession ends in death. Haller really comes to no end in the work for he is now trapped in the Magic Theater.

“I would sample its tortures once more and shudder again at its senselessness. I would traverse not once more, but often the hell of my inner being.

One day I would be a better hand at this game. One day I would learn how to laugh.”

This has the flavor of the Buddhist belief that all are trapped within the endless cycle of birth and death until one becomes enlightened and now free to achieve the ultimate goal of existence—Nirvana. For Harry, the goal is to laugh the laugh of the immortals.

Is it coincidence that Harry Haller’s initials are HH, as are those of the author?

Overall Reaction: a remarkable book, which I now find richer and more thought-provoking than I found it the first time around, when it did not bring to mind the works of Nietzsche, Mann, and Dostoyevsky. No doubt there are other works that other readers can bring to mind while reading Steppenwolf.

Simon J. Ortiz: May 27, 1941--

Both poems come from

Simon Ortiz: Woven Stone
The University of Arizona Press, Tucson and London



The Dedication from the book:

For my children,
Raho Nez, Rainy Dawn, and Sara Marie,
and their children--
and their children's children henceforth:

The stories and poems come forth,
and I am only a voice telling them.
They are the true source themselves.
The language of them is the vision
by which we see out and in and all around.


Frequently duties require doing things one doesn't want to do, right now, but they must be done--even if one isn't sure of the goal or why it is obscure.



Evening Beach Walk

I don't really feel like walking
at first
but somehow feel I must
since I have come
this far
to this edge,
and so I walk.

The sun is going downwards
or rather one point changes to another,
and I know I am confronting
another horizon.

A dog comes sniffing at my knees
and I hold my hand to him,
and he sniffs, wags his tail
and trots away to join a young couple,
his friends, who smile as we meet.

I look many times as the sun sets
and I don't know why I can't see
clearly the horizon that I've imagined.
Maybe it's the clouds, the smog,
maybe it's the changing.

It's a duty with me,
I know, to find the horizon
and I keep on walking on the ocean's edge,
looking for things in the dim light.

-- Simon J. Ortiz --




This is the poem that comes directly after "Evening Beach Walk." I wonder if there's a connection here.

A Patience Poem for the Child
That is Me

Be patient child,
be patient, quiet.
The rivers run into the center
of the earth
and around
revolve all things
and flow
into the center.
Be patient, child,
quiet.

-- Simon J. Ortiz --

Hitomaro: a poem

I first read this several days ago, and now, every morning, I can't help but think of this poem.


When,
Halting in front of it, I look
At the reflection which is in the depths
Of my clear mirror,
It gives me the impression of meeting
An unknown old gentleman.

-- Hitomaro -- (c. 700 AD)
from The World's Best Poems
Mark van Doran and Garibaldi M. Lapolla, ed.

In Memoriam: Langston Hughes Feb. 1, 1902--May 22, 1967

Afro-American Fragment

So long,
So far away
Is Africa.
Not even memories alive
Save those that history books create,
Save those that songs
Beat back into the blood--
Beat out of blood with words sad-sung
In strange un-Negro tongue--
So long,
So far away
Is Africa.

Subdued and time-lost
Are the drums--and yet
Through some vast mist of race
There comes this song
I do not understand,
This song of atavistic land,
Of bitter yearnings lost
Without a place--
So long,
So far away
Is Africa's
Dark face.

-- Langston Hughes --
from Selected Poems of Langston Hughes

Something to think about

It always surprises me, I don't know why, when I find that some current attitudes have been around for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Consider these two poems, one by Po Chu-i (772-846), and one by Su Tung-p'o (1036-1101).



Remembering Golden Bells

Ruined and ill,--a man of two score;
Pretty and guileless, --a girl of three.
Not a boy,--but still better than nothing:
To soothe one's feeling,--from time to time a kiss!
There came a day,--they suddenly took her from me;
Her soul's shadow wandered I know not where.
And when I remembered how just at the time she died
She lisped strange sounds, beginning to learn to talk,
Then I know that the ties of flesh and blood
Only bind us to a load of grief and sorrow.
At last, by thinking of the time before she was born,
By thought and reason I drove the pain away.
Since my heart forgot her, many days have passed
And three times winter has changed to spring.
This morning, for a little, the old grief came back,
Because, in the road, I met her foster-nurse.

-- Po Chu-i (772-846) --
trans. by Arthur Waley

The third line reminded me of an article I had read just recently about a potentially serious problem in China. Because of the stringent birth laws (one child per family), many families will kill female babies because they prefer to have a male child. A male child will be able to provide some support when they are no longer able to work, whereas a female child will marry into the husband's family, who will support his parents. There is a concern that this will translate into a severe imbalance in the near future, with males being in greater numbers than females. This will make it more difficult for males to set up their own households.




This father has a interesting philosophy regarding his son and his hopes for the boy's future.


On The Birth of His Son

Families, when a child is born
Want it to be intelligent.
I, through intelligence,
Having wrecked my whole life,
Only hope the baby will prove
Ignorant and stupid.
Then he will crown a tranquil life
By becoming a Cabinet Minister.

-- Su Tung-p'o (1036-1101) --
trans. by Arthur Waley


This poem needs no comments from me.



Both poems come from
The World's Best Poems
Mark van Doren and Garibaldi M. Lapolla, ed.

Franz Kafka: "A Country Doctor"

Franz Kafka, "A Country Doctor," a short story.

It begins relatively sanely:

"I was in great perplexity; I had to start on an urgent journey; a seriously ill patient was waiting for me in a village ten miles off."

The situation? He had to get to a village ten miles away to treat a seriously ill patient, it was snowing heavily, his horse had died during the night from overwork, and he couldn't find anyone to loan him a horse. He does have a serious problem, but it doesn't sound strange or bizarre at all, at least not to me. But wait . . . This is Kafka!

I've read a number of Kafka's short stories (I find his novels almost unreadable) and some critical commentaries about them. Many refer to a "dreamlike" quality to them, and my immediate thought is that "nightmare" would be a more accurate term. However, I had to agree when I read "A Country Doctor." In fact, I will argue that this really is a dream, for there are too many elements in this story that are found typically in dreams to even consider it something happening in reality, even a bizarre reality that Kafka so frequently creates.


Spoiler Warning:


The first sign of a dream occurs immediately after the setting of the story. A stranger crawls out on his hands and knees of the abandoned pigsty. He is followed by "two horses, enormous creatures with powerful flanks, one after the other, their legs tucked close to their bodies, each well-shaped head lowered like a camel's, by sheer strength of buttocking squeezed out through the door hole which they filled entirely." The doctor does not seem surprised at this and immediately accepts the offer of the loan of the horses.

Does this seem possible, even in Kafka's admittedly bizarre world--that a horse would or even could crawl on all fours into a small pigsty? In a dream, this might happen, and the doctor's lack of surprise is typical of a dreamer's reaction to the outlandish events found in dreams.

What happens next is also commonly found in dreams: a quick change of scene. The doctor goes through his courtyard gate and is at the patient's farm, with no time passing, as if the two were adjacent and not ten miles apart. It seems that there is no travel time in dreams if one succeeds in going from one place to another.

He arrives at the farmhouse and discovers there's nothing wrong with the patient. He is about to leave when, again, the scene turns bizarre. The horses have somehow slipped loose from their halters and are standing at a open window, with their heads protruding into the room. They whinny loudly, and he discovers that the patient has a large wound near his hip. The village elders suddenly appear, and they and the family take his clothes off when the village choir appears and begins to sing:

"Strip his clothes off, then he'll heal us,
If he doesn't, kill him dead!
Only a doctor, only a doctor".

They pick him up and place him in the bed with the patient, and all leave the room. After reassuring the patient that all is well, the doctor gets out of bed, gathers up his bag and clothes, and without bothering to dress, he goes outside in the nude, in the midst of a blizzard. He mounts one of the horses and as is typical of a dream, or nightmare, when one wants to travel quickly, the exact opposite occurs.

"Gee up!' I [the doctor] said, but there was no galloping; slowly, like old men, we crawled through the snowy wastes; a long time echoed behind us the new but faulty song of the children:

'O be joyful, all you patients,
The doctor's laid in bed beside you!'


Never shall I reach home at this rate."


While Kafka is known for his bizarre tales, many of the elements here indicate that this really is a dream (nightmare, if you prefer). Looking at this as a dream, one might come up with some interesting interpretations of several of the elements. For example, the stranger and the horses are found in a pigsty. His servant girl laughs and says, "You never know what you are going to find in your own house." This, of course, is not true for the pig sty is a separate place. He doesn't know what is in there, just as we do not know what is in our unconscious minds. The unconscious is the repository of desires and needs, many of which we don't wish to acknowledge--disgusting things--the type of things suggested by a pig sty. Dreams supposedly are the manner in which the unconscious makes known these hidden needs and desires, although in a disguised way.

Numerous dream interpretation theories also include the belief that some characters found in dreams are actually disguised substitutes of the dreamer, engaging in activities that the dreamer finds distasteful or evil. As the doctor leaves his house, the stranger breaks into the house, and the doctor knows that he is going to attack the servant girl, "the pretty girl who had lived in my house for years almost without my noticing her." He "almost" didn't notice that she was a "pretty girl." I wonder if the stranger is acting out what the doctor has really wanted to do for a long time.

Later, at the patient's house, he, at first, couldn't find anything wrong, but then discovers a large wound near the hip. One of the most common ways of suggesting impotence is a reference to a wound near the hip or thigh. Is the patient another substitute for the doctor? Could the dreamer be having doubts about his sexuality? In addition are the strange events in the farmhouse where the doctor is stripped of his clothes and placed nude in the bed next to the patient, on the side where the wound is. That could suggest that the two are the same person.


I think there are enough clues in the tale to suggest that this really is a dream, but I must admit, though, that unless written confirmation by Kafka is found, there is no way of proving that the above interpretation has any validity. On the other hand, letting one's imagination run loose once in awhile can be fun. Stretching one's muscles is healthy; perhaps stretching one's mind is also.

Emily Dickinson: Dec 10, 1830--May 15, 1886, In Memoriam

Emily Dickinson lived only fifty-six years, and much of that time as a recluse. However, the almost 1800 poems that she wrote will keep her memory alive as long as someone still reads poetry.

Dickinson never used titles for her poems, which creates a problem for her editors. One solution has been to use the first line as a title. There is now a second solution, now that all of her poems have been collected into one volume--The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson--which is edited by Thomas H. Johnson. He has tried to order the poems chronologically and has numbered them. So, I will use the numbering system devised by Johnson. Readers trying to locate the poems in other collections should search on the first line of the poem.


Dickinson wrote a large number of poems that dealt with death, so I again thought it appropriate to post one of them today. This is one of her most anthologized poems.



No. 465

I heard a Fly buzz--when I died--
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air--
Between the Heaves of the Storm--

The Eyes around--had wrong them dry--
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset--when the King
Be witnessed--in the Room--

I willed my Keepsakes--Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable--and then it was
There interposed a Fly--

With Blue--uncertain stumbling Buzz--
Between the light--and me--
And then the Windows failed--and then
I could not see to see--

-- Emily Dickinson --


The last line has always intrigued me--"I could not see to see--" Why not simply "I could not see"?

Michel de Montaigne on prognostication

The following quotations are from Montaigne's Essays, specifically Chapter 11, "Of Prognostications."

And although there still remain among us certain methods of divination, by stars, by spirits, by ghosts, by dreams, and otherwise--a notable example of the senseless curiosity of our nature, occupying itself with future matters, as if it had not enough to do with digesting those at hand.

Montaigne then quotes Horace: As for those who understand the language of birds and learn more from the liver of a beast than from their own thought, they should be heard, rather than heeded.

Montaigne's next observations could be written today:

I see some who study and annotate their almanacs, and hold them up to us as authority about the things that are taking place. . . I think no better of them because I see them sometimes make a lucky hit. . . It may be added that no one keeps a record of their miscalculations, as they are of common occurrence and endless; and everyone ranks their true prognostics as remarkable, incredible, and prodigious.

I should greatly like to have beheld with my own eyes those two marvels--the book of Joachim, the Calabrian abbot who predicted all the Popes to come, their names and persons; and that of the Emperor Leo, who predicted the emperors and patriarchs of Greece. This I have seen with my own eyes, that, in times of public confusion, men amazed by what happens to them fall back, as into other forms of superstition, into seeking in the heavens the causes and past threatenings of their ill-fortune; and they are so strangely lucky at it in my time that they have convinced me that, inasmuch as it is an occupation for keen and idle minds, those who are trained to this subtle art of knotting and unknotting these signs would be capable of finding in any writings whatever they sought therein. But what above all helps them in this game is the obscure, ambiguous, and fantastic language of the prophetical jargon, to which those who use it give no clear sense, so that posterity may ascribe to it any meaning it pleases.

Interesting observations by Montaigne:

I think no better of them because I see them sometimes make a lucky hit. . . It may be added that no one keeps a record of their miscalculations, as they are of common occurrence and endless; and everyone ranks their true prognostics as remarkable, incredible, and prodigious.


and they are so strangely lucky at it in my time that they have convinced me that, inasmuch as it is an occupation for keen and idle minds, those who are trained to this subtle art of knotting and unknotting these signs would be capable of finding in any writings whatever they sought therein.

But what above all helps them in this game is the obscure, ambiguous, and fantastic language of the prophetical jargon, to which those who use it give no clear sense, so that posterity may ascribe to it any meaning it pleases.

Montaigne wrote this five centuries ago, Horace over two thousand years ago. I find it incomprehensible that the same minds are still with us, and with those believers come those who prey on them and profit from them.

I wonder how many are now claiming to have predicted the demise of Osama bin Laden.

Something to think about

No. 3

The source of man's creativeness is in his deficiencies; he compensates himself for what he lacks. He became Homo faber--a maker of weapons and tools--to compensate for his lack of specialized organs. He became Homo ludens--a player, tinkerer, and artist--to compensate for his lack of inborn skills. He became a speaking animal to compensate for his lack of the telepathic faculty by which animals communicate with east other. He became a thinker to compensate for the ineffectualness of his instincts.

Eric Hoffer
Reflections on the Human Condition



I'm not sure I can go along with all of this. I have some doubts about the telepathic faculty which he says animals have.

The Rubaiyat: Quatrain XL

This is the second quatrain in a set of six that refer in some way to either the grape or the vine. The other quatrains are XXIX, XLI, XLII, and XLIII.

The frequent references to wine seems strange since Moslems do not drink alcohol, or at least that's what I've always heard. Some commentators explain this by stating that Khayyam is not referring to wine or alcohol. Instead, he really means God's grace or something similar. In some quatrains, that could be a possible interpretation, but in others, I don't see how it's possible. It's something for the reader to puzzle over.



First Edition: Quatrain XL

You know, my Friends, how long since in my House
For a new Marriage I did make Carouse:
Divorced old barren Reason from my Bed,
And took the daughter of the Vine to Spouse.



Second Edition: Quatrain LVII

You know, my Friends, how bravely in my House
For a new Marriage I did make Carouse;
Divorced old barren Reason from my Bed,
And took the daughter of the Vine to Spouse.


Fifth Edition: Quatrain LV

You know, my Friends, with what a brave Carouse
I made a Second Marriage in my house;
Divorced old barren Reason from my Bed,
And took the daughter of the Vine to Spouse.


The changes all take place in the first two lines as the third and fourth lines are identical in all three editions.

In the first line, "long since" becomes "brave." "Long since" suggests time or duration, which can be appropriate when talking about actions. However, "brave" means "courageous," and that doesn't seem to fit too well. I checked on the meaning for "Carouse," and it clearly matches the sense of the quatrain for it means "boisterous, drunken, merrymaking"--which goes well with the themes of a marriage celebration and the Vine. But, some secondary meanings of "brave" are "colorful," "gay," "splendid," or "making a fine display." I think these adjectives are a better fit with boisterous, drunken, and merrymaking than courageous. The fifth edition is closest to the second, for the reference to brave remains, even though the word order is changed.

The second change occurs between the second edition and the fifth editions:

Second Edition: For a new Marriage I did make Carouse;

Fifth Edition: I made a Second Marriage in my house;


I think the most significant change is the substitution of "Second" in the fifth edition for "new" in both the first and second editions. I think the tone is different. "New" suggests something different, something fresh or novel--a fresh beginning. On the other hand, "second" is just the next in a series--first, second, third . . . I think it lacks that excitement or hope of a change found in "new."

The overall sense here is that of abandoning "barren reason," which refers back to the reference to "fruitful grape" in the previous quatrain. It's another statement of the narrator's conviction that logic and reason get one nowhere, as he has frequently argued in earlier quatrains.