Provocative Literature

[VonWeiner]

I wanted to start a thread where people could post pieces of writing that have had an impact on their thinking. Not only could we introduce each other to books we find great, but maybe we could understand each other better. So many books have affected me deeply. I wanted to find a place to share them.
I thought of putting this on the "Books" section in the forum, but wasn't sure if any would see it. The Q&A gets the most traffic. It can always be moved though.

I will post this piece and hope others will post their's as well. I have transcribed it from the book in front of me and forgive me if the formatting makes it hard to read. My typing skills are not what they should be. Maybe someone out there knows of a place you can get books already put into a format that you can cut and paste from. Until then, it's sore fingers for me.

It comes from Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn - The Gulag Archipelago. I have mentioned him before and this book in particular is one of the best I've ever read. It is deeply sad, tragic. Even in translation, the meaning is profound.

On Evildoers:

An eyewitness from the group around Gorky , who was close to Yagoda at the time, reports that in the vestibule of the bathhouse on Yagoda's estate near Moscow, ikons were placed so that Yagoda and his comrades, after undressing, could use them as targets for revolver practice before going in to take their baths.

Just how are we to understand that? As the act of an evildoer? What sort of behavior is it? Do such people really exist?

We would prefer to say that such people cannot exist, that there aren't any. It is permissible to portray evildoers in a story for children, so as to keep the picture simple. But when the great world literature of the past - Shakespeare, Schiller, Dickens - inflates and inflates images of evildoers of the blackest shades, it seems somewhat farcical and clumsy to our contemporary perception. The trouble lies in the way these classic evildoers are pictured. They recognize themselves as evildoers, and they know their souls are black. And they reason: "I cannot live unless I do evil. So I'll set my father against my brother! I'll drink the victims sufferings until I'm drunk with them!" Iago very precisely identifies his purposes and his motives as being black and born of hate.

But no; that's not the way it is! To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he is doing is good, or else it's a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek justification for his actions.

Macbeth's self-justifications were feeble - and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb too. The imaginations and the spiritual strength of Shakespeare's evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology.

Ideology - that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others' eyes, so that he won't hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors. That was how the agents of the Inquisition fortified their wills: by invoking Christianity; the conquerors of foreign lands, by extolling the granduer of their Motherland; the colonizers, by civilization; the Nazis, by race; and the Jacobins (early and late), by equality, brotherhood, and the happiness of future generations.

Thanks to ideology, the twentieth century was fated to experience evildoing on a scale calculated in the millions. This cannot be denied, nor passed over, nor suppressed. How, then, do we dare insist that evildoers do not exist? And who was it that destroyed these millions?

And one more that seemed to reflect current events - same book:

...very likely spy mania was not merely the narrow-minded predilection of Stalin alone. It was very useful for everyone who possessed any privileges. It became the natural justification for increasingly widespread secrecy, the withholding of information, closed doors and security passes, fenced-off dachas and secret, restricted special shops. People had no way of penetrating the armor plate of spy mania and learning how the bureaucracy made its cozy arrangements, loafed, blundered, ate, and took its amusements.

*the above excerpts were taken from The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn - Translation by Thomas P. Whitney, Harper & Row, Publishers

[VonWeiner]

Thx Berry

I was going to put it somewhere, but wasn't sure if it would go in Books or here or somewhere else.

Not many seem to come off Q&A, myself included until recently.

Thanks for taking the time to move it. :D

[Whiskers]

That's okay. Thanks for being such a good sport about it.

[VonWeiner]

No problemo Berry. thx

Here is a bit of Aristotle that I like.


Aristotle - Nicomachean Ethics

On the generous person's state:

He gives without stint

It is also very definitely proper to the generous person to exceed so much in giving that he leaves less for himself, since it is proper to a generous person not to look out for himself. However, the reference to exceeding must not mislead us. For in speaking of generosity we refer to generosity that fits one's property. For what is generous does not depend on the quantity of what is given, but on the state of the giver, and that kind of giving fits one's property. Hence one who gives less (than another) may still be more generous, if he has less to give.

He is not concerned with wealth

It is not easy for a generous person to grow rich, since he is ready to spend, not to take or keep, and honours wealth for the sake of giving, not for itself. Indeed fortune is denounced for this reason, that those who most deserve to grow rich actually do so least. In fact, however, this is not an unreasonable result, since someone cannot possess wealth, any more than other things, if he pays no attention to possessing it.

The generous person is also an easy partner to associate with in dealings that involve money; for he can easily be treated unjustly, since he does not honour money, and is more grieved if he has failed to spend what it was right to spend than if he has spent what it was wrong to spend.

I left out a paragraph or two in between these about wastefulness and indiscriminate giving and the pleasure and pains associated with both (for the generous person). The above is what I liked the most.


*the above excerpts were taken from Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle - Translation by Terence Irwin, Hackett Publishing Company

[VonWeiner]

Next installment: Walden

I wanted to put in this piece from Henry David Thoreau - Walden


From the chapter entitled Reading

However much we may admire the orator's occasional bursts of eloquence, the noblest written words are commonly as far behind or above the fleeting spoken language as the firmament with its stars is behind the clouds. There are the stars, and they who can may read them. The astronomers forever comment on and observe them. They are not exhalations like our daily colloquies and vaporous breath. What is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the study. The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and heart of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.

No wonder that Alexander carried the Illiad with him on his expeditions in a precious casket. A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips; - not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself.

Books are the treasured of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations... Their authors are a natural and irresistable aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings and emperors, exert an influence on mankind.


...It is not all books that are as dull as their readers. There are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand, would be more salutary than the morning or the spring to our lives, and possibly put a new aspect on the face of things for us. How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. These same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occured to all the wise men; not one has been omitted; and each has answered them, according to his ability, by his words and his life

Between the second and third paragraphs above, Thoreau spends a few sentences on Grecian marble. I felt this was tangential and wanted to keep the focus on books. The last paragraph was a bit farther ahead. I wrote it down because I thought it important.

*the above excerpts were taken from Walden and Civil Disobedience, Henry David Thoreau - The New American Library Inc. Publishers

[VonWeiner]

Next - Plato

Plato - The Republic

Here is a passage from Plato concerning the "just" man. It is an excerpt, but makes a good point. Socrates is the primary speaker. I have placed the letters S and P for clarification (in case my typing is confusing :?. It may be more confusing now...)

Socrates(S) speaks to Polemarchos(P):

S: "We said first it was just to do well to the friend and to do ill to the enemy: now we must add something to this 'just', and say it is just to do well to the friend if he is good, and to injure the enemy if he is bad?"

P: "Certainly," he said. " That seems right to me now."

S: "And yet," said I, "is it right for the just man to injure any man at all?"

P: "Of course it is," he said, "to injure bad men and enemies."

S: "Take horses: When injured do they become better or worse?"

P: "Worse"

S: "Worse in the virtue of a dog, or in the virtue of a horse?"

P: "Worse in the virtue of a horse"

S: "And dogs being injured become worse in the virtue of a dog, not of a horse?"

P: "That is necessary."

S: "And what about men, my friend? Are we not to say that they become worse in human virtue when they are injured?"

P: "Certainly"

S: "Is not justice a human virtue?"

P: "That is necessary too."

S: "Then, my friend, if men are injured, they must necessarily become more unjust."

P: "So it seems."

S: "Take music, now: Is it possible for the musical to make men unmusical by means of music?"

P: "No."

S: "Or horsemen bad horsemen by means of horsemenship?"

P: "Impossible."

S: "But can the just make men unjust by justice? Or in general, can the good make men bad by means of virtue - is that possible?"

P: "No, impossible."

S: "For it is not the work of heat to make cold, but the opposite?"

P: "Yes."

S: "And it is not the work of what is dry to make things wet, but the opposite?"

P: "Certainly."

S: "Nor is it the work of the good to injure, but the opposite?"

P: "So it seems."

S: "And the just man is good?"

P: "Certainly."

S: "Then it is not the work of the just man to injure, Polemarchos, whether to injure a friend or anyone else, anyone - but that is the work of the unjust man."

P: "I think you are absolutely right, Socrates."

S: "Then if one says it is right to give back what is owing to each, and means by this that injury is owing to his enemies from the just man and benefit to his friends, the one who said it was no wise man; for he did not speak the truth, since it has been shown that to injure anyone, is never just, anywhere."

Ah well, I tried to make things a bit easier to understand with the "S" and "P" but it may be distracting. Sorry if this is the case. I am getting the feeling I am the only one reading this thread anyway! :lol:

Oh well, I need a place where I can drone on and on, without being "tossed off" the stage.

*the above excerpts were taken from Great Dialogues of Plato - Translation by W.H.D. Rouse, The New English Library Limited, London

[VonWeiner]

More on evildoing from Solzhenitsyn

Evildoing continued:

Evidently evildoing also has a threshold magnitude.

Yes, a human being hesitates and bobs back and forth between good and evil all his life. He slips, falls back, clambers up, repents, things begin to darken again. But just so long as the threshold of evildoing is not crossed, the possibility of returning remains, and he himself is still within reach of our hope.

But when, through the density of evil actions, the result either of their own extreme degree or of the absoluteness of his power, he suddenly crosses that threshhold, he has left humanity behind, and without, perhaps, the possibility of return.

*the above excerpts were taken from The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn - Translation by Thomas P. Whitney, Harper & Row, Publishers

[Grey Mouser]

Thanks for the extracts VonWeiner. I read them with interest. Keep 'em coming, especially Plato and Solzhenitzyn. I'm not ready for you to be pelted off stage just yet. I'm saving my ammo for the hecklers at the back :)

[VonWeiner]

Thx Mouser! I try to put ones up as often as I can. I have so many passages from books I'd like to share. It just takes me a while to type them out (type = hunt and peck for me). Need a place where whole books are on the net, but then again, I would get lazy cutting and pasting. Transcription is probably the best.

"pelted off stage", That made me laugh! :lol:

[VonWeiner]

Since you asked for more Solzhenitsyn, here you go. This is a paragraph about the people who were shot during the time the events of The Gulag Archipelago take place:

Thus many were shot - thousands at first, then hundreds of thousands. We divide, we multiply, we sigh, we curse. But still all and all, these are just numbers. They overwhelm the mind and then are easily forgotten. And if someday the relatives of those who had been shot were to send one publisher photographs of their executed kin, and an album of those photographs were to be published in several volumes, then just by leafing through them and looking into the extinguished eyes we should learn much that would be valuable for the rest of our lives. Such reading, almost without words, would leave a deep mark on our hearts for all eternity.

In one household that I am familiar with, where some former zeks* live, the following ceremony takes place: On March 5, the day of the death of the Head Murderer*, they spread out on a table all the photographs of those who were shot and those who died in camps that they have been able to collect - several dozen of them. And throughout the day solemnity reigns in the apartment - somewhat like that of a church, somewhat like that of a museum. There is funeral music. Friends come to visit, to look at the photographs, to keep silent, to listen, to talk softly together. And then they leave without saying goodbye.

And that is how it ought to be everywhere. At least these deaths would have left a small scar on our hearts. So that they should not have died in vain!

And I, too, have a few such chance photographs. Look at these at least:

Viktor Petrovich Pokrovsky - shot in Moscow in 1918.

Aleksandr Shtrobinder, a student - shot in Petrograd in 1918.

Vasily Ivanovich Anichkov - shot in the Lubyanka in 1927.

Aleksandr Andreyevich Svechin, a professor of the General Staff - shot in 1935

Mikhail Aleksandrovich Reformatsky, an agronomist - shot in Orel in 1938

Yelizaveta Yevgenyevna Anichkova - shot in a camp on the Yenisei in 1942

I scanned the page from my rather worn-out copy of the book and uploaded them so you could view them. These pictures are at the end of the chapter which this passage is from and they are heart-breaking I think. Look into their eyes and know these people for just a moment.

*zek - prison slang for prisoner, derived from zaklyuchenny, Russian word for "prisoner"

*Head Muderer - Joseph Stalin


*the above excerpts were taken from The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn - Translation by Thomas P. Whitney, Harper & Row, Publishers

[VonWeiner]

Melville

Here is a bit of writing from Herman Melville, Moby Dick

When I read this book, I found passages inside which seemed to speak directly to me. It was as if Melville shared my thoughts (or troubles).

Moby Dick, Chapter 49 - The Hyena

There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. However, nothing dispirits, and nothing seems worth while disputing. He bolts down all events, all creeds, and beliefs, and persuasions, all hard things visible and invisible, never mind how knobby; as an ostrich of potent digestion gobbles down bullets and gun flints. And as for small difficulties and worryings, prospects of sudden disaster, peril of life and limb; all these, and death itself, seem to him only sly, good-natured hits, and jolly punches in the side bestowed by the unseen and unaccountable old joker. That odd sort of wayward mood I am speaking of, comes over a man only in some time of extreme tribulation; it comes in the very midst of his earnestness, so that what just before might have seemed to him a thing most momentous, now seems but a part of the general joke.

And one other line that made sense to me at one time when I was upset and depressed. I won't bore you all with the details but, suffice to say, it was a melancholy I could not seem to shake - I felt it was consuming me.

Moby Dick, Chapter 44 - The Chart

God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart forever; that vulture the very creature he creates.

As some of you may have guessed, I am one of those people (geeks) that reads with a pencil or highlighter close at hand. I mark many of my books as I read them, if I find something that interests me. And (before you gasp) I only do this to the cheap copies, never with first editions or old/rare books. As I said - geek. I admit this only because I think I am in similar company here. :lol:

*the above excerpts were taken from Moby Dick, Herman Melville - The Great Books Foundation Publishers

[VonWeiner]

Double Post

I posted this in the "Current Affairs" topic in Q&A and will post it here as well - with some edits. I wrote:

I found a place to get some of the dialogues of Plato.

http://classics.mit.edu/Plato

This page is an index of the pages MIT has for Plato. There are text versions of the dialogues and HTML versions (which may be easier to read). Many are listed but not all. I use a book by W.H.D. Rouse, Great Dialogues of Plato, John Clive Graves Books 1956. There are more recent versions of this same book and I just think his translations are the best and there are more than on the page listed above.

I have been very busy and haven't posted here in a while and now I post a link. Ah, must be getting lazy. :lol:

[Anonymous]

There are many pieces of writing and film and music that have moved and influenced me, I just find it very hard to singularly identify singular passages.
Dorian Grey has, in places certainly made me think ,though usually it merely makes me recoil in horror, especially if one follows the full extent of Harry's theories. I actually once went to buy The Republic but instead bought Oscar Wilde and Brave New World by Huxley. May I reccommend Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell by Huxley, a book that is both insightful and profound, yet manages to remain accessible.
Machiavelli's the Prince, though I have not completed it, has had a similar effect, especially his chapter on Alexander and Persia. (I think it's Alexander and Persia, that's not the exact name but that's the general topic!) By the by, could I ask anybody to recommend any Sartre, as I went to buy Nausea, but instead bought Les Miserables, so as to avoid disappointment, and, incidentally, is Camus woth a read. (I'm off to buy some books come the Weekend to tide me over the seemingly endless homework my Year 10 -I'm not sure what Grade that is in America, it's the forth grade after starting High School-) I will certainl;y hunt out Solzhenitsyn, though I must confess to have never heard of him.
I will also look out for Aristotle, though, thankfully, I have heard of him!
I was warned off Moby Dick by my father, though not some sort of illiterate oaf, he said that it was a book 'ingrained with in its own world,' I think were his worlds. Any thoughts on this?
I would also be very glad of any mentions of non-specific authors, as I'm running out of books, I've only got about 10 left to read. Thankyou.

Actually, while I think about it, the single kost moving passage I've read, overused it may be, is the climax of Of Mice and Men, which still, for me retains its beauty every time I read it. Is the Lord of the Flies worth reading. Sorry about all the questions!
Hope to have a reply soon, many thanks!

[VonWeiner]

I always loved the preface to Dorian Gray,

The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.

The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things. The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass. The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.

The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium.

No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved. No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.

No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.
Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.

Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art. From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft is the type.

All art is at once surface and symbol.
Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.
When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself.

We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

All art is quite useless.

*The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde, Wordsworth Editions Limited 1992

I love Machiavelli too - I think I posted his writing somewhere on the site.

As far as Moby Dick goes, I liked it. There are certain parts that are wonderful and others that are boring (his chapter named Cetology with its descriptions of different kinds of whales had me sleeping!), but I definitely recommend it. One person who knows a lot more than I do concerning Melville is Carter Kaplan who posts here regularly. He is an English professor and I think he belongs to some Melville Society group. He could probably offer you a lot of advice on Moby Dick.

Authors... Hmmm...

Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange - read the book, the movie is good, but the book really immerses you into the language of it.

George Orwell
Gene Wolfe (anything)
George Eliot (aka Mary Anne Evans) Silas Marner, The Weaver of Raveloe - this book is so moving at times and is one of my favorites.
Harry Harrison - Stainless Steel Rat books
RE Howard
ER Burroughs
HD Thoreau
SunTzu
HP Lovecraft
Fritz Lieber
Fyodor Dostoevsky - Crime and Punishment - this book will have your heart skipping a beat or two when you read it. Very intense, very good.
A. Conan Doyle - love most of his Sherlock Holmes stories
Voltaire - Candide
Plato - great philosophy and Socrates is comical at times - I call his writing "mental gymnastics"
Aristotle - he is much more serious than Plato and tends to explain things as a teacher would, whereas Plato explains things as a storyteller.
Sophocles - riveting stories, even in translation
Aristophanes - very funny at times
Homer - what can I say, it's Homer
Euripides
Aeschylus - one thing I love about the Greek authors is that their stories tend to intertwine - much like Moorcock's

Solzhenitsyn, Solzhenitsyn, Solzhenitsyn - The Gulag Archipelago, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, etc. He is one of the most profound authors I have ever read.

I know I am not mentioning many others and I am sure after I post I will say, "damn, I should have mentioned...". But I could go on all night. Try some of the above and ask around the site too. There are so many people here that are well read and can give you great advice. I know Michael Moorcock has mentioned many writers that he likes.

Good luck Red, sorry for the long post! 8O

[Anonymous]

Many thanks, worry not about the duration of you post, I read it with interest. I have read Sun Tzu's The Art of War and found it immensly interesting, I will try and get some of these you mentioned second hand, in order to save my fast decreasing stock of cash.