Quote of the Post

The writer closely observed the western front during World War One. His observations here are timeless.

"The well-born, the clever, the haughty, and the greedy, in their fear, pride, and willfulness, and the perplexity of their scheming, make a general mess of the world. Forthwith in a panic they cry, 'Calamity cometh!'....
  Then from out of their obscurity, wherein they dwelt because of their low worth arise the Nobodies; because theirs is the historic job of restoring again the upset balance of affairs. They make no fuss about it. Theirs is always the hard and dirty work. They have always done it. If they don't do it, it will not be done. They fall with a will and without complaint upon the wreckage willfully made of generations of such labor as theirs, to get the world right again, to make it habitable again, though not for themselves; for them, they must spend the rest of their lives re-creating order out of chaos. A hopeless task; but they continue at it un-murmuring, giving their bodies without stint, as once they gave their labour, to the fields and the sea. And some day the planet will get back to its old place under the sun; but not for them, not for them."



H.M. Tomlinson Holly Ho, essay, from his collection: Old Junk

Should Auld Acquaintance...

  Last week, I ran into an old friend at the library. I hadn't seen, or even thought of him, for at least twenty years; but it was as if no time had passed since last we met.
My friend's name is Horace Rumpole, English barrister. He's the creation of John Mortimer, and the 'Rumpole of the Bailey' stories have given me hours of entertainment.
I'd been looking for Walter Mosely's Devil in a Blue Dress, which happened to be out. Mortimer was shelved just to the left, and I grabbed a handful of old Rumpole, instead.
  Rumpole.
  I've often said that no one writing in the English language is better at naming characters than Charles Dickens (yeah, I know, Shakespeare wasn't bad, either.) Just think of Pip, or Scrooge and you know who they are. Old Fezziwig is the very embodiment of yuletide cheer. But Rumpole, now. Rumpled, gruff, portly; certainly a major-league wiseass. It's all in the name.
If you haven't figured it out, he comes highly recommended. The stories are witty and sometimes hilarious.


John Mortimer's Rumpole stories are collected in some of the following:


Rumpole of the Bailey
The Trials of Rumpole
Rumpole for the Defense
Rumpole's Return
Rumpole and the Golden Thread
Rumpole's Last Case
Rumpole and the Age of Miracles


Non Rumpole books include:


Paradise Postponed
Summer's Lease
Titmuss Regained


There are many more than I've listed. Good Reading.

None So Blind

Dwell on the past- lose an eye
Forget the past- lose both eyes
  Russian proverb

  On December ninth, the New York Times published an editorial by Anthony Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, in which he called on President Obama to pardon the torturers from Bush and Cheney on down.
  Romero argues, correctly, I've come to believe, that only by granting formal pardons can we get recognition of the crimes that the Bush administration perpetrated. Without prosecutions there is, in effect, a 'tacit' pardon that leaves the door open for the future use of torture. The likelihood of torture being used in the future, especially after another attack, is quite high. Indeed, only John McCain, of all leading Republicans, has repudiated the use of torture. A victim of torture himself, McCain said that the torture policy "stained our national honor." As a combat veteran, unlike the chicken hawks of the Bush administration and Republican leadership, I think the senator has a grasp of the world that can't be gotten from fictional movies and television shows.
  The report is being derided by the right who seem to think that torture is not only right and effective, but isn't torture in the first place. After all, the Bush administration gave itself legal permission to use 'enhanced interrogation techniques' such as: sleep deprivation, stress positions, and waterboarding. We prosecuted Japanese and Germans as war criminals for using the same 'EIT's'. I guess I agree that enhanced interrogation techniques are not torture- torture has fewer syllables.
  Senator McCain realizes that the torture techniques "not only failed their purpose- to secure actionable intelligence to prevent further attacks on the U.S. and our allies- but actually damaged our security interests, as well as our reputation as a force for good in the world." He also, correctly, said that "This report strengthens self-government and, ultimately, I believe, America's security and stature in the world." That should shut the mouths of the apologists, but it won't.
  The ability to simply and forever mark the torturers as criminals is something that I don't believe the President will do. But he should. We must have the argument now, while we have the luxury of time; not after we are confronted with smoking ruins someday, after the inevitable attack. The American people have never shown a willingness to let contemplation interfere with grief and anger on a national scale. After Lincoln's assassination, Herman Melville wrote a poem, The Martyr, in which he said: " ...the people in their weeping/ Bare the iron hand;/ Beware the people weeping/ When they bare the iron hand." The punitive measures the south faced during reconstruction were certainly due to the shadow of blame for his death.
  I don't think that future presidents will necessarily let the criminality of torture stop them. We have already seen the self justification that the Bush administration used. A future President, so inclined, will justify his actions on our grief, and the bankrupt maxim that 'the ends justify the means'.
  The pathetic, heart-breaking reality of this country today is that we tortured. Part of the remedy- pardoning the criminals- is more pathetic and heart-breaking, but it is a start.


Postscript: The statute of limitations now shields some of the torturers. I believe that torture should be considered a war crime without a statute of limitations. Perhaps we can someday change the law before we replay this tragedy.

Notes

The proverb comes from memory. I am nearly positive that I encountered it reading Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago. The possibility exists that I'm mistaken.

The editorial cited is from the December 9, 2014 New York Times editorial- Pardon Bush and Those Who Tortured by Anthony D. Romero

All the McCain quotes are from the CNN Politics website article McCain makes passionate defense for torture report's release by Alexandra Jaffe 12/10/14

I encourage you to read the Melville poem The Martyr. Melville's emotions are palpable: the raw grief and anger that the country felt are fresh. He also correctly prophesied the harsh punishment the South would soon face. You may find this poem on the internet, or, more appropriately, check out a collection of his poetry from the library. It occurs to me that Project Gutenberg probably has them. I'm going there now.  

The Song of Wandering Aengus

 

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread:
And when white moths were on the wing;
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and tides are done
The silver apples of the moon
The golden apples of the sun.



William Butler Yeats

...I will find out where she has gone...

Quote of the Post

"You can never, unfortunately, make virtue as interesting as vice, for virtue is negative and vice is positive. The man who does not do certain things is the better citizen, but he has not the glamour of the man who does do them. It is sad but true."

Arthur Conan Doyle, The Last Resource, short story

The perfect explanation of tabloid journalism, I think.

" 'It would be well,' the Scotsman concluded, 'if those who express opinions on such subjects would bear in mind those simple rules of evidence laid down by Auguste Dupin. "Exclude the impossible," he remarks in one of Poe's immortal stories, "and whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth." ' "

Doyle, The Fate Of the Evangeline, short story

Fans of Sherlock Holmes will recognize this as his famous rule. This story was published in 1885, two years before the first Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, was published. I have yet to search Poe's stories for the quote, but I have never heard it attributed to anyone but Holmes (Doyle). I wonder, though, if perhaps Doyle was already thinking and writing about his soon to be iconic creation, and needed a source for the quote. As a fan of Poe, I look forward to the upcoming research.

Quote of the Post

"For all its fiery rhetoric and holy panoply, the second crusade turned quickly into an anarchic mess and, finally, an unmitigated disaster. It is an axiom of history- which it would reward contemporary politicians to consider- that few human endeavors prove as pointless as projects of religiously inspired military idealism unaccompanied by worldly understanding, strategic thoughtfulness, and common sense."

Thomas Cahill Mysteries of the Middle Ages

Astute readers will recognize this writer. He is on my recommended list for the series of books he calls 'The Hinges of History'. This quote is from one of the books in that series.

There are so many groups and nations to which this passage could be aimed, that I leave it to you to apply as needed.

Quote of the Post

"A few lines glimpsed on a page may alter your whole trend of thought for the day, reverse the currents of the mind, change the profile of the city....The moment when one meets a book and knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that that book must be his- not necessarily now, but some time- is among the happiest excitements of the spirit....There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love, and like that colossal adventure it is an experience of great social import....We visit bookshops not so often to buy any one special book, but rather to rediscover, in the happier and more expressive words of others, our own encumbered soul."

Christopher Morley On Visiting Bookshops, essay, in Pipefuls

Have any of you felt that way, too? Until I read Morley, I thought I was alone in the universe. I've bought almost all my books used and there is nothing better than wandering the stacks and having something completely unexpected catch my eye. I felt all of the above when I laid eyes and hands on two amazing books in a museum gift shop: Complete Works of both DaVinci and Michelangelo. Huge format volumes, with a comparable price tag, by the great publishing house Taschen. As an artist, and reader, I have to have them- some time.

Notes on Quotes

Observant readers of these blogs may have noticed that I have a slight penchant for sharing interesting quotations. It is a predisposition that long predates blogging. In fact, I have many old journals loaded with gleanings from my reading. I have, occasionally, committed the more interesting ones to memory, squeezing them in amongst the poetry, Gettysburg Address, the first half of the Declaration of Independence, and all the Shakespeare that can be crammed into my thick Irish skull.

When I started putting quotes in here, it was only a matter of time before I decided to use a few from memory, and was faced with the very real problem of finding out if memory truly served. Whenever I've quoted the Bard I've easily looked up the needed lines to check proper phrasing and punctuation (who can ever remember that? ) Trying to find quotes from different writers, however, aint always so easy.Three times now, having failed to find the needed passages on the internet, I've re-read the novels in order to confirm the quotes. It wasn't the chore you might be thinking, as the novels were by Steinbeck, R.L.Stevenson and Arthur Conan Doyle. And, no, the Doyle was not a Sherlock Holmes, but one of his lesser known historical novels, Micah Clarke. It was that experience that occasions this piece.

Here's the quotation as I remembered it:

     Beware the zealot, for he will not only fight for his own right of worship, wherein he hath justice. He will also presume upon the consciences of others, thereby falling into the very error against which he fights.

Nice, huh? As relevant today as in the nineteenth century, when it was written. Also, not quite on the mark. Here is the actual quote:

     For the zealot is a man who not only defends his own right of worship, wherein he hath justice, but wishes to impose upon the consciences of others, by which he falls into the very error against which he fights.

Ok. Conan Doyle gives it a bit more poetry, perhaps, but the meaning is the same in both versions. I seem to have edited it down to its essence. Or, at least, I'd like to think so. My memory also tricked me in the setting of the story. I had remembered it as taking place during the English Civil War- Oliver Cromwell, and all that, you know. It turns out that I was close there as well. Micah Clarke is the story of the Duke of Monmouth's Rebellion which happened about a generation later.

A mind can be a minefield if you're not careful. As for me, it was no great effort to re-read those books. Re-discovering great writing is nearly as joyful as discovering it in the first place. I wish all of you happy hunting.

Quote of the Post

In the midst of moving, the writer is in a quandary over which books he can safely store, and which ones he must keep with him. For: "Suppose we want to look up a quote, in those late hours when all really worthwhile reading is done?"
"Those late hours when all really worthwhile reading is done." This guy was a kindred spirit. Is it any wonder that he coined a word for those who like to read in bed? (see earlier post for that word)
And who wrote it, you ask?
Yes, Morley.

Christopher Morley, Moving, essay in Pipefuls

Quote of the Post

" 'Lord!' he said, 'when you sell a man a book you don't sell him just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue- you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humor and ships at sea by night- there's all heaven and earth in a book, a real book I mean.' "

Christopher Morley, Parnassus on Wheels

Get used to Morley quotes. As I find more of his books and re-read Parnassus and Haunted Bookshop, I will be sharing.

Quote of the Post (and a definition)

"Read, every day, something no one else is reading.
Think, every day, something no one else is thinking.
Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do.
It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity."

Christopher Morley, a final message to his friends.

Librocubicularist: One fond of reading in bed. Coined by Morley in The Haunted Bookshop.

I was pleased to find out that someone had gone to the trouble of coining a word for my third favorite thing to do in bed. I was also pleased to realize that I wasn't the only one who enjoyed it.