Republic of Letters

“I say let the world go to hell but I should always have my tea.”

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Aversion

Since last summer, every time I read news on Chinese politics and its current state of affairs, I think of this book cover. My choice is between anger and apathy, and I am increasingly leaning towards the latter.

If the American people elect Donald Trump to the White House, they deserve it (for they did it to themselves). But the Chinese people do not deserve a pig.

It’s a sad situation.

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Untitled

Sunday in Central park; almost un-NYC-like. Ambition and anxiety are on vacation; people return to be family men and women, moms and dads, jogger and bikers.

There’s a new Munch exhibition in Neue Galerie. The prints Munch did in his earlier years are simultaneously captivating and mystifying. (I was particularly enamored with “Towards the Forest” series.) Some versions of the famous “Scream” are also on display. For the first time, I learn that the artist inscribed a poem at the bottom of the frame of this masterpiece.

I was walking along the road with two friends The Sun was setting – the Sky turned blood-red. And I felt a wave of Sadness – I paused tired to Death – Above the blue-black Fjord and City Blood and Flaming tongues hovered My friends walked on – I stayed behind – quaking with Angst – I felt the great Scream in Nature

Not entirely in keeping with the early spring mood outside, but it left a trace of Munch’s tortured angst in me long after I had taken off from the gallery.

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Last day of being 28. I’m aging calmly.

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Lincoln Center on an early Saturday morning. There's a tinge of sweetness in the air.

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Finding a Classicist in a Liberal

The Victorian Poetry class keeps my blood boil on a frigid Monday morning.

The woods decay, the woods decay and fall, The vapours week their burthen to the ground, Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath, And after many a summer dies the swan. Me only cruel immortality Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms, ...

The opening lines of Tennyson’s “Tithonus” grab my heart immediately: the calm, reflective lyric in the first four lines, almost Wordsworthian, only to be followed by a yearning voice of a soul, parched by his desire to die yet unable to do so.

How can one not be humbled by a genius poet like Tennyson? How can one not be blown away?

Sometimes I feel that being a classicist in literature and the arts inevitably makes one conservative, almost reactionary. If the best and the most glorious have already existed, only to dwarf whatever we have in this age and day, how can we not long for the past and possibly seek its restoration? In other words, if truth is already witnessed in the past, what benefits can future progress bring about?

I don’t consider myself a classicist (mainly due to deficiency of intellect but also perhaps out of personal volition), but I can see its appeal. It is why T. S. Eliot claims himself a “classical in literature, royalist in politics, and Anglo-Catholic in religion.” His lifelong effort in modern literature seeks to add to and integrate with the literary tradition, rather than to rebel against it. And it is also clearly reflected in his politics.

I often wonder how liberal intellectuals (not liberal ideologues) grapple with this dilemma: the recognition of equality for all and the notion that some sort of hierarchy should be maintained in the normative world in order to provide aesthetic or moral guidance. How do we ensure that people have their utmost freedom to like either Shakespearean plays or “Fifty Shades of Grey”, but in the meantime also instill a sense of value as which is more superior to the other? This may not matter to everyone. But to the learned class devoted to seek higher meanings in life, total equality and hierarchy seem to be in conflict every now and then.

I scribbled down similar thoughts about a month ago:

Being a liberal is not the same as being a relativist. The decree of “egalite” extends to the political, social and economic realms in so far as rights and access are concerned. Participants in the intellectual realm all, covertly or otherwise, worship and seek to establish some kin of pedigree, which the modern liberalism - especially when manifest in the political and social context - seeks to demolish. While the decree of free market preaches the psalm of no barrier to entry, barrier is all there is to define intellectualism.

But this is a topic to be expounded in more depth for another day.

Sorry I digressed. I only meant to say that I love my poetry class this semester. It’s snowing gently outside right now, wet and large snowflakes. My room is lit with yellow lights. I’m overcome by sense of peace and calm :)

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Valentine's Day.

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Who Likes a Humorless Bitch?

The answer is: Nobody.

I’ve been thinking about ambitious women and Hillary Clinton’s “likablity issue” quite a lot lately.

One thing I concluded is that it’s hard for an ambitious woman to be likable because she can’t afford to have a couple of self-deprecating moments in order to lighten the mood and appear more amicable. If a woman doesn’t take herself seriously, no one else does. They have to stand up for themselves at every instance, since backing down automatically means ceding control. That’s why it’s hard for them to let down the guard, especially when contending for power.

Over time, they become this stereotype of humorless bitches. Men do not find them amusing, naturally. And many fellow women do not take to them. “Take a chill pill, will you?” they’d jeer and sneer.

But we need the humorless bitches. They are paving the way with their bodies to true gender equality such that one day, we hope, women can be both ambitious and relaxed.

=======

It’s so friggin’ cold outside today, windy also. It almost makes me glad that I don’t have any Valentine’s Day plan. - Okay that sounds sour grape. But really, I do feel that way.

I have a ticket to the Cleveland Orchestra performing with Mitsuko Uchida at Carnegie Hall tonight. Haven’t decided if I should go, given the cold weather and my post-op swollen cheek. (I had three teeth - two molars and one wisdom - extracted yesterday. How about that!)

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Fictions

I do not like MFA-New Yorker style fictions. They are often filled with a protagonist’s neurosis insulated from the external world. There’s a tornado inside him or her, it’s all business as usual around him or her. The tornado comes and goes. Had it not for the storyteller, we’d never know about it.

I like my novels where things happen. I like them packed with a healthy does of -isms. That is almost a vulgar thing to say, I am aware. But only through human interaction can literature has the power to let grand theories and ideas run their course, manifest in blood and flesh, intertwined with history and future. Fictions should be where things happen, things happening and things in passing. Truth may be eternal and still, but it only reveals itself in rare fleeting moments of action. These fictional characters have maelstrom of strong emotions, but it is closely tied to the surroundings instead of something cooked and amplified entirely by themselves. There is no alienation. Correction: there is alienation but it is actively contemplated, looked into, and struggled against by the person who suffers from it. These actions, again, form bonds between the person and the world around him.

Unfortunately, I live more like a character from a New Yorker short story, giving up and giving in to isolation. In fact, I believe I self-alienate a lot of times. So, maybe I am one of those MFA fictional characters. I just don’t like seeing a reflection in the mirror.

But still, isn’t it that fictions are fictions because they transport us to unknown territory (often in the guise of familiar turf) and push the boundary of imagination?

I will continue skipping the fictions in my New Yorker magazines.

(*** It’s a quick quip on a frigid Saturday morning. Feels great to have a brain fart. Now that I’ve finished amusing myself, I shall now get back to hot coffee and work.)

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Winter solace is unassuming pastry coupled with hot tea.

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First Post

I wanted “Republic of Letters”, but someone beat me to it.