Hi [ ]--
I just received your reply. Your concern for my safety is most touching, and I don't quite know what to say, except that I'm profoundly moved and grateful. Not to demean you at all, but I wish I could arouse similar sentiments in my immediate family. Other than my parents and one aunt (who react as you do), no one else seems to be bothered to notice my existence any more. I speak here of siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, etc. They seem to think I'm the 'black sheep' of the family (actions do speak louder than words) and therefore deserving of ostracism, since they seem to think (as far as I can tell) that I have scandalized THEIR REPUTATIONS.
Well, forgive me if I am wrong, but what is worse in your view--to have made some bad mistakes in years past, or to fail to show love and compassion to one's suffering fellow-man in the present? In my own humble opinion, I believe that a person whose heart is filled with God-like love and compassion (whatever his other failings) cannot--by definition--be a bad person.
It grieves me that so many people in my immediate family have not yet learned this most important life-lesson, and I marvel that the same DNA that produced me has also produced them. Very hard not to judge, eh? We are only human, after all ...
I awoke this morning in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, to find about five inches of snow on the ground, with an accumulation of about eight to ten inches expected. But at least it's not ICE. Snow can be handled--if done with care and caution. ...
The snow is briskly falling right now, even as I write this, and occasionally the wind slackens, and the mystical flakes really come alive then, magically and dreamily floating on the still air. Ah, what a wonderful sight! It is so profoundly, hauntingly beautiful--it seems to renew the world overnight (as Thoreau said), to transform this tired, dreary, mundane world of sorrows and regrets into such an innocent, childlike wonderland that (in me at least) it helps renew a sense of hope that things can eventually get better. This beautiful, pure, white, driven snow--a gift from God, in the sense that it helps relieve our burden of sorrow, by transforming our perceived world into something almost indescribably lovely and beautiful, into something truly divine--a glimpse of Heaven itself, as it were, and thereby giving us greater hope for the future.
My poet's soul is profoundly moved by a spectacle such as this (even as the practical, truck-driver side of me worries ...).
This pure and beautiful snow, with its transforming power, puts me in mind of what Nietzsche wrote in 1889, even as the madness had started to destroy his mind:
"All the world is transfigured, and the Heavens are filled with Joy..."
And this leads me to ask: had the madness, before it completely destroyed his Reason, perhaps at first briefly afforded some rare glimpse into regions Celestial--into the hidden beauty of this world, ordinarily denied to us mere Mortals? The Japanese have a word for this 'hidden' or subtle beauty: shibui. From Nietzsche's comment, such a thing would seem at least possible--even if it was only in his tragically-deluded mind at that point.
I would like to think so, at any rate: that the capricious gods, before depriving him of his wonderfully brilliant mind forever, gave him one last, final (and very cruel) gift of insight--the epiphany of all epiphanies--into the incredible, marvelous beauty of spirit this world possesses, but which beauty we frequently fail, due to our mental conditioning to the contrary, to properly see and behold.
Oh, how truly the gods do mock us, and use us for their Sport!
T.J. White
15 January, 2007
Friday, January 26, 2007
Monday, January 01, 2007
Letter to a new acquaintance (excerpt)
My driving time is also my thinking time. It lets me get away from other people and pressures which would otherwise constantly occupy my thoughts, & largely prevent me from being able to think & reflect about things (which is how I prefer to spend much of my time anyway). I am a philosopher, you see. The word "philosopher" (in case you don't already know) comes from two Greek words, "philo-" meaning "love of", and "sophia", meaning "wisdom" or "knowledge". So, since I am a person in love with knowledge and learning things, I believe I truly am a "philosopher". Driving big rigs over the wide open stretches of America merely takes me away from normal, everyday life (like Thoreau in the woods), and allows me the time and opportunity to really think. I never was happy with the 'normal' nine-to-five routine and competitiveness of the life I once tried to pursue. And finding that I was not likely to be handed a job as a college professor merely based on my good looks (ha!), I went out on the open road as a perpetual traveller, since I was better-known there anyway.
Many of the people in my family are professional educators, and a number of us also write, so I guess I "fit right in". My first cousin, Dr. [ ] White, is Associate Professor of Mathematics at [ ] College in [ ]--quite a brilliant human being. His late Dad (my uncle) was even smarter, and could never be "stumped" by even the most difficult, "unsolveable" mathematical problems which his son (the Mathematician, who couldn't even solve them himself!) would present to him!
My field, however, is not mathematics, but rather life itself. I am mostly a serious, even somber person. I do often find situations funny and laughable, but there is nothing trivial or frivolous about me at all. I do not like to waste my time with personal interactions with most people I see from day to day. There are a few exceptions to this rule, but they are very few. I was almost certainly mildly autistic as a boy and young man, and much of this tendency still carries over to the present day. It seems (from what I've read on the subject) that the frequent drawback to having a brilliant mind is also being autistic (and thus antisocial). In other words, the same gene (or genetic combination) which produces the brilliant left-brained mind also seems to produce autism (much of the time, anyway).
I guess you could also say that--due to my autism--I'm still trying to find where and how I "fit" into this crazy, mixed-up world, and feel I need to distance myself from other people to give myself the time to think things through properly.
I hope I have not put you off by saying any of this. But I do want you to realize who and what you are dealing with here.
Oh, you are very right about Illinois being very gray and depressing in the Winter! I have seen so much of it over these last few weeks that I will be very happy indeed when Spring (and some greenness) finally arrives!
Yes, there is a stark, bare, almost primitive beauty to that barren landscape--if one has the eyes with which to see it. I saw similar stark, raw, wild and primitive beauty in several places when I was in South Africa twenty some years ago--many places there look much like our Great Plains.
(Oh, and since you might have wondered about the French I used--) I am also a self-taught student of several languages--including French--but mostly the older forms, like Medieval English, Medieval French, Italian, Latin, Greek, Gothic, Medieval Old High German, etc. I am not so much interested in what now IS, as much as I am interested in HOW IT GOT THAT WAY. I have always liked to delve into the causes of things--the "whys" and "wherefores" of existence.
Terrence.
Many of the people in my family are professional educators, and a number of us also write, so I guess I "fit right in". My first cousin, Dr. [ ] White, is Associate Professor of Mathematics at [ ] College in [ ]--quite a brilliant human being. His late Dad (my uncle) was even smarter, and could never be "stumped" by even the most difficult, "unsolveable" mathematical problems which his son (the Mathematician, who couldn't even solve them himself!) would present to him!
My field, however, is not mathematics, but rather life itself. I am mostly a serious, even somber person. I do often find situations funny and laughable, but there is nothing trivial or frivolous about me at all. I do not like to waste my time with personal interactions with most people I see from day to day. There are a few exceptions to this rule, but they are very few. I was almost certainly mildly autistic as a boy and young man, and much of this tendency still carries over to the present day. It seems (from what I've read on the subject) that the frequent drawback to having a brilliant mind is also being autistic (and thus antisocial). In other words, the same gene (or genetic combination) which produces the brilliant left-brained mind also seems to produce autism (much of the time, anyway).
I guess you could also say that--due to my autism--I'm still trying to find where and how I "fit" into this crazy, mixed-up world, and feel I need to distance myself from other people to give myself the time to think things through properly.
I hope I have not put you off by saying any of this. But I do want you to realize who and what you are dealing with here.
Oh, you are very right about Illinois being very gray and depressing in the Winter! I have seen so much of it over these last few weeks that I will be very happy indeed when Spring (and some greenness) finally arrives!
Yes, there is a stark, bare, almost primitive beauty to that barren landscape--if one has the eyes with which to see it. I saw similar stark, raw, wild and primitive beauty in several places when I was in South Africa twenty some years ago--many places there look much like our Great Plains.
(Oh, and since you might have wondered about the French I used--) I am also a self-taught student of several languages--including French--but mostly the older forms, like Medieval English, Medieval French, Italian, Latin, Greek, Gothic, Medieval Old High German, etc. I am not so much interested in what now IS, as much as I am interested in HOW IT GOT THAT WAY. I have always liked to delve into the causes of things--the "whys" and "wherefores" of existence.
Terrence.
Monday, January 30, 2006
A Fugitive and a Vagabond in the Earth am I ...
Ecce eicis me hodie a facie terrae, et a facie tua abscondar,
et ero vagus et profugus in terra; omnis igitur qui invenerit me,
occidet me. ...
Heu, ego dolentus, ego miser: poenarum plagarum inundant:
amari, amari torrentes. ...
Vae, misero mihi!
Quid sum miser tunc dicturus?
Dicam Deo: Noli me condemnare: indica mihi cur me ita judices;
numquid bonum tibi videtur, si calumnieris et opprimas me,
opus manuum tuarum, et consilium impiorum adiures;
numquid oculi carnei tibi sunt, aut sicut videt homo,
et tu videbis? ...
Et scias, quia nihil impium fecerim cum sit nemo, qui de manu tua,
possit eruere. ...
et ero vagus et profugus in terra; omnis igitur qui invenerit me,
occidet me. ...
Heu, ego dolentus, ego miser: poenarum plagarum inundant:
amari, amari torrentes. ...
Vae, misero mihi!
Quid sum miser tunc dicturus?
Dicam Deo: Noli me condemnare: indica mihi cur me ita judices;
numquid bonum tibi videtur, si calumnieris et opprimas me,
opus manuum tuarum, et consilium impiorum adiures;
numquid oculi carnei tibi sunt, aut sicut videt homo,
et tu videbis? ...
Et scias, quia nihil impium fecerim cum sit nemo, qui de manu tua,
possit eruere. ...
Saturday, December 24, 2005
Non Est Species
Non est species ei neque decor, et vidimus eum et non erat aspectus et desideravimus eum. Despectum et novissimum virorum, virum dolorum et scientem infirmitatem. ...
Isaiah 53: 2-3
Isaiah 53: 2-3
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Commentary on an Arabian Nights' Tale
A Commentary on a tale from The Arabian Nights, "The Tale of Hasan and the Persian Magician". In this commentary, I have used the Powys Mathers translation, as found in the book, Gay Tales and Verses from The Arabian Nights, compiled, edited, and with an introduction by Henry M. Christman (Banned Books, Austin, Texas: 1989)
_____________________________
Page thirty-six describes the main character, Hasan, as "a youth ... who was the most handsome, gracious, and dainty of his time." His "beauty drew the eyes of all passengers to-wards his shop [he was a very young and boyish shop-owner], and none crossed the market without stopping at the door to contemplate and marvel at this work of the Creator" [i.e., at the young man's remarkable beauty.] In other words, his outward physical appearance conformed especially closely to the common archetypal image of the beautiful young man--so much so that the majority of people, both male and female, were drawn to his beauty.
Also from page thirty-six we learn that "His father and mother loved him greatly, for he was the child of their old age ..."
This generation gap, together with the fact that his father had died while the boy was yet young, would seem to suggest--despite the weak inference--that the boy was deprived of some of his necessary emotional familial bonding as a child, and was therefore sending out sub-conscious signals to others advertising his need for such emotional bonding (i.e., "love" and "approval" from older authority-figures). The boy would thus be ripe, we would say, for the attentions of an older homosexual male. This is quite separate and apart from the notice the boy would attract simply because of his strong archetypal 'beauty'.
Also from page thirty-six:
"[H]e soon wasted his father's savings in feasting and dissipation with young men of his own age ..."
The implication here, of course, is that only relationships with those older (and wiser) than himself will help him--that congress with only more inexperienced youths such as himself will inevitably lead only to his ruin (cf. the Biblical story of the "Prodigal Son"). Perhaps (in passing) this lesson is appropriate for today's young men--enamoured of each other (in the form of gangs) as they are. ... But of course--at least as far as today's youth are concerned--the reverse can also be argued: that it is a failure of intergenerational bonding--due to fear of relating and expressing intergenerational emotions or sexuality--which precisely forces young men to bond with each other, instead of with their elders.
At page thirty-seven, the Persian Magus wishes to adopt the boy as his own son and teach him his art. For references to this ancient pedagogic tradition, see John Boswell's The Kindness of Strangers.
Based also on page thirty-seven:
Whether from hope of riches, or from the sub-conscious realisation that his deepest needs for emotional bonding are (potentially) about to be met, the young man is already defending his growing relationship with the Persian Magus to his mother. One wonders to what degree the (admittedly fictional) youth was being knowingly and intentionally devious and complicitory in the matter. ... Note also, from page thirty-eight, that the youth is either ignorant of his own beauty (and its potential for attracting others to him), or intentionally glosses over and hides its power in front of his mother: "Mother, [he says] we are poor and have nothing to tempt the cupidity of any ..." In other words, "How could this old man ever possibly be interested in little old ME? ..."
Also at page thirty-eight, the magus demands a non-married status from the youth in exchange for the magus' knowledge. How convenient! This is actually because--following ancient practise--the youth becomes in effect the sexual partner of the older teacher in exchange for the love, guidance, and knowledge imparted. The youth essentially becomes a magus-in-training, and--as such--becomes the life-partner of the older teacher in every way (including the sexual). That is to say, the two must bond in all areas. Historically, such master-student relationships have sometimes been tolerated, occasionally even encouraged; today, however, this is obviously not the case. (This is what is known to some of us as the 'pedagogic' tradition.)
From page thirty-nine:
Irrespective of the actual form of the instruction, what the magus has actually been doing, in effect, is teaching the boy an alternative way of perceiving his reality, and since most different ways of 'perceiving reality' usually violate local taboo or custom (as in this example), strong resistance is usually encountered. Most people (as in the boy's mother) are usually timid sheep who dare not think of going against societal custom or thought, and as a result, they are almost always intolerant of attempts by those within their influence (relatives, neighbours, friends, etc.) to stray beyond those invisible mind-boundaries. Some of us more adventurous souls today encounter this same type of resistance and/or punishment for daring to think (and especially act) counter to the prevailing "wisdom".
But it should be especially noted that the price or prerequisite for higher knowledge (mystical awareness, esoteric knowledge, etc.) has ever been--first and foremost--the ability to see beyond one's own immediate cultural frontiers, or ways of thinking. In order to advance in knowledge and experience, therefore, cultural "norms" must first be challenged and shown to be relative--i.e., not by any means fixed and immutable. This is exactly what the magus has been doing: teaching the youth to see beyond his society's arbitrary restrictions. This is the first step on the path of knowledge, or "enlightenment". And since those with vested interests in societies usually do not like their privileged status to be challenged or threatened [would you, in a similar position? Would I?], they usually fiercely persecute these true teachers or "light-bringers" (Lucifers) of humanity--label them as "devils" or "witches" (etc.) so as to create fear in the minds of their potential field of candidates, thus crippling the passing of real saving knowledge and mystical illumination (which has ever been the goal of true alchemy or kabbalah) from potential master/teachers to their potential students.
October or November, 1995.
T.J. White
_____________________________
Page thirty-six describes the main character, Hasan, as "a youth ... who was the most handsome, gracious, and dainty of his time." His "beauty drew the eyes of all passengers to-wards his shop [he was a very young and boyish shop-owner], and none crossed the market without stopping at the door to contemplate and marvel at this work of the Creator" [i.e., at the young man's remarkable beauty.] In other words, his outward physical appearance conformed especially closely to the common archetypal image of the beautiful young man--so much so that the majority of people, both male and female, were drawn to his beauty.
Also from page thirty-six we learn that "His father and mother loved him greatly, for he was the child of their old age ..."
This generation gap, together with the fact that his father had died while the boy was yet young, would seem to suggest--despite the weak inference--that the boy was deprived of some of his necessary emotional familial bonding as a child, and was therefore sending out sub-conscious signals to others advertising his need for such emotional bonding (i.e., "love" and "approval" from older authority-figures). The boy would thus be ripe, we would say, for the attentions of an older homosexual male. This is quite separate and apart from the notice the boy would attract simply because of his strong archetypal 'beauty'.
Also from page thirty-six:
"[H]e soon wasted his father's savings in feasting and dissipation with young men of his own age ..."
The implication here, of course, is that only relationships with those older (and wiser) than himself will help him--that congress with only more inexperienced youths such as himself will inevitably lead only to his ruin (cf. the Biblical story of the "Prodigal Son"). Perhaps (in passing) this lesson is appropriate for today's young men--enamoured of each other (in the form of gangs) as they are. ... But of course--at least as far as today's youth are concerned--the reverse can also be argued: that it is a failure of intergenerational bonding--due to fear of relating and expressing intergenerational emotions or sexuality--which precisely forces young men to bond with each other, instead of with their elders.
At page thirty-seven, the Persian Magus wishes to adopt the boy as his own son and teach him his art. For references to this ancient pedagogic tradition, see John Boswell's The Kindness of Strangers.
Based also on page thirty-seven:
Whether from hope of riches, or from the sub-conscious realisation that his deepest needs for emotional bonding are (potentially) about to be met, the young man is already defending his growing relationship with the Persian Magus to his mother. One wonders to what degree the (admittedly fictional) youth was being knowingly and intentionally devious and complicitory in the matter. ... Note also, from page thirty-eight, that the youth is either ignorant of his own beauty (and its potential for attracting others to him), or intentionally glosses over and hides its power in front of his mother: "Mother, [he says] we are poor and have nothing to tempt the cupidity of any ..." In other words, "How could this old man ever possibly be interested in little old ME? ..."
Also at page thirty-eight, the magus demands a non-married status from the youth in exchange for the magus' knowledge. How convenient! This is actually because--following ancient practise--the youth becomes in effect the sexual partner of the older teacher in exchange for the love, guidance, and knowledge imparted. The youth essentially becomes a magus-in-training, and--as such--becomes the life-partner of the older teacher in every way (including the sexual). That is to say, the two must bond in all areas. Historically, such master-student relationships have sometimes been tolerated, occasionally even encouraged; today, however, this is obviously not the case. (This is what is known to some of us as the 'pedagogic' tradition.)
From page thirty-nine:
Irrespective of the actual form of the instruction, what the magus has actually been doing, in effect, is teaching the boy an alternative way of perceiving his reality, and since most different ways of 'perceiving reality' usually violate local taboo or custom (as in this example), strong resistance is usually encountered. Most people (as in the boy's mother) are usually timid sheep who dare not think of going against societal custom or thought, and as a result, they are almost always intolerant of attempts by those within their influence (relatives, neighbours, friends, etc.) to stray beyond those invisible mind-boundaries. Some of us more adventurous souls today encounter this same type of resistance and/or punishment for daring to think (and especially act) counter to the prevailing "wisdom".
But it should be especially noted that the price or prerequisite for higher knowledge (mystical awareness, esoteric knowledge, etc.) has ever been--first and foremost--the ability to see beyond one's own immediate cultural frontiers, or ways of thinking. In order to advance in knowledge and experience, therefore, cultural "norms" must first be challenged and shown to be relative--i.e., not by any means fixed and immutable. This is exactly what the magus has been doing: teaching the youth to see beyond his society's arbitrary restrictions. This is the first step on the path of knowledge, or "enlightenment". And since those with vested interests in societies usually do not like their privileged status to be challenged or threatened [would you, in a similar position? Would I?], they usually fiercely persecute these true teachers or "light-bringers" (Lucifers) of humanity--label them as "devils" or "witches" (etc.) so as to create fear in the minds of their potential field of candidates, thus crippling the passing of real saving knowledge and mystical illumination (which has ever been the goal of true alchemy or kabbalah) from potential master/teachers to their potential students.
October or November, 1995.
T.J. White
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Sunday, August 14, 2005
Reply To "Anonymous"
Have rec'd your comments. Very much appreciate your interest & time. Have not yet heard of 'Neoteny', but looked up the web site you indicated & will read & study with great interest. Will comment further when I process the info. Thanks! T.J. White.
Hi--Back again. I wonder if David Brin, ph.D. has heard of Elaine Morgan's "Aquatic Ape" theory..... For convenience, I am pasting
one of the web pages mentioning the same below. It is at the site http://www.primitivism.com/aquatic-ape.htm . This theory,
while mildly controversial (and when is any compelling theory not?) seems to me to offer the most sane reason and common sense.
All for now. More later.
T.J. White
______________________________________________
Elaine Morgan has done most of the writing in support of this interesting and mildly controversial hypothesis of Alistair Hardy. For those who feel a strong affinity for water--and considering the cost of lakefront and especially oceanfront property, that is a lot of us--I think the theory resonates in some respect, and it perhaps opens our perspective on what a life closer to nature might be like.--JF)
Aquatic Ape Theory
Elaine Morgan
"An aquatic Ape is a likely ancestor of humans in terms of primate behaviour, marine ecosystems and geophysical timing."
- Prof. Derek Ellis, Dept. of Biology, Uni. of Victoria, Canada
"All other theories about the origin of our species have reached an impasse."
- Dr. Michel Odent, author of 'Water and sexuality'
"An aquatic hypothesis offers far simpler explanations."
- Dr. Chris Knight, author of 'Blood Relations'
"It is difficult to see how all the points assembled to back the Aquatic Theory can be explained away."
- Dr. Desmond Morris, author of 'The Naked Ape'
"The aquatic hypothesis... cannot be eliminated yet."
- Prof. Glyn Isaac
"We believe that this proposal [AAT] should be taken seriously."
- Prof Michael Crawford, author of 'The Driving Force'
"[AAT] conforms to current theories of speciation better than the savannah origins model, and accounts for a number of diverse phenomena hitherto not seen as connected."
- Prof. Graham Richards, author of 'Human Evolution'
Why humans differ from apes
Scientists find it easy to explain why we resemble the African apes so closely by pointing out that gorillas, chimpanzees and humans share a common ancestor.
It is much harder to explain why we differ from the gorilla and the chimpanzee much more markedly than they differ from one another. Something must have happened to cause one section of the ancestral ape population to proceed along an entirely different evolutionary path.
The most widely held theory, still taught in schools and universities, is that we are descended from apes which moved out of the forests onto the grasslands of the open savannah. The distinctly human features are thus supposed to be adaptations to a savannah environment.
In that case, we would expect to find at least some of these adaptations to be paralleled in other savannah mammals. But there is not a single instance of this, not even among species like baboons and vervets, which are descended from forest- dwelling ancestors.
This awkward fact has not caused savannah theorists to abandon their hypothesis, but it leaves a lot of problems unanswered. For example, on the question of why humans lost their body hair, it has been argued at various times that no explanation is called for, or that we may never know the reason, or even that there may not be a reason. These attitudes seem to be not merely defeatist, but fundamentally unscientific.
The Aquatic Ape Theory (AAT) offers an alternative scenario. It suggests that when our ancestors moved onto the savannah they were already different from the apes; that nakedness, bipedalism, and other modifications had begun to evolve much earlier, when the ape and human lines first diverged.
AAT points out that most of the "enigmatic" features of human physiology, though rare or even unique among land mammals, are common in aquatic ones. If we postulate that our earliest ancestors had found themselves living for a prolonged period in a flooded, semi-aquatic habitat, most of the unsolved problems become much easier to unravel.
There is powerful geological evidence to support this hypothesis, and nothing in the fossil record that is inconsistent with it. Some of the issues it raises are briefly outlined in the following pages.
The naked ape
Humans are classed anatomically among the primates, the order of which includes apes, monkeys and lemurs. Among the hundreds of living primate species, only humans are naked.
Two kinds of habitat are known to give rise to naked mammals - a subterranean one or a wet one. There is a naked Somalian mole rat which never ventures above ground. All other non-human mammals which have lost all or most of their fur are either swimmers like whales and dolphins and walruses and manatees, or wallowers like hippopotamuses and pigs and tapirs. The rhinoceros and the elephant, though found on land since Africa became drier, bear traces of a more watery past and seize every opportunity of wallowing in mud or water.
It has been suggested that humans became hairless "to prevent overheating in the savannah". But no other mammal has ever resorted to this strategy. A covering of hair acts as a defense against the heat of the sun: that is why even the desert- dwelling camel retains its fur. Another version is "to facilitate sweat-cooling". But again many species resort to sweat-cooling quite effectively without needing to lose their hair.
There is no known reason why an ape should suffer more from overheating than the savannah baboon. And, especially for a savannah primate, there would be a high price to pay for hairlessness. Primate infants are carried around clinging to their mothers' fur; the females would be severely hampered in their foraging when that no longer became possible.
One general conclusion seems undeniable from an overall survey of mammalian species: that while a coat of fur provides the best insulation for land mammals the best insulation in water is not fur, but a layer of fat.
Fat
Humans are by far the fattest primates; we have ten times as many fat cells in our bodies as would be expected in an animal of our size.
There are two kinds of animals which tend to acquire large deposits of fat - hibernating ones and aquatic ones. In hibernating mammals the fat is seasonal; in most aquatic ones, as in humans it is present all the year round. Also, in land mammals fat tends to be stored internally, especially around the kidneys and intestines; in aquatic mammals and in humans a higher proportion is deposited under the skin.
It is unlikely that early man would have evolved this feature after moving to the plains and becoming a hunter, because it would have slowed him down. No land-based predator can afford to get fat. Our tendency to put on fat is likelier to be an inheritance from an earlier aquatic phase of our evolution. It is true that some apes, especially in captivity, may put on weight, but we still differ from them in two important ways. One is that they are never born fat. All infant primates except our own are slender; their lives may depend on their ability to cling to their mothers and support their whole weight with their fingers. Our own babies accumulate fat even before birth and continue to grow fatter for several months afterwards. Some of this fat is white fat, and that is extremely rare in new-born mammals. White fat is not much good for supplying instant heat and energy. It is good for insulation in water, and for giving buoyancy.
The other difference is that in our case the subcutaneous fat is bonded to the skin. When an anatomist skins a cat or rabbit or chimpanzee, any superficial fat deposits remain attached to the underlying tissues. In the case of humans, the fat comes away with the skin, just as it does in aquatic species like dolphins, seals, hippos and manatees.
Walking on two legs
Human beings are the only mammals in the world that habitually walk on two legs. (The only other creature with a perpendicular gait is an aquatic bird, the penguin.)
It is not surprising bipedalism is so rare. Compared with running or walking on four legs it has many disadvantages. It is slower; it is relatively unstable; it is a skill that takes many years to learn, and it exposes vulnerable organs to attack.
We have been doing it for five million years and in that time our bodies have been drastically remoulded to make it easier, but it is still the direct cause of many discomforts and ailments such as back pains, varicose veins, haemorrhoids, hernias and problems in childbirth. It would have been far more difficult and laborious for our ape-like ancestors; only some powerful pressure could have induced them to adopt a way of walking for which they were initially so ill suited.
One hypothesis used to be that they first developed big brains and began to make tools, and finally walked on their hind legs to free their hands for carrying weapons. But we now know that it was bipedalism that came first, before the big brain and tool-making.
However, if their habitat had become flooded, they would have been forced to walk on their hind legs whenever they came down to the ground in order to keep their heads above water. The only animal which has ever evolved a pelvis like ours, suitable for bipedalism, was the long-extinct _Oreopithecus_, known as the swamp ape.
Today, two primates when on the ground stand and walk erect somewhat more readily than most other species. One, the proboscis monkey, lives in the mangrove swamps of Borneo. The other is the bonobo or pygmy chimpanzee; its habitat includes a large tract of seasonally flooded forest, which would have covered an even more extensive area before the African climate became drier.
Both of these species enjoy the water. It is interesting that the bonobos often mate face-to-face as humans do; in our case it is explained as a consequence of bipedalism. This mode of mating is another characteristic very rare among land animals, which we share with a wide range of aquatic mammals such as dolphins, beavers and sea otters. What we have in common with them is a mode of locomotion in which the spine and the hind limbs are in a straight line, and that affects the position of the sex organs.
Breathing
The human respiratory system is unlike any other land mammal's in two respects.
The first is that we have conscious control of our breathing. In most mammals these actions are involuntary, like the heart beat or the processes of digestion.
Voluntary breath control appears to be an aquatic adaptation because, apart from ourselves, it is found only in aquatic mammals like seals and dolphins. When they decide how deep they are going to dive, they can estimate how much air they need to inhale. Without voluntary breath control it is very unlikely that we could have learned to speak.
The other human peculiarity is called "the descended larynx". A land mammal is normally obliged to breathe through its nose most of the time, because its windpipe passes up through the back of the throat and the top end of it (the larynx) is situated in the back of its nasal passages. A dog, for example, has to make a special effort to bring its larynx down into its throat in order to bark or to pant; when it relaxes, the larynx goes back up again. Even our own babies are born like that.
A few months after birth the human larynx descends into the throat, right down below the back of the tongue. Darwin found that very puzzling because it means that the opening to the lungs lies side by side with the opening to the stomach. That is why in our species food and drink may sometimes go "down the wrong way". If we had not evolved an elaborate swallowing mechanism it would happen every time.
This arrangement means that we can breathe through our mouths as easily as through our noses. It is probable that this is an aquatic adaptation, because a swimmer needing to gulp air quickly can inhale more of it through the mouth than through the nostrils. And we do know that the only birds which are obligatory mouth breathers are diving birds like penguins, pelicans and gannets. As for mammals, the only ones with a descended larynx, apart from ourselves, are aquatic ones - the sea lion and the dugong.
Other differences
It is impossible in a brief outline to discuss all the physical features distinguishing us from the apes, but a few are worth mentioning.
For example, we have a different way of sweating from other mammals, using different skin glands. It is very wasteful of the body's essential resources of water and salt. It is therefore unlikely that we acquired it on the savannah, where water and salt are both in short supply.
We weep tears of emotion, controlled by different nerves from the ones that cause our eyes to water in response to smoke or dust. No other land animal does this. There are marine birds, marine reptiles and marine mammals which shed water through their eyes, or through special nasal glands, when they have swallowed too much seawater. This process may also be triggered in them by an emotional excitement caused by feeding or fighting or frustration. Weeping animals, apart from ourselves, include the walrus, the seal and the sea otter.
We have millions of sebaceous glands which exude oil over head, face and torso, and in young adults often causes acne. The chimpanzee's sebaceous glands are described as "vestigial" whereas ours are described as "enormous". Their purpose is obscure. In other animals the only known function of sebum is that of waterproofing the skin or the fur.
The most widely discussed contrast between ourselves and the apes is that we have bigger brains. A bigger brain may well have been an advantage to early man, but it would have been equally of advantage to a chimpanzee: the question is why one of them acquired it.
One factor may have been nutritional. The building of brain tissue, unlike other body tissues, is dependent on an adequate supply of Omega-3 fatty acids, which are abundant in the marine food chain but relatively scarce in the land food chain.
AAT is the only theory which logically connects all these and other enigmatic features and relates them to a single well attested historical event.
The time and the place
It is now generally agreed that the man/ape split occurred in Africa between 7 and 5 million years ago, during a period known as the fossil gap.
Before it there was an animal which was the common ancestor of human and African apes. After it, there emerged a creature smaller than ourselves, but bearing the unmistakable hallmark of the first shift towards human status: it walked on two legs.
This poses two questions: "Where were the earliest fossils found?" and "Do we know of anything happening in that place at that time that might have caused apes and humans to evolve along separate lines?"
The oldest pre-human fossils (including the best known one, "Lucy") are called australopithecus afarensis because their bones were discovered in the afar triangle, and area of low lying land near the Red Sea. About 7 million years ago that area was flooded by the sea and became the Sea of
Afar.
Part of the ape population living there at the time would have found themselves living in a radically changed habitat. Some may have been marooned on off-shore islands - the present day Danakil Alps were once surrounded by water. Others may have lived in flooded forests, salt marshes, mangrove swamps, lagoons or on the shores of the new sea, and they would all have had to adapt or die.
AAT suggests that some of them survived, and began to adapt to their watery environment. Much later, when the Sea of Afar became landlocked and finally evaporated, their descendants returned to the mainland of Africa and began to migrate southwards, following the waterways of the Rift Valley upstream.
There is nothing in the fossil record to invalidate this scenario, and much to sustain it. Lucy's bones were found at Afar lying among crocodile and turtle eggs and crab claws at the edge of a flood plain near what would then have been the coast of Africa.
Other fossils of Australopithecus, dated later, were found further south, almost invariably in the immediate vicinity of ancient lakes and rivers.
We now know that the change from the ape into Australopithecus took place in a short space of time, by evolutionary standards. Such rapid speciation is almost invariably a sign that one population of a species has become isolated by a geographical barrier such as a stretch of water. ...
The Aquatic phase took place more than 5 million years ago. Since then, Homo has had five million years to re-adapt to terrestrial life. It is not surprising that the traces of aquatic adaptation have become partially obliterated and have gone unrecognized for so long. But the traces are still there as the table indicates. ...
Hi--Back again. I wonder if David Brin, ph.D. has heard of Elaine Morgan's "Aquatic Ape" theory..... For convenience, I am pasting
one of the web pages mentioning the same below. It is at the site http://www.primitivism.com/aquatic-ape.htm . This theory,
while mildly controversial (and when is any compelling theory not?) seems to me to offer the most sane reason and common sense.
All for now. More later.
T.J. White
______________________________________________
Elaine Morgan has done most of the writing in support of this interesting and mildly controversial hypothesis of Alistair Hardy. For those who feel a strong affinity for water--and considering the cost of lakefront and especially oceanfront property, that is a lot of us--I think the theory resonates in some respect, and it perhaps opens our perspective on what a life closer to nature might be like.--JF)
Aquatic Ape Theory
Elaine Morgan
"An aquatic Ape is a likely ancestor of humans in terms of primate behaviour, marine ecosystems and geophysical timing."
- Prof. Derek Ellis, Dept. of Biology, Uni. of Victoria, Canada
"All other theories about the origin of our species have reached an impasse."
- Dr. Michel Odent, author of 'Water and sexuality'
"An aquatic hypothesis offers far simpler explanations."
- Dr. Chris Knight, author of 'Blood Relations'
"It is difficult to see how all the points assembled to back the Aquatic Theory can be explained away."
- Dr. Desmond Morris, author of 'The Naked Ape'
"The aquatic hypothesis... cannot be eliminated yet."
- Prof. Glyn Isaac
"We believe that this proposal [AAT] should be taken seriously."
- Prof Michael Crawford, author of 'The Driving Force'
"[AAT] conforms to current theories of speciation better than the savannah origins model, and accounts for a number of diverse phenomena hitherto not seen as connected."
- Prof. Graham Richards, author of 'Human Evolution'
Why humans differ from apes
Scientists find it easy to explain why we resemble the African apes so closely by pointing out that gorillas, chimpanzees and humans share a common ancestor.
It is much harder to explain why we differ from the gorilla and the chimpanzee much more markedly than they differ from one another. Something must have happened to cause one section of the ancestral ape population to proceed along an entirely different evolutionary path.
The most widely held theory, still taught in schools and universities, is that we are descended from apes which moved out of the forests onto the grasslands of the open savannah. The distinctly human features are thus supposed to be adaptations to a savannah environment.
In that case, we would expect to find at least some of these adaptations to be paralleled in other savannah mammals. But there is not a single instance of this, not even among species like baboons and vervets, which are descended from forest- dwelling ancestors.
This awkward fact has not caused savannah theorists to abandon their hypothesis, but it leaves a lot of problems unanswered. For example, on the question of why humans lost their body hair, it has been argued at various times that no explanation is called for, or that we may never know the reason, or even that there may not be a reason. These attitudes seem to be not merely defeatist, but fundamentally unscientific.
The Aquatic Ape Theory (AAT) offers an alternative scenario. It suggests that when our ancestors moved onto the savannah they were already different from the apes; that nakedness, bipedalism, and other modifications had begun to evolve much earlier, when the ape and human lines first diverged.
AAT points out that most of the "enigmatic" features of human physiology, though rare or even unique among land mammals, are common in aquatic ones. If we postulate that our earliest ancestors had found themselves living for a prolonged period in a flooded, semi-aquatic habitat, most of the unsolved problems become much easier to unravel.
There is powerful geological evidence to support this hypothesis, and nothing in the fossil record that is inconsistent with it. Some of the issues it raises are briefly outlined in the following pages.
The naked ape
Humans are classed anatomically among the primates, the order of which includes apes, monkeys and lemurs. Among the hundreds of living primate species, only humans are naked.
Two kinds of habitat are known to give rise to naked mammals - a subterranean one or a wet one. There is a naked Somalian mole rat which never ventures above ground. All other non-human mammals which have lost all or most of their fur are either swimmers like whales and dolphins and walruses and manatees, or wallowers like hippopotamuses and pigs and tapirs. The rhinoceros and the elephant, though found on land since Africa became drier, bear traces of a more watery past and seize every opportunity of wallowing in mud or water.
It has been suggested that humans became hairless "to prevent overheating in the savannah". But no other mammal has ever resorted to this strategy. A covering of hair acts as a defense against the heat of the sun: that is why even the desert- dwelling camel retains its fur. Another version is "to facilitate sweat-cooling". But again many species resort to sweat-cooling quite effectively without needing to lose their hair.
There is no known reason why an ape should suffer more from overheating than the savannah baboon. And, especially for a savannah primate, there would be a high price to pay for hairlessness. Primate infants are carried around clinging to their mothers' fur; the females would be severely hampered in their foraging when that no longer became possible.
One general conclusion seems undeniable from an overall survey of mammalian species: that while a coat of fur provides the best insulation for land mammals the best insulation in water is not fur, but a layer of fat.
Fat
Humans are by far the fattest primates; we have ten times as many fat cells in our bodies as would be expected in an animal of our size.
There are two kinds of animals which tend to acquire large deposits of fat - hibernating ones and aquatic ones. In hibernating mammals the fat is seasonal; in most aquatic ones, as in humans it is present all the year round. Also, in land mammals fat tends to be stored internally, especially around the kidneys and intestines; in aquatic mammals and in humans a higher proportion is deposited under the skin.
It is unlikely that early man would have evolved this feature after moving to the plains and becoming a hunter, because it would have slowed him down. No land-based predator can afford to get fat. Our tendency to put on fat is likelier to be an inheritance from an earlier aquatic phase of our evolution. It is true that some apes, especially in captivity, may put on weight, but we still differ from them in two important ways. One is that they are never born fat. All infant primates except our own are slender; their lives may depend on their ability to cling to their mothers and support their whole weight with their fingers. Our own babies accumulate fat even before birth and continue to grow fatter for several months afterwards. Some of this fat is white fat, and that is extremely rare in new-born mammals. White fat is not much good for supplying instant heat and energy. It is good for insulation in water, and for giving buoyancy.
The other difference is that in our case the subcutaneous fat is bonded to the skin. When an anatomist skins a cat or rabbit or chimpanzee, any superficial fat deposits remain attached to the underlying tissues. In the case of humans, the fat comes away with the skin, just as it does in aquatic species like dolphins, seals, hippos and manatees.
Walking on two legs
Human beings are the only mammals in the world that habitually walk on two legs. (The only other creature with a perpendicular gait is an aquatic bird, the penguin.)
It is not surprising bipedalism is so rare. Compared with running or walking on four legs it has many disadvantages. It is slower; it is relatively unstable; it is a skill that takes many years to learn, and it exposes vulnerable organs to attack.
We have been doing it for five million years and in that time our bodies have been drastically remoulded to make it easier, but it is still the direct cause of many discomforts and ailments such as back pains, varicose veins, haemorrhoids, hernias and problems in childbirth. It would have been far more difficult and laborious for our ape-like ancestors; only some powerful pressure could have induced them to adopt a way of walking for which they were initially so ill suited.
One hypothesis used to be that they first developed big brains and began to make tools, and finally walked on their hind legs to free their hands for carrying weapons. But we now know that it was bipedalism that came first, before the big brain and tool-making.
However, if their habitat had become flooded, they would have been forced to walk on their hind legs whenever they came down to the ground in order to keep their heads above water. The only animal which has ever evolved a pelvis like ours, suitable for bipedalism, was the long-extinct _Oreopithecus_, known as the swamp ape.
Today, two primates when on the ground stand and walk erect somewhat more readily than most other species. One, the proboscis monkey, lives in the mangrove swamps of Borneo. The other is the bonobo or pygmy chimpanzee; its habitat includes a large tract of seasonally flooded forest, which would have covered an even more extensive area before the African climate became drier.
Both of these species enjoy the water. It is interesting that the bonobos often mate face-to-face as humans do; in our case it is explained as a consequence of bipedalism. This mode of mating is another characteristic very rare among land animals, which we share with a wide range of aquatic mammals such as dolphins, beavers and sea otters. What we have in common with them is a mode of locomotion in which the spine and the hind limbs are in a straight line, and that affects the position of the sex organs.
Breathing
The human respiratory system is unlike any other land mammal's in two respects.
The first is that we have conscious control of our breathing. In most mammals these actions are involuntary, like the heart beat or the processes of digestion.
Voluntary breath control appears to be an aquatic adaptation because, apart from ourselves, it is found only in aquatic mammals like seals and dolphins. When they decide how deep they are going to dive, they can estimate how much air they need to inhale. Without voluntary breath control it is very unlikely that we could have learned to speak.
The other human peculiarity is called "the descended larynx". A land mammal is normally obliged to breathe through its nose most of the time, because its windpipe passes up through the back of the throat and the top end of it (the larynx) is situated in the back of its nasal passages. A dog, for example, has to make a special effort to bring its larynx down into its throat in order to bark or to pant; when it relaxes, the larynx goes back up again. Even our own babies are born like that.
A few months after birth the human larynx descends into the throat, right down below the back of the tongue. Darwin found that very puzzling because it means that the opening to the lungs lies side by side with the opening to the stomach. That is why in our species food and drink may sometimes go "down the wrong way". If we had not evolved an elaborate swallowing mechanism it would happen every time.
This arrangement means that we can breathe through our mouths as easily as through our noses. It is probable that this is an aquatic adaptation, because a swimmer needing to gulp air quickly can inhale more of it through the mouth than through the nostrils. And we do know that the only birds which are obligatory mouth breathers are diving birds like penguins, pelicans and gannets. As for mammals, the only ones with a descended larynx, apart from ourselves, are aquatic ones - the sea lion and the dugong.
Other differences
It is impossible in a brief outline to discuss all the physical features distinguishing us from the apes, but a few are worth mentioning.
For example, we have a different way of sweating from other mammals, using different skin glands. It is very wasteful of the body's essential resources of water and salt. It is therefore unlikely that we acquired it on the savannah, where water and salt are both in short supply.
We weep tears of emotion, controlled by different nerves from the ones that cause our eyes to water in response to smoke or dust. No other land animal does this. There are marine birds, marine reptiles and marine mammals which shed water through their eyes, or through special nasal glands, when they have swallowed too much seawater. This process may also be triggered in them by an emotional excitement caused by feeding or fighting or frustration. Weeping animals, apart from ourselves, include the walrus, the seal and the sea otter.
We have millions of sebaceous glands which exude oil over head, face and torso, and in young adults often causes acne. The chimpanzee's sebaceous glands are described as "vestigial" whereas ours are described as "enormous". Their purpose is obscure. In other animals the only known function of sebum is that of waterproofing the skin or the fur.
The most widely discussed contrast between ourselves and the apes is that we have bigger brains. A bigger brain may well have been an advantage to early man, but it would have been equally of advantage to a chimpanzee: the question is why one of them acquired it.
One factor may have been nutritional. The building of brain tissue, unlike other body tissues, is dependent on an adequate supply of Omega-3 fatty acids, which are abundant in the marine food chain but relatively scarce in the land food chain.
AAT is the only theory which logically connects all these and other enigmatic features and relates them to a single well attested historical event.
The time and the place
It is now generally agreed that the man/ape split occurred in Africa between 7 and 5 million years ago, during a period known as the fossil gap.
Before it there was an animal which was the common ancestor of human and African apes. After it, there emerged a creature smaller than ourselves, but bearing the unmistakable hallmark of the first shift towards human status: it walked on two legs.
This poses two questions: "Where were the earliest fossils found?" and "Do we know of anything happening in that place at that time that might have caused apes and humans to evolve along separate lines?"
The oldest pre-human fossils (including the best known one, "Lucy") are called australopithecus afarensis because their bones were discovered in the afar triangle, and area of low lying land near the Red Sea. About 7 million years ago that area was flooded by the sea and became the Sea of
Afar.
Part of the ape population living there at the time would have found themselves living in a radically changed habitat. Some may have been marooned on off-shore islands - the present day Danakil Alps were once surrounded by water. Others may have lived in flooded forests, salt marshes, mangrove swamps, lagoons or on the shores of the new sea, and they would all have had to adapt or die.
AAT suggests that some of them survived, and began to adapt to their watery environment. Much later, when the Sea of Afar became landlocked and finally evaporated, their descendants returned to the mainland of Africa and began to migrate southwards, following the waterways of the Rift Valley upstream.
There is nothing in the fossil record to invalidate this scenario, and much to sustain it. Lucy's bones were found at Afar lying among crocodile and turtle eggs and crab claws at the edge of a flood plain near what would then have been the coast of Africa.
Other fossils of Australopithecus, dated later, were found further south, almost invariably in the immediate vicinity of ancient lakes and rivers.
We now know that the change from the ape into Australopithecus took place in a short space of time, by evolutionary standards. Such rapid speciation is almost invariably a sign that one population of a species has become isolated by a geographical barrier such as a stretch of water. ...
The Aquatic phase took place more than 5 million years ago. Since then, Homo has had five million years to re-adapt to terrestrial life. It is not surprising that the traces of aquatic adaptation have become partially obliterated and have gone unrecognized for so long. But the traces are still there as the table indicates. ...
Monday, August 08, 2005
Sunday, July 24, 2005
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
Thruster Holding Me Tight
I am he that walks with the tender and growing night;
I call to the earth and sea half-held by the night.
Press close barebosomed night! Press close magnetic nourishing night!
Night of the south winds! Night of the large few stars!
Still nodding night! Mad naked summer night! ...
Prodigal! you have given me love! .... therefore I to you give love!
O unspeakable passionate love!
Thruster holding me tight and that I hold tight!
We hurt each other as the bridegroom and the bride hurt each other. ...
Walt Whitman,
from Song of Myself
I call to the earth and sea half-held by the night.
Press close barebosomed night! Press close magnetic nourishing night!
Night of the south winds! Night of the large few stars!
Still nodding night! Mad naked summer night! ...
Prodigal! you have given me love! .... therefore I to you give love!
O unspeakable passionate love!
Thruster holding me tight and that I hold tight!
We hurt each other as the bridegroom and the bride hurt each other. ...
Walt Whitman,
from Song of Myself
Friday, July 15, 2005
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Peaks of Western Culture
Excerpts from a recent e-mail to Fred Child, Programme Director of NPR's "Performance Today" radio broadcast:
.... [T]hanks for including the new Bach aria discovery last week (old business). Any new addition to the Bach repertoire is always welcome (and interest-provoking).
I wonder, in passing, however (and this is a general comment, not directed to you personally), whether we are not sometimes guilty of over-emphasizing every tiny jot and tittle of the music of Bach at the expense of many another, perhaps equally-worthy composer of the period. Examples of these would be Locatelli, Marcello, the Scarlattis (pere et fils), Corrette, Pergolesi, Gluck, the Benda brothers, Quantz, Boccherini, Soler, and even some of Bach's own sons--Emmanuel and Johann Christian, for example--some of these composers dating from the latter half of that century. Bach was unquestionably a giant in 18th-Century music--indeed, of all music (from our standpoint, anyway)--both intellectually and aesthetically, but if we want to be intellectually honest, we must admit that the world of such music did not begin or end with him (nor with the likes of Handel, Mozart, or Haydn--great as they admittedly were). As you will probably know (and agree), there were many others (at that time) who were far better-known and better-liked than Bach. Proper historical perspective requires that we at least acknowledge this fact.
I don't want this attempt at criticism to sound like I'm trying to devalue Bach. I actually admire and respect most, if not all, of his endeavours--even if and when I may not always find them as aesthetically-pleasing as works by other composers. Let me say, rather, that I'm only attempting to place him in proper perspective.
As to this morning's programme (about time I actually got around to the real order of business)--thanks once again, this time for the Vivaldi e-minor Violin Concerto, performed by the Venice Baroque Orchestra. I have heard this work before, from a recording by the Moscow Virtuosi, so I was familiar with it.
A word concerning this particular work, if I may:
There are from time to time moments, in the world of the fine arts, when a particular balance, harmony, and seeming-bliss of perfection is achieved. Such a moment of perfection may not always be apparent to observers at the precise instant it is revealed, but later generations (with a discerning eye) can look back and see the glorious moment of radiant perfection that was. (Schopenhauer once said something along these lines ...) Robert Schumann once described Mozart's 'great' g-minor symphony (K.550) as possessing a "Grecian lightness and grace"
(per Marc Vignal), or, as Neal Zaslaw once wrote, "the classical balance, proportions and repose of a Greek vase." This is what I'm talking about here.
The Vivaldi concerto in question here, is (in my opinion) just such a moment of perfection as I describe. I'm not a proper musicologist, so I cannot state with authority just when the work dates from, but I would guess, based on its style, that it dates from late in Vivaldi's career--i.e., the 1730s. Even if it may not, it still bears the marks of that style--a harbinger, therefore, of things to come. This work, to me, seems to be infused with the 'spiritoso' style of the 'galant' Roccoco age; it breathes a softer, more serene and contemplative air than the vigorous, virtuoso 'Baroque' Vivaldi we are accustomed to. To sum up, it is quite possibly the most sublime and elegant work I have yet heard from Vivaldi--very much worthy to be placed alongside anything by Boccherini (my true Arbiter of Elegance--even more than Haydn).
Other works I place in this same category (and not always musical examples, either) include the Parthenon in Athens, the "Winged Victory" statue of Samothrace, the "David" statue of Verrocchio (even more than the one by Michelangelo), certain poems by Keats (his "Ode on a Grecian Urn", and "To Autumn", for example), and Franz Benda's Flute Concerto in e-minor, Corrette's Flute and Keyboard Concerto (Op.26, No.6), Gluck's Reigen Seliger Geister (Dance of the Blessed Spirits) from his Orfeo ed Euridyce, Locatelli's Violin Concerto in c-minor (Op.3, No.2), Handel's Concerto Grosso in g-minor (Op.6, No.12), Marcello's Oboe Concerto in d-minor, Beethoven's 'Pastoral' Symphony (No.6), and several of Boccherini's works (too numerous to mention individually). All of these (and there are others) I consider to be profound 'high points' in our Western tradition of the arts and culture, which we have inherited from Greece and Rome. It is sad and much to be regretted, I think, that these (and other) important examples of cultural excellence in our history and tradition are so much ignored, devalued, and neglected as they are today by so many people--particularly the young, who are our future [i.e., the 'hip-hop' generation]. Mine is almost a lone voice "crying in the wilderness," I think;
a modern-day Boethius regretting the passing and loss of so much excellence, beauty and wisdom from his day and age. [Sic transit gloria mundi .... thus passes the glory of the world.]
.... [T]hanks for including the new Bach aria discovery last week (old business). Any new addition to the Bach repertoire is always welcome (and interest-provoking).
I wonder, in passing, however (and this is a general comment, not directed to you personally), whether we are not sometimes guilty of over-emphasizing every tiny jot and tittle of the music of Bach at the expense of many another, perhaps equally-worthy composer of the period. Examples of these would be Locatelli, Marcello, the Scarlattis (pere et fils), Corrette, Pergolesi, Gluck, the Benda brothers, Quantz, Boccherini, Soler, and even some of Bach's own sons--Emmanuel and Johann Christian, for example--some of these composers dating from the latter half of that century. Bach was unquestionably a giant in 18th-Century music--indeed, of all music (from our standpoint, anyway)--both intellectually and aesthetically, but if we want to be intellectually honest, we must admit that the world of such music did not begin or end with him (nor with the likes of Handel, Mozart, or Haydn--great as they admittedly were). As you will probably know (and agree), there were many others (at that time) who were far better-known and better-liked than Bach. Proper historical perspective requires that we at least acknowledge this fact.
I don't want this attempt at criticism to sound like I'm trying to devalue Bach. I actually admire and respect most, if not all, of his endeavours--even if and when I may not always find them as aesthetically-pleasing as works by other composers. Let me say, rather, that I'm only attempting to place him in proper perspective.
As to this morning's programme (about time I actually got around to the real order of business)--thanks once again, this time for the Vivaldi e-minor Violin Concerto, performed by the Venice Baroque Orchestra. I have heard this work before, from a recording by the Moscow Virtuosi, so I was familiar with it.
A word concerning this particular work, if I may:
There are from time to time moments, in the world of the fine arts, when a particular balance, harmony, and seeming-bliss of perfection is achieved. Such a moment of perfection may not always be apparent to observers at the precise instant it is revealed, but later generations (with a discerning eye) can look back and see the glorious moment of radiant perfection that was. (Schopenhauer once said something along these lines ...) Robert Schumann once described Mozart's 'great' g-minor symphony (K.550) as possessing a "Grecian lightness and grace"
(per Marc Vignal), or, as Neal Zaslaw once wrote, "the classical balance, proportions and repose of a Greek vase." This is what I'm talking about here.
The Vivaldi concerto in question here, is (in my opinion) just such a moment of perfection as I describe. I'm not a proper musicologist, so I cannot state with authority just when the work dates from, but I would guess, based on its style, that it dates from late in Vivaldi's career--i.e., the 1730s. Even if it may not, it still bears the marks of that style--a harbinger, therefore, of things to come. This work, to me, seems to be infused with the 'spiritoso' style of the 'galant' Roccoco age; it breathes a softer, more serene and contemplative air than the vigorous, virtuoso 'Baroque' Vivaldi we are accustomed to. To sum up, it is quite possibly the most sublime and elegant work I have yet heard from Vivaldi--very much worthy to be placed alongside anything by Boccherini (my true Arbiter of Elegance--even more than Haydn).
Other works I place in this same category (and not always musical examples, either) include the Parthenon in Athens, the "Winged Victory" statue of Samothrace, the "David" statue of Verrocchio (even more than the one by Michelangelo), certain poems by Keats (his "Ode on a Grecian Urn", and "To Autumn", for example), and Franz Benda's Flute Concerto in e-minor, Corrette's Flute and Keyboard Concerto (Op.26, No.6), Gluck's Reigen Seliger Geister (Dance of the Blessed Spirits) from his Orfeo ed Euridyce, Locatelli's Violin Concerto in c-minor (Op.3, No.2), Handel's Concerto Grosso in g-minor (Op.6, No.12), Marcello's Oboe Concerto in d-minor, Beethoven's 'Pastoral' Symphony (No.6), and several of Boccherini's works (too numerous to mention individually). All of these (and there are others) I consider to be profound 'high points' in our Western tradition of the arts and culture, which we have inherited from Greece and Rome. It is sad and much to be regretted, I think, that these (and other) important examples of cultural excellence in our history and tradition are so much ignored, devalued, and neglected as they are today by so many people--particularly the young, who are our future [i.e., the 'hip-hop' generation]. Mine is almost a lone voice "crying in the wilderness," I think;
a modern-day Boethius regretting the passing and loss of so much excellence, beauty and wisdom from his day and age. [Sic transit gloria mundi .... thus passes the glory of the world.]
Friday, June 10, 2005
On the Subject of Christian Denominations
Unlike many people nowadays who call themselves "Christian," I take a very laid-back and relaxed attitude toward denominations: to me one denomination versus another is much like preferring 'this' flavour of ice-cream over 'that' flavour. Some people prefer
'Chocolate' over 'Plain Vanilla', whereas others like 'French Vanilla' instead of 'Plain Vanilla'. (Oo-La-La!!!....) Some people are really 'out there' and want 'Raspberry Truffle', or even
'Licorice' (these I compare to denominations such as the 'hard-shell' Evangelicals, or the 'Jehovah's Witnesses'). I myself can tolerate and find myself at home in just about any denomination of "Christianity" except the 'licorice' varieties--they are just too extreme, too doctrinaire, too dogmatic and intolerant for me.
And as far as these denominations (generally-speaking) go--it seems to me that 'Plain Vanilla' will fill one's belly (and provide about the same degree of nutrition) as any other, more exotic flavour. In other words, they can all of them (just about) get you to 'Heaven'--if (big if) you know how to let them do so. That is the real trick--discovering how to see through these different denominations and their respective doctrines to the essential, underlying truths they all contain to one degree or another.
Let me give you a big clue or hint: read Joseph Campbell. And then go back and re-read Joseph Campbell. And then dwell and ponder for a good long time on what it is he is saying. And then ponder some more--perhaps even several years' worth of this. For it is not until you have fully and deeply understood what it was that he was trying to teach us, that you will begin to approach 'the Truth'. For a general introduction, try the site: www.jcf.org (The web-site of the Joseph Campbell Foundation).
'Chocolate' over 'Plain Vanilla', whereas others like 'French Vanilla' instead of 'Plain Vanilla'. (Oo-La-La!!!....) Some people are really 'out there' and want 'Raspberry Truffle', or even
'Licorice' (these I compare to denominations such as the 'hard-shell' Evangelicals, or the 'Jehovah's Witnesses'). I myself can tolerate and find myself at home in just about any denomination of "Christianity" except the 'licorice' varieties--they are just too extreme, too doctrinaire, too dogmatic and intolerant for me.
And as far as these denominations (generally-speaking) go--it seems to me that 'Plain Vanilla' will fill one's belly (and provide about the same degree of nutrition) as any other, more exotic flavour. In other words, they can all of them (just about) get you to 'Heaven'--if (big if) you know how to let them do so. That is the real trick--discovering how to see through these different denominations and their respective doctrines to the essential, underlying truths they all contain to one degree or another.
Let me give you a big clue or hint: read Joseph Campbell. And then go back and re-read Joseph Campbell. And then dwell and ponder for a good long time on what it is he is saying. And then ponder some more--perhaps even several years' worth of this. For it is not until you have fully and deeply understood what it was that he was trying to teach us, that you will begin to approach 'the Truth'. For a general introduction, try the site: www.jcf.org (The web-site of the Joseph Campbell Foundation).
Thursday, June 09, 2005
A Translation From the Old English I Made at the Age of Twenty-Five
It is "Pope Gregory and the English Slave Boys," from an Anglo-Saxon version of the Venerable Bede's original Latin version of Book II, Chapter 1 of his Ecclesiastical History of the English People. After my translation, I will include another English translation (not by me) for comparison, and then the Latin original. I was unfortunately unable to easily find an online text of the Anglo-Saxon version from which I made my translation, or I would have included it here also.
In 1988, when I first made my translation, I used the Anglo-Saxon version because Latin at that time was too difficult for me to be able to attempt a translation. I was at that time more familiar with the Anglo-Saxon language. I will not now vouch for the complete accuracy of my translation; indeed, I have not even looked at it for many years, until now, nor compared it with either the Latin original, the Anglo-Saxon gloss, nor even any other English translations. So I presently have really no idea how well or poorly a job I did then. You be the judge.
________________________________
My own translation (dated Nov. 6, 1988):
It is not for us, then, to try to silence the fame and notoriety of the story which is told us by our elders concerning the blessed Gregory [and his encounter with the English slave boys]. For this cause did men greatly wonder at him, that he displayed such an eager interest in these boys, who were slaves taken from among our own kindred.
They say that on a certain day, there came to Rome new traders from Britain, who also brought with them many and various slaves and chattels for to sell in the markets. There also came at that time many to buy of the things which were brought. It then happened that Pope Gregory (among the many others) also went thither, and chanced to see, among the many other goods and chattels for sale, several beautiful boys--boys with noble, pure hair, and fair and white bodies.
As soon as he saw and beheld them, he immediately stopped and asked where they were from. A man answered and said that they were brought from Britain's island, and also informed the Pope that the rest of the people of that far-off island looked like these particular boys. After which, Pope Gregory inquired whether those same people were Christian--they who, unbeknownst to him, were yet Pagan. A man answered him and said that they were still heathen. At that reply, Pope Gregory swore strongly in his heart, and exclaimed: "Welaway! That is very sad--that such wondrously fair lives and such light and beautiful boys should be the property of the Dark Prince!"
Then he asked what the name of the people was from whom they came. A man answered and said that they were called 'Angles'. Whereupon Pope Gregory immediately remarked: "It is meet that they should be called so, for they certainly have the most angel-like of visages, and also such forms as would befit wards of heaven."
Then he questioned still further, and said: "What are the particular tribe called from whom these boys were taken?" Then answered him a man and said that they were named 'Dere'. Quoth Pope Gregory: "Well it is that they are called Dere--that is: 'de ira eruti' [from wrath saved]; they should be saved from the destruction of God's wrath, and called to Christ's mercy."
Then he went on, and asked what their king was called. And a man answered him and said that he was called 'Alle'. And then the Pope continued his game of sporting with his words by making puns on the names, and said: "Alle--Alleluia! That name is well-befitting a king of such people as these--that thus the praise and glory of God our Creator should be sung in those parts."
______________________________
(Here follows another English translation for comparison:)
Nor is the account of St. Gregory, which has been handed down to us by the tradition of our ancestors, to be passed by in silence, in relation to his motives for taking such interest in the salvation of our nation. It is reported, that some merchants, having just arrived at Rome on a certain day, exposed many things for sale in the marketplace, and abundance of people resorted thither to buy: Gregory himself went with the rest, and, among other things, some boys were set to sale, their bodies white, their countenances beautiful, and their hair very fine. Having viewed them, he asked, as is said, from what country or nation they were brought? and was told, from the island of Britain, whose inhabitants were of such personal appearance. He again inquired whether those islanders were Christians, or still involved in the errors of paganism? and was informed that they were pagans. Then fetching a deep sigh from the bottom of his heart, "Alas! what pity," said he, "that the author of darkness is possessed of men of such fair countenances; and that being remarkable for such graceful aspects, their minds should be void of inward grace." He therefore again asked, what was the name of that nation? and was answered, that they were called Angles. "Right," said he, for they have an Angelic face, and it becomes such to be co-heirs with the Angels in heaven. What is the name," proceeded he, "of the province from which they are brought?" It was replied, that the natives of that province were called Deiri. "Truly are they De ira," said he, "withdrawn from wrath, and called to the mercy of Christ. How is the king of that province called?" They told him his name was Ælla: and he, alluding to the name said, "Hallelujah, the praise of God the Creator must be sung in those parts."
From ORB's Internet Medieval Sourcebook, Paul Halsall, editor
(at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook.html )
_________________________________
(And here is Bede's Latin original:)
Nec silentio praetereunda opinio, quae de beato Gregorio traditione maiorum ad nos usque perlata est; qua uidelicet ex causa admonitus tam sedulam erga salutem nostrae gentis curam gesserit. Dicunt, quia die quadam cum, aduenientibus nuper mercatoribus, multa uenalia in forum fuissent conlata, multi ad emendum confluxissent, et ipsum Gregorium inter alios aduenisse, ac uidisse inter alia pueros uenales positos candidi corporis, ac uenusti uultus, capillorum quoque forma egregia. Quos cum aspiceret, interrogauit, ut aiunt, de qua regione uel terra essent adlati. Dictumque est, quia de Brittania insula, cuius incolae talis essent aspectus. Rursus interrogauit, utrum idem insulani Christiani, an paganis adhuc erroribus essent inplicati. Dictum est, quod essent pagani. At ille, intimo ex corde longa trahens suspiria: ‘Heu, pro dolor!’ inquit, ‘quod tam lucidi uultus homines tenebrarum auctor possidet, tantaque gratia frontispicii mentem ab interna gratia uacuam gestat!’ Rursus ergo interrogauit, quod esset uocabulum gentis illius. Responsum est, quod Angli uocarentur. At ille: ‘Bene,’ inquit; ‘nam et angelicam habent faciem, et tales angelorum in caelis decet esse coheredes. Quod habet nomen ipsa prouincia, de qua isti sunt adlati?’ Responsum est, quod Deiri uocarentur idem prouinciales. At ille: ‘Bene,’ inquit, ‘Deiri; de ira eruti, et ad misericordiam Christi uocati. Rex prouinciae illius quomodo appellatur?’ Responsum est, quod Aelli diceretur. At ille adludens ad nomen ait: ‘Alleluia, laudem Dei Creatoris illis in partibus oportet cantari.’
From the web-site http://thelatinlibrary.com/bede.html
In 1988, when I first made my translation, I used the Anglo-Saxon version because Latin at that time was too difficult for me to be able to attempt a translation. I was at that time more familiar with the Anglo-Saxon language. I will not now vouch for the complete accuracy of my translation; indeed, I have not even looked at it for many years, until now, nor compared it with either the Latin original, the Anglo-Saxon gloss, nor even any other English translations. So I presently have really no idea how well or poorly a job I did then. You be the judge.
________________________________
My own translation (dated Nov. 6, 1988):
It is not for us, then, to try to silence the fame and notoriety of the story which is told us by our elders concerning the blessed Gregory [and his encounter with the English slave boys]. For this cause did men greatly wonder at him, that he displayed such an eager interest in these boys, who were slaves taken from among our own kindred.
They say that on a certain day, there came to Rome new traders from Britain, who also brought with them many and various slaves and chattels for to sell in the markets. There also came at that time many to buy of the things which were brought. It then happened that Pope Gregory (among the many others) also went thither, and chanced to see, among the many other goods and chattels for sale, several beautiful boys--boys with noble, pure hair, and fair and white bodies.
As soon as he saw and beheld them, he immediately stopped and asked where they were from. A man answered and said that they were brought from Britain's island, and also informed the Pope that the rest of the people of that far-off island looked like these particular boys. After which, Pope Gregory inquired whether those same people were Christian--they who, unbeknownst to him, were yet Pagan. A man answered him and said that they were still heathen. At that reply, Pope Gregory swore strongly in his heart, and exclaimed: "Welaway! That is very sad--that such wondrously fair lives and such light and beautiful boys should be the property of the Dark Prince!"
Then he asked what the name of the people was from whom they came. A man answered and said that they were called 'Angles'. Whereupon Pope Gregory immediately remarked: "It is meet that they should be called so, for they certainly have the most angel-like of visages, and also such forms as would befit wards of heaven."
Then he questioned still further, and said: "What are the particular tribe called from whom these boys were taken?" Then answered him a man and said that they were named 'Dere'. Quoth Pope Gregory: "Well it is that they are called Dere--that is: 'de ira eruti' [from wrath saved]; they should be saved from the destruction of God's wrath, and called to Christ's mercy."
Then he went on, and asked what their king was called. And a man answered him and said that he was called 'Alle'. And then the Pope continued his game of sporting with his words by making puns on the names, and said: "Alle--Alleluia! That name is well-befitting a king of such people as these--that thus the praise and glory of God our Creator should be sung in those parts."
______________________________
(Here follows another English translation for comparison:)
Nor is the account of St. Gregory, which has been handed down to us by the tradition of our ancestors, to be passed by in silence, in relation to his motives for taking such interest in the salvation of our nation. It is reported, that some merchants, having just arrived at Rome on a certain day, exposed many things for sale in the marketplace, and abundance of people resorted thither to buy: Gregory himself went with the rest, and, among other things, some boys were set to sale, their bodies white, their countenances beautiful, and their hair very fine. Having viewed them, he asked, as is said, from what country or nation they were brought? and was told, from the island of Britain, whose inhabitants were of such personal appearance. He again inquired whether those islanders were Christians, or still involved in the errors of paganism? and was informed that they were pagans. Then fetching a deep sigh from the bottom of his heart, "Alas! what pity," said he, "that the author of darkness is possessed of men of such fair countenances; and that being remarkable for such graceful aspects, their minds should be void of inward grace." He therefore again asked, what was the name of that nation? and was answered, that they were called Angles. "Right," said he, for they have an Angelic face, and it becomes such to be co-heirs with the Angels in heaven. What is the name," proceeded he, "of the province from which they are brought?" It was replied, that the natives of that province were called Deiri. "Truly are they De ira," said he, "withdrawn from wrath, and called to the mercy of Christ. How is the king of that province called?" They told him his name was Ælla: and he, alluding to the name said, "Hallelujah, the praise of God the Creator must be sung in those parts."
From ORB's Internet Medieval Sourcebook, Paul Halsall, editor
(at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook.html )
_________________________________
(And here is Bede's Latin original:)
Nec silentio praetereunda opinio, quae de beato Gregorio traditione maiorum ad nos usque perlata est; qua uidelicet ex causa admonitus tam sedulam erga salutem nostrae gentis curam gesserit. Dicunt, quia die quadam cum, aduenientibus nuper mercatoribus, multa uenalia in forum fuissent conlata, multi ad emendum confluxissent, et ipsum Gregorium inter alios aduenisse, ac uidisse inter alia pueros uenales positos candidi corporis, ac uenusti uultus, capillorum quoque forma egregia. Quos cum aspiceret, interrogauit, ut aiunt, de qua regione uel terra essent adlati. Dictumque est, quia de Brittania insula, cuius incolae talis essent aspectus. Rursus interrogauit, utrum idem insulani Christiani, an paganis adhuc erroribus essent inplicati. Dictum est, quod essent pagani. At ille, intimo ex corde longa trahens suspiria: ‘Heu, pro dolor!’ inquit, ‘quod tam lucidi uultus homines tenebrarum auctor possidet, tantaque gratia frontispicii mentem ab interna gratia uacuam gestat!’ Rursus ergo interrogauit, quod esset uocabulum gentis illius. Responsum est, quod Angli uocarentur. At ille: ‘Bene,’ inquit; ‘nam et angelicam habent faciem, et tales angelorum in caelis decet esse coheredes. Quod habet nomen ipsa prouincia, de qua isti sunt adlati?’ Responsum est, quod Deiri uocarentur idem prouinciales. At ille: ‘Bene,’ inquit, ‘Deiri; de ira eruti, et ad misericordiam Christi uocati. Rex prouinciae illius quomodo appellatur?’ Responsum est, quod Aelli diceretur. At ille adludens ad nomen ait: ‘Alleluia, laudem Dei Creatoris illis in partibus oportet cantari.’
From the web-site http://thelatinlibrary.com/bede.html
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Recent e-mails to and from NPR's "Performance Today" programme
Subject:
RE: Programme of Tuesday, June 7th, 2005
Date:
Wed, 8 Jun 2005 11:08:44 -0400
From:
"Fred Child" Add to Address Book
To:
revenant1963@yahoo.com
Dear Mr. White,
Thanks for your thoughtful note about Bach and period performance
practice. We're big fans of that approach -- we were hoping to get the
Akademie fur Alte Musik from Berlin to join us in the NPR studios during
their American tour, but they couldn't quite squeeze us into their
schedule. We're always on the lookout for top-notch performances of Baroque
music, and we'll get as many as we can on the air.
All the best,
Fred Child
Host of NPR's Performance Today
---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: terrence White <revenant1963@yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2005 08:41:43 -0700 (PDT)
Hi--
You asked for the opinions of your listeners, so here is mine:
I definitely agree that no work from the 18th century (or earlier)
even begins to approach true 'authenticity' unless some serious
efforts are made along the lines of what is popularly
called "period performance" practices.
It is, of course, true (and almost goes without saying) that we
can never really know exactly how any piece of 'old' music truly
sounded. The recording of music, after all, didn't really begin
in earnest until the early 20th century. But this by no means
decides that performers (and conductors!) should simply 'throw in
the towel' and lazily content themselves with modern instruments
and modern performance techniques. Far from it! A great deal is
actually known today about how music was performed in earlier
centuries, and to ignore this sound (and widely-available)
scholarship is nothing but pure, willful blindness and ignorance--
similar to the proverbial 'ostrich burying its head in the sand'.
There is currently a whole world of 'period' music performances,
broadcasts, and recordings existing in Europe, which the vast
majority of (willfully?) ignorant Americans have barely, scarcely
begun to appreciate or explore. (Perhaps this is an example of
continuing colonialism, in that American tastes--or those of any
colony or former colony--lag behind those of the 'mother
countries' by several decades.) American tastes in 'classical'
music, it is plainly obvious, are still in the 1950s (to the
discomfiture of those of us who appreciate and prefer to hear real
music from the earlier centuries--or the closest modern performers
can get to it).
Let us please hear more of this 'period' or 'authentic' early
music! You cannot possibly broadcast enough of it to suit someone
like myself! (Even mid-nineteenth century music can benefit
from 'period performance' practice.)
I only wish Georgia Public Broadcasting would do this as well
(sigh).
Sincerely,
T.J. White
Thomaston, Georgia
e-mail at revenant1963@yahoo.com
RE: Programme of Tuesday, June 7th, 2005
Date:
Wed, 8 Jun 2005 11:08:44 -0400
From:
"Fred Child"
To:
revenant1963@yahoo.com
Dear Mr. White,
Thanks for your thoughtful note about Bach and period performance
practice. We're big fans of that approach -- we were hoping to get the
Akademie fur Alte Musik from Berlin to join us in the NPR studios during
their American tour, but they couldn't quite squeeze us into their
schedule. We're always on the lookout for top-notch performances of Baroque
music, and we'll get as many as we can on the air.
All the best,
Fred Child
Host of NPR's Performance Today
---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: terrence White <revenant1963@yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2005 08:41:43 -0700 (PDT)
Hi--
You asked for the opinions of your listeners, so here is mine:
I definitely agree that no work from the 18th century (or earlier)
even begins to approach true 'authenticity' unless some serious
efforts are made along the lines of what is popularly
called "period performance" practices.
It is, of course, true (and almost goes without saying) that we
can never really know exactly how any piece of 'old' music truly
sounded. The recording of music, after all, didn't really begin
in earnest until the early 20th century. But this by no means
decides that performers (and conductors!) should simply 'throw in
the towel' and lazily content themselves with modern instruments
and modern performance techniques. Far from it! A great deal is
actually known today about how music was performed in earlier
centuries, and to ignore this sound (and widely-available)
scholarship is nothing but pure, willful blindness and ignorance--
similar to the proverbial 'ostrich burying its head in the sand'.
There is currently a whole world of 'period' music performances,
broadcasts, and recordings existing in Europe, which the vast
majority of (willfully?) ignorant Americans have barely, scarcely
begun to appreciate or explore. (Perhaps this is an example of
continuing colonialism, in that American tastes--or those of any
colony or former colony--lag behind those of the 'mother
countries' by several decades.) American tastes in 'classical'
music, it is plainly obvious, are still in the 1950s (to the
discomfiture of those of us who appreciate and prefer to hear real
music from the earlier centuries--or the closest modern performers
can get to it).
Let us please hear more of this 'period' or 'authentic' early
music! You cannot possibly broadcast enough of it to suit someone
like myself! (Even mid-nineteenth century music can benefit
from 'period performance' practice.)
I only wish Georgia Public Broadcasting would do this as well
(sigh).
Sincerely,
T.J. White
Thomaston, Georgia
e-mail at revenant1963@yahoo.com
Some of my Favourite Thoreau
Note: Since I consider Thoreau to be one of the most important and formative influences on my life and thinking, it is only right that I include some of my favourite passages of his here.
_________________________
There are from time to time mornings, both in summer and in winter, when especially the world seems to begin anew ... The world has visibly been recreated in the night. Mornings of creation, I call them. In the midst of these marks of a creative energy recently active, while the sun is rising with more than usual splendor, I look back ... for the era of this creation, not into the night, but to a dawn for which no man ever rose early enough. A morning which carries us back beyond the Mosaic creation, where crystallizations are fresh and unmelted. It is the poet's hour. Mornings when men are new born, men who have the seeds of life in them.
Journal, January 26, 1853
But alone in distant woods or fields, in unpretending sproutlands or pastures tracked by rabbits, even in a bleak and, to most, cheerless day, like this, when a villager would be thinking of his inn, I come to myself, I once more feel myself grandly related, and that cold and solitude are friends of mine. I suppose that this value, in my case, is equivalent to what others get by church-going and prayer. I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home. ... I come out to these solitudes, where the problem of existence is simplfied. I get away a mile or two from the town into the stillness and solitude of nature, with rocks, trees, weeds, snow about me. I enter some glade in the woods, perchance, where a few weeds and dry leaves alone lift themselves above the surface of the snow, and it is as if I had come to an open window. I see out and around myself. ... This stillness, solitude, wildness of nature is a kind of thoroughwort, or boneset, to my intellect. This is what I go out to seek. It is as if I always met in those places some grand, serene, immortal, infinitely encouraging, though invisible, companion, and walked with him.
Journal, January 7, 1857
It is dry, hazy June weather. We are more of the earth, farther from heaven these days. We live in a grosser element. We [are] getting deeper into the mists of earth. Even the birds sing with less vigor and vivacity. The season of hope and promise is past; already the season of small fruits has arrived. The Indian marked the midsummer as the season when berries were ripe. We are a little saddened, because we begin to see the interval between our hopes and their fulfillment. The prospect of the heavens is taken away, and we are presented only with a few small berries.
Journal, June 17, 1854
Flint's Pond! Such is the poverty of our nomenclature. What right had the unclean and stupid farmer, whose farm abutted on this sky water, whose shores he had ruthlessly laid bare, to give his name to it? Some skin-flint, who loved better the reflecting surface of a dollar, or a bright cent, in which he could see his own brazen face; who regarded even the wild ducks which settled in it as trespassers; his fingers grown into crooked and horny talons from the long habit of grasping harpy-like;--so it is not named for me. I go not there to see him nor to hear of him; who never saw it, who never bathed in it, who never loved it, who never protected it, who never spoke a good word for it, nor thanked God that He had made it. Rather let it be named from the fishes that swim in it, the wild fowl or quadrupeds which frequent it, the wild flowers which grow by its shores, or some wild man or child the thread of whose history is interwoven with its own; not from him who could show no title to it but the deed which a like-minded neighbor or legislature gave him,--him who thought only of its money value; whose presence perchance cursed all the shore, who exhausted the land around it, and would fain have exhausted the waters within it; who regretted only that it was not English hay or cranberry meadow,--there was nothing to redeem it, forsooth, in his eyes,--and would have drained and sold it for the mud at its bottom. It did not turn his mill, and it was no privilege to him to behold it. I respect not his labors, his farm where everything has its price, who would carry the landscape, who would carry his God, to market, if he could get anything for him; who goes to market for his god as it is; on whose farm nothing grows free, whose fields bear no crops, whose meadows no flowers, whose trees no fruit, but dollars; who loves not the beauty of his fruits, whose fruits are not ripe for him till they are turned to dollars. Give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth.
Walden, 1854
(Note: I have always preferred to restate that last phrase as: "Give me the true wealth that poverty brings"--it seems so much more in the spirit of Thoreau's personality and life. TJW)
For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snow storms and rain storms, and did my duty faithfully; surveyor, if not of highways, then of forest paths and all across-lot routes, keeping them open, and ravines bridged and passable at all seasons, where the public heel had testified to their utility.
I have looked after the wild stock of the town, which gives a faithful herdsman a good deal of trouble by leaping fences; and I have had an eye to the unfrequented nooks and corners of the farm; though I did not always know whether Jonas or Solomon worked in a particular field to-day; that was none of my business. I have watered the red huckleberry, the sand cherry and the nettle tree, the red pine and the black ash, the white grape and the yellow violet, which might have withered else in dry seasons.
Walden, 1854
Finding that my fellow-citizens were not likely to offer me any room in the court-house, or any curacy or living any where else, but I must shift for myself, I turned my face more exclusively than ever to the woods, where I was better known.
Walden, 1854
What should we think of the shepherd's life if his flocks always wandered to higher pastures than his thoughts?
Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself. I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks. I got up early and bathed in the pond; that was a religious exercise, and one of the best things which I did. They say that characters were engraven on the bathing tub of king Tching-thang to this effect: "Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again." I can understand that. Morning brings back the heroic ages. I was as much affected by the faint hum of a mosquito making its invisible and unimaginable tour through my apartment at earliest dawn , when I was sitting with door and windows open, as I could be by any trumpet that ever sang of fame. It was Homer's requiem; itself an Iliad and Odyssey in the air, singing its own wrath and wanderings. There was something cosmical about it; a standing advertisement, till forbidden, of the everlasting vigor and fertility of the world. The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour. Then there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night.
Walden, 1854
Some of my pleasantest hours were during the long rain storms in the spring or fall, which confined me to the house for the afternoon as well as the forenoon, soothed by their ceaseless roar and pelting; when an early twilight ushered in a long evening in which many thoughts had time to take root and unfold themselves. In those driving northeast rains which tried the village houses so, when the maids stood ready with mop and pail in front entries to keep the deluge out, I sat behind my door in my little house, which was all entry, and thoroughly enjoyed its protection. In one heavy thunder shower the lightning struck a large pitch-pine across the pond, making a very conspicuous and perfectly regular spiral groove from top to bottom, an inch or more deep, and four or five inches wide, as you would groove a walking-stick. I passed it again the other day, and was struck with awe on looking up and beholding that mark, now more distinct than ever, where a terrific and resistless bolt came down out of the harmless sky eight years ago. Men frequently say to me, "I should think you would feel lonesome down there, and want to be nearer to folks, rainy and snowy days and nights especially." I am tempted to reply to such,--This whole earth we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments? Why should I feel lonely? is not our planet in the Milky Way? This which you put to me seems to me not to be the most important question. What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary? I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another. What do we want most to dwell near to? Not to many men surely, the depot, the post-office, the bar-room, the meeting-house, the school-house, the gorcery, Beacon Hill, or the Five Points, where men most congregate, but to the perennial source of our life, whence in all our experience we have found that to issue, as the willow stands near the water and sends out its roots in that direction. This will vary with different natures, but this is the place where a wise man will dig his cellar. ...
Walden, 1854
The indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature,--of sun and wind and rain, of summer and winter,--such health, such cheer, they afford forever! and such sympathy have they ever with our race, that all Nature would be affected, and the sun's brightness fade, and the winds would sigh humanely, and the clouds rain tears, and the woods shed their leaves and put on mourning in midsummer, if any man should ever for a just cause grieve. Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself?
Walden, 1854
After a still winter night I awoke with the impression that some question had been put to me, which I had been endeavoring in vain to answer in my sleep, as what--how--when--where? But there was dawning Nature, in whom all creatures live, looking at my broad windows with serene and satisfied face, and no question on her lips. I awoke to an unanswered question, to Nature and daylight. The snow lying deep on the earth dotted with young pines, and the very slope of the hill on which my house is placed, seemed to say, Forward! Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution. "O Prince, our eyes contemplate with admiration and transmit to the soul the wonderful and varied spectacle of this universe. The night veils without doubt a part of this glorious creation; but day comes to reveal to us this great work, which extends from earth even into the plains of the ether."
Walden, 1854
[In the last days of Thoreau's life, when he was already an invalid confined indoors,] ... Edmund Hosmer told him of seeing a spring robin, Thoreau replied, "Yes, This is a beautiful world; but I shall see a fairer." He was greatly moved by the attentions of his friends and neighbors. He "came to feel very differently toward people," one of them reported, "and said if he had known he wouldn't have been so offish."
The devotion of his friends [said his sister Sophia] was most rare and touching; his room was made fragrant by the gift of flowers from young and old; fruit of every kind which the season afforded, and game of all sorts was sent him. It was really pathetic [i.e., greatly moving] the way in which the town was moved to minister to his comfort. Total strangers sent grateful messages, remembering the good he had done for them. All this attention was fully appreciated and very gratifying to Henry; he would sometimes say, "I should be ashamed to stay in this world after so much had been done for me, I could never repay my friends." ...
When he learned that some boys in the neighborhood had been robbing birds' nests, he requested that they be called into his sickroom and asked them if they knew "what a wail of sorrow and anguish their cruelty had sent all over the fields and through the woods." ...
[Yet,] When Thoreau learned that some of the boys of the neighborhood had brought him some game to eat, he asked, "Why did you not invite them in? I want to thank them for so much they are bringing me," ...
In his last illness [recalled a child of the neighborhood] it did not occur to us that he would care to see us, but his sister told my mother that he watched us from the window as we passed, and said: "Why don't they come to see me? I love them as if they were my own." After that we went often, and he always made us so welcome that we liked to go. I remember our last meetings with as much pleasure as the old playdays. ...
During his long illness [said Sophia] I never heard a murmur escape him, or the slightest wish expressed to remain with us; his perfect contentment was truly wonderful. None of his friends seemed to realize how very ill he was, so full of life and good cheer did he seem. One friend, as if by way of consolation, said to him, "Well, Mr. Thoreau, we must all go." Henry replied, "When I was a very little boy I learned that I must die, and I set that down, so of course I am not disappointed now. Death is as near to you as it is to me."
Some of his more orthodox friends and relatives tried to prepare him for death, with but little satisfaction to themselves. When an old friend of the family asked "how he stood affected toward Christ," he replied that "a snow-storm was more to him than Christ." When his aunt asked him if he had made his peace with God, he answered, "I did not know that we had ever quarrelled, Aunt." ...
He did not lose his sense of humor. He told Sanborn that whenever his corpulent, full-faced aunt came to his chamber door to inquire about his welfare, he thought her to be "the rising full moon." When someone commented how little his hair had grayed, even in his illness, he replied: "I have never had any trouble in all my life, or only when I was about fourteen; then I felt pretty bad a little while on account of my sins, but no trouble since that I know of. That must be the reason why my hair doesn't turn gray faster. But there is Blake; he is gray as a rat." ...
[When his time to leave finally came] his mother, sister, and his Aunt Louisa watched, his breathing grew fainter and fainter, and without the slightest struggle he died at nine o'clock. Sophia said, "I feel as if something very beautiful had happened,--not death."
From American Heritage, Vol. XIV, No.1 (Dec. 1962), pp.106-112
_________________________
There are from time to time mornings, both in summer and in winter, when especially the world seems to begin anew ... The world has visibly been recreated in the night. Mornings of creation, I call them. In the midst of these marks of a creative energy recently active, while the sun is rising with more than usual splendor, I look back ... for the era of this creation, not into the night, but to a dawn for which no man ever rose early enough. A morning which carries us back beyond the Mosaic creation, where crystallizations are fresh and unmelted. It is the poet's hour. Mornings when men are new born, men who have the seeds of life in them.
Journal, January 26, 1853
But alone in distant woods or fields, in unpretending sproutlands or pastures tracked by rabbits, even in a bleak and, to most, cheerless day, like this, when a villager would be thinking of his inn, I come to myself, I once more feel myself grandly related, and that cold and solitude are friends of mine. I suppose that this value, in my case, is equivalent to what others get by church-going and prayer. I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home. ... I come out to these solitudes, where the problem of existence is simplfied. I get away a mile or two from the town into the stillness and solitude of nature, with rocks, trees, weeds, snow about me. I enter some glade in the woods, perchance, where a few weeds and dry leaves alone lift themselves above the surface of the snow, and it is as if I had come to an open window. I see out and around myself. ... This stillness, solitude, wildness of nature is a kind of thoroughwort, or boneset, to my intellect. This is what I go out to seek. It is as if I always met in those places some grand, serene, immortal, infinitely encouraging, though invisible, companion, and walked with him.
Journal, January 7, 1857
It is dry, hazy June weather. We are more of the earth, farther from heaven these days. We live in a grosser element. We [are] getting deeper into the mists of earth. Even the birds sing with less vigor and vivacity. The season of hope and promise is past; already the season of small fruits has arrived. The Indian marked the midsummer as the season when berries were ripe. We are a little saddened, because we begin to see the interval between our hopes and their fulfillment. The prospect of the heavens is taken away, and we are presented only with a few small berries.
Journal, June 17, 1854
Flint's Pond! Such is the poverty of our nomenclature. What right had the unclean and stupid farmer, whose farm abutted on this sky water, whose shores he had ruthlessly laid bare, to give his name to it? Some skin-flint, who loved better the reflecting surface of a dollar, or a bright cent, in which he could see his own brazen face; who regarded even the wild ducks which settled in it as trespassers; his fingers grown into crooked and horny talons from the long habit of grasping harpy-like;--so it is not named for me. I go not there to see him nor to hear of him; who never saw it, who never bathed in it, who never loved it, who never protected it, who never spoke a good word for it, nor thanked God that He had made it. Rather let it be named from the fishes that swim in it, the wild fowl or quadrupeds which frequent it, the wild flowers which grow by its shores, or some wild man or child the thread of whose history is interwoven with its own; not from him who could show no title to it but the deed which a like-minded neighbor or legislature gave him,--him who thought only of its money value; whose presence perchance cursed all the shore, who exhausted the land around it, and would fain have exhausted the waters within it; who regretted only that it was not English hay or cranberry meadow,--there was nothing to redeem it, forsooth, in his eyes,--and would have drained and sold it for the mud at its bottom. It did not turn his mill, and it was no privilege to him to behold it. I respect not his labors, his farm where everything has its price, who would carry the landscape, who would carry his God, to market, if he could get anything for him; who goes to market for his god as it is; on whose farm nothing grows free, whose fields bear no crops, whose meadows no flowers, whose trees no fruit, but dollars; who loves not the beauty of his fruits, whose fruits are not ripe for him till they are turned to dollars. Give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth.
Walden, 1854
(Note: I have always preferred to restate that last phrase as: "Give me the true wealth that poverty brings"--it seems so much more in the spirit of Thoreau's personality and life. TJW)
For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snow storms and rain storms, and did my duty faithfully; surveyor, if not of highways, then of forest paths and all across-lot routes, keeping them open, and ravines bridged and passable at all seasons, where the public heel had testified to their utility.
I have looked after the wild stock of the town, which gives a faithful herdsman a good deal of trouble by leaping fences; and I have had an eye to the unfrequented nooks and corners of the farm; though I did not always know whether Jonas or Solomon worked in a particular field to-day; that was none of my business. I have watered the red huckleberry, the sand cherry and the nettle tree, the red pine and the black ash, the white grape and the yellow violet, which might have withered else in dry seasons.
Walden, 1854
Finding that my fellow-citizens were not likely to offer me any room in the court-house, or any curacy or living any where else, but I must shift for myself, I turned my face more exclusively than ever to the woods, where I was better known.
Walden, 1854
What should we think of the shepherd's life if his flocks always wandered to higher pastures than his thoughts?
Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself. I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks. I got up early and bathed in the pond; that was a religious exercise, and one of the best things which I did. They say that characters were engraven on the bathing tub of king Tching-thang to this effect: "Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again." I can understand that. Morning brings back the heroic ages. I was as much affected by the faint hum of a mosquito making its invisible and unimaginable tour through my apartment at earliest dawn , when I was sitting with door and windows open, as I could be by any trumpet that ever sang of fame. It was Homer's requiem; itself an Iliad and Odyssey in the air, singing its own wrath and wanderings. There was something cosmical about it; a standing advertisement, till forbidden, of the everlasting vigor and fertility of the world. The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour. Then there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night.
Walden, 1854
Some of my pleasantest hours were during the long rain storms in the spring or fall, which confined me to the house for the afternoon as well as the forenoon, soothed by their ceaseless roar and pelting; when an early twilight ushered in a long evening in which many thoughts had time to take root and unfold themselves. In those driving northeast rains which tried the village houses so, when the maids stood ready with mop and pail in front entries to keep the deluge out, I sat behind my door in my little house, which was all entry, and thoroughly enjoyed its protection. In one heavy thunder shower the lightning struck a large pitch-pine across the pond, making a very conspicuous and perfectly regular spiral groove from top to bottom, an inch or more deep, and four or five inches wide, as you would groove a walking-stick. I passed it again the other day, and was struck with awe on looking up and beholding that mark, now more distinct than ever, where a terrific and resistless bolt came down out of the harmless sky eight years ago. Men frequently say to me, "I should think you would feel lonesome down there, and want to be nearer to folks, rainy and snowy days and nights especially." I am tempted to reply to such,--This whole earth we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments? Why should I feel lonely? is not our planet in the Milky Way? This which you put to me seems to me not to be the most important question. What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary? I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another. What do we want most to dwell near to? Not to many men surely, the depot, the post-office, the bar-room, the meeting-house, the school-house, the gorcery, Beacon Hill, or the Five Points, where men most congregate, but to the perennial source of our life, whence in all our experience we have found that to issue, as the willow stands near the water and sends out its roots in that direction. This will vary with different natures, but this is the place where a wise man will dig his cellar. ...
Walden, 1854
The indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature,--of sun and wind and rain, of summer and winter,--such health, such cheer, they afford forever! and such sympathy have they ever with our race, that all Nature would be affected, and the sun's brightness fade, and the winds would sigh humanely, and the clouds rain tears, and the woods shed their leaves and put on mourning in midsummer, if any man should ever for a just cause grieve. Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself?
Walden, 1854
After a still winter night I awoke with the impression that some question had been put to me, which I had been endeavoring in vain to answer in my sleep, as what--how--when--where? But there was dawning Nature, in whom all creatures live, looking at my broad windows with serene and satisfied face, and no question on her lips. I awoke to an unanswered question, to Nature and daylight. The snow lying deep on the earth dotted with young pines, and the very slope of the hill on which my house is placed, seemed to say, Forward! Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution. "O Prince, our eyes contemplate with admiration and transmit to the soul the wonderful and varied spectacle of this universe. The night veils without doubt a part of this glorious creation; but day comes to reveal to us this great work, which extends from earth even into the plains of the ether."
Walden, 1854
[In the last days of Thoreau's life, when he was already an invalid confined indoors,] ... Edmund Hosmer told him of seeing a spring robin, Thoreau replied, "Yes, This is a beautiful world; but I shall see a fairer." He was greatly moved by the attentions of his friends and neighbors. He "came to feel very differently toward people," one of them reported, "and said if he had known he wouldn't have been so offish."
The devotion of his friends [said his sister Sophia] was most rare and touching; his room was made fragrant by the gift of flowers from young and old; fruit of every kind which the season afforded, and game of all sorts was sent him. It was really pathetic [i.e., greatly moving] the way in which the town was moved to minister to his comfort. Total strangers sent grateful messages, remembering the good he had done for them. All this attention was fully appreciated and very gratifying to Henry; he would sometimes say, "I should be ashamed to stay in this world after so much had been done for me, I could never repay my friends." ...
When he learned that some boys in the neighborhood had been robbing birds' nests, he requested that they be called into his sickroom and asked them if they knew "what a wail of sorrow and anguish their cruelty had sent all over the fields and through the woods." ...
[Yet,] When Thoreau learned that some of the boys of the neighborhood had brought him some game to eat, he asked, "Why did you not invite them in? I want to thank them for so much they are bringing me," ...
In his last illness [recalled a child of the neighborhood] it did not occur to us that he would care to see us, but his sister told my mother that he watched us from the window as we passed, and said: "Why don't they come to see me? I love them as if they were my own." After that we went often, and he always made us so welcome that we liked to go. I remember our last meetings with as much pleasure as the old playdays. ...
During his long illness [said Sophia] I never heard a murmur escape him, or the slightest wish expressed to remain with us; his perfect contentment was truly wonderful. None of his friends seemed to realize how very ill he was, so full of life and good cheer did he seem. One friend, as if by way of consolation, said to him, "Well, Mr. Thoreau, we must all go." Henry replied, "When I was a very little boy I learned that I must die, and I set that down, so of course I am not disappointed now. Death is as near to you as it is to me."
Some of his more orthodox friends and relatives tried to prepare him for death, with but little satisfaction to themselves. When an old friend of the family asked "how he stood affected toward Christ," he replied that "a snow-storm was more to him than Christ." When his aunt asked him if he had made his peace with God, he answered, "I did not know that we had ever quarrelled, Aunt." ...
He did not lose his sense of humor. He told Sanborn that whenever his corpulent, full-faced aunt came to his chamber door to inquire about his welfare, he thought her to be "the rising full moon." When someone commented how little his hair had grayed, even in his illness, he replied: "I have never had any trouble in all my life, or only when I was about fourteen; then I felt pretty bad a little while on account of my sins, but no trouble since that I know of. That must be the reason why my hair doesn't turn gray faster. But there is Blake; he is gray as a rat." ...
[When his time to leave finally came] his mother, sister, and his Aunt Louisa watched, his breathing grew fainter and fainter, and without the slightest struggle he died at nine o'clock. Sophia said, "I feel as if something very beautiful had happened,--not death."
From American Heritage, Vol. XIV, No.1 (Dec. 1962), pp.106-112
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
