On the other hand, 'eating chocolate cake whilst watching your favourite television programme,' is clearly on the list of things one should always endeavour to do.  Again, not exactly Mensa type problem solving going on here.

Despite this, it is a query which surfaces on a regular basis.  I endeavour to answer it and yet you come back for more.  As a result I have been pondering and come up with the whole Family Fortunes thing.  I took a survey of me (which is roughly equivalent to a hundred of your earth people) and came up with the top ten things you must never do:

1. Play piggy on the railway picking up stones.  As you well know, in this classic cautionary tale, along came an engine and broke piggy's bones.  If you were pretending to be piggy on this particular day I doubt that you would be repeating piggy's next classic line; 'Oy!' said Piggy, 'That's not fair!' being as how you would be squished to jam.  It is even more unlikely that the engine driver would lean down from his cab to say: 'Pooh!' Said the engine driver, 'I don't care.' due to the very real fear that once your relatives had scraped you off the track they would sue his arse, and the fact that he would probably be a gibbering heap of post traumatic stress disorder by then anyway.
2. Take up nudism when you've just got a job as a short order fry cook.  Fried eggs really, really spit you know.  You'd be awash with scars at the end of the first shift.  Most uncomfortable. I think nudists probably go in for salads quite a lot.  It's hard to receive scarring from a radish.
3. Swim in shark infested waters covered in lumps of Steak Tartare, unless you are thinking of auditioning for a part in Dirty Sanchez or whatever those other damn fool silly programmes are where they staple their gonads to ravening wildebeest just to see what it feels like.
4. Watch Cbeebies when you have no children around.  This will get you sectioned post haste and is one of the first signs of incipient madness.  Look at poor Iris Murdoch bless her.
5. Audition for the Apprentice when the only thing on your CV is a six month stint playing 'When the Saints Come Marching in' on a kazoo at Elephant and Castle tube station.  You'll be mincemeat.
6. Go to work for Battersea Dogs Home wearing trousers impregnated with aniseed oil.  You'll be popular for thirty seconds before you're ripped to pieces by a pack of ravening beasts.
7. Have a child in the hope that it will cement the foundations of your already shaky marriage.  Are you insane? I'd rather swim in shark infested waters covered in steak tartare.
8. Buy a first class train ticket when you have small children and expect people to be helpful to you, even though the problems that you are experiencing are their fault in the first place.  Bastards!
9. Volunteer, for anything, ever, in the history of ever.
10. Ask me for anything before I've had at least two cups of coffee so strong it would make the average person's eyebrows curl.

So, avoid these ten things, and you should be fine.  I have noticed however, that this is rather a negative list.  Being negative is very frowned upon these days by such heroes of the modern age as Deepak Chopra and that cheery Fern Britton (who cares if she's had a gastric band? You go girl!).  So, I have compiled a top ten list of things you must always do:

1. Always eat as much cake as possible, wherever and whenever the opportunity presents itself.  If you are too full for cake at that precise moment it is totally acceptable to ask for it 'to go', whereupon you can stow it away carefully and save it for later.  If the person offering the cake to you is French, make sure they understand the concept 'to go' thoroughly.  I once had a nasty incident with some Tarte Tatin at Archway tube station because the silly man filled the cake carton with single pouring cream and it leaked out into my shoes.  He meant well.  The French have never been great at picnics though, it has to be said.
2. Always carry an emergency book with you.  This is very important and will help to pass the time in petrol stations, lay bys and tailbacks on the M25.  It is also good for swatting moths, wasps and other flying pests, as well as for pressing wild flowers.  In desperation it can also be an acceptable substitute for toilet paper if that tailback is really long.  Try and rip out a page you've already read or you'll be cursing yourself later.
3. Always trust your inner voice and buy two of those fabulous pairs of trousers that make you look so thin.  If you wait and think about it and go back, they will have sold out.  That's a solid gold fact, and you can take it to the bank.
4. Use the tried and tested, patented Katy shopping method.  This involves, coffee and a bun, spurt of intensive shopping, cake and beverage, intensive shopping, lunch preferably with a good friend who can encourage you to have pudding even though you've already had two petite snackettes, intensive shopping to work off extra calories, coffee and biscuits to round off the day and give you the strength to get home.
5. Find a good spot in a cafe, so that if your eyes are too tired to read your book you will have an excellent vantage point from which to people watch and take notes on their shopping, eating and fashion habits with which to amuse yourself, and hopefully the friend you are with.
6. Keep up with the gossip, and most importantly random bits of useless and yet fascinating trivia with which to keep flagging conversations buoyant.  This saves you having to discuss the state of Liam's latest bowel movements outside the school gates, or talk to a dreary man about the shocking state of the housing market at dinner parties.  I guarantee that if they can resist the urge to slag off Britney Spears' latest wardrobe malfunction they will crack under the; 'Did you know that squid have bifurcated penises?' story.
7. Have a well stocked larder, fridge, kitchen shelves.  There is nothing more depressing than waking up in the middle of the night after having had a tantalising dream of spaghetti and vongole only to go downstairs to find you've got a packet of Supernoodles and a dried up head of celery with which to sate your newly aroused appetite.
8. Always make time for shoes.  They are deeply satisfying, and may actually be the answer to life, the universe and everything.  I posit that if Hitler's mother hadn't made him wear those Cornish pasty shoes at school, he would never have invaded Poland.  Manolos.  That's what's needed, and Louboutins.  Free Louboutins on the National Health for everyone, bugger support tights and wigs.
9. Always, always pay attention to what Ray Mears has to say.  With global warming and the collapse of the international economy due to the credit crunch, his wisdom becomes more relevant every day.  I keep telling you this, but heed my predictions.  One day he will be King Ray, and he will recognise his loyal followers, mainly because of their hand made bread boards and string.
10. Be prepared to go down in a blaze of glory.  Otherwise what's the point?

Stop laughing . . .

Anyway, after the Magnum opus that was my last post, I thought I'd come back today with something a bit on the sunnier, fresh-air side of life.

I love movies. Always have. The peaceful moments of my existence are embodied best in a quite evening at home with a DVD in the Pioneer and the lights out. And while there's nothing wrong with the occasional lighthearted romantic comedy or a mindless blockbuster action movie, what I really enjoy are movies about interesting characters. Often called dramas, these presentations of honest people living real, complex lives in the midst of both the magnificent and the mundane turn my crank and drag me through the entire spectrum of emotions. I laugh. I cry. I escape for a couple hours and then slide reluctantly back into the real world, often having learned a thing or two about myself along the way. And making good character-driven movies take incredibly talented and versatile actors.

I got to thinking about all this last night while watching one such movie with my son, and our chat was still jogging upon the dewy grass track of my mind as I awoke this morning. So I decided to run with it and solidify a list of my favorite character actors to share with you, starting with the ladies. When I see any of these gals cast in a movie, it's almost always a must-see. So here they are, my leading ladies, in no particular order:

Patricia Clarkson

She oozes talent from every pore. While most may not consider her a leading lady, I find that she brightens nearly every movie I've had the pleasure of seeing her in. I fell for her in The Green Mile. To watch her transform from a diseased and bedridden bag of bones into a beacon of light and redemption moved me. She stole the show, even if only for a brief few minutes. She did almost the same thing in The Station Agent. And then she melted my heart completely in Lars and the Real Girl.

Joan Allen

She never plays a weak character, every one a strong woman with poise and intelligence. Consider her as Bonnie Waitzkin, the protective yet compassionate mother to a chess prodigy in Searching for Bobby Fischer, or as the no-nonsense senator in The Contender. And who really wants to mess with Pamela Landy, the hard-as-nails agent with a heart of gold in the last two installments of the Bourne trilogy? She's been in too many good movies to list here. As a leading lady, she's not had much success. But she steals every scene she gets with her wit and charm. She's spot on every time and a pleasure to watch.

Helen Hunt

I've loved her since Mad About You. She was the perfect foil for Paul Reiser, counterbalancing is stupidity with her spunk and grace. She manages to save Twister, and then burst onto the big screen with class in As Good As It Gets, providing the shaky yet determined voice of reason to Jack Nicholson's insanity and earning and Oscar in the process. Her eyes speak volumes and her silence screams. It all just simmers underneath and then bursts out with such precision and poise. She's been sort of underground for a while but has a new movie out, Then She Found Me, which she wrote, produced, directed and starred in. I can't wait to see it.

Charlize Theron

She could have been a bimbo actress. Her first big screen role was in Children of the Corn III. What?! Then came The Devil's Advocate. I was a bit worried. Then she started taking on some real meaty roles and came out shining. Most people missed The Legend of Bagger Vance, which is a shame. And . . . my God . . . the awesomeness that is her performance in Monster. Rent it today if you haven't seen this Oscar-winning performance. She sparkled in The Cider House Rules and showed her tough side in The Italian Job. She's gorgeous, talented and hasn't disappointed me in quite some time. Of course, I haven't seen Æon Flux yet . . .

Cate Blanchett

My favorite elf. I'd enter a spooky, ancient forest any day for an audience with this extremely talented former Queen of England . . . er . . . I mean actress. Cate has portrayed almost everyone imaginable, including Bob Dylan, and done so with her own unique style. Her smile can lift your spirits or rip out your heart. Consider her role in Notes on a Scandal opposite the always-good Judi Dench. She fell apart on screen, deconstructing the stereotypical image of a successful woman with secrets in the closet. And she managed to steal Babel right out from under Brad Pitt. Then there's all that red hair. My oh my, what a beautiful woman.

Toni Collette

She quietly slipped on the scene in 1994's Muriel's Wedding in a performance lauded by critics but missed by most moviegoers. Then came The Sixth Sense, in which her startling and sympathetic turn as struggling single mother Lynn Sear earned her an Academy Award nomination. I watched this movie again last night with my son and I'm still touched by her transparent performance. Simply riveting. Almost as good as her role in the funny yet touching Little Miss Sunshine. Her pout isn't . . . pouty, if you catch my drift. She's honest with her emotions and never fails to make me smile.

Kate Winslet

Face it. Anyone who could make Titanic a joy to watch has to be good. Kate is fearless when it comes to the roles she chooses. She can play the classics, as she did as Ophelia in Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet, embody such eccentric personalities as Iris Murdoch in Iris, and then bring boring to life with an easy dramatic flair as she did in Little Children. She even managed to breathe life into Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind opposite Jim Carrey. That was no small feat, for that movie would have been dead without her knack for sincere laughter atop a smile that speaks a thousand words. She's a rare and elegant beauty, and I just adore her.

Jennifer Connelly

I just realized that Jennifer Connelly is the first brunette on my list. I'll let you decide what that means. Meanwhile, I'll watch her again and again. I loved her in the thinking person's sci-fi noir flick Dark City. She looked just so darn poised and otherworldly standing on the dock at the end of the film, her dark hair blowing in the breeze. But her other roles have taken her deeper, as a drug addict in Requiem for a Dream, as Jackson Pollock's impressionable lover in Pollock, as a single mother with supernatural water stains on her apartment ceiling in Dark Water. But watching her shatter a glass of water in anger and frustration in A Beautiful Mind is a study in excellence of expression and personification. And those baby blue eyes . . .

Hilary Swank

Russell Crowe once encouraged anyone who came from "the downside of advantage" to pursue their dreams whatever they may be. Such is the case with Hilary Swank. She got her first big break in The Next Karate Kid after she and her mother moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting. Then came Boys Don't Cry, and astonishingly compassionate and realistic performance as Brandon Teena, a transsexual who was brutally raped and murdered in Nebraska in 1993. Few people saw this movie, which is a shame. She earned an Oscar for her performance, and then earned a second Oscar for her portrayal as boxing phenom Maggie Fitzgerald in Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby. She's had some duds (The Reaping) but the good far outweigh the bad.

Laura Linney

If I were pressed to name my favorite actress, I wouldn't hesitate a second in picking Laura Linney. Honestly, I've never seen her in a bad movie. She has that rare ability to rescue even the shallowest of screenplays and bring her performance to life. I first fell for her in The Truman Show. Her over-the-top performance matched Carrey's step for step. And consider her opposite Mark Ruffalo in You Can Count on Me. The quiver in her voice sounds genuine and unforced and adds a sympathetic touch that dives deep but never drowns. I especially enjoyed her in The Savages with Philip Seymour Hoffman. Interestingly, she always seems to be cast opposite some of my favorite actors. She holds her own and brings out the best in everyone.

Julianne Moore

Ever see Magnolia? No, not Steel Magnolias. That one sucked. Magnolia is the three-hour ensemble drama directed my Paul Thomas Anderson, the wunderkind behind last years best movie, There Will Be Blood. He has a way of bringing out the best in his actors, and he got way more than even he could have imagined from Julianne Moore in Magnolia. She walks the tightrope of madness and never slips. She's done sensitive and sweet in Far From Heaven, sexy, dirty and nasty in Boogie Nights, and strong and proud in Children of Men. Not all of her movies have been masterpieces, but that's no fault of hers. Heck, I even liked her as Clarice Starling in Hannibal, not an easy role to take on after Jodie Foster's Oscar-winning turn.

So there you have 'em, my leading ladies of cinema. Were I an actor in need of someone to work with who could make my star shine, I'd choose any one of these gals any day of the week. Feel free to add your favorites to the comments, or simply add your praise for these actors if you feel so led. I love talking movies, so fire away . . .

I know one thing's for sure.  I am so terribly disorganised and my memory is so very, very appalling that if I do turn out to have Alzheimer's nobody will know about it until the very last minute anyway.  I shall live a relatively happy life if that's the way I finally shuffle off this mortal coil because I really am used to that stuff.  I read about Iris Murdoch in that book by her husband where he said that one of the things that most upset him was the fact that as the illness progressed she really liked watching Teletubbies.  I think that would upset me too.  I loathe Teletubbies.  Maybe I'll take that as my benchmark.  Once I start sitting down with a nice cup of tea and thinking; 'Hoorah! Teletubbies.  How very soothing.' That's when we need to call the doctors.  Up to that point I shall just galumph about as normal forgetting my phone number, wandering into random rooms eighteen times before remembering what I came in for, never knowing what day it is and not being able to find the words to finish any sentence other than: 'Put that down!' or 'Don't do that!'

I decided today that we would go out regardless of the weather, the political situation in Afghanistan and the state of my bank account.  I could no longer stomach the thought of being stuck in the house with three small children, trying to keep them entertained and finding new and ever increasing ways of explaining why the television does not follow us from room to room in the on position.  I watched an MTV Cribs once where some footballer and his soap wife had a television on a swivel stand in their kitchen so whatever they were doing they could watch it.  The thought of it made me want to weep.  The children think that it is the most brilliant invention of the century, other than having small screens inserted into the palms of their hands that is.

I was very unpopular in my decision to get active because I actually got Matilda out of bed before ten thirty this morning.  She's a real night bird.  She is allowed to stay up in the evenings as long as she stays in her room and amuses herself.  Unlike during the day when she spends most of the time in a coma of ennui and boredom if you don't prod her with a stick, she is perfectly happy to entertain herself all night if needs be.  She reads, she writes, she creates 'things' out of cardboard and string.  She listens to CD's and enacts one woman plays of epic length.  On school nights we usually force her at gunpoint into bed by about half past ten.  During the holidays she can stay up until we got to bed, as long as she doesn't wake her sister.  This means that she usually likes to sleep in until about eleven in the mornings.  This morning she sat at the breakfast table with a face like a smacked bum, demanding to know why she had to go and get dressed.  She's clearly in training for her teens which are now only a few short years away, god help us.

In the meantime, Tallulah has turned into Silas Marner.  She has managed to persuade Jason to open her piggy bank for her, in which is the princely sum of forty four pence.  Since then she has been extorting money with menaces from whoever passes by and keeping it in a pencil case.  She managed to get twenty five pence out of my dad yesterday, which I was most impressed by.  She has also conned her dad into coughing up some change.  This morning the first sound I was actually aware of was a repetitive jingling motion.  She was keeping herself busy by pouring all her money on the floor, putting it in stacks, pretending to count it and scooping it back into her purse.  And repeat. Endlessly until mum gets up and begrudgingly serves breakfast.  She then spent the entire of breakfast discussing how much money she had, how much more money she could get, and what she might spend it on whilst still keeping exactly the same amount of money.  I might buy her some fingerless gloves and a tea bag on a string for her birthday.

Oscar is poorly.  He's been cutting a tooth all week.  Yesterday he showed me that it had finally come through the gum and so I foolishly thought that the worst was over.  Clearly, after all these years of trraining I know nothing.  It's only just begun as the horribly stick insectish Karen Carpenter used to warble.  He woke me six times in the night and Jason twice (I was clearly dead to the world at this point as I never heard a thing).  His bed is now a morass of Calpol infested sheets, and this morning when he finally arose from his pit he was smothered from head to foot in spots, including all over his face and in his hair.  He refused breakfast, demanded milk and then vomited it all over himself, his newly dressed sister and the cream sofa in spectacular fashion, ten minutes before the taxi arrived to take us out.  It was bedlam.

I can't make my mind up if it's an important rash, or just one of those rashes that Oscar gets whenever he gets hot.  It's definitely not chicken pox, as I am a world expert at chicken pox, but it coiuld be almost anything else from Dengue Fever to Beri Beri, to the effect of too much calpol being rubbed lightly over pyjamas for eight hours.  I really don't know.  I've decided to stop worrying about it and just get on with it.  Because we were going out I scraped him down, threw clean clothes on him and went.  My theory being that he can be ill almost anywhere because he's very portable, and he might as well be ill out and away from my cream sofa than in and near to it.

He perked up remarkably in the taxi and made brumming noises and danced to the radio, so I feel that we can probably cross Dengue fever off of our list, which is nice.  In Sainsburys' where we had to go because Matilda needs a packed lunch for her trip out with her friend tomorrow, and I only found out after I'd placed the Ocado order, he played happily and tried to snatch all the cakes from the shelves as we went past, which I thought was another good sign.  I decided to feed the kids in the cafe at Sainsburys because they do this cool kids lunch deal where they can choose five items for a packed lunch and the kids really like it.  We were going to Borders straight afterwards to play and eat cake, but they don't like Starbucks' sandwiches, so I thought this would avoid trauma.  How wrong I was.

I hate Sainsburys' cafe at the best of times.  Here are things you can always guarantee about it:

1. It's staffed by the same people who supply staff for Glenfield Co-op.  Job opportunity workers who don't know one end of a slice of bread and butter from the other.  Consequently, ordering hot food is more than your life is worth.  If you want to wait forty five minutes for a jacket potato which is burned on the outside and raw in the middle, be my guest.
2. The coffee machine is always broken and they have to apologise to everyone because they can't make a latte, or indeed anything that doesn't involve Nescafe and a tea spoon.
3. The woman who works the till knows no more about working the till than me (and when you consider that during my ill fated career as a waitress I once charged two poor pensioners twenty four pounds for two tea cakes and a pot of tea, you will see what I mean).
4. There is always a queue and it is always the longest, slowest queue in the entire world.
5. They run out of things.  You make your mind up to have 'x' and they say: 'I'm sorry.  We're out of 'x'.' and you think: 'Bloody hell! This is a supermarket for  pity's sake.  How can you run out of bread/jam/sausages in a supermarket? Hop across the tills and get some more you lazy peasant.'  Well, you do if you're me anyway.
6. It's shit.  It's always shit.  It never gets any better.  It's always utterly, utterly shit.

So.  With this in mind, we get there only to find that they have completely changed their approach to fun kids' meals.  Now, they bag them up for you and choose what sandwiches you're going to have in them.  You would think, given the peculiarities of small children that they would pick something like ham, or cheese, or either.  Nope! You could have chicken and sweetcorn with mayonnaise or egg and cress with mayonnaise.  My children hate these sandwiches.  They are hysterical with loathing at the thought of these sandwiches.  All except Oscar, who has seen food and is now going mental because he's hot, he's spotty and he is starving because he's vomited the contents of his stomach all over my sofa.  I can't back out now because otherwise Oscar will explode with rage and I am trapped.

I make an executive mum style decision.  I announce that we will have one packet of salmon sandwiches and one packet of BLT sandwiches.  I announce that the brown bread will not kill them (they already hate me.  See yesterday's blog).  I announce that I will pick all the greenery and reddery out of the sandwiches.  I say that they only have to eat half of the sandwich anyway because Oscar will share the salmon with Tallulah (they both like salmon) and Tilly will share the bacon with me (I don't like it, but I'm going to eat it anyway because I hate everything by now).  We get smoothies (which doctors say are now going to be responsible for the entire generation of children growing into adulthood now having blackened stumps for teeth and that we should let them eat Mars bars instead) and I bribe them with the promise of cake in Borders.  They look stricken.

There is only one other woman in the queue in front of us.  It takes the woman at the till ten minutes to serve her one cup of coffee ('you'll have to have instant.  We can't do lattes).  She rings it into the till only to find that the woman in front of me is also slow and was waiting to announced that she wanted another cup of coffee for her friend.  Ten minutes later, cup number two hoves into view a la Mrs. Overall, i.e. half is now in the saucer.  It takes another five minutes to pay.  After all, whilst waiting for twenty minutes at the till why would you actually get your purse out, or even know where it was?

In the meantime Tilly is in virtual tears over the thought that she will have to eat a brown bread bacon sandwich.  Tallulah is dubiously telling me how nice salmon sandwiches are (thus trying to talk herself into it), but also flapping about undressing in the aisle for some unknown reason, and nearly killing a pensioner by throwing her coat in the air and nearly blinding the poor bloke with her buttons.  Oscar is going completely insane because nobody is letting him anywhere near the food that he can see and smell and he's starving.  He has tears running down his spotty little cheeks and is raising his arms in supplication shouting: 'Out! Out! Din nah!'  The idiot woman at the till who is still fumbling with her purse is throwing me filthy looks as if to say: 'Can't you control your children better? You reprobate mother you.'  I am seething with fury and internally weeping into my bosom, wondering why we didn't just stay at home and watch television.  I am very glad that guns are not legal in this country now, because my trigger finger is itching uncontrollably and the red mist is starting to descend.

After I had paid for lunch and we were all sat down,  the hideousness continued.  Tilly choked on every miniscule mouthful, threatening to vomit, gagging, sighing, rolling her eyes and crying.  Tallulah, who was entranced by Tilly's bad behaviour merely pretended to nibble her sandwich whilst not actually eating it, and Oscar sat in a sicky smelling bundle on my knee, devouring everything that came near him.  I was very, very, very depressed indeed.  After twenty minutes when they had barely eaten anything and Oscar had wiped his plate clean, I herded them out with a stern lecture on what was the bloody point of it all, and no sweetie time for you (which sadly meant no sweetie time for me either, which was most aggravating) and we stomped to Borders.

I did think about not going to Borders either, but as I had already been punished with a crappy lunch and miserable children and was not getting cake either, I decided that I'd suffered enough and we would go anyway.  Luckily they were having an activity day, so the kids were kept amused and I could sit on a small stool and read without having to run round the shop herding them like weevils.  They made spy passports and spy notebooks (It was a James Bond theme day), and had a brilliant time with glue and glitter.  I was happy because they were rubbing glue and glitter into someone else's carpet and not mine.

Then there were some people doing experiments and they got to make snow and watch an indoor volcano explode.  The kids were very impressed.  I'm not sure what this had to do with James Bond, unless this was the bit where they showed you how to do all the cool, evil villain gadgets and that they were then going on to show you how to build your underground lair under the recently exploded volcano.  All I know is that it kept them amused for an hour before we went home, which was more than I could have hoped for, despite the fact that we weren't very popular because Tallulah collapsed the marble run game and the woman had to spend forty minutes crouched on the floor putting it back together.

When we got home I threw them all in the bath.  This is usually my fail safe. When they are all being scratchy and awful a bath usually helps a lot.  They calm down and play nicely together.  They also really needed a bath due to being covered in paint, glue and glitter from their spyware, and the fact that Oscar still smelled of sick.  I had of course failed to factor in the fact that Oscar was feeling poorly.  He barricaded himself into the end of the bath and threw things at the girls.  I had just sorted this out when there came the hideous cry of: 'Oscar's done a pooh! Urghhhh!' and so they all had to come out while I scrubbed the bath.  It was at this point that I sat on the floor and thought: 'How bad can the television be?'  I got a whole half an hour of peace before the girls dad descended to take them out for the evening, the marvellous man.  Not so marvellous because he's bringing them back at half eight in the morning, but it's a start.

Oscar is now in bed, wearing Tallulah's sun hat, which he has taken a violent passion for and refuses to remove.  I tried to wrench it off his head on the way up there on the grounds that it was bound to make him more hot and uncomfortable, but he screamed blue murder until I put it back on.  Jason will kill me if he overheats in a sun hat, but I have tried my best, and frankly I can do no more.

Andrea is coming to pick me up at five o'clock.  We're going to the theatre for the first time in ages.  We're off to the RSC to see Taming of the Shrew.  I've been looking forward to it for weeks, and now I'm so tired I really don't want to go.  I'm not going to be defeated though, as I have a sneaking suspicion that Oscar might be doing the whole 'I'm ill' thing to ensure that I never leave his sticky little side again.  So even if I have to drink fourteen espressos to keep awake I'm damn well going.  You'll hear me.  I'll be the one snoring in the front row and sticking to the chair.

Прочетох “The Bell” ( Благодаря, Георги!!!) и в момента ми изглежда най-хубавата книга на Айрис. Макар че се чете съвсем леко, тя е претъпкана с въпроси, които ме интересуват: за любовта, секса, религията, оттеглянето от света, общностите, хомосексуалността, брака, невинността, порастването.

Както обикновено, има много напрежение и драматизъм не само в случките и ситуациите, но и в героите и взаимоотношенията им, в реакциите им към поднасяното от живота – да, дори и в уединена религиозна общност не можеш да се скриеш от живота и от себе си, така че ако някой смята, че ще се застрахова срещу болката като се скрие, е твърде заблуден. Уединението за мен не е скриване, а по-добър начин за пребиваване в света и общуване с него, защото в тишината и празнотата мога да чуя по-ясно посланията, да видя моделите, а това ме свързва със света.

Може да звучи парадоксално, но когато човек живее на бързи обороти, сред много шум, той губи връзка и със себе си, и с тези, с които непрекъснато уж общува. Когато нямаш възможност да спираш и да обмисляш, в теб се натрупват безброй неразбрани болезнени неща. Повечето хора, страхувайки се от тишината и оставането насаме с непознатия, когото наричат “Аз”, запълват малкото празни мигове с активност, “общуване”, музика, филми, телевизия, четене и пр. Но когато хвърлиш още едно одеало върху болката, тя не си отива, а напротив – расте и излиза навън по невероятни начини - от желание да си купиш нови обувки до политиканстване.

Не казвам, че е достатъчно да останеш в тишина за да чуеш веднага истинския си глас. Поне у мен се започва с предълги Платонови диалози, но нямам нищо против тях, понеже от малка обичам да задавам невинни безмилостни въпроси. Предполагам, че с друг тип хора се случва друго – може би те не са толкова вербални като мен, но съществената разлика тук не е преобладаващият начин, по който идват прозренията; по-скоро хората се различават по това доколко силно е желанието им за прозрение.

Не знам откъде се взема тази енергия, която ме движи към повече и повече познание. Не разбирам защо у някои хора е толкова слаба. Като учител, за мен въпросът е професионален, понеже схващам образованието не като пълнене на кофа, а като подпалване на огън. Всеки носи в себе си искрата, която, както казва Юнг, не ни позволява да се разложим в толкова присъщата на човечеството леност. Преведено на езика на правителствените и наднационални директиви – хубаво е да повишаваме мотивацията за учене, ама кой всъщност знае нещо по-съществено за нея? Аз не. И това ме фрустрира.

Винаги когато чета роман, виждам и усещам местата, но когато чета роман на Айрис, чувствам, че това са МОИТЕ места. Живяла съм в Лондон не повече от месец и съм видяла съвсем малка част от него, и макар че не съм била на местата, които Айрис описва или не съм забелязала че съм била, винаги съм се чувствала у дома във всяка нейна книга, независимо в кое десетилетие на 20 век е писана, независимо дали част от действието се случва извън Лондон. Още по-странното е, че се чувствам по същия начин когато чета нейни биографии, така че вече съм живяла почти 90 години с Айрис.

Може да греша, но мисля, че Айрис е във всеки от героите, мъже и жени, независимо от сексуалната им ориентация, с изключение на демоничните мъжки фигури, в които виждам някои от нейните мъже – със сигурност Елиас Канети и съпругът й Джон Бейли. Те се издават сами – със спомените си за Айрис, с цялата болка и ненавист, която са събрали и проектират върху нея.

Мисля, че Айрис е писала романите си като форма на самолечение, самозащита и себеизследване. Мисля, че точно писането й е помогнало да се запази като очарователно и абсолютно lovable човешко същество, дори през годините, в които е потъвала в себе си през Алцхаймер, до последния си дъх.

Много пъти ми е било болно за Айрис, и по някое време съм мислела с тъга, че съм успяла да стигна до повече щастие в себе си, отколкото тя е успяла. Сега не съм сигурна. Все повече ми се струва, че Айрис е оставила послания за щастливите си прозрения по особено subtle начин в романите си. Може би затова те са 25, а философските й работи са само 4. Не съм чела още 11 от романите й, и нито едно от философските съчинения. Чак днес се сетих, че бих могла да погледна заглавията. И виждам, че поне 3 от 4 искам да прочета със сигурност. Малко съм смутена да осъзная, че май не съм я вземала насериозно като философ и преподавател, точно като в случаите, от които се възмущавам тук.

Засега изобщо не мога да си представя за какво е говорила на лекциите си и какво ли е било да отидеш в кабинета на своя tutor Айрис за седмичния си разговор. Ако се бях родила петдесетина години по-рано и бях станала чистачка в Оксфорд, може би щях да работя тихо и внимателно пред вратата й.

2.1 Schopenhauer and The Transcendental
The World as Will and Idea occasioned the advent of the Modern Era of the Philosophy of Saintliness. Whereas Pre-Modern philosophical conceptions of saintliness were dependent upon Christian conceptions, Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) attempted to construct a complete, self-sustained metaphysical system to support his notion of saintliness. This project therefore is to be regarded as appropriating the concept of saintliness for Philosophy proper.
Moreover, as Schopenhauer’s conception of saintliness is indeed philosophically unique and culturally alien, it demands that I offer a more detailed exposition than I have done so far with respect to the preceding, Pre-Modern conceptions.

Arthur Schopenhauer’s masterpiece, The World as Will and Idea culminates with arguments concerning the ethical consequences of the preceding metaphysical system explicated therein.
The ‘good’, we are told, is commonly regarded to be that which furthers the attainment of one’s goals and/or desires. That which is ‘bad’, conversely, is whatever hinders the attainment of one’s goals and/or desires. From this dichotomy, Schopenhauer develops a hierarchy of ‘moral’ categories (i.e. pertaining to more than the individual):
1) Cruelty is the lowest of these, as it actively obstructs the gratification of another’s desires, inevitably to one’s own benefit/pleasure.
2) Egoism, again, is a negative moral category, as one seeks to gratify one’s own goals, even at the cost of another’s.
3) Righteousness finds equilibrium, where, working together, one pursues one’s own interests in mutual cooperation with others.
4) Charity is a positive good, in so far as one actively assists in the attainment of another’s goals whilst disregarding one’s own interests.
5) Asceticism is the highest possible good, according to Schopenhauer’s categories, as the saint actively denies their own self (i.e. the gratification of worldly desires and the attainment of worldly goals. )

It is this final category that principally informs Schopenhauer’s conception of saintliness. However, to adequately appreciate its significance we must approach it via further exposition of the preceding categories and their relation to Schopenhauer’s philosophy of human ‘happiness’.

As Arthur Schopenhauer is surely the most renowned pessimist of the Western Philosophical canon, it should come as little surprise that he regarded happiness to be illusory. Conversely, Schopenhauer held (à la Buddha) that suffering is intrinsic to all life, and is the result of our ever-persistent, unfulfilled desires and goals. When any one desire is specifically gratified and thereby ceases to be, it is immediately replaced or usurped by another. True happiness is therefore seen to be essentially illusory, as any sense of contentment is only realisable via the memory of past suffering produced by a particular, now annihilated desire, which, when contrasted to the aggregation of our present desires, can never assuage the suffering that is intrinsic to all life. As Schopenhauer himself puts it: “all satisfaction, or what is commonly called happiness, is always really and essentially only negative and never positive.”
In this light, it can be seen that actions pertaining to at least the first three of Schopenhauer’s moral categories vainly strive to attain personal happiness through the gratification of one’s own personal desires/goals.
The emphasis placed here on ‘personal’ gain is significant: Schopenhauer argues that this sense of individuality (which is given as the more grandly metaphysical, principium individuationis) is intrinsic to the ‘veil of Mâyâ’ (i.e. conventional reality) that obscures enlightenment. The charitable realise this by virtue of their charitable actions. They no longer see themselves as individuated from others. As Schopenhauer says of the cruel: “The inflictor of suffering and the sufferer are one. The former errs in that he believes he is not a partaker in the suffering; the latter, in that he believes he is not a partaker in the guilt.” The charitable do not make this same mistake. As Schopenhauer explains:
The principium individuationis, the form of the phenomenon, no longer holds him so tightly in its grasp, but the suffering which he sees in others touches him almost as closely as his own. He therefore tries to strike a balance between them, denies himself pleasures, practices renunciation, in order to mitigate the sufferings of others.

Unfortunately, they do still attempt to alleviate suffering through the gratification of desires – it is just that their desires now extend beyond their own personal interests. The ascetic saint, however, not only sees through the principium individuationis, but also realises the true, phenomenal nature of suffering. In Schopenhauer’s own words:
…he who sees through the principium individuationis, and recognises the real nature of the thing-in-itself and thus the whole, is no longer susceptible of such consolation [as illusory happiness]; he sees himself in all places at once, and withdraws. His will turns round, no longer asserts its own nature, which is reflected in the phenomenon, but denies it. The phenomenon by which this change is marked, is the transition from virtue to asceticism. That is to say, it no longer suffices for such a man to love others as himself; but there arises within him a horror of the nature of which his own phenomenal existence is an expression, the will to live, the kernel and inner nature of that world which is recognised as full of misery. He therefore disowns this nature which appears in him, and is already expressed through his body, and his action gives the lie to his phenomenal existence, and appears in open contradiction to it. Essentially nothing else but a manifestation of a will, he ceases to will anything, guards against attaching his will to anything, and seeks to confirm in himself the greatest indifference to everything.

Such profound asceticism, Schopenhauer terms the denial of the will to life, in contradistinction to his earlier metaphysical assertion that everything - all existence, being and suffering - is fundamentally the will to life. It is therefore unsurprising that saintly asceticism should result in utter self-annihilation and “the greatest delight in death.” What is more surprising, however, is that Schopenhauer should claim that such an annihilation should extend beyond the illusory-self, to everything, so that “this our world, which is so real, with all its suns and milky-ways – is nothing.”
To appreciate how this argument is thought to work, we must briefly look to Schopenhauer’s treatment of the relation between Being and Nothingness.

Being, Schopenhauer points out, is typically valued positively. Indeed, this holds even in the case of the suicidal, who, although ‘hating’ their own existence, are only able to do so because of the positive value they attach to idealised being. Nothingness, in contrast, is negatively valued. The ascetic saint, however, is able, via their denial of the will to life, to invert the values commonly given to these two polar concepts according to the following logic:
… every nihil negativum [or absolute nothingness], if subordinated to a higher concept, will appear as a mere nihil privativum or relative nothing, which can, moreover, always exchange signs with what it negates, so that that would then be thought of as negation, and it itself as assertion.

While this may prima facie seem little more than to say that as the saint so truly abhors life, non-existence may actually be a positive, Schopenhauer seems to want to suggest that there is far more at stake. For instance, the ascetic saint is able, via the inversion of metaphysical evaluations, to achieve true happiness and contentment. As was explained before, for the non-saint, happiness is only ever a negative illusion because once any one desire is fulfilled, another immediately replaces and surpasses it. For the ascetic saint, however, at the point of annihilation they completely cease willing and desiring. I say that it is only at the point of annihilation because Schopenhauer maintains that the process of the denial of the will to life “is a hard and painful self-conquest” and “must ever anew be attained by a constant battle.” Or again, more elaborately:
…by constant privation and suffering, [the saint] may more and more break down and destroy the will, which he recognises and abhors as the source of his own suffering existence and that of the world. If at last death comes, which puts an end to this manifestation of that will, whose existence here has long since perished through free-denial of itself … it is most welcome, and is gladly received as a longed-for deliverance. Here it is not, as in the case of others, merely the manifestation which ends with death … For him who thus ends, the world has ended also.

This ‘most welcome, gladly received, and longed-for deliverance’ is further described by Schopenhauer as “that perfect calm of the spirit, that deep rest, the inviolable confidence and serenity.”
Here something seems to have gone awry, however, for Schopenhauer also claims that, because saintly annihilation suspends “the whole manifestation of the will; … the universal forms of this manifestation, time and space, and also its last fundamental form, subject and object”, the so-called “ecstasy, rapture, illumination, union with God, and so forth” is impossible to understand or appreciate from the non-saintly perspective, as it is argued to be “accessible only to one’s own experience and cannot be communicated at second hand.”
While it is tempting to adopt a line of attack similar to the all too common criticism of Kant’s transcendentalism and object that Schopenhauer is guilty of ‘describing the supposedly indescribable’, I will resist this temptation here. Rather, I believe it will prove far more fruitful to instead invoke the following criticism made by Søren Kierkegaard against Schopenhauer’s conception of saintliness, as the metaphilosophical parameters suggested by William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience (and exposited in the following section (#2.2)) will offer a far more philosophically satisfactory response than any (anti)metaphysical arguments could ever hope to achieve:
On Arthur Schopenhauer
… After reading A.S.’s ethics through, one discovers – he is, of course, that honest – that he is not such an ascetic himself. Consequently he does not himself represent the contemplation that is attained through asceticism, but a contemplation which relates contemplatively to that asceticism. This is extremely suspect…

2.2 James and The Psychological

William James (1842-1910), in The Varieties of Religious Experience, sought to evaluate religious saintliness without recourse to supernaturalistic metaphysical beliefs/commitments, in a manner reminiscent of Erasmus. That is to say that (echoing the sentiment expressed by Camus in Section #1.1) James was concerned with the question of what can be said of saintliness, regardless of whether or not God exists. In order to accomplish this task, James emphasised what he called ‘the primacy of experience’, and, drawing from biographical accounts, attempted to substantiate Existential/Psychological justifications for the character and worth of saintliness.

According to James, the ‘universal’ saint of all religions will have the following four characteristics:
1) a feeling of a “wider life [and] of an Ideal Power” ; and
2) a friendly continuity and willing self-surrender to the Ideal Power; and
3) a feeling of “immense elation and freedom, as the outlines of the confining self-hood melt down” ; and
4) “a shifting of the emotional centre towards loving and harmonious affections, towards ‘yes, yes’.”

The practical consequences of these phenomenological/psychological characteristics are, again, four-fold: (i) Asceticism; (ii) Strength of Soul/Will; (iii) Purity; (iv) Charity.
While James himself goes on to give a typically level-headed, pragmatic evaluation of these phenomenological/psychological and practical characteristics of his ‘universal saint’, I will refrain from following suit for three reasons: 1) There already exist a number of fine expositions of James’s conceptions of saintliness; 2) the broadening of our cultural horizons afterwards has revealed James’s researches to be overly restrictive and narrow ; and 3) his Varieties are significant to the explication of saintliness herein as the methodology used by James will suggest yet another metaphilosophical restriction to be made.

James arrived at the characterisation of saintliness by drawing upon biographical material concerning characters expressive of a heightened religious experience. Indeed, The Varieties of Religious Experience contains numerous substantial slabs of quotations, spanning multiple pages. While his broad and detailed researches were culturally restricted, his methodology nevertheless warrants the following metaphilosophical parameter to be placed upon this thesis:
[MP4] For a conception of saintliness to be philosophically adequate, all psychological and/or phenomenological claims must be empirically defensible.
By this, I mean that characterisations that claim, for instance, that ‘saintliness’ has either beneficial or detrimental phenomenological and/or psychological effects need to be able to provide empirical evidence in support of their position. Similarly, conceptions that claim that saintliness itself involves a particular phenomenological and/or psychological status must be able to be empirically defensible. To fail to do so would be to trespass against Philosophical propriety.
As a case in point, when Robert C. Neville makes the following claim in his work, Soldier, Sage, Saint, we are quite within our rights to demand that his position be supported by empirical evidence pertaining to such ‘saintly’ figures:
The powers of saintliness are greatly to be feared… A small mistake of saintly reasoning can unleash a mighty power for harm. If a misdirected soldier is dangerous, a mistaken saint is close to Satan!

Unfortunately, such a devastating form of misdirected saintliness is not a commonly recognised understanding, and Neville himself makes no attempt to provide any empirical evidence (such as historical examples) in support of his argument. Indeed, it seems unlikely, even if Neville were to produce such a ‘satanic’ figure, that many would be swayed to view them impassively as a saint who made a ‘small mistake’.
This conception of saintliness, as was advanced in Soldier, Sage, Saint, must therefore be regarded as unpersuasive in the context of this thesis.

Similarly, when one encounters a philosophical conception such as is found in Arthur Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Idea (see Section #2.1), not only may one echo the ad hominem criticism put forward by Søren Kierkegaard (i.e. “it is always dubious to propound an ethics which does not exercise such a power over the teacher that he expresses it in himself.” ) but it may be taken one decisive step further:
Schopenhauer proposes a phenomenological characterisation of saintliness that: (1) he provides no empirical support for; (2) he presumably has no personal experience of; and (3) he stipulates cannot be known by any who have not themselves had such an experience (indeed, even of those who have, it cannot properly be called either knowledge or experience!).
In accordance with the metaphilosophical parameters suggested by the methodology of William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience (i.e. MP#4), Arthur Schopenhauer’s saint is therefore severely discredited.
Certainly, Schopenhauer may not have held himself to such metaphilosophical parameters as I have established here. Admittedly, he does goes some distance to pre-empting objections such as Kierkegaard’s, as can be seen in the following passage:
It is … just as little needful that a saint should be a philosopher as that a philosopher should be a saint; just as it is not necessary that a perfectly beautiful man should be a great sculptor, or that a great sculptor should himself be a beautiful man. In general, it is a strange demand upon a moralist that he should teach no other virtue than that which he himself possesses.

Unfortunately, as I consider the metaphilosophical parameter established in response to James’s admirable methodology to be only reasonable, the transcendental edifice upon which Schopenhauer sought to characterise saintliness is rendered inadequate, and so the entire structure collapses.

2.3 Huxley and The Hagiographical
Here, I must momentarily contravene the convention of addressing each topic by the chronology of the philosopher thought to best articulate it, for when Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) writes the following, then, in accordance with the metaphilosophical parameter established in the preceding section (#2.2), one must consider whether he is attempting to offer a proscriptive or a descriptive characterisation of saintliness:
[Like soldiers, saints] tend to forget the inborn and acquired idiosyncrasies with which they normally identify their being and, transcending selflessness, to behave in the same, one-pointed, better-than-personal way...

The following passage, however, suggests that Huxley does indeed believe his conception to be based on empirical fact:
The biographies of the saints testify unequivocally to the fact that spiritual training leads to a transcendence of personality …

Unfortunately, Huxley does not provide any further evidence in support of this assertion. Yet, I think we can safely say that, although the generalising nature of a term such as ‘saint’ necessarily suggests commonalities for its members, the hagiographical literature of the Christian tradition seemingly discredits Huxley’s claim. Take, for instance, two of the better-known religious saints: St Francis of Assisi and St Clare. Both were contemporaries, lived in Assisi, and were extremely pious. However, to claim that either ‘transcended their personalities’ would be to go too far. Distinguished as a great contemplative, St Clare never left the convent at Assisi. St Francis, on the hand, regularly travelled far and wide, and was renowned for his preaching. St Francis is most popularly known for his love of nature, whereas St Clare is better known for her joyful austerity in poverty. So, while it is true that both were undoubtedly religious saints in their own right, it would be overly presumptuous to claim, as Huxley seems to, that they had become the antithesis of ‘Legion’.

Additionally, Huxley goes on to claim that: “It is for this reason [of monotonous uniformity] that, in the whole repertory of epic, drama and the novel, there are hardly any representations of true theocentric saints.” That is to say, reminiscently of Aristotle’s musings on the aesthetic need for akrasia in the protagonists of tragedy : “Legion prefers to read about Legion”
Indeed, a similar notion was expressed by Iris Murdoch in her work, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, when she wrote: “The story of Christ is the story that we want to hear: that suffering can be redemptive …” A character who suffers is a character that we can identify with; hence the profundity of Jesus’ supposed final words: “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?”

Here we strike upon a further difficulty: to what extent are we to trust hagiographical accounts?
Certainly, there have been a number of representations of saintly-type figures in the canon of Literature. However, both Huxley and Murdoch are right to suggest that these characters are hardly ever purely and unwaveringly saintly. Most examples of saintly characters given in fictional depictions involve a great deal of uncertainty in their steadfastness and faith. The particular instances that I am thinking of here are: the priests in Graham Greene’s The Power and The Glory, Monsignor Quixote and The Potting Shed; Anthony in Gustav Flaubert’s The Temptation of Saint Anthony; Millie in Henry James’s The Wings of The Dove; and Aloysha and/or Father Zoisma in Fydor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.
What is at issue here, I suspect, is the relationship between form and content. While it is appropriate that literary works should explore the psychological difficulties faced by those attempting to live a life of purity, it is just as appropriate that hagiography (which is in essence a form of eulogy) should prudently overlook many of the shortcomings of its subjects. As Iris Murdoch puts it: “a saint described is a saint romanticised.”
The implication that such thinking holds for my own explication of a philosophically adequate conception of saintliness can be stated as yet another metaphilosophical parameter:
[MP5] A philosophically adequate conception of saintliness must be especially prudent when making recourse to any form of hagiography.
2.4 Nietzsche and The Anti-Transcendental
Friedrich Nietzsche’s (1844-1900) conception of saintliness developed directly out of that of Arthur Schopenhauer’s. This should come as little surprise, for as Bertrand Russell pointed out in his History of Western Philosophy: “Nietzsche regarded himself, rightly, as the successor of Schopenhauer…” Indeed, this is nowhere more apparent than in his early essay, ‘Schopenhauer as Educator’, wherein he wrote the following echo of his predecessor’s conception of saintliness:
… the genius longs more deeply for sainthood because from his watchtower he has seen further and more clearly than other men, down into the reconciliation of knowledge with being, over into the domain of peace and denial of the will, across to the other coast of which the Indians speak.

It wasn’t long, however, before this once avid Schopenhauerian eventually came to be dissatisfied with “that educator and philosopher [he] had sought for so long.” As Alain de Botton explains: in a letter Nietzsche wrote to Cosima Wagner, Nietzsche claimed to have realised that “fulfilment was to be reached not by avoiding pain, but by recognizing its role as a natural, inevitable step on the way to reaching anything good.” Consequently, his philosophy of saintliness was altered too … so much so, that William James characterised Nietzsche as “the most inimical critic of the saintly impulses whom I know.” Walter Kaufmann explained the transformation as follows:
In his early philosophy, Nietzsche had envisaged artist, saint, and philosopher as the supreme triad of humanity. [Later] he would still agree that these are the three types that have tried to rise above the mass of men, but he would evaluate them differently. The saint is now pictured as the man who has extirpated his passions and thus destroyed his chances of ever living the Good Life, while artist and philosopher employ their passions in spiritual pursuits and are the most nearly perfect of men; for the powerful life is the creative life.

Indeed, this is all too obvious in the following characteristically Nietzschean aphorism, simply entitled ‘Saints’: “– It is the most sensual men who have to flee from women and torment their body.”
In order to fully appreciate the consequences of this philosophical conception, we first must briefly consider both (1) Nietzsche’s anti-transcendental metaphysical stance, and (2) his genealogical account of morality.

1) As was explained in Section #2.1, Arthur Schopenhauer’s saint was thought to be able to transcend, via the denial of the will to life, what was otherwise the overarching, universal metaphysical force of the will to life. In contrast, Friedrich Nietzsche’s break from his early ‘educator’ resulted in the exposition of his own, original metaphysical principle. Intended to be a truly universal force, the will to power was envisaged by Nietzsche as one that not even the saint could transcend.
That Nietzsche did indeed hold such an anti-transcendental metaphysical stance is evidenced in the following passage, taken from Human, all too Human:
Metaphysical world. – It is true, there could be a metaphysical world; the absolute possibility of it is hardly to be disputed … but one can do absolutely nothing with it, not to speak of happiness, salvation and life depend on the gossamer of such a possibility. – For one could assert nothing at all of the metaphysical world except that it was a being-other, an inaccessible, incomprehensible being-other; it would be a thing with negative qualities. – Even if the existence of such a world were never so well demonstrated, it is certain that knowledge of it would be the most useless of all knowledge…

Prima facie, there may seem to be incongruence between my claim that the will to power was intended as a ‘metaphysical principle’, and the explicitly anti-metaphysical sentiment expressed above. However, let me make it clear that Nietzsche was antithetical to supernaturalistic transcendental metaphysics, but not to metaphysical systems/propositions altogether. For example, one need only think of Nietzsche’s notion of the eternal recurrence to realise the veracity of this claim. Indeed, what else could the will to power be, if not a metaphysical principle? What it wasn’t intended to be, however, was a transcendental/supernaturalistic metaphysical principle of the sort Nietzsche attacks in the quotation above. The will to power was conceived of as a truly universal principle that could in no way be transcended by the extreme asceticism practiced by Schopenhauer’s saint. As he puts it in the final sentence of The Genealogy of Morals:
[Asceticism] signifies, let us have the courage to face it, a will to nothingness, a revulsion from life, a rebellion against the principal conditions of living. And yet, despite everything, it is and remains a will.”

What the consequences of this position were for Nietzsche’s own conception of saintliness, is best accounted for by looking to his genealogy of morality.

2) Nietzsche typically divided humanity into two classes: the strong and the weak. The strong are those who exercise the will to power over those who are therefore deemed to be the weak. This oppression, Nietzsche argues, resulted in ‘morality’, which, conceived of genealogically, is seen to be little more than the normative adoption of behaviours and attitudes typically expected of the weak by the strong. From out of this phenomenon of oppressive morality, there arose yet a further ‘type’: the saint. According to Nietzsche, (ascetic) saints pervertedly express the will to power by pathologically embracing the otherwise natural oppression and suffering of morality as a penance for their own heightened sense of ‘guilt.’ As Nietzsche describes it:
… everywhere a misinterpretation of suffering as guilt, terror, and punishment; everywhere the flagellant’s lash, the hair shirt, the sinner stretching himself on the rack of his sadistic conscience …

However, this tendency to punish one’s own self was not thought by Nietzsche to be as simple (or innocent) as it may first appear; for, as he said, “there has never been a saint who reserves sins to himself and virtues to others.” As Nietzsche explains of this new type of the pervertedly strong: “self-inflicted cruelty, [and] ingenious self-castigation, was the principal instrument of these power hungry anchorites and innovators…” It was thus that they oppressed the weak individual even further by the invention of ‘sin’; for at “the very first hint as to the cause of suffering: [the weak man] is told to look at himself, to search his own soul for a guilt, a piece of his personal past; to view his suffering as a penance …” Or again, as Nietzsche explains at some length:
Man, the most courageous animal, and the most inured to trouble, does not deny suffering per se: he wants it, he seeks it out, provided that it can be given a meaning. Finally the ascetic ideal arose to give it meaning – its only meaning, so far … [For] man would sooner have the void for his purpose than be void of purpose…

The result was that, “people no longer complained of pain but were insatiable for it.” This phenomenon, Nietzsche argued, coincided with the advent of Christianity, as he explains in the following aphorism entitled ‘Christianity and Suicide’:
When Christianity came into being, the craving for suicide was immense – and Christianity turned it into a lever of its power. It allowed only two kinds of suicide, dressed them up with the highest dignity and highest hopes, and forbade all others in a terrifying manner. Only martyrdom and the ascetic’s slow destruction of his body were permitted.”

These ‘highest hopes’ form the primary focus of ‘Ascetic Philosophy’ (presumably a reference to Schopenhauer): namely, to deny what is most real. Indeed, in his posthumously published The Will to Power, we find the following account of saintliness:
…The saint as the most powerful type of man-: it is this idea that has elevated so high the value of moral perfection. One must imagine the whole of knowledge labouring to prove that the moral man is the most powerful, most godlike. -The overcoming of the senses, the desires – everything inspired fear; the antinatural appeared as the supernatural, as something from the beyond-

It is, I believe, this conclusive sentiment that best expresses the core of Nietzsche’s conception of saintliness. However, as it was echoed and refined in the work of Nietzsche’s own successor, Jean-Paul Sartre, I shall hold off from any critical engagement until the ensuing section (#2.5).
Before I move on to do so, however, it must be noted that Nietzsche believed himself to be responding (like Hume before him) directly to Christian conceptions of saintliness. From this, some may want to suggest that his philosophy is more characteristic of The Pre-Modern Era than it is of what I have claimed to be the religiously independent Modern one. Although I cannot discount Nietzsche’s own beliefs, I nevertheless think it fair to say that Nietzsche’s conception of saintliness is so peculiarly at odds with common notions of saintliness (perhaps because of the strong Schopenhauerian influence) that, in a sense, it stands alone, apart from characteristically Pre-Modern conceptions. The same holds true, I believe, also with regard to Sartre.

2.5 Sartre and The Anti-Supernatural

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) was no more sympathetic to the phenomenon of saintliness than was his predecessor, Friedrich Nietzsche; as is evidenced in the following, rather crude explanation: “I am not as fond of shit as some people say I am. That is why I reject Saintliness wherever it manifests itself…”
Again, Sartre’s reasons for such an abrasive rejection of saintliness are entirely reminiscent of the anti-supernatural sentiment that was expressed by Nietzsche:
With these [‘saintly’] men appeared the sophistry of the Nay which later achieved such brilliant success; in a destructive society which places the blossoming of being at the moment of its annihilation, the Saint, making use of divine mediation, claims that a Nay carried to the extreme is necessarily transformed into a Yea. Extreme poverty is wealth, refusal is acceptance, the absence of God is the dazzling manifestation of his presence, to live to die, to die is to live, etc.

Such ‘sophistry’ was held by Sartre - again, echoing Nietzsche - to be little more than the result of a passionate desire for power by those who were unable to attain it naturally or honestly:
Unable to be the first among men, [ascetic saints] will want to be above the first; they will turn their eagerness against themselves, and, by a long, conspicuous suicide, they will give the society which is rushing delightfully to its destruction the exemplary image of proud annihilation. These clerks are fakers. By going through the ecclesiastical mill they could have obtained something: some honours, some money, some power. In pursuing Saintliness, it is therefore something which they are refusing. But by means of the transport they display in refusing, by means of self-torture which they practice, they convince themselves and others that they have refused everything.

Here, one is reminded of Nietzsche’s philosophy of the signification of asceticism (i.e. “a will to nothingness … yet … it is and remains a will.” ). Sartre takes this insight one step further, and places it in a social context, so as to thereby claim that “the phenomenon of saintliness appears chiefly in societies of consumers”. The reasons for this are twofold:
(i) [With respect to saintliness,] a simple-minded practicality [in the consumer] stresses the final aspect of the product; the truth of its being appears when it is presented to the purchaser or user as a polished, varnished, sparkling object; it demands, in its being, that it be consumed.

(ii) The Saint makes the world useless, symbolically and in his person, because he refuses to use it. He dies of hunger amidst riches. But it is necessary that these riches exist: divers must seek pearls in the ocean beds; miners must extract gold from the bowels of the earth; hunters must, at the risk of their lives, break down the defences of the elephant; slaves must build palaces, cooks must invent the rarest dishes, so that the Saint, rejecting royal dignity, ivory, precious stones and the beauty of women, may lie at death’s door, barren and disdainful, heaped with everything because he accepts nothing.

In response to Sartre’s conception of saintliness (and, by extension, Nietzsche’s), I have the following to say:
Certainly, both Nietzsche’s and Sartre’s insights into the ‘sophisticated’ appearance of ‘gain’ and supernaturalism via the seemingly exhaustive refusal that is integral to saintly asceticism must be conceded. Extreme asceticism can and has produced in the mind of the ascetic and/or the observer, an appearance (sophisticated or otherwise) of a metaphysical commitment that is antithetical to ordinary, everyday valuations. Although Sartre and Nietzsche both argue that this ‘appearance’ is deceptive because it is wholly dependant on that which it supposedly transcends, I need not refute nor commit to such reasoning at present. It is sufficient that I invoke the first metaphilosophical parameter, in claiming that, as far as the scope of this thesis permits, both Sartre and Nietzsche’s conclusions are, prima facie, valid. This is to say, that while in fact the saint’s actions may well point toward a supernaturalistic metaphysics, all that the present investigation is apt to accede to is that they give the appearance of pointing - whether or not they point towards truth or illusion is, however, a matter beyond the scope of this thesis.

That being said, I nonetheless feel that both of the above philosophers’ attacks against the phenomenon of saintliness are overly brash and require tempering. For instance, while one concedes the (unjustified) supernatural phenomenon of extreme ascetic saintliness, we need not condemn asceticism altogether. Certainly, one would seem to be unjustified in believing that, because the saint denies everything in this world, they must therefore gain everything in/from another. However, this does not entail (as much of Sartre’s and Nietzsche’s philosophy implies) that such a rejection of material goods is bad in and of itself. While many have and do foster philosophically unwarranted metaphysical commitments from such behaviour, there is perhaps, a far more metaphysically innocuous, and philosophically profound relation between consumerism and the asceticism attributed to saintliness.

That the very essence of asceticism is dependant upon its antithesis is not to be doubted. That it is wholly dependant, however, must be … and with interesting results.
Sartre, as was quoted previously, held that “it is necessary that … riches exist” in order for asceticism to be meaningful. This suggests that, in the absence of something to deny, asceticism would be impossible. Initially, this may seem coherent. To our normal way of thinking, it would indeed seem meaningless for an individual to adopt ascetic practices in the context of extreme and persisting poverty and famine. One may ask of such a scenario: what would differentiate the ascetic from the non-ascetic? In answering this question, however, we reveal the true nature of asceticism, and the mischaracterisation of it advanced by Sartre, Nietzsche, and even perhaps by Schopenhauer.
In a context of extreme poverty and famine, an ascetic would be one who seeks contentment with their situation. While in a normal, ‘consumerist’ context, the ascetic strives to minimise their desires, at least in part, by minimising their ‘consumption’ of worldly goods, in the former context the ascetic’s annihilation of desire must be achieved in attitude alone. The ascetic, then, would be differentiated from the non-ascetic by their behaviour and (to tread problematic metaphysical grounds) their feelings/beliefs. The non-ascetic would presumably continue to search in vain for sustenance, and, moreover, express deep and profound despair at both his present situation and the future it portends. In contrast, we can imagine that the ascetic would strive not to scavenge, and to find contentment with whatever the future holds.
In an aphorism entitled ‘To the teachers of selflessness’, Nietzsche wrote: “One’s ‘neighbour’ praises selflessness because he derives advantage from it!” One need only to recall the nature of Schopenhauer’s ethical categories to appreciate the sentiment expressed here. When we take the hypothetical scenario given above, however, it is difficult to perceive what advantage the neighbour of an ascetic might gain in the absence of worldly goods. On the face of it, the non-ascetic may (mistakenly) believe that the ascetic’s disinclination to forage for food and water may be beneficial to him, because, were his own efforts to succeed, he would (against the spirit of charity) feel no inclination to share his spoils with the other. It is, however, just as likely in such a situation, that the addition of another’s aid in the search for sustenance would be beneficial, even if it were to mean that one would have to share.
So, continuing on with Nietzsche’s own program of investigating what is taught or signified by asceticism, in the case given above we can characterise it essentially as an attitude of contentment at odds with desire altogether. That it has the appearance of being a matter of refusal or self-denial in normal circumstances does indeed attest to Sartre’s claim that it occurs primarily in consumerist societies, but not that it is necessary that there be something to refuse or deny.
Indeed, it seems only natural that, as Sartre claimed, extreme asceticism occurs in consumerist societies, as the proliferation of desire or discontent that is broadly fostered by consumerism is not only what makes contentment with nothing appear saintly and/or exceptional, but, additionally, is what makes it necessary at all. Here, it looks as if the adage, ‘extreme circumstances engender extreme measures’ is appropriate. That the phenomenon of venerated asceticism could occur in a society of modest wants seems unlikely. Indeed, hagiographical accounts suggest that the motivation for an individual’s adoption of a life in solitude (or even in a hermitage) was, more often than not, owing to a repulsion felt towards the barbarous and decadent state of the society they abandon. The life of Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) is probably the most well known example of this.
Again, it is difficult to see how an ascetic’s self-indulgent neighbour might ‘derive advantage’ (in a Schopenhauerian sense) from such a scenario. That is, apart from the more traditional (non-metaphysical) interpretation: that the ascetic signals the potentially detrimental effects of unbridled desires.
Here, I need not invoke any notion of ‘eternal punishment’ or ‘sin’ that may infringe the metaphilosophical parameters of this thesis. Instead, it is enough to invoke far more metaphysically innocuous ideas. For instance, it seems obvious that wantonly unbridled desires can be detrimental to one’s consideration of others. Alternatively, history has shown that greed - among other vices - has led to the downfall of a number of societies including Ancient Rome and Nazi Germany. And yet, in either of these cases, the ‘advantage gained’ is not, as Nietzsche claimed, on one’s own terms. Rather it is because one comes to appreciate the worth of the alternative values of the ascetic.

2.6 Conclusions

In this, Part Two, the following was established:
(#2.1) Arthur Schopenhauer’s conception of saintliness was both philosophically unique and culturally alien, and thus occasioned the advent of The Modern Era of The Philosophy of Saintliness, which is distinct from its precursor in so far as the conceptions it advanced were no longer dependent upon Christian conceptions. Schopenhauer conceived of saintliness in terms of extreme asceticism that sought to transcend the otherwise universal will to life.
(#2.2) William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience continued on the spirit of the Modern Era in its attempt to characterise ‘the universal saint.’ Although the broadening of cultural horizons has revealed certain deficiencies in his conception, James’s methodology nonetheless suggested that one must be able to provide or produce empirical evidence in support of any psychological/phenomenological claims pertaining to the nature and/or effects of saintliness. Applying this parameter to both Schopenhauer’s and Neville’s conceptions of saintliness revealed them to be deficient in terms of both execution and conception.
(#2.3) Similarly, Aldous Huxley’s claim, that saintliness universally erases an individual’s personality, was shown to be not only without empirical support, but contrary to it. This, however, raised the issue of the potentially biased nature of hagiographical accounts.
(#2.4) Whereas Friedrich Nietzsche’s notion of saintliness was initially essentially Schopenhauerian, he eventually developed his own conception in accordance with his overarching, non-transcendental, metaphysical principle: the will to power. Roughly stated: even the denial of the will to live is a willing (to power). According to this view, the saint ignobly embodies the will to power, thereby oppressing the weaker via a culture of asceticism that gives the illusion that the antinatural is in fact supernatural.
(#2.5) With respect to their conceptions of saintliness, Jean-Paul Sartre was Nietzsche successor. Taking the idea of ‘saintly sophistry’, Sartre placed it in a worldly context and claimed further (i) that saintliness was a consumerist phenomenon, and (ii) that, because the appearance of absolute refusal is dependant upon the something it refuses, it is to be dismissed outright. While I conceded (on my own terms) that the ascetic’s apparent refusal of everything does not entail a subsequent supernatural reward, it was argued that saintly asceticism is nevertheless meaningful in so far as it suggests a tempering (or even polarisation) of ordinary values that, in the face of potentially detrimental extravagances, is to be praised.

By no means am I suggesting that these five philosophers of the Modern Era were the only ones to have employed the concept of saintliness in undertaking significant work in their philosophy. Iris Murdoch and Simone Weil , for example, are two prominent Philosophical figures that spring to mind when discussing saintliness. However, for various reasons – the least of which being that their conceptions were not significantly revolutionary – I have deemed it appropriate that they should be overlooked here. Such an omission, I hope, will be allowed, for while those included in my genealogical account are thought to serve my explication of a philosophically adequate conception of saintliness, those whom I have left out are not thought to contradict it in any meaningful way.

 ~ David Hawkins

"To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go."

~ Mary Oliver, from Blackwater Woods

"Without love intelligence is dangerous; without intelligence love is not enough."

~ Ashley Montagu

"Love expands intelligence and creativity. Love returns autonomy, and as it returns autonomy, it returns responsibility and the experience of freedom.

I am going to tell you what love is, not as a definition, but as an abstraction of the coherences of our living... Love is the domain of relational behaviors through which another (person, being, or thing) arises as a legitimate other in coexistence with oneself.

The dynamics abstracted above, are how we act, whether or not we reflect on it.

Aggression is that domain of relational behaviors in which another is negated as a legitimate other in coexistence with oneself."

~ Humberto Maturana

"Love and magic have a great deal in common. They enrich the soul, delight the heart. And they both take practice."

~ Nora Roberts

"Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence."

~ H. L. Mencken

"There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread."

~ Mother Theresa

"The opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference."

~ Elie Wiesel

"We can only learn to love by loving."

~ Iris Murdoch

"Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?"

~ Abraham Lincoln

"What the world really needs is more love and less paperwork."

~ Pearl Baily

"If love is the answer, could you rephrase the question?"

~ Lily Tomlin

But more subtle factors may come into play. A truism of literary prize-giving is that awards often go to everybody’s second choice. Judges may split into two camps with each side fiercely opposing the other’s first choice. To reach a decision, they may choose a second-rate book they can all support.

Judges tell many stories in among themselves about such compromises but rarely discuss them publicly. Who wants to admit to having honored a clinker? But Neville Braybooke suggests how the practice can work in his preface to the Every Eye, the elegant second novel by his late wife, Isobel English. Braybooke writes that English refused to add the happy ending that an American publisher wanted to her to give her first novel, The Key That Rusts:

“More significantly, during these early days of her career, came the news that The Key That Rusts had been shortlisted for the Somerset Maugham Award, tying for first place with Iris Murdoch’s first novel, Under the Net. In the event, the judges were unable to decide who should be the winner, so they gave the prize to the runner-up, Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim.”

Neville Braybrooke in Every Eye (David R. Godine/Black Sparrow, $23.95) www.blacksparrowbooks.com.

Comment by Jan:

Braybrooke may have been willing to tell this anecdote partly because there would have been no shame in losing either to Lucky Jim or Under the Net, both modern classics. And few critics would argue that Amis’s comic novel was unworthy of an award. The Somerset Maugham Award is given annually by the London-based Society of Authors www.societyofauthors.org to the writer or writers under the age of 35 who wrote the best book of the year.

Do you think any unworthy books have won awards? What are they?

© 2008 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved. www.janiceharayda.com

“ …

Even anthologies such as The Best American series provide, at best, a glimpse of short literature. Everything else—the collections by one author, for instance—are picked up by university presses. Granted, I’m happy that university presses are picking up the slack, but Barnes & Noble and Waldenbooks are not in the practice of keeping their shelves stocked with the latest publications from the University of Michigan Press or the Susquehanna University press or anywhere else, for that matter. I am convinced that there are lots of great stories, great poems, great plays, and great novellas/short novels out there. But nobody can get them because the chain bookstores are selling the “big” things and—as a post from last week argues—mixes in literature with everything else, anyway.

And even getting a short work out in the first place is difficult. In the novella course this semester, I noticed immediately that all of the novellas we read in class were part of some other collection. Then Steve Yarbrough, one of the visiting novelists, pointed out that in European countries, a person can go into a bookstore and find novellas, printed by themselves. (Granted, this is obviously hearsay because I’m taking his word for it, but I don’t doubt that America and Europe have different literary cultures. That he is married to the Polish literary translator Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough and spends several months of each year in Krakow only makes his claim more reputable.) I don’t think this problem ends just with literature, either. People will purchase seasons of television shows and movies, but when did you last hear common people—not just film nuts—talk about short films?

And the same is true of short stories and essays and poems. Who talks about them, aside from story writers and essayists and poets? Stephen King, in his introduction to The Best American Short Stories 2007 concludes that the American short story was alive, but not well. I can hardly wonder why.

Last weekend I went to D.J. Ernst Used Bookstore in Selinsgrove, where I purchased a copy of Iris Murdoch’s “Something Special.” Yes, this is not a typo—“Something Special” is a single short story. Fifty-one wonderful pages, written in Murdoch’s smart, thoughtful, and crisp prose, this single story was published by W.W. Norton in November 2000, almost a year-and-a-half after Murdoch’s death. It was a rare pleasure to find a single story, published in hardcover by a major house. I read it the other night, and reading this book reminded me of the joy in sitting down to read something short, brilliant, and slight. And because of this, I have to wonder how Americans can meet fantastic literature. Our bookstores are not selling gems like Murdoch’s “Something Special.” And that’s something that I find terribly unsettling.

• In film, This is England. (Watched it tonight, and it's brilliant, just brilliant. The dialogue's great, the soundtrack is perfect, and most of the acting is great too.)
• In music, Portland Rise. (Yes, I have a bit of a vested interest in these guys, but would recommend them even if I didn't know them.)
• In books, Under the Net. (Iris Murdoch's first novel, and unfortunately the only one of hers I've read, but will try and rectify that this summer after my exams.)

That's my watch, listen and read for this week. I might even make it a semi-regular feature, depending how revision goes.

• (And as a bonus, in podcasts, the Ubuntu-uk podcast episode 2, or uupc as it is become known. It even got a mention on lugradio this week!)

In other events, Freya has hidden our car keys. She is refusing to remember where she has put them, saying: 'I don't know, where are the car keys?' each time we ask her. Like it's some sort of rhyming game we're playing for her amusement. We have searched high and low and we have no spare set. I'm blaming Freya, but of course it could have been Ben. Or Don, even. Though, admittedly, I was the last to drive the car.

Anyway, what with Easter coming up very shortly, and the fact that I've only got two exams this year (one's six hours long though!), I decided to do an Amazon shop for a couple of things we (as a house) wanted to get and throw in a book. Underworld, by Don DeLillo - weighing in at a hefty 800+ pages, it should last me a little while at least. In the meantime - I went for free super saver delivery, of course, being a cheap arse student - I'll get Iris Murdoch's first novel, Under the Net, out of the way.

Why choose Underworld? I read Falling Man for a seminar this term, and actually quite enjoyed it. It didn't strike me as at all amazing, but what I've heard of his other work he's not a half bad writer, and rather than start meekly at the shallow end with something like White Noise I thought I should go for the big one. We shall see how it goes.

To beat stress in the evening, I find a powerful tool in the delightful collection by James Salter, Last Night. My own anti-stress prescription reads: “Read one story a day at bedtime, do not overuse, pause and meditate on each of them”. For the moment, I can’t really decide which I love best, because they are all so good! The writing is sparse and you need to concentrate to get the details of what’s going on, because otherwise, you miss the whole emotion. This definitely will put me on track to find out more on James Salter. I hadn’t heard of him before, but it’s never too late. Any suggestion? 

On the side, during my commute, I’m reading a fascinating book on Paris that mix literary masterpieces (Balzac, Hugo, Zola, etc.) set in the city with the history of the place itself. I’m learning a lot about the neighbourhoods that I have always taken for granted. It’s interesting to see how the city dynamics changed from one century to the next. I’ve never been a fan of local history but this one is special and makes me want to go back to a great Balzac book. Or maybe Danielle’s challenge to read Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables? I admit that I recoil at the huge number of pages. 

Mr. Smithereens also contributed his 2-cents by offering me “Iris”, a memoir by Iris Murdoch’s husband, John Bailey. The tone is very intimate and loving. I’ve never read any Murdoch before either, so it might be the right time. 

I’m also contemplating 2 books that sit in my TBR pile for quite a while. The first was last year’s unexpected literary bestseller in France: L’élégance du Hérisson, by Muriel Barbery (The hedgehog’s elegance? I think it’s still un-translated), the story of a gifted child in a privileged family and that of the also very gifted yet underestimated superintendent of the building where she lives. I usually don’t follow the moment’s literary fad, but I’m curious about this one. And that would go well with my 2008 resolution to read more French novels.  

The other book I’m thinking about is very different. It’s Lunar Park, by Bret Easton Ellis, because I still don’t know whether I like or hate BEE’s works. It might be worth trying. He has been accused of misogyny, but I think that there is more to it. Did any of you try this novel? 

Well, I don’t know about you, but I find it comforting to have that many good books around the corner, waiting for me. I’ll maybe throw yet another Vargas thriller for good measure? No, that would be overusing my anti-stress prescription. Better keep it for later…

un citat din fim: "cand trebuie sa alegi intre doua feluri de rau, alege-l pe cel nefamiliar".

viata lui Iris mi-a amintit de o discutie citata acum cateva zile de cineva, la un interviu : tatal isi intreaba nedumerit fiul :"de ce vrei sa fii scriitor? nu esti nici nebun, nici homosexual".

So I wasn't struck with a sense of having done any harm until I did a double take at her message. "It comes off as sexist, and I know you're not sexist." Oh boy ... I mean, oh girl ... I mean, I don't know what I mean now.

When writing for other people to read, the concern is not about what is proper or grammatically correct. Rather, the concern should be centered around how a message is conveyed. How will another person read this? After all, what is language but a placeholder for understanding one another, a means of communicating real thoughts through otherwise empty sounds and script? If the words are not doing their job of effectively evoking the same thoughts in the reader that are evoked in the writer, then we need to find new words.

In Iris Murdoch's novel Under the Net, two of the main characters have a discussion about the function of language, and its accuracy and efficiency in its purposes. One of the two characters, Hugo Belfounder, says about conveying an idea, "The language just won't let you present it as it really was." He believes that language betrays our original thoughts, and when jokingly asked if one shouldn't speak at all, Hugo replies seriously, "I think perhaps one oughtn't to."

I do not share Hugo's deep cynicism with regard to verbal interaction, but his point makes me think a bit. While I still believe that language can act as an effective means of communication, and I don't by any means think we should outlaw speaking to one another, perhaps we should be careful about what we say. And I don't mean trying to be sensitive or not hurt others' feelings. I mean we should take into thorough consideration how our message, once encrypted in the hieroglyphics of language, will be decoded when it reaches its target. If I come across as sexist by using "he," then, barring Hugo's idea that language itself is inherently defective, there is either a problem with my encryption or a problem with the reader's decryption. And as my mother's first boss drilled into her head, and by proxy, into mine, the customer is always right.

Or is she? Writing or verbally expressing one's thoughts requires an understanding of one's audience, but so, too, does being an audience member require an understanding of the writer or speaker. Here we have the essence of communication: understanding. Hugo thinks language is useless because it doesn't promote a full understanding of another's ideas or thoughts; rather, it skews them. Oppositely, I think that language is useful because it is the best tool we have for transcending our own minds and making the vital link with another human being. It's not perfect, but neither are we. To be cliche for a moment, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. And to try to make communication perfect while we are imperfect really only strengthens one link. There will be imperfections always, but the sport of it comes in approaching the unattainable limit, to see what phrases or images we can conjure that will evoke the same feeling in another person.

Now onto the politics of all this.

First, the heuristics of "he." The possibility that we will have a female President a year and a few days from now has, for the first time, a very high probability. To say "he" when I mean "he or she" is simply a shortcut, albeit a poorly timed one. I do not mean to detract from Hillary Clinton or the possibility that she may win the election. The fact that I have to clarify my intentions points to an oversight on my part when choosing which pronoun to use.

Second, the implications of what we've said in the grander political world. The purpose of a candidate's run for office is to convince the voters that he or she will be the best choice in a field of options. This requires communicating with the voters, which in turn, as we have discovered, requires understanding the voters. But it also requires the voters to understand the candidates. And here, upon the principles of understanding, we find the essence of communication, and the key to being a successful candidate. Let's analyze:

In Iowa, Barack Obama displayed an understanding of the people's desire for change, unity, and forward progress. He was rewarded, even if his promises will be difficult or impossible to follow through. His message was one that demonstrated an empathetic relationship between Obama and the voters. Likewise, when Clinton changed her image in New Hampshire, she tried for a more understanding candidate, one who would listen and understand the voters. Again, she was rewarded. Let's look at John Edwards for a moment. He shows that he understands the people "without a voice" in the United States. He is perhaps the most empathetic seeming of all the Democratic candidates. Unfortunately, the people whom Edwards understands and so appeals to are the voiceless, as he has said. This means those with no organization, no powerful lobbyists, no money, and no influence. Hence Edwards' clear third place. Sadly, it seems that despite his message of sympathy, he is unelectable because he doesn't try to connect with the voiced members of America as well.

On the Republican side, John McCain's "straight talk" shows he understands the voters' desire to avoid empty promises, enticing as they may be, and hear the plain truth. This message is paying off for him. Mitt Romney's hair and his seeming plasticity make many voters unsure of whether he could really understand them the way they want a President to do. He's outspent the other candidates by far, but it seems to have only ensured a that he's not totally lost in the Republican shuffle, although his message seems to have resounded fairly well in Michigan, with 3% of the Republican vote counted thus far. Mike Huckabee, on the other hand, has shown a remarkable connection to the religious right, despite his more centrist fiscal approach. Rudy Giuliani has shown that he understands Floridians, but that will not be enough, and it might not even be enough in Florida, as many of the voters have turned to McCain. All these results stem from a perceived understanding between the candidates and voters.

This all may seem fairly intuitive, but it is easy to underestimate the importance of understanding, in communication or in politics. Language is nothing without connection, as we have shown. Similarly, promises and policies are nothing without a connection between candidates and voters. It's not about words; it's about what's behind them, the meaning they possess, the fire they instill, the spirit they carry. Amy Clampitt, in my opinion one of the most underappreciated poets of the twentieth century, wrote this in her poem "Losing Track of Language" to pull back the facade of language and show the depth of meaning behind it:

The train leaps toward Italy; words fall away
through the dark into the dark bedroom
of everything left behind, the unendingness
of things lost track of—of who, of where—
where I’m losing track of language.

So let us be careful which words we choose and how we use them. Because each is a tool that can open -- or close -- the pathways between us and those around us. They are not ideas themselves; rather, they are gateways to the ideas that make up the common understanding of all human beings, portals to a realm of transcendence, where our thoughts can exist outside our minds. Words represent a power beyond any weapon or destructive force; they are the ultimate constructive force. Use them wisely.

Amb motiu d'aquesta mostra, s'ha realitzat un recull de recursos electrònics i bibliogràfics sobre aquesta pensadora i creadora.

Podeu llegir més sobre aquesta notícia al web del CRAI, i també a El Periódico (3 de gener 2008).

The sea which lies before me as I write glows rather than sparkles in the bland May sunshine.  With the tide turning, it leans quietly against the land, almost unflecked by ripples or by foam.  Near to the horizon it is a luxurious purple, spotted with regular lines of emerald green.  At the horizon it is indigo.  Near to the shore, where my view is framed by rising heaps of humpy yellow rock, there is a band of lighter green, icy and pure, less radiant, opaque however, not transparent.  We are in the north, and the bright sunshine cannot penetrate the sea.  Where the gentle water taps the rocks there is still a surface skin of colour.  The cloudless sky is very pale at the indigo horizon which it lightly pencils in with silver.  Its blue gains towards the zenith and vibrates there.  But the sky looks cold, even the sun looks cold. 

 -- Rafe