et cetera

With the new academic year about to crash, this seems more than usually relevant.

For some reason my most vivid memories concern examinations. Big amphitheater in Goldwin Smith. Exam from 8am to 10:30. About 150 students—unwashed, unshaven young males and reasonably well-groomed young females. A general sense of tedium and disaster. Half-past eight. Little coughs, the clearing of nervous throats, coming in clusters of sound, rustling of pages. Some of the martyrs plunged in meditation, their arms locked behind their heads. I meet a dull gaze directed at me, seeing in me with hope and hate the source of forbidden knowledge. Girl in glasses comes up to my desk to ask: “Professor Kafka, do you want us to say that…? Or do you want us to answer only the first part of the question?” The great fraternity of C-minus, backbone of the nation, steadily scribbling on. A rustle arising simultaneously, the majority turning a page in their bluebooks, good teamwork. The shaking of a cramped wrist, the failing ink, the deodorant that breaks down. When I catch eyes directed at me, they are forthwith raised to the ceiling in pious meditation. Windowpanes getting misty. Boys peeling off sweaters. Girls chewing gum in rapid cadence. Ten minutes, five, three, time’s up.

From Alvin Toffler, “Vladimir Nabokov—A Candid Conversation with the Artful, Erudite Author of Lolita“, in Playboy, Vol. 1, January 1964, pp. 35-45. Reprinted in Strong Opinions, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1973. (Via the always wonderful Sentences).

Two questions:

1. Why call this either “candid” or a “conversation”, when it is well known that Nabokov demanded his questions be sent in advance, and then proceeded to read his answers from notecards—or simply handed the notecards to his interviewer?
2. Can the choice of Toffler to interview Nabokov be any more bizarre? Toffler?

I am not here concerned to enquire under what circumstances some of us might with advantage take a lesson from the cow. I have really no doubt that such exist.

G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica: With the Preface to the Second Edition and Other Papers, Thomas Baldwin (Ed), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, [1903] 1993, p. 96. (Via N. Moore presumably means to assert the existence of such lessons, though elsewhere he asserts the existence of cows, too).

In The Rest is Noise, Ross mentions (p. 182) the following “placard-like notice” appearing in the preface to the Ragtime movement of Paul Hindemith‘s Suite ‘1922′:

Mode d’emploi – Direction for Use!!

Pay no attention to what you have learned in your piano lessons.
Do not consider for long whether you should play D# with the fourth or sixth finger.
Play this piece very ferociously, but keep strictly in rhythm like a machine.
Regard the piano here as an interesting kind of percussion instrument and treat it accordingly.

(This translation from Glenn Watkins, Soundings: Music in the Twentieth Century, Schirmer, New York, 1988, p. 289. Cited by Avior Byron, Schoenberg as Performer: An Aesthetics in Practice, PhD Thesis, Royal Holloway, University of London, London, p. 64).

Now, Charles Bukowski was born in Germany and voraciously consumed classical music, so the title of his Play the Piano is almost certainly a nod to Hindemith:

These days there are lots of interesting things being done to pianos, and I’m glad to be getting back into New York early enough to hear this:

There are many useless ways to idle away time on the internet. And then there is this.

Roberto Bolaño would have had a lot of fun with this–

Scott Alan Carson, “The Stature and Body Mass of Mexicans in the Nineteenth-Century United States“, in Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 39, No. 2, Autumn 2008, pp. 211-232.

Abstract
Data taken from nineteenth-century American prison records reveal that the statures of Mexicans born in Mexico declined, whereas the statures of Mexicans born in the United States increased. The body mass indexes of both Mexicans born in Mexico and in the United States, however, remained approximately constant throughout the nineteenth century. The evidence suggests that even though the two groups shared a common background, their biological living conditions differed markedly.

Data

This list seems to leave off the occupation poet. But then, in which category would it go?

Over at Three Percent, Chad has been pushing Paul Verhaeghen for some time now. I had initially been very excited about reading Omega Minor, which sounded like a Pynchon-esque historical caterwaul, not least because Verhaeghen is by day a professor of psychology working on cognitive aging. In what free time did he manage to produce a more than six hundred page novel, in Flemish, and then translate it himself into English? (The still-green academic asked himself). After reading the excerpt available on the Dalkey Archive website, however, I became far less enthusiastic—this now sounded like just the sort of hyperbolic sex-crazed narcissism that has kept me away from John Updike. I still may read Omega Minor, out of curiosity—but in the meantime, I propose to establish a new award, to be irregularly announced right here:

The Et Cætera Awards For Best Use of The Expression “Et Cætera” Or Any Variant Thereof

Without further ado, I confer the first award on Michael Orthofer, for the first use in his review of Omega Minor.

Almost exactly a year ago, I noted the release of Félix Fénéon’s Novels in Three Lines. Now, in a stroke of genius, NYRB Classics is broadcasting the entire book through Twitter. (Insert commentary on the ever-shifting world of media here).

I am currently reading Alex Ross’s excellent history of twentieth century classical music, The Rest is Noise. In Chapter 5, “Apparition from the Woods: The Loneliness of Jean Sibelius” (an edited version of which is available online), Ross describes Sibelius’s descent into alcoholism by referring to a painting:

A widely discussed painting by the Finnish artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela, “The Problem,” depicted Sibelius drinking with friends, his eyes rolled back in his head.

Just as with his earlier discussion of photographs of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern posing in the uniforms of the Austrian army, no associated image is contained in the glossy centre pages of the book. So I thought I would post some more information and images here, so that other people reading the book can easily see what Ross is describing (unfortunately I haven’t yet been able to find the army photographs online).

It turns out that The Problem is more frequently referred to under the Finnish titles Probleemi or Kajustaflan, and that it was in fact a draft for the later work Symposion. Here it is:

And here is the later work Symposion:

The other figures in the paintings are (left to right) the painter himself, the composer and critic Oskar Merikanto, the conductor Robert Kajanus, and Sibelius—while the drink on the table is DOM Benedictine. The second work is more carefully executed and less fantastical; but perhaps of most interest in the historical context is that the figures are less wildly drunk than darkly intense and brooding. Where in the first painting Sibelius is pale and wasted, and Gallen-Kallela snarling directly at the viewer, in the second painting the artists are represented as staring intently at the wings of Osiris, lost in philosophical reflection rather than drunken stupor. Gallen-Kallela’s eyes are completely sunken into shadow, while Kajanus holds a cigarette that looks like it will burn off in his hand. I wonder whether this was the painter’s response to the public controversy over the raw drunkenness depicted in the first painting, which was loud enough to result in Sibelius being refused loans—a painterly revision designed to reveal the real heart of the Symposion evenings superficially depicted in Kajustaflan.

More background on Sibelius’s so-called “Symposion Years” can be found here.

In the latest issue of the British Academy Review, there is an excerpt from Robin Dunbar‘s 2007 Joint British Academy/British Psychological Society Lecture, appearing under the title “Why Humans aren’t just Great Apes” [PDF]. The article begins with Dunbar recapitulating his famous argument for his eponymous number, complete with the following, lovely, table.

The number ~150 was initially obtained by noting the relationship between brain size and social group size in different primate species and extrapolating for humans (measuring the scale and nature of human social networks is obviously extremely difficult—or at least it was before Facebook—and so there remains much dispute about whether the number is accurate).

But what is it about brain size that enables the formation of larger social networks? Dunbar speculates that the difference concerns what he (misleadingly) calls theory of mind—the ability to form concepts of the intentional states of others (the label is misleading because there is an ongoing debate in philosophy and cognitive science concerning whether this ability is in fact underwritten by anything resembling a theory. Elsewhere, Dunbar has argued that there are also correlations between memory capacity and other structural properties of human social groups).

Call first order intentionality the possession of an intentional state directed towards a non-intentional state of affairs, and then (n)–order intentionality the possession of an intentional state directed at an (n-1)–order intentional state (whether in oneself or another). So for example, my belief that Paris is windy tonight is a first order intentional state, while your belief that I believe that Paris is windy tonight is a second order intentional state, and so on. Dunbar reports research showing that two-thirds of humans are only capable of fifth-order intentionality or below, while three-quarters of us are only capable of sixth-order intentionality or below. So far, so interesting (Dunbar does not mention the heated contest over the existence of chimpanzee theory of mind, the result of which would presumably have significant ramifications for his thesis—hopefully the full lecture, still forthcoming, will elaborate).

But then comes exactly the sort of fanciful leap we have come to expect from evolutionary psychologists. And I quote:

Consider the case of the audience watching Shakespeare’s Othello. They have to believe that Iago intends that Othello imagines that Desdemona is in love with Cassio, an activity involving four levels of intentionality. However, notice that, at this point, the kind of story they are dealing with is not especially demanding (or, for that matter, particularly enthralling). Why should Othello care if Desdemona fantasises about Cassio? The bottom line of everyday life is that very few of us would be anything but mildly bemused by such a trivial phenomenon, and the story would end there as a dull narrative. What gives Shakespeare’s play its bite is the fact that Iago is able to persuade Othello that Cassio reciprocates Desdemona’s feelings, thereby creating a romantic triangle and raising the stakes high enough for all of us to be gripped by the drama (especially when, with the benefit of spectator-sight, we are aware of Iago’s scheming plan). At this point, of course, the audience is having to work at fifth order intentionality, and is thus at the natural limits for the great majority of the population.

But, in putting this story together, Shakespeare himself has to go one level higher than his audience, to sixth order: he has to intend that the audience believes…. I suggest that this might explain why the capacity to enjoy good literature is a widespread human universal, but the ability to compose good literature is not—storytelling demands social cognitive competencies that are beyond the normal range for the great majority of the population. Thus it is that, when we sit down to write those novels we have so long aspired to write, our natural limits at fifth order intentionality constrain most of us into writing dull narratives.

This is nonsense. There is no reason to think that the dullness of narrative corresponds to the level of intentionality required to understand it. There is no reason to think that the difficulty of writing literature varies with the levels of intentionality contained within the text. Indeed, writing non-narrative forms of literature is just as difficult as writing narrative—if not more so (to Dunbar, it appears that literature is equivalent to social storytelling). Moreover, Dunbar’s theory entails, absurdly, that comprehending a sixth-order narrative is about as difficult as writing a fifth-order one, and so on down the hierarchy.

There is more, but I am bored. Before offering more ridiculous pseudo-explanations of literature and the literary imagination, evolutionary psychologists should turn their carefully selected brain-modules to the question of why we are so much better at producing than evaluating explanations—and, more to the point, why they are themselves so often so clueless about the arts.

(By Erik Satie, via UbuWeb)

An artist must regulate his life.

Here is a time-table of my daily acts. I rise at 7.18; am inspired from 10.23 to 11.47. I lunch at 12.11 and leave the table at 12.14. A healthy ride on horse-back round my domain follows from 1.19 pm to 2.53 pm. Another bout of inspiration from 3.12 to 4.17 pm. From 5 to 6.47 pm various occupations (fencing, reflection, immobility, visits, contemplation, dexterity, swimming, etc.)

Dinner is served at 7.16 and finished at 7.20 pm. From 8.19 to 9.59 pm symphonic readings (out loud). I go to bed regularly at 10.37 pm. Once a week (on Tuesdays) I awake with a start at 3.14 am.

My only nourishment consists of food that is white: eggs, sugar, shredded bones, the fat of dead animals, veal, salt, coco-nuts, chicken cooked in white water, mouldy fruit, rice, turnips, sausages in camphor, pastry, cheese (white varieties), cotton salad, and certain kinds of fish (without their skin). I boil my wine and drink it cold mixed with the juice of the Fuschia. I have a good appetite but never talk when eating for fear of strangling myself.

I breathe carefully (a little at a time) and dance very rarely. When walking I hold my ribs and look steadily behind me.

My expression is very serious; when I laugh it is unintentional, and I always apologise very politely.

I sleep with only one eye closed, very profoundly. My bed is round with a hole in it for my head to go through. Every hour a servant takes my temperature and gives me another.