amelo14

The Erotic Life and Poetry

Eros III:

1. Simple lines

The kiss:

Suppose you read the following brief poem about eros:

“I don’t know what I should do: two states of mind in me … (36)
I’m in love! I‘m not in love!
I’m crazy! I’m not crazy!

Suppose you reread it. Such simple few lines composed with such few simple words. What would you tend immediately to think? Would this be a candidate for a Daily Deviation here at dA? It seems to me not, for a multiplicity of reasons. I believe dA is at times too sophisticated. I tend to think most of us would smilingly frown upon it; it sounds too juvenile. Perhaps we would even tend to feel a tad of sarcastic sympathy within, we might even mock the words a bit. We laugh a bit at them; though perhaps the joke is, as we shall see, on us. When one is not in love, irony towards the other rules; yet, when in love, such irony is the least of our concerns.

But back to this simple poem. We already know so much about love and the erotic that we might in fact fail to see, to touch, to smell, to conceptualize. More philosophically, we modern westerners tend to think we have truly liberated human sexuality to its fullest expression. But this might just be simply a dangerous illusion as Michel Foucault dramatically points out in the first volume of his powerful The History of Sexuality.  Although he is one of the strongest defenders of postmodernism ----a movement which criticizes  the tyranny of modern reason------ there Foucault radically criticizes the connection between modern sexual liberation and the false sense of overall liberation we assume we have reached from the deeper western roots found in our confessional practices.  

But back to the poem. Does it not seem altogether naïve? These words seem more a youthful description than a poem; they merely recount a very personal moment which most of us keep to ourselves. But let us not be so quick to dismiss it; maybe its apparent simplicity  demands of us an effort which goes unnoticed at the start. Line-art, as I have argued elsewhere,  does so similarly. What, then,  does this naïve poem demand? That we situate ourselves in the time of the lover who loves; that time is the now of  our existence. To remember a love is not be in love. To demand a love to the future is not to love fully. We humans can only fall in love in the now, we can only love in the present presence of the now.  But we ALL know this; so, what makes this poem so special? Why tell us about it?  If I had written it, I would probably not have much to say. But here is the thing,  it was written by a lover, perhaps the greatest woman lover of them all. These simplistic words were written by Sappho, one of the greatest poets in human history. Courageously,  she has marked down these dramatic words to posterity so that we can situate ourselves in the “now” of the erotic. But besides, all her words carry an erotic charge which has not dissipated over the centuries. In her poetic lines she confronts us and reminds us of the complex nature of erotic life as expressed in our deepest  longings and complex desires as humans.

But let us go back to the poem. Why then  is this poem so famous if it is so elusively naïve,  even premature and incomplete? Therein precisely lies its force. Its simplicity deludes us into thinking that no complexity is there to be found. Its simplicity  masks purposely. This journal tries to investigate this simplicity. It briefly seeks to investigate some of the many questions regarding erotic desire and its puzzles as seen by Sappho. One could even go so far as to say that this type of exercise is required in order to deepen the discussion on sexuality in our societies. We  constantly hear that  we, as a society, have failed in our own erotic education.  I truly believe we have failed and will fail, unless we take seriously the task of understanding desire beyond the technical and biological aspects we emphasize as moderns. That type of technical education and practice speaks thus: your sexual organs are such and such; they are located here and here; you put this there; you put this on like so; if you touch here, then ; have any problems? Take this… …. ; and so on.

Instead of defending such crass  reduction, an investigation on the metaphors of erotic love becomes central to understanding ourselves; even to deciding what type of life we choose to live. For the questions around the erotic involve a choice of life. Such an investigation will touch on Sappho here as one of the representatives of the views of eros as defended by artists. But this investigation requires a much deeper understanding of the challenge to artists set forth by Plato’s and Aristotle’s combined understandings of desire. Art and philosophy are THE privileged avenues to desire. Exploring them both, opens us to ourselves in a broader, less illusory fashion. Women like Martha Nussbaum lead the way here with her important The Fragility of Goodness. But perhaps the tension between both areas will eventually lead us to defend and, actually live, altogether different erotic lives.  

Shaken by coming to recognize that what we thought was an irrelevant poem, we want to take another chance with it. Don’t we also sometimes want to take another chance with an unforgettable lover? We want to let ourselves be opened by the poem, Sappho wishes to open us and close us repetitively, teaching us the motions of our desiring natures. We must be ready to open  ourselves and close ourselves in the rhythm of her “simple” words. For her, we must be ready to love as lovers do. For her we must be ready to risk.

Naked before you:

2. Deceptive simplicity

Cuerpos: :thumb28176429:


So let us return to these opening lines which we now know have a poetic backing like few others. The poem, once again,  reads:

“I don’t know what I should do: two states of mind in me …
I’m in love! I‘m not in love
I’m crazy! I’m not crazy!”

First she tells us, “I do not know what I should do.” Don’t you remember this? You might answer, “Yes, I do.”  But unfortunately, I must tell you that, strictly speaking, you cannot.. “Why? What do you mean?”, you protest. Part of the reason is this: if you CAN remember,  then you are NOT in love in this moment. For in love, says Sappho in this poem, you just do not know anymore! Perhaps this is why we can  never quite remember how badly it went previously the last time we loved, when we ACTUALLY fall in love again NOW.  Repetitive loses accumulate as we cannot grasp what is going on each time.

And moreover, if in fact you CAN remember having felt this, then ----really,  really---- you don’t remember. What you are trying to say just means, most probably,  that you are now in love. Only in being in love do these words touch you as they should, for in love you are no longer yourself.  As Sappho says, in love you  do not know what you should do. And if you think you do, Sappho thinks you might just be deluding yourself.

Or in other words, of course, when we are NOT in love, or when we think we are assured the love of another ---–which is a very odd thing to think/desire--- we simply shrug our shoulders when faced with such “immature” poetic words. “Yeah I know, I remember when I fell in love”, you say to yourself. But in doing so you confuse what you ONCE felt in the PAST with what it is ACTUALLY to be IN love NOW. By projecting the “then” of love into the present moment, you certainly feel secure. This is the characteristic of the worst of lovers, says Plato in his beautiful Phaedrus. Plato finds this tyrannical type of love exemplified in the story of King Midas. Everyone knows his story; he tried to control the temporality of love, and failed.

In seeking such security,  the indecision of Sappho’s poem seems juvenile and unworthy. But, “not to know”; do you remember how this felt so as to liberate YOU  to the full presence of the present instant of loving now? Stricken by the other’s enigmatic presence, Sappho allows us   ---or better yet, makes us--- feel  what this presence does to us through her words. What occurs in the “now” of the erotic according to Sappho?

In the appearance of the erotic other, I lose all possibility of thoughtful presence. This Sappho affirms. Little wonder we mock those in love; we humor ourselves through their lost capacities. This is nowhere more poignantly revealed than in  The Damask Drum, a must read for anyone interested in erotic desire. This is a short play by Japanese writer Yukio Mishima in which  a poor and old janitor named  Iwakichi, claims to fall in love with a 20 year old  beauty called Kayoko. The perplexing dynamic of their affair reveals much about the way we mock those who lose themselves in love. But be that as it may, we have ALL at one time or another actually mocked those in love. For, you see,  they truly seem out of their wits! They actually seem irresponsive, as in a dream. They are slow to reaction and for this we taunt them. They can’t even keep in their saliva at times! Even their bodily functions are a total loss!

“Not knowing” in that moment of the erotic encounter; to be simply grabbed by the force of a presence which remains even when not there. The absence of the loved one does not mitigate in the least the feeling. And worse yet, “not knowing” carries with it crucial problems in real life. “Not knowing” ourselves, ceasing to be who we thought we were, our actions cease to be coherent. For responsible actions require  some kind of  identity that affirms such decisions. No wonder lovers are irresponsible! The planned coherence once available to answer the question “ who am I?” evades us in this instance. We are paralyzed as rarely we are. This is why Saphho adds that her not knowing involves primarily not knowing what I should do.  Once you know what you should do, you have lost contact with Sappho’s poem. Perhaps you seek such security, but ironically such security erases the moment  which held the erotic tension in its extreme possibility. You get back to the security of yourself, but perhaps this is precisely the way to lose yourself.  

But this is odd, isn’t it? How come you do not know what you should do? Well, we feel like saying to the lover,  “Just kiss him or decide not to kiss him. Or send him a denial. Just get it over with”,  we are frequently advised by friends. But that, precisely,  is NOT the point. In contrast,  Sappho asks us to remain in the presence of the moment in which the other comes into our view as a lover we desire intensely. But to remain there, this is almost impossible in our first loves, for powerful enigmatic forces override us, as we shall see. Perhaps in reading and understanding Sappho,  other more enticing  possibilities might appear for us.

But remaining in that privileged instant, we are  ---- paradoxically--- conscious we no longer are fully conscious of ourselves. I do not know what to do in that moment which many seek to avoid, to forget. To this we shall return. For captivated by it, we can no longer do anything as we did. In a sense,  I know I should, but I can’t; in another sense, I know I shouldn’t’ but I find that can and I will. And a question arises;  is Sappho speaking here of the moral limitations of social life? Not in the least. That is not her concern here. Her point, instead, is that eros is a kind of assault; we tremble, we feel uneasy,  and yet –paradoxically—we desire to feel so. Eros pushes us besides ourselves, and in doing  so we, says Sappho,  risk our very own personal and uniquely created identity.

This is confirmed by the simple words that follow. The expression of this enigmatic and unexpected entrance brings about severe division and fragmentation.  He who was once one,  has NOW become two. Knowing yourself divided, a fall of consciousness that both opens the world to new possibilities, but risks the very foundations of who we have become. Sappho adds in the poem, as if to validate our previous words:

“I’m in love! I’m not in love!
I’m crazy! I’m not crazy!”

To be crazy is to lose it, to lose one’s wits; to remain in the realm of the metaphoric as against the unerotic realism of the everyday real. What we have suspected above is revealed as true. Knowing she cannot act,  she nonetheless begins by accepting this rupture and division. The penalty of not being ruptured lies in the constant immersion in the  ordinary world of constant personal presence. Many of us live, prefer to live,  without such disruptions all our lives. We can actually BE with another and yet not love as Sappho claims we should. But some of us chose not to live so. Such are true artists, such are true philosophers. Instead of the safety of the known, the artistic lover embarks in another type of self-affirmation which might end badly for her. The poetess knows it is unreasonable to do so, to “chose” to do so. That is why she cries out of two severed minds that she is in love and that she is not, that she is not crazy and that she is.

These words have the sound of a certain truth to them, they reveal the stance of the person who has fallen in love. To fall in love is indeed to fall; it is to become another  who no longer is as he was. To be in love. To become two; to be unable to decide. In love we are and we cease to be. For we love and we long  to be with another, and yet that other who beckons us makes us fear we will be utterly lost to ourselves. But without such erotic presence the loss might be double! Divided we stand as we long to be and not to be in front of her. How peaceful it was when time was not rushing forth in the now. How peaceful it is to simply remember as if one had once lived such a life and had gotten over it.  

Emily Dickinson, also a woman, knew of this kind of love. In her No. 18 she points out to the very same dilemma of internal division and strife:

”Heart! We will forget him!
You and I ----  tonight!
You may forget the warmth he gave ---
I will forget the light!

When you have done, pray tell me
That I may straight begin!
Haste! Lest while you’re lagging
I remember him.”

Of course, Dickinson speaks once the affair has come to the painful realization of the final loss. Sappho cannot accept this. It is for her, in a sense, a kind of cheating. Instead,  Sappho asks us to remain in the now of the moment in which the touch of the other’s caress reaches us and we are paralyzed physically, conceptually and metaphorically. This journal stems from such decisions in my life.

No wonder Sappho’s words endure in their utmost simplicity  as the barest --in the sense of most naked--- expressions of the erotic instant. Erotic desire as unnamable cannot be named in  too many lines; Sappho reminds us of this. Her courage lies in not being capable of denial. Her courage lies in opening herself, and ourselves,  with her erotically charged words to the presence of eros in our lives. If ever there was a force that could make us transform our settled dispositions, here we have found it at last. And how we yearn for such change, we artists and philosophers.

3. Erotic assault

Uterus

Romanticism as an artistic movement saw nature as somehow intimately connected to our most basic human desires. It was in and through nature that we found the most complete fulfillment available to us as natural human beings. For the romantics we sought nature to become whole once again, to overcome the temporary division which separates us as humans from the rest of the natural world; even to overcome the divisions within ourselves between reason and feeling, between thought and creative expression. In a sense a contemporary and dramatic portrayal of this dream is the stunning documentary The Grizzly Man in which a young man seeks to become one with the bears of Alaska. Of course, there are different types of romantic positions available; from the naïve kind found in Goethe’s Werther, moving to more complex ones such as the one found in Wordsworth magically healing poetry. To repeat, to bridge the gap between us humans and the natural becomes the cornerstone of their position. (See Taylor’s Sources of the Self)

But Sappho thinks otherwise. Sappho’s poetry reveals , continuously,  its  non-romantic character and foundation. This is, I believe,  why it touches us so deeply as moderns living a disenchanted world. Seeking a certain type of erotic fusion with the world and the other is something she believes is unavailable to us. Sappho,  instead,  focuses seriously  -----makes us focus seriously---- on the real nature of desire as we experience it as the embodied beings we are. This stance is powerfully revealed by Sappho in  her vision of eros as a woman caught in the grasp of love. In this respect, perhaps one of the most anti-romantic poems ever written on the nature of erotic desire is the following:   

”Eros once again limb-loosener whirls me
Sweetbitter, impossible to fight off, creature stealing up”   (40)
www.classicpersuasion.org/pw/s…

We have already encountered Sappho’s simplicity of word. And, as it clearly stands out,  she remains firm to her decision. My own line-art has been deeply influenced by her. But once again, this simplicity is truly deceptive. We desire an encounter, an encounter with Sappho's simplicity. But we must not be blinded into believing that simplicity obscures complexity. Rather, it might just be that  in simplicity lies the most complex of all affairs. For don’t we ourselves sense how simple it was to fall in love? And yet, don’t we acknowledge much later the complexity of what we did not see in the beginning?

How does Sappho express erotic desire in this famous poem? Sappho answers with great awareness. Against our romantic notions of eros  -----the lovers who hold each other dreamily in a kind of oblivion of each (e.g. Tristan und Isolde)----  Sappho speaks as a mature human does. First, what strikes one immediately is that for her Eros is not at all chosen. Instead, she claims that eros is a creature which steals up; as if in ambush, as if unseen. Eros, a predator.  The mystery of eros cannot be controlled from within for it is an unexpected appearance from the outside, a sort of reptilian assault which steals up towards us. Eros is an external force we cannot will, just as one cannot will either birth or death.

Secondly, instead of a gentle touch, she demands of us to recognize things as they are. Eros is a limb-loosener, not in the first instance a limb-generator. Eros whirls and twirls. It has hurricane forces to it. As it appears from hiding, no rectitude remains. No assured  rigidity can face up to its overwhelming presence. And, as we saw above,  it cares little for the powers of assured identity. In contrast, as if in a kind of protest, Sappho knows of  her body’s loosing itself;  for  we do indeed tremble when in the presence of the lover (even if through a computer!) Each and every single limb comes apart as the force of the external comes rushing though my bodily self-image. Sappho demands that we recognize that eros touches our body first, our minds only much later. To live erotically is to pay attention to the body that we as finite human are and will always be until our death. This is why in another poem she writes:

”Without warning

As a whirlwind
swoops on an oak
Love shakes my heart”. (44, Barnard)

Eros without warning, impossible to fight off. Against it, no defenses. Or so it seems. But  this is not altogether right. Of course,  we ALL know we actually DO defend ourselves quite well. Even some of our modern marriages may try to become a kind of defense. But Sappho speaks not to those who claim such abilities, she speaks to the artists and artistically-minded humans who have the courage not to defend themselves from eros in irony, denial or multiple deflections. However, some of the consequences of such an open stance   -----of the stance which sees something beyond the boring repetition of oneself in front of oneself----- may  turn out to be dire. This is why in another short poem Sappho warns:

”Pain penetrates

Me drop
by drop” (61)

Freud also knows of the strange enticement behind these words, as he shows in this studies on the phenomenon of sadomasochism.

But that is not all. We are not even close to the poem yet. We have barely felt its loosening power. We have barely opened ourselves to Sappho’s bodily words. This is revealed  by looking more closely at the poem, just as we desire to look more closely at our lover. We become like the photographers of Sappho’s poetic lines. We photograph her, that is to say,  we write her in the light of our own erotic understanding.  

Magnification brings out a special word  in the poem. The poem uses the Greek word glukupikron  which is erroneously translated in English as “bittersweet”. But the order of Greek is quite different; it is the same order of the word in Spanish. No wonder Spanish culture is close to the erotic; full of serenades, and dance and such! For the Greek word literally translates “sweetbitter”,  or as in Spanish, “dulceamargo”. But what is Sappho pointing out? She is struggling to point out the temporal ordering of desire. The sight of the beloved in the first instance is adequately perceived as bringing forth a certain desirable sweetness. Rarely do we think of our first loves as lemons, rarely do we play erotic games with acid limes. Usually we use chocolates, and sweet oranges and the like. Later, of course, that MAY change.

But, less literally,  what could this word be pointing  to? Primarily to the fact that the assault that whirls us around, is, in the first instance, not so intimidating. The first encounter is actually pleasant. Of course, if our loves have gone badly, then we tend to deny this first impression later on. However that may be ---–and it is a VERY frequent and  difficult issue--- Sappho speaks primarily to those who,  in opening themselves to themselves,  are honest to themselves as regards their natural erotic capacities towards the pleasant. But alas, it is also true that lovers can DO what in another poem Sappho says is itself a chosen denial:  

”But their heart turned cold and they dropt their wings.” (16)

But then again, for Sappho that was not erotic love at all primarily because eros is not chosen. .  

And even when previous loves have failed, we cannot but feel the sweetness of a new encounter. We feel what Sappho speaks of, namely, that in love  we sense we are never more alive, readier for challenges, readier to regain our health, readier even for certain types of battles and decisions. The world is another, it has become unrecognizable.

But there is still much more to this little simple poem. According to the powerful work of Anne Carson, the crucial aspect of this poem is  a tiny Greek word  which, when translated, comes out to mean “once again”. The word in Greek is deute. The fact that Sappho seems to have invented it speaks volumes of her poetic abilities and endurance. But what could such a little word hold?   The word “deute” relates us to the temporality of eros.  It is grammatically composed of two elements: “de”  which means ‘once’ thus signaling to the unequivocally non-repeatable present moment of the erotic encounter. “De” signals vibrantly  the now of desire.

The second composite part of “deute” is the word “aute” which turns out to mean “again”. In contrast,  it points to the temporal repetition of desires which have come and gone throughout our lives. “Now” we feel the presence of Eros, but Sappho in her maturity recalls that this newness was there before and was somehow “conveniently” forgotten. To this we shall return below. But that would not be fair; for if we remember well, Sappho’s erotic assault is NOT up to us! It just isn’t! So in this combined magical word “deute” the temporal nature of desire springs forth. In it,  intertwined,  we encounter the “now “ that we are facing in this instant as we look at her eyes (or messages if on the internet!), but this now is traversed “again” by the repetition of the many already felt assaults which have come previously in a similar fashion. To put it simply one could say, this poem reveals how this “now” is traversed by the “thens” of love. (Carson, 165)  Pulled within the now,  we actually feel in love. Pulled apart by the "thens",  we feel the craziness of the whole thing. And yet we let ourselves fall in the now. For Sappho, herein lies our humanity.  

Much more could be said about the attempt to control the temporal nature of desire. To those interested in these issues Plato’s Phaedrus is a must read. Just recall King Midas. But here I would like to focus on what is meant by the now of erotic desire. So I will tell you a little story of mine. One of the main reasons I returned to Canada for a third time, was to see, feel and touch snow. To you this must seem incredible. But if you lived in the hot tropics you would never cease to be amazed by snow.

This whole absurd idea is perfectly captured by our amazing Gabriel Garcia Márquez in his deep and hilarious novel Cien años de soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude) . If ever you intend on living in a "developing" country, this is required reading. In his famous book, Gabo shares one of the amazing stories of José Arcadio Buendía. The book itself even begins with these incredible words which could barely be understood by an inhabitant of Northern latitudes:

"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

Upon death, Aureliano remembers the sensation of ice. I, for my own part, remember the sensation of snow. Gabo tells us the whole story a little later in the novel. José Arcadio ------Aureliano's father----- exclaims after seeing ice for the very first time in his life: "It is the largest diamond in the world." (We smile thanks to Colombian humour.) Just to touch the ice, means José Arcadio must pay a big sum of money. But the sensation suddenly brought upon him, sheds light upon the memory his son Aureliano will carry forth until his death. Gabo tells us:

" and so he placed his hand over the ice, and held it there for several minutes, while his heart grew swollen with fear and jubilation in contact with the mystery."

Ice, a mystery; snow a mystery. But what could this mystery be? What is the mystery of ice? What is the mystery of snow? It's a mystery that is not totally decipherable. You must grab an ice cube and experience it for yourself. What you find yourself stunned by, is the feeling of holding on to the effacing. The more you press, the quicker it melts. The harder you wish to hold on, the quicker it ceases to be. You desire not to let go, and yet you know you must if you desire to feel this novel pleasure extended in time. You are torn between letting go -----thus freeing what you wish were only yours---- and holding on to what brings an indescribable and unknown pleasure, thus necessarily destroying it in the process.

We are reminded of some of our loves. This is why some have compared the sensation of holding ice in your hands to eros. One of those who knows of this mystery is Sophocles. In a poem he writes:

"This disease is an evil bound upon the day.
Here's a comparison --not bad, I think:
when ice gleams in the open air,
children grab.
Ice-crystal in the hands is
at first a pleasure quite novel.
But there comes a point--
you can't put the melting mass down,
you can't keep holding it.
Desire is like that,
Pulling the lover to act and not to act,
again and again, pulling." (See Anne Carson.)

Holding ice in your hands, you become more aware of the temporal nature of desire. You come closer to knowing, and thus truly feeling, the always fleeting now of human desire. Understanding this becomes crucial in order to give life to healthier desires within our erotic relations. For we also wish to hold on to our loves in this troubling way. Much more could be said, but perhaps now you better understand why I wanted to return to Canada and see, and touch, and melt snow in my bare hands. And perhaps now you better understand when Sappho exclaims:

“I don’t know what I should do: two states of min in me …
I’m in love! I ‘m not in love
I’m crazy! I’m not crazy!

Reflections outside my window

4. The metaphoric distance of our erotic lacks.

Eros I:

Simplicity, loss of identity, bittersweetness, the “now” and “thens” of eros; all mysteriously opened in the poetic words of Sappho. But even more stunningly, Sappho reveals the nature of our erotic longing in an unparalleled graphic poem. We ask: what precisely in us makes us desire what we have seen may lead to a deep destabilizing force in our lives? Sappho reveals that desire is moved negatively by the presence of a self-sustaining lack. In another very short poem Sappho adds to our previous considerations:

’As a  sweet apple turns red on a high branch
high on the highest branch and the applepickers
forgot----
well, no they didn’t forget ---were not able to reach.”

If desire moves us so deeply, it is perhaps because in part it reaches out to something we ourselves have not made part of our self-identity. We are not whole, but tend to desire some kind of wholeness; even desire an original wholeness previous to birth. Coming together  sexually is perhaps the closest we may come to bridging this “physical” gap. This is brilliantly related by Aristophanes the comedian in the Symposium, perhaps another journal will provide the connections.

For what we do not lack seems not to move us in the least. If in fact we were completely self-sufficient, it seems our movements would cease; we would become something like strange bodiless gods. But we are far from such self-sufficiency, says Sappho. Science fiction does dream of bodiless existences, but even if it were so, Sappho would protest that such a life would not be a human life in the least. This sense of lack is then a powerful jump-starter, but a dangerous one as well. It does pull us out of ourselves, but it may do so primarily seeking its own fulfillment. Having my needs met by you  ---believing that this is possible---  I fail to confront my needs which continue to go unnoticed within me. For perhaps in seeking not to face our lacks,  we push them forth into others, specially and most dramatically into our lovers.  We place in them  the burden of our desire for original wholeness.

But how is all this connected to the poem at hand? Let us see. As we elevate our linguistic sight,  we behold  a very complete sweet apple turning on a high branch hanging above us. Focusing our eyes upon this apple we discover several things. First, and foremost, that we no longer see our surroundings. The tree which bears this apple has been lost to us, the other apples are no longer there to be seen. Is this not very much like the times we have become smitten by eros in our lives? Don’t we radically reduce our sight from a healthy wide-angled view to the most telescopic of lenses? Photographically speaking, we move from 10mm to about 600mm! Besides, we know Sappho has chosen an apple tree for obvious reasons. If indeed most of us westerners relate the apple to another myth, the myth of Adam and Eve, it is clear that for Sappho and the Greek lyrical poets in general, an apple is the metaphoric fruit of the beloved.  Rather than the beginning of a sinful existence as in the Christian myth,  it stands as the perplexing presence of an erotic longing which might make us fall as well, but in an altogether different sense. And even in our daily life we still correlate sweet apples with erotic desire; dA is full of such enticing photographs. Some photographs even portray this with no apple whatsoever!

Now, what was puzzling from the start,  becomes even more so. If we were initially told that the sweet apple  was on a high branch, we now are corrected by Sappho who stretches our sight almost beyond the visible. She tells us now that even the 600mm is not enough, we WILL need lens-extenders! Or so it seems. For this sweet self-sufficient, self-enclosed  and silent apple is truly situated “high in the highest branch”! (For an amazing analysis of the Greek grammar which carries out this telescoping see Ann Carson). But how could we have been so mistaken! I mean,  how could our eyes have not seen this coming? Perhaps they did not want to see, perhaps they saw what they wanted before them. And just like the ice we held, but somehow did not want to hold on to for it meant its dissolution,  likewise we now look but do not want to look too hard for we might no longer have anything to look at!   

Suddenly we are introduced to the true subjects of the poem: the apple-pickers who “specialize” in picking the beloveds of the world. Apple-pickers, men and women who seek out the fulfillment of their desires in another whose beauty primarily seems to appear as a sweetness which hides bitter possibilities. But what does Sappho herself tell us about them? First off,  that they are many. Many, it seems, look up to the apple which awaits picking, many will have to “deck it out” for it. The whole thing is quite Darwinian! Secondly,  that instead of picking -----which is what they are good at----  they instead are lost in the activity of seeing. As if charmed by the apple’s reddish presence, they have ceased any action. But this is not altogether true. Sappho tells us that what they have done is rather specific, they have decided to “forget”. We are told that in picking they have forgotten something altogether important. But what is it that they have forgotten? Their first action, was to pick, then they just stare, and now suspiciously they forget! And forgetting desire, how difficult a task that is according to Sappho!  We continue reading and, fortunately,   the poetess herself reveals it “all” to us. She clarifies the illusions behind the mysterious forgetting of the beloved.

Suddenly, as if pulling us back from the distance to the reality of the present,  Sappho tells us that in reality the apple-pickers did not actually forget at all:

“well, no they didn’t forget ---were not able to reach”.

What a stunning revelation of a conveniently comic decision! The sweet apple on the highest branch remains untouched by any of them; and yet,  instead of recognizing their incapacity, they make a strategic move. They pretend to have not even seen it at all!  For if they are indeed good apple-pickers, it would be to their detriment to have some apples actually escape into the freedom of their own erotic nature. So, just as we convince ourselves that the “now” of eros can be sidestepped, so these apple pickers convince themselves that they never saw anything! Faced with the desire to face their own lacks, they instead become forgetful of themselves so as to be able to desire this very same apple the morning after as they move around the orchard unchanged and truly unloved.

By thus moving us using this kind of photographic focusing of erotic desire, Sappho teaches us that the erotic lack we have as sexual beings  pulls us outside ourselves into a distant reality. This erotic reality which hangs before us eludes us; we tend to deny it in disbelief as we approach it and learn, to our astonishment,  that it continuously evades us. Lacking the apple we seek it, but if we actually came to possess it, the drive to jumpstart the search would be gone! And therefore, during the sleep of the night, these apple-pickers will convince themselves of events that did not occur. They will awaken the next morning to try to pick the sweet apple on the high branch, or rather, the sweet apple high on the highest branch. And they will forget once more, and they will begin anew the morning after. The apple, it seems, will never be reached, for in reaching it, we would cease to be humans altogether.

Perhaps Sappho allows us, through her poetry, to liberate our lacks into the honesty of their essential nature. In reading Sappho’s simple lines  there might come a day in which we will not only not forget, but actually love the other as other for we will have come to know ourselves as lacking. And perhaps it is in a very similar way that we as artists relate ourselves to our own work. For we all know of the desire to create and yet somehow feel that once the work is created, once the apple has become real, the search for it is gone. And day by day we convince ourselves that there is a new apple we have not picked. It lies  high in a high branch in a tree we can no longer see, and in this way we strive to give poetic word to those foundational lacks which conform us from the very start.

(A complete understanding of this dynamic would have to include several discussions of Plato’s Symposium and Phaedrus, including their intimate discussions of wings and metaphors. Besides, a deeper understanding of the apple itself and its troubling intrinsic nature  -----of this self-sufficient being which is the erotic beloved, which in modernity finds parallels in the idea of  the “Lolita”---- in a sense requires readings such as Yukio Mishima’s stunning The Damask Drum, Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, Alba Lucia Angel’s Misia Señora  and Gabriel Garcia Márquez latest book: Memoria de mis putas tristes, among many others.)

5.  Erotic triangulation

Bitter sweet:

Sometimes one should simply let a great poem speak for itself instead of pretending to understand it:

”He seems to me equal to gods that man
who opposite you
sits and listens close
to your sweet speaking

and lovely laughing --- oh it
puts the heart in my chest on wings
for when I look at you, a moment, then no speaking
is left in me

no: tongue breaks, and thin
fire is racing under skin
and in eyes no sight and drumming
fills ears

and cold sweat holds me and shaking
grips me all, greener than grass
I am and dead ---or almost
I seem to me.”   (31)

(Do let me know if you have found the puzzle of triangulation within its mysterious lines. To be able to see it  involves, among other things, learning to  read erotically: amelo14.deviantart.com/journal… )

6. Conclusion

Eros II

Sappho’s poetry is perhaps the single most important poetic work on the nature of eros in a pre-Christian era. Not giving in to romanticism, she faces the mystery of erotic desire head on. Thoughtfully perceptive to desire’s perplexing dilemmas, she encourages us with her courage to feel the nakedness  of those simple poetic lines in which she remains open as perhaps the most erotic lover of all. Her poems provide a certain mature self-sufficiency which nonetheless remains open to the living eroticism of those with whom we come into contact as we move through our lives. Or in other words, through her decisions  the poem is liberated to its inmost energetic possibility which in turn may radiate into the possibility of loving oneself –---and perhaps another-----in the intimacy of the created and creating word.

However, me must conclude by pointing to at least two great challenges to this very powerful view of human desire. One is the view of eros as defended by Socrates and later on Aristotle guided by a reconsideration of desire and the connection between true friendship, another kind of self-sufficiency, and a happiness beyond the mere sense of a personal feeling. (See my journals on Socrates : a) amelo14.deviantart.com/journal… b) amelo14.deviantart.com/journal… )   The second view is the view upheld by a  believer; for instance the one defended by Christians and their notion of “agape”  (love of God) as expressed profoundly in Augustine’s Confessions.  

We artists might feel secure in our own islands, but Sappho’s poetry at least teaches that openness alone guarantees the possibility of avoiding self-delusion.  It is this very same poetic honesty which may allow us to return to the beginning of erotic love:

“I don’t know what I should do: two states of mind in me … (36)
I’m in love! I‘m not in love!
I’m crazy! I’m not crazy!

I have been there. It does take much courage. It is rare.

Composition XIV

Socrates on the self-sufficient life



One of the exciting and relevant reasons for turning to the Greeks is that in the work of some Greek philosophers ----specially that of Plato----  one finds what are perhaps the best, the deepest,  and the most lively discussions on the tensions between philosophy and art as conflicting ways of life. In dialogues such as the Symposium, the debate reaches a real climax.  There Socrates and Aristophanes battle it out. The basis for their discrepancy in part revolves around the nature of desire and the possibility of human self-sufficiency and happiness.

This is not to say that in modern times one does not find authors who see the importance of touching on such a debate. One indeed finds it  particularly  in the work of Nietzsche who moves permanently between both camps. Nietzsche the philosopher, Nietzsche the artist;  as if unable to decide, as if as moderns we can no longer decide. He seems, in a sense, weary of both activates as we have come to understand them. But of course,  Nietzsche touches on the debate  in a very different way than Plato. In contrast to Nietzsche’s penetrating psychological fragments on the artist ----arrived at in the solitude of an introspective stance----- the beautifully artistic and dramatic form of a Platonic work such as the Symposium lies in  that the dialogue makes the discussion almost alive and  politically situated.

Moreover, Nietzsche  stands as the primary source of a radical critique which has as its direct aim Socrates and his tradition.  This is evident early on in his The Birth of Tragedy in which Socratic rationalism is set up against Greek tragedy which, by the end of the book, is assured its place as the unquestionable winner of the debate. Tragedy reaches the summit of expressive art. However, in tragedy self-sufficiency remains an impossibility because the tragic is by nature akin to the incomplete, to the flawed. Socrates, in contrast, teaches the possibility of self-sufficiency as the highest form of life.  

But before pointing out one of the fundamental tensions between Platonic philosophy and art, a brief contextualization. Postmodernism, which began in architecture and therefore is closely linked  to art,  is the name of a critical stance towards modernity. It is set dead against the modern notion of enlightened reason which seeks to bring everything to the presence of a unequivocal and unimpaired lighting.  Some of its proponents go so far as to interpret the work of authors such as Heidegger and Nietzsche  in a way that widens the challenge not only to modernity, but rather to the whole of the Western tradition. In this respect they see crucial failings in the very origins of the Western tradition; a tradition whose foundations many find in the works of Plato, specially in his Republic. They emphasize, in this respect, his alleged desire to banish poetry and seek a rational understanding of the whole once we are liberated from the cave.

As the years go by, such an interpretation of Platonic philosophy seems to me  less legitimate, less plausible and  less interesting. At least three powerful reasons for this position stand out clearly to me now. On the one hand, there is here a confusion between modern reason and the ancient ideal of  rationality. Secondly, such proposals are quite blind to the artistic merit of the dramatic form of Platonic philosophy itself which reaches us in the form of  carefully, artistically created, dialogues. And finally, such overwhelming critiques fail to recognize the fact that it is Socrates who first tries to understand the political nature of us as human beings living in society. For some, specially in the Straussian tradition,  Socrates’ concern is in the first instance with human affairs, not transcendental ideas.

What is the relevance of this debate to contemporary artists? HUGE. On the one hand, they may benefit from reading authors such as Michel Foucault who takes up seriously Nietzsche’s discussions on art. For him  the only means of subverting this all-encompassing rationalistic project is life made  artistic. The aesthetic configuration of oneself is the sole means of protest in an increasingly alienating world of micropowers. Foucault’s work adamantly defends the possibility of what he calls an “aesthetic of existence”. As he puts it: “the principle work of art one has to take care of , the main area to which one has to apply aesthetic values is oneself, one’s life, one’s existence. “ (pg 245; see also Nietzsche TGS  #290) If  reason no longer can guide our lives, art must lead the way. But on the other hand, contemporary artists might become more aware of the type of art which they are led to produce in this attempt to seek countermeasures by contrasting this stance with Socratic views of art and, in general,  the role of desire in human affairs.

Let me just say briefly that, as far as I can see, the uniting thread which both camps address differently is the topic of “desire”. For the artist desire is the beginning and the end. The beginning for it is that which grants motion to the work, the end because the work expresses desire in a sublimated fashion. The Socratic philosopher, in particular, also begins with desire, but his/her erotic desire reaches out to another very different end. The end is erotic self-sufficiency. Among many other things, Socrates continuously asks whether a desire that has no limit to its gratification can in the end make a person fully human. As against Nietzsche, and the postmodernist defense of tragedy, Socrates defends the possibility of a certain happiness in philosophical excellence.

Xenophon –---who is now little read--- captures dramatically this sense of Socratic self-sufficiency  in a passage in which Socrates, as is frequently the case,  defends himself against an attack which he does not initiate.  This dialogical interchange between Antiphon and Socrates might in a sense make us more aware of the nature of desire and its puzzling presence in our human lives. Xenophon reports this conversation went like this:   


"It is only fair to Socrates not to leave unrecorded the conversations that he had with Antiphon the sophist. On one occasion, this man, wishing to transfer Socrates' associates to himself, went up to him in their presence and said: 'Socrates, I always thought that people ought to become happier through the study of philosophy, but it seems to me that you have experienced the opposite effect. At any rate, you lead the sort of life that no slave would put up with if it were imposed upon him by his master. You eat and drink the worst possible food and drink, and the cloak you wear is not only of poor quality, but is the same for summer and winter; and you never wear shoes or a tunic. Then, you never accept money, the receipt of which is cheering and the possession of  which enables people to live with more freedom and pleasure. So if you are going to affect your associates in the same way as the teachers of other occupations, who turn out pupils after their own pattern, you should regard yourself as a teacher of misery.'

Socrates replied, 'You seem to have got it into your head that I live such a miserable life, Antiphon, that I really do believe you would rather die than live as I do. Come on, then: let us see what hardship you have detected in my way of life. Is it that those who accept payment are bound to do the work for which they've been paid, whereas I, since I don't accept it, am not compelled to converse with a person if I don't want to? Or do you depreciate my diet on the ground that it is less wholesome and sustaining than yours? Is it that my means of subsistence are harder to procure than yours, because they are rarer and more costly? Is it that you enjoy your provisions more than I do mine? Don’t you know that the more a man enjoys eating, the less he needs a stimulus for his appetite, and the more he enjoys drinking, the less he craves for a drink that he hasn't got? As for cloaks, you know that people change them because of cold or hot weather, and they wear shoes to prevent things from hurting their feet and so impeding their movements. Well, have you ever known me stay indoors more than anybody else on account of the cold, or compete with anyone for the shade on account of the heat, or fail to walk wherever I wanted because my feet were sore? Don't you know that those who are physically weakest by nature, if they train with a particular end in view. become better able to achieve that end, with less effort to themselves, than the strongest athletes who neglect their training? And if that is so, don't you think that I, who am always training myself to put up with the things that happen to my body, find everything easier to bear than you do with your neglect of training? As for my not being a slave to my stomach, or to sleep, or to lechery, what better reason for it can you imagine than that I have other more pleasant occupations, which cheer me not only when I am engaged upon them, but also as giving me ground for hoping that they will benefit me always?

Besides, you must be aware of this, that those who feel that their farming or seafaring or any other occupation that they have is going well, are cheered by the consciousness of success. Now then, do you suppose that all these feelings give as much pleasure as the thought that one is becoming better oneself, and acquiring better friends? Well, I have this belief all the time. And then, if one’s friends or the State needs help, which has more leisure to attend to this duty - the man who passes his time as I do now, or he one whom you regard as fortunate? Which could more readily go on military service - the man who can't live without an expensive diet, or the one who is content with whatever is to hand? And which would be sooner reduced to surrender in a siege the one whose requirements are most difficult to obtain, or the me who is satisfied with whatever he comes across? It seems to me, Antiphon, that you identify happiness with luxury and extravagance; but I have always thought that to need nothing is divine, and to need as little as possible is the nearest approach to the divine; and that what is divine is best, and what is nearest to the divine is the next best."

Interpreting these words is no easy matter. But I truly believe Van Gogh also sought a similar type of self-sufficiency as well. His poverty is very much akin to Socrates’. But  what Van Gogh affirmed through his own decisions and desiring activity was quite other than what Socrates held to be the highest good available to humans. One could conclude by saying: seeking to avoid the tension between philosophy and art might leave each of the parties safer to themselves, but safety is not primarily what philosophers or artists are all about.
_{Memorabilia I 6,  Xenophon}

Socrates on love-charms and magic spells



Xenophon reports many intriguing conversations Socrates had with fellow Athenians and foreigners. One of these was held with an extremely  beautiful young woman called Theodote who, given her beauty,  frequently posed for painters and artists. The very end of their conversation reads like this:

”‘Very well,’ said Theodote. ‘how am I to arouse hunger for what I have to give?’

‘Why surely, said Socrates, ‘if , when your admirers are satiated, you neither offer nor hint at your favours, until the satisfaction has passed and they feel the want again; and next, when they most feel the want, if you drop hints by a combination of the most modest behavior and obviously wanting to gratify them, and by obviously holding back until their need is as great as possible –for the same favours are much better then, than before the desire for them is aroused.’

Theodote said,’ ‘Why don’t you help me in my hunt for friends, Socrates?’

‘I will , believe me,’ said Socrates, ‘if you persuade me.’

‘How can I persuade you?’

‘You’ll look to that yourself,’ he said, ‘and you will find a way, if you need any help from me.’

‘Then come and see me often,’ she said.

‘Well, Theodote,’ replied Socrates, poking fun at his own avoidance of public life, ‘it’s not very easy for me to  find the time for it. I have a great deal of private and public business that keeps me occupied; and I have some girlfriends  too (note: ironic) , who will never let me leave them by day or night, because they are learning from me about love-charms and spells.’

‘Do you really know about them too, Socrates?, she asked.

‘Why do you suppose that Apollodorus here and Antisthenes never leave me? And that Cebes and Simias come to visit me from Thebes? You may be sure that these things don’t happen without a lot of love-charms and spells and magic wheels.’

‘Lend me the magic wheel, then, so that I can spin it first for you.’

‘Certainly not,’ he said, I don’t want to be drawn to you; I want you to come to me.’

‘Very well, I will,’ she declared. ‘Only  mind you let me in.’

‘Yes, I’ll let you in,’ said Socrates, ‘unless I have someone with me that I like better.’”
_{Xenophon Memoirs of Socrates III, 11}

No wonder ugly Socrates  ------who knew he knew nothing----- also knew he only knew much about only ONE specific topic. That topic was eros. In this respect he is not far from artists, who also claim to know much about our erotic life.

Humans: the giving animals



"Unwittingly noble. A man's behavior is unwittingly noble if he has grown accustomed never to want anything from men, and always to give to them." Nietzsche

1. Introduction

Although I wanted to follow up my latest journal on reading with another which would have dealt with the mystery of listening, I have moved in another direction. The traditional season for giving has come to an end once again. And yet the more years go by, the more  I wonder whether the way we actually give is the healthiest available to us as humans. I have gone to many Christmas gatherings, and yet I sense now that many times the giving of things replaces the giving of thought-provoking words. Inquiring into the nature of giving becomes central to see whether the way we moderns celebrate our liberality doesn’t in fact generate some profound puzzles. In this respect, thinking about giving is quite central to adequately understanding what it is to give.

But we rarely pause to think about giving, in part because the primary giving season is too close to the departure of the year. Having given, we are too quick to begin a new year. But many times we forget to find the time to consider what we have been, in fact, doing. In other words, for weeks we have gathered together in giving, and yet,  while involved  in the act of giving,  we rarely come face to face with what it is to give. We give, and hardly think about what giving might hide, or might reveal. So this is why a reflection on giving, and its relation to creation and thought is required. Particularly as artists, and very much as philosophers, we enjoy the season of giving, but we tend to consider giving in a completely different light. We are troubled and feel uneasy when we see such a generous world around us filled with such appalling realities of lack everywhere.

You might protest, “Is this to say that we should stop giving? The whole thing would even be worse!” One could respond. Learning to give takes time, just think of your mother’s constant repetition, day after day, hour after hour; “Share, share, share with your little sister.” And even after that intense training, we still find it difficult! It would be absurd to seek to do away with such learning. But perhaps we could be better givers, and by that I do not mean “give more things”. For it is indeed a bit odd that for us moderns, living in capitalist realities, giving has been reduced to the giving of things, mostly technologically-oriented things. So much giving of things may make it impossible to give ourselves to each other, even to give ourselves to ourselves.

Perhaps we are giving things for we know of no other way to give. But there are indeed many other ways to give. In this respect,  artists and philosophers can indeed come together to help us out,  though they do not give the same kind of gifts. Perhaps artists and philosophers open to us the gift of giving itself. Together they give what giving IS. The main purpose of this journal then is to puzzle about giving by seeking to look a bit more closely at the dilemmas behind our giving stance. We might even learn that solely if one knows oneself well can one truly come to know that one’s gifts are actually given generously.

To put this puzzle in terms of questions: When we give, must we know that we are giving? For instance, would you like someone to just give you ANYTHING? “Oh yes, that lovely pink dress will be wonderful for her,” he says. And in contrast you bite your lips!  Or, should we instead just give and receive as an old saying says in Spanish, A caballo regalado no se  le mira el diente (“if someone gives you a horse, don’t fuss about his teeth!”? If you get such a horse, and his teeth are indeed decaying rapidly, just figure a way to deal with it; just don’t be ungrateful. But wouldn’t this stance be very odd? I mean, I surely do not want to receive certain gifts, and surely not receive them from just ANYONE! Don’t you remember the awkward feeling of saying thank you to a gift you actually hated from someone you did not really like THAT much! “What was he/she thinking,” you say to yourself. And don’t you remember the embarrassment you felt when you gave something to another who half-smiled in painful gratitude?

Besides, shouldn’t one ask;  how does one give? There must be pleasure in giving, and yet, have you not received a gift that you KNEW was given by someone in utter pain? (just like it pained us to share our toys with our little sister!) Or, do you remember giving something ------thinking that you did it out of the bottom of your heart---  and yet somehow feeling little pleasure? And what about those cases in which you were given something but the giver just told you over and over how difficult it was for him to actually get it! Surely, that is not giving! “How we give” thus becomes crucial, for surely giving must produce great pleasure. But at times things seem otherwise.

Even more profoundly, can we even go so far as to ask what seems like an absurd question to our materialistic minds;   what is the very nature of  giving? Are giving and thinking somehow related to each other? How are giving, thinking and creating brought together in the gift? What exactly do great artists give in creation? Do I have to know myself in order to be a great giver of words, images  and things? Are there multiple ways of giving, so that giving a thing is only a very minor way of giving ourselves to others? And for us moderns, what is it to give in a secular utilitarian age?

But you might be thinking to yourself: would it not be odd if, on Christmas Eve, somebody stood up and started asking all these questions? So we end up opening our gifts,  play with them, and rarely pause to see whether what we have just done is actually giving  in the healthiest of its possibilities. I myself had to wait until January to write this journal! I was too busy playing with my gifts!

But, what could be meant by a healthier form of giving? Well, in a sense,  nothing very complex. Giving is one of the noblest forms of life for humans,  we could even say that humans are THE giving animals. Not even dolphins wrap gifts, you see. But true giving ----clear-headed giving---- must give  for the sake of the action itself, not to receive anything apart from the giving itself. Healthy giving is captured well by Aristotle, without whose work I could not write any of this. Aristotle writes regarding giving:  

“and this is probably the right procedure for those who have had a course in philosophy; for the value of this is not measurable in money, nor could such a service be balanced by a gift of honor.” NE IX 1

In giving, one should not expect anything in return. Giving should be done for the sake of giving itself. We ALL know this.

2. The paradox of giving

But seriously, what could be wrong with giving? I mean, specially here at dA we often give in a way that is unique to cyberspace. There is even a nice word in dA which you can place as part of your own description. Deviant "X" is a “gift-giver”. I have seen at least a few deviants who fully fit this category.  I don’t use it myself because there is so much I have to learn about giving. One could also mention the amazing work of groups such as  ArtistsForCharity and many others. Besides, many deviants amaze us with  their capacity to give creatively  time and time again. And I myself have experienced the beauty of giving in  my life. I have given quite a few gifts; to the rich and the poor, to the weak and the strong, to the manly and to the feminine. And I myself have received some amazing ones from the ugly and the beautiful, from the empowered and the disempowered, from the ascetic and the erotic. There are some, specially from the weakest ---the damned  in society---- which I can never forget. Some, you would not believe.

And just recently I was given really beautiful gifts. Generously, I was recently given Don Giovanni by Mozart. Really, is there any greater gift than that “Overture”? Surely Mozart is perhaps THE greatest gift-giver.  Moreover, not too long ago I was given a story about a magical giving tree. Here is a quick summary: a boy and a tree grow up together. The boy moves about life using the tree for a multiplicity of purposes;  to swing, to earn money with its fruit, to buy a house, and to construct a boat for new voyages. In the end the giving tree is reduced to a stump. The story ends thus:  

_{"And after years and years, the boy came back. Both of them were old.
"I really cannot help you if you ask for another gift."
"I'm nothing but an old stump now. I'm sorry but I've nothing to give."
"I do not need very much; just a quiet place to rest."
"Well, said the tree, and old stump is still good for that."
"Come, boy", he said, "Sit down, sit down and rest a while."
And so he did.
Oh, the tree was happy."}  

There is much gladness and pleasure in giving, but as in all human affairs there is much that leads to the corruption of our own possibilities. It is not by accident that this little story has a TREE as the faithful giver! It is a rare tree that gives in full consciousness, it is even rarer a human that teaches by example the gladness of giving. Such a teacher would surely  be capable of what Nietzsche calls greatness: "Privilege of greatness. It is the privilege of greatness to grant supreme pleasure through trifling gifts." (496, HatH) This greatness, then, is not measured in quantity as we many times do.

But if so many examples of giving abound, what could be wrong with giving? In a sense, there is nothing wrong if one sees the cultural value of giving as the very basis for the creation of cohesive societal structures. In giving we construct the relations which structure the world with others who become our friends, relatives and  citizens. In giving, specially families cement their world. This idea is well presented by Mauss in his The Gift. Against the simplistic idea that gifts are selflessly given, Mauss:

“argued that gifts are not free but rather create an obligation to reciprocate. Through the gift, the givers give part of themselves, implying that the gift is imbued with a certain power that compels the recipient to reciprocate. Gift exchanges play therefore a crucial role in creating and maintaining social relationships by establishing bonds of obligations. The gift …… carries the power to create a system of reciprocity in which the honour of both giver and recipient are engaged.” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structur…

Giving creates the bonds of the political. The gift cements the links that bring us together. And we know this all too well. We gather during the giving season to share in our generosity. This is the whole point of the Holiday/Christmas gathering; to get together and celebrate the social ties which unite and bond us, specially to celebrate those ties that  are the basis of the family.

And yet it is precisely  in such times of communal giving that artists and philosophers tend to be the most puzzled. For their very being knows of other ways to give; but these, unfortunately, are frequently silenced so that the ritual of giving may continue without reflection. And so years go by, and our modern world lacks more.

But why then go and ruin everything by thinking about it! Let things be! Indeed most will have to let things be as they are, but some of us will not. Why? Precisely because we want to make sure we are not deluding ourselves. And more importantly, because this reflection has direct consequences on our actions in the world  in which gift-giving is a social, economic, and political reality. The purchase of gifts drives our economy, the giving of gifts solidifies our diplomacy, the handing out of gifts conforms our familial structures. In this respect, political corruption is a misunderstanding of gifts; just look at the dilemmas generated in my two countries, Canada and Colombia, because of this.

So, where could one find the path to the discovery of the basic elements behind giving? One avenue is to look at those times in which giving comes to a bitter end. Where do we  find such events? Primarily when our friendships come to and end, or when our loves are  no more, or when severe fights for identity occur in the family, or when civil war begins. Don’t we come to realize just then things like: “Oh yes, when I gave you that beautiful sweater of mine, I REALLY did not mean forever. And by the way, do you remember those cds I gave you; perhaps you misunderstood me, I JUST lent them to you.” We have become so ironic that we actually speak of “de-gifting” and “re-gifting”. I myself remember once getting back several paintings I had “generously” given away! It was many MANY years later that I understood I had not actually truly given anything to her.

“But this is just when we are too young to notice”, you might respond. Then, think of the following case  frequently found among the adult core of a family. Our parents are the greatest of givers for they have, unknowingly or not, given us life.  And however, in the heat of the moment such gifts become a burden. What was once the gift of life, becomes the sacrificial burden of parenthood. It is in such times we might hear things such as; “I have given you everything and this is how you repay me.” Blunt translation;  “I have given you life, you owe me buddy.” Of course this is done, frequently, in desperation. But it points to the nature of giving. Giving requires  no pay back, and yet the closest to us seem to forget it often. Instead, how beautiful it is to receive a gift and feel that the thank you in one’s response is not required at all. But it seems we tend to constantly require, at least unconsciously,  the “thank you” to affirm our own generosity. This is an odd, and very dangerous,  need indeed.

The irony of this unhealthy view of giving is very well captured in the movie As good as it gets. There, it is assumed that the offer to save Helen Hunt’s own child, requires payback in sexual installments by the weird character played by Jack Nicholson. One of Nietzsche’s powerful fragments also captures well this very same tension with few words:  "Anticipating ingratitude. The man who gives a great gift encounters no gratitude; for the recipient, simply by accepting it, already has too much of a burden." (HatH VI 323)

Perhaps now you have felt the full force of the puzzle underlying our desire to give. Giving without becoming clear on why it is we give, we can literally become the worst of  tyrants. For we give endlessly simply to accumulate the necessary repayments; in love, in things, in affection, in dominance. And we do so unconsciously, which is even worse, for we actually BELIEVE we are doing great good. So you see,  it seems that giving is full of perplexing intricacies. But, more precisely, where is the puzzle? To repeat, when we give generously we give simply for the sake of giving; we do the action for the sake of itself. Herein lies the joy and pleasure of giving; and yet we have come to see that such giving can be quite rare. Rarely do we give in the  generosity of a free consciousness. And the more we give things, I believe, the farther we are from understanding a type of giving that gives in liberty. Liberality is the name of the virtue that corresponds to giving; it is not a coincidence that the word “liberality” is intimately linked to the word “liberty”. By learning to give, we free both ourselves and those  to whom we give. It seems few of us are actually free.

But if this is so, what kind of gifts would be the ones that are healthier? Perhaps it is by looking at artists, allegedly the freest humans,  that we might learn more about healthier types of giving.

3. Artists as givers.

Artists may indeed turn out to be THE greatest of givers. They seem  to be, by far, the most complete expression of the giving animal that we humans can be. One simply has to call to mind the life and work of artists such as  Mozart, Van Gogh,  Shakespeare, and Mann. Their creative production is a gift with few parallels in history. In embodying their expressive capacities, they bring to life the plasticity of our instinctual nature. Through them, what is animal in us, receives the form of a gift.  

Why is the artist the greatest of givers? In part because what is created is left into the liberty of what appears. The artist liberates “what is” through his giving. Bringing thought and feeling to matter, the material nature of the work becomes a truly independent gift for those of us who can learn to perceive it. In a sense, the artist gives the world to us by opening the world to its possible and unknown interpretative dimensions. Sure, the artist signs the work, but the signature which signs is not the signature which lives. In this respect, artists can become the greatest of givers. But the way an artist gives is not without deep dilemmas. In a sense, one need also remember how Van Gogh and Gauguin could not stand each other. Or think of the relation between Bach and his musical brother. Artists can be the very worst of givers. At least three illusions may haunt the giving of an artist; the illusion of self, the illusion of world and the illusion of the recognition by the audience.

The artist, in giving so much, might get confused into thinking that SHE is, in fact,  what gives. This is what one could call the illusion of self. Nietzsche sees this clearly in his The Genealogy of Morals which has a several long sections on the soul of artists and their extremely problematic form of ascetism. It is a must read for ANY artist, specially young artists, because artists are sometimes so  sure of themselves that they hardly think  they might be the expression of the severest forms of ascetism. However that may be, Nietzche writes:

“one does best  to separate and artist from his work, not taking him as seriously as his work. He is, after all, only the precondition of his work, the womb, the soil, sometimes the dung and manure on which, it grows --- and therefore in most cases something one must forget if one is to enjoy the work itself. “ (III #4)

Giving art gives you to yourself for the very first time; a similar thing occurs when we read as we saw in the previous journal I wrote on the desire to read. The gift of art is not yours, it is a gift which become “ours” through you. In the creative process you cease to affirm yourself, you dis-center yourself to become another. Indeed the artist is dung, the artist MUST be dung. Have you had dung in your hands? Dung fertilizes the soul so that births and rebirths can come to life. In the true gift of a mature artist, manure appears transfigured into the symbolic gift liberated from its preconditions. Even manure can become the greatest of gifts. And I remember the gifts given to me by those who are seen as manure by many.

But this is not the only issue. The second illusion, perhaps the most dangerous,  is the illusion that the world we care for as artists has some kind of inherent meaning to it. Rather, in the explosive desire to express our bodily selves through the working materials at our disposal, we seek to give some kind of meaning to that which might otherwise not have any. This is what we could call the illusion of THE meaningful world. The complex issue of how our modern world is a disenchanted one is too long to develop here. Briefly, previously art could secure its meaning through an intimate connection with the real symbols which permeated the world of things. Foucault has studied this in his amazing Les mots et les choses which begins with a dramatic analysis of Velázquez’s painting Las Meninas. Taylor has studied this issue deeply in his art-loving Sources of the self. Ours is a world of disenchantment in which things have been freed from any intrinsic meaningfulness. Once the moon had an intrinsic meaning, now it no longer does.

To put it more simply. In painting a flower that flower which is painted is not the flower of the world, and much less  is it the flower as we tend to imagine romantically. The more the meaningfulness  of the world resides, the less we can push meaningfulness into living things. The work of art   becomes the plausible site of meaning itself, even if it is only to express the lack of meaning surrounding us. For some, the work of art even becomes autotelic, that is to say, it is the sole point in which the world may appear. For instance, a flower in Medieval times brings to light the connection of correspondences between the microcosm and the macrocosm. Think of the nature of alchemy. In contrast, what is a flower to us moderns? Best to hear what a beautiful artist says herself: Georgia O’Keeffe expresses it well in the words accompanying her 1941 painting entitled An orchid:

“Well – I made you take the time to look at what I saw and when you tool time to really notice my flower you hung all your own associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see  what you think and see of the flower ---and I don’t”

Projecting unto the flower an illusory sense  of meaning becomes the trap in which a gift which is honestly given  is charged with the greatest of dangerous illusions. The artist, as the greatest gift-giver can give the most profound of lies. But who would ever want such a gift? Perhaps this is why artists need thinkers as much as thinkers require the gift giving nature of artists. Nietzche points out this mutual dependence dramatically:

"The artist’s sense of truth. Regarding truths, the artist has a weaker morality than the thinker. He definitely does not want to be deprived of the splendid and profound interpretations of life, and he resists sober, simple methods and results. Apparently he fights for the higher dignity and significance of man; in truth, he does not want to give up the most effective presumptions of his art: the fantastic, mythical, uncertain, extreme, the sense of the symbolic, the overestimation of the person, the faith in some miraculous element in the genius. Thus he considers the continued existence of his kind of creation more important than scientific devotion to the truth in every form, however, plain.” (146 The Portable Nietzsche pg 53 )

For the more radical Nietzsche, we have art lest we perish of the truth. But knowing this can liberate art’s gift to its own myth.

Finally, the third illusion which beautifully wraps the artist’s gift is what may be called the illusion of the audience. The desire for recognition by others is specially deep in artists for the artist requires an audience who partakes of the work. A gift which is given into the air cannot really be called a gift. A hand, a few eyes, some ears, several bodies, must be there to receive it. But the need for such recognition may drive the artist into a dangerous compromise. As in Mann’s Death in Venice the initial creative stance becomes a deadly formalism. What was light becomes ash, as Aschenbach’s  name –the main character of the work---- clearly shows. In the desire for recognition, recognition trumps the honesty of the work given.  Ponder, do you post work in dA to receive favorites? Isn’t it rather that the gift you give us here is given in spite of any deviants who are so touched that they click the favorite button in gratitude?

This dramatic corruption may be felt the more in truly creative artists because truly creative work  -----ground-breaking work--- must be misunderstood from its very inception. Van Gogh was not seen, and much less importantly, was not sold during his lifetime. But this requires much courage; to believe that the gift which has no hands to be received is nonetheless worth creating. Once again Nietzsche  dramatically portrays this dilemma inherent to the artistic activity of giving  by pointing  to the depth of the Greek tragedians. A true artistic gift presents itself as a gift of excellence primarily in front of oneself. For Nietzsche,  the audience for the artist is the audience of an imagined scale of excellence. Giving is not merely a sacrifice for the recognition of my efforts, but rather the giving of greatness in a battle between the greatest of givers:

"Artistic ambition. The Greek artists, the tragedians, for example, wrote in order to triumph; their whole art cannot be imagined without competition. … Now, this ambition demanded above all that their work maintain the highest excellence in their own eyes, as they understood excellence, without consideration for a prevailing taste or the general opinion about excellence in a work of art. And so, for a long time, Aeschylus and Euripides remained unsuccessful until they finally educated critics of art who esteemed their work by the standards that they themselves applied. Thus they strive for victory over their rivals according to their own estimation, before their own tribunal; they really want to be more excellent; then they demand that others outside agree with their own estimation, confirm their judgment. …… " (HatH,  IV 170;  see also IV 197). www.publicappeal.org/library/n…

Giving before your eyes  in the honesty of the search for excellence, opens the gift to others who await.

Grasping the danger of these three illusions,  the artist may come to give not in the pain of self-sacrifice, but in the pleasure of the world which opens amidst the surrounding darkness. The artist does not give in the way that the kiss is awkwardly withheld in Klimt’s famous The Kiss. Instead,  the artist gives for the sake of giving itself. By learning from thinkers the dangers of these illusions, we artists are better prepared to give out of ourselves. Perhaps for the very first time we might give a gift as it should be done. This, artists teach us.

4. Philosophers; the gift of thinking about giving.

This brief voyage into giving has revealed much. But I must be honest. Most of it comes not from me, but rather from the gift of thinkers who have opened me to what the plausible nature of giving might be. Such philosophers include Socrates, Aristotle, Nietzsche and Heidegger.

But you might wonder, is the giving by thinkers free of such illusions? Surely not. Perhaps the single most problematic illusion with regards to giving for the thinker is misunderstanding the nature of teaching. Unfortunately,  I cannot go into this in detail. I have taught for many years myself, and when one begins to teach one feels that one is truly a privileged giver. One congratulates oneself on one’s decided generosity. But things  might turn out to be otherwise because we also feel the desire to please our students, we feel the powerful desire to let them know how helpful we teachers are. But this unhealthy desire  may end up by hampering the possibility of thought itself. For as in reading, a teacher who does not make YOU puzzle, surely has only pretended to give. This is captured powerfully by Nietzsche in a famous remark which captures succinctly this profound idea:

"Caution in writing and teaching. Whoever has once begun to write and felt the passion of writing in himself, learns from almost everything he does or experiences only what is communicable for a writer. He no longer thinks of himself but rather of the writer and his public. He wants insight, but not for his own use. Whoever is a teacher is usually incapable of doing anything of his own for his own good. He always thinks of the good of his pupils, and all new knowledge gladdens him only to the extent that he can teach it. Ultimately he regards himself as a thoroughfare of learning, and in general as a tool, so that he has lost seriousness about himself." (HatH, IV)

Nietzsche’s words are striking. A teacher who “dissolves” himself in his students is no teacher. The teacher who -----and these are the current models for education---- thinks only of what he gives his students, is a teacher who is somewhat confused.

Moreover,  I have been around teachers and I have remarked that as the years go by,  the pessimism of some increases in direct proportion to a demand for a recognition for the “gifts” they have given to their students. Fortunately,  I have had professors who have shaken me in such a way that I now understand that education as a means for recognition of one’s efforts is the kind of educational  model that goes about things in the wrong way. Learning is a gift, and as such,  it is an activity done for its own sake. But rarely do we find this. True learning moves us to the pleasure of the word, but we tend rather to emphasize the painful effort required. This is what is so striking about Aristotle’s simple words. Let me repeat them once again for you to read: “and this is probably the right procedure for those who have had a course in philosophy; for the value of this is not measurable in money, nor could such a service be balanced by a gift of honor.” As we have argued, true giving gives in the selflessness of the gift. In this respect, philosophy seems to give as no other human activity can.

But what exactly does philosophy give? Surely it does not give things. The richness of thought lies elsewhere. Rather, it gives questioning words which seek to counteract the strong powers in us that move us forcefully towards self-delusion. And in this very same vein, I have not found any more perplexing words on giving and its relation to thought,  as those given to us by Heidegger:

“What gives us food for thought we call thought-provoking. But what is thought–provoking, not just occasionally, and not just in some limited respect, but rather gives food for thought inherently and hence from the start and always –----is that which is thought-provoking per se. This is what we call most thought-provoking. And what it gives is to think about, the gift it gives to us, is nothing less than itself ---itself which calls on us to enter thought”   (“What calls for thinking”,  pg. 367)

What could Heidegger be speaking of? In part, what he speaks of we have already tried to do by thinking about what giving is essentially. But in doing so we have been given  a very unique gift which is not at all the type of gift we have grown accustomed to in our materialistic world. In thinking about giving we have come across that which is thought-provoking. Puzzled we have had to stop our actions, and turn to our thoughts.  Turn not just to any thoughts, we have been mobilized towards those thoughts underlying our very actions. In turning to thought,  and attempting to understand what we did before without ever pausing, we liberate the action to itself.

Perhaps we have even become better givers of gifts by thinking about giving. This is so because, just maybe,  we have given ourselves the chance to  give ourselves to ourselves more generously. No longer deluded  by the necessity of reciprocation in things, we give  in what is a truly liberal fashion. The words that now appear ----the very word “gift”---- does so in true liberty. This is why we can say with total confidence that it surely is no coincidence that liberality and liberty go hand in hand.

On the desire to read: a tribute to the books that have transformed my life



This simple photograph is a tribute to the books that have transformed my life and sense of self. This journal -----which was never meant to be a journal,  but instead a simple few paragraphs which kept on growing out of control----- seeks to discover what drew me to them, it seeks to tell you why I fell in love with them. For good readers are the best of lovers. Their hands touch you with some of the words we all long for; the words that bring us closer to ourselves in intimate encounters.

Encountering these books has allowed me to become who I am. They appeared at different moments in my life, but what makes them unique is how deeply they have touched me as I move through life. Among them, I found  friends  and challenging questions. For unquestioning friends are not true friends, but simply important acquaintances. These books questioned me, making me humbler. Because of them, I felt my ignorance. These books taught me, making me prouder. Because of them,  I felt my possibilities. Among them I feel at home, a  home built upon creative thought cemented, both tightly and loosely, by a passion for words. Within their pages, I discovered  profound human issues and beautifully complex human dilemmas. Their questioning nature allowed my sense of being to become a question, rather than a shallow and definite answer. How we hate to be questioned nowadays. How little we actually read. Have we then become the worst of lovers in an age in which sexuality is our expertise?

But I must confess. I recall my high-school years when I never even seriously took a book in my hands, being all too busy with basketballs and soccerballs. Don’t get me wrong I did well. But “doing well” is quite different from “becoming well”. But then ---–choosing to exile myself quite young, choosing the life of the eternal migrant without really understanding the consequences fully---- foundational changes came upon  me. The world of words appeared. I could not go back. I still cannot go back. I will not go back.

What I recall  most from the books on this OPEN list, is the feeling of exhilaration I felt when encountering them. It took me quite some time, but I learned what is  probably one of the most important things, not to fear  my initial failing to understand how  words I did not truly understand fully, could possess me so. Rejecting a book because you do not understand, is not believing in yourself. I remember, as well, how each touched me at different times in my life. It took me decades to understand what were some of the points underlying Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics. Although I had read it several times having attended multiple seminars, and although I understood the words I found before me, I did not understand their complex purpose. Now –---thanks to a very wise professor-----  I will dedicate great part of my life to it. As a matter of fact, I myself am surprised to have selected this author as part of my thesis as  he seemed so foreign to me for years. In contrast, I felt extremely close to Mann’s The Magic Mountain and Nietzsche’s views on art  from the very start. This worries me a bit  because they are too close to home. What is so close, can at times, hardly question us.

But, to repeat,  what I can recall most in ALL of these great books is the utter initial excitement I felt at coming in contact with ideas and feelings I had never thought about or felt. Through these books, my soul and body slowly became conscious of themselves. I found myself when I had thought for many years I was already there. I was there, but I was not myself yet. I am still working on being there more fully. All these great books held enigmas which forced me to think and feel anew. They required, and continue to require, great courage and dedication. And at the same time,  they held hidden keys which made me not despair completely. They provided, and continue to provide,  great hope and happiness. But to be totally honest,  many good professors indeed tried to help me along the way. I am always indebted to  them.

But all this is best expressed in one of the books in the list. Paul Ricoeur says it much better than I could ever do in his beautiful essay “The hermeneutical function of distanciation”. Worried by such complex words? Well, try to open yourself to them; enrich yourself by letting yourself know that you do not know. It is not easy for sometimes un-knowing is more difficult than coming to know. However that may be, in that essay Ricoeur speaks of what it is to understand oneself through written words:

“henceforth to understand is to understand oneself in front of the text. It is not a question of imposing  upon the text our finite capacity of understanding, but of exposing ourselves to the text and receiving from it an enlarged self, which would be the proposed existence corresponding in the most suitable way to the world proposed So understanding is quite different form a constitution  of which the subject would posses the key. In this respect  it would be more correct  to say that the self  is constituted by the “matter” of the text . (pg.  143-4,  Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences)

Opening yourself before the text, you re-place yourself; you find yourself inhabiting yourself in new spaces. You find homes. Words, these immaterial beings, allow your very skin to come alive. But you must let your skin be touched by the page. You must open your mind to the nervous sensation of not-knowing. Then you will come to know; perhaps even your body will realize.

If you are a bit lost, try to imagine this; learning another language, learning to read OUT LOUD the foreign words which escape you. This feeling of despair -------which I frequently saw in my dear students trying to learn English with its very complex pronunciation patterns---- is similar to what you must try to seek and feel. To really learn to read, enroll yourself in a class in a language you do not understand. Then, I believe, you will be much better prepared to read in your own language. For you will understand that reading, as Ricoeur says, requires a kind of displacement to become an effective generator of consciousness. Just try to read this Spanish selection from our famous Colombian Gabriel García Márquez:

"---¿Y hasta cuándo cree usted que podremos seguir en este ir y venir del carajo? –preguntó.
Florentina Ariza tenía la respuesta preparada hacía cincuenta y tres años, siete meses y once días con sus noches.
---Toda la vida--- dijo.”

If you live in Canada, as I do, now you might better understand what immigrants face daily. They are models for understanding the dis-centering of self required to become a good reader.


Or put another way, perhaps the single most important thing a reader must learn to do is to read by questioning what is read. Writers do not simply write in order to fill us with their knowledge. A lover that just wants to fill you, is a bad lover as well. Reading is special kind of action, more precisely, it is an inter-action. Puzzling, your mind becomes active before itself. Too complex? Think about this, have you ever read while having a conversation with another? In reading, you face yourself as actively as can be done.  Writers who want to be read interactively, immerse us in expectations and puzzles. Rather than answers, they provide the health of questions. By doing so, they jump-start our own process of self-discovery through self-reflective questioning. And this can, and usually is, a painful process of rupturing preconceived paradigms and schemata. In other words, a reader who does not puzzle over what he reads, is a very poor reader. This is why reading a newspaper will not do, this is why reading Stephen King will not do, this is why reading most magazines will not do. They do not require you to puzzle, though they are quite entertaining. In contrast, better reads generate a certain puzzling activity, that is to say, a dis-centering of oneself trying to understand how what we read alters us and makes us another. You hardly recognize yourself afterwards. When this happens to you, you know you will not forget.

Or think of it in still another way. Anne Carson, in her beautifully written Eros the Bittersweet, which looks at the transformations wrought by the appearance of writing and reading in the Greeks,  allows us to imagine the difficult appearance of a literate culture:

“When people begin to learn reading and writing, a different scenario develops. Reading and writing require focusing the mental attention upon a text by means of the visual sense. As an individual reads and writes he gradually learns to close or inhibit the input of his sense, to inhibit or control the responses of his body, so as to train  energy and thought upon the written word. He resists the environment outside him by distinguishing and controlling the one inside him” (pg. 44)

And this makes a lot of sense; for it takes much self-control to be able to sit down for hours upon hours and read. Don’t you remember your teachers telling you; “Can’t you just sit down for a minute!” Or think of how  you are often asked: “What are you doing?”, to which you respond, “Just reading.” As if “doing” were primarily moving around. Reading is a doing, but of a special kind. To put it bluntly, in reading, you are doing yourself.

Have you puzzled about this whole issue we take for granted? You there yourself on your own reading page after page of something which does not even speak to you and which makes it impossible to eat, or to jog, and even in some cases to listen to music at the same time. You cannot even have a conversation while you read. Reading is demanding of you, you must learn to focus intensively, to redirect your strengths and focus them on scribbled passages on a white sheet of paper. Sometimes even the print is so small your eyes go numb! But going through the motions of reading. is quite different from understanding a text. Books are always in need of good readers; they are in need of  questioning and eloquent readers who can make them come alive again. Books require enticing interpretations founded on the love of the word. (Anyone who has heard Robert Adams here in Toronto will understand immediately what I mean. www.writersunion.ca/a/adams_ro… . All societies have, must have, at least one such Adams.)

But besides our recognizing that reading generates a reflective stance that a simple conversation does not, there is also the less seen question of the erotic nature of reading. It is of crucial importance to signal out that a true writer permeates his pages with the eroticity of words. This may sound a bit strange to us moderns; but if one reads Plato’s beautiful Phaedrus, it is quite evident. Or think about the following. Do you remember the sensation of reading that book which moved you deeply? Do you remember not being able to put it down? Not even for your naked boyfriend, or girlfriend? “I’ll be right with you, honey,” you might say. It must be a powerful force, within you,  which makes you not let go of a book! What could it be? Once again, Anne Carson provides a thesis and a possible answer to a very peculiar human puzzle in her writing on eros and symbolic language. For instance, originally the word “symbol” ----and what are we artists but generators of symbols--- is simply your “other half”, your erotic love in Greek. This in itself is quite puzzling and problematic. But besides this, in her analysis of the written text  --specially those texts concerned with eros itself---- Carson points out that reading generates a triangular relation which is also inherent to erotic desire. There you are, there is the book. But how can two alone, triangulate? Two triangulate as lovers do; for the one we love in our imagination is not the same one we love who is standing right there in front of us. We love an image of the other, an image to which we cling. That the superimposition of the two is not frequent, is revealed by our divorce rates.

In a similar way, there is also a mysterious third party which provides the necessary voltage required to go on reading. It is the space between the book and yourself, the space in which your imagination grows. Photographers also know of this unique lit space between the object and the camera. It is the intermediate space in which one day you might find yourself and know who you are. It is the metaphoric space of the possible. Within it, as an artist,  you can be. I cannot here go into the details. Let me just say that we gain much from reading the following passage from Carson’s book. It is a passage which deals, in particular,  with the novel:

  “There is something paradoxical in the relations between a novelist and his lovers. As a writer he knows their story must end and wants it to end. So, too, as readers we know the novel must end and want it to end. “But not yet!” say the readers to the writer. “But not yet!” says the writer to his hero and heroine. “But not yet!” says the beloved to the lover. And so the reach of desire continues. What is a paradox? A paradox is a kind of thinking that reaches out but never arrives at the end of its thought. Each time it reaches out, there is a shift of distance in mid-reasoning that prevents the answer from being grasped” (pg. 81)

Upon encountering a book, you wish the relation would not end. This journal has tried to show why I cannot let go of the books in my open list. I have learned what is gratitude and generosity from them. Through their pages,  I have partially created myself. And as Carson points out, we wish we could go on forever reading. And yet, we know a book is finite. How could it be otherwise, for WE are finite. However, books embody a unique kind of finitude. A book is the finite human creation that pulls us out of ourselves into ourselves. By your becoming a great reader, the book becomes thoughtful flesh. The book is liberated from the silence of time. Thinking desire comes to life in the word.  

Something like this must be what Professor Pangle means when he speaks about the love inherent in great books:

“The quest for the truth, in the humbling awareness of how far short we  will inevitably fall in our erotic or needy pursuit of it, can be the foundation for the firmest attachments for a truly common humanity –---for a sense of the humane, and an immunity to the inhumane--— that emerges as a natural expression of the common love for truth. The great books may be said to be the products of such love; they may be understood as the gifts ----–handed down to us------ of such lovers.” </b> (The Ennobling of Democracy pg 216)

Have yourself a good read.




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Appendix: The list of books

Some of you might consider my training to be too academic, too classical for dA. You are right and you are wrong. You would have to know me better. But perhaps in our age, being classical is revolutionary; being classical has become the most devious thing one can do. Moreover, this tribute is specially significant because I come to the end of my 4th year of continuous daily reading  in preparation to write my thesis Hopefully the next 2 years will be focused on writing and reviewing more, and reading less. Let us hope these coming years will prove a good harvest. Let this be a start.

And finally, please forgive me for  extending myself so much, here are the books that transformed my life. I have tried to list them in order of importance to me, though this has been VERY difficult to do. These books are:




1. Aristotle: Nichomachean Ethics
2. Plato: Four Texts on Socrates: Plato's Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito and Aristophanes' Clouds and his Laches
3. Nietzsche: The Gay Science
4. Plato: The Republic
5. Plato: Symposium and The Phaedrus
6. Aristotle:  Politics
7. The Bible
8. Heidegger:  Poetry Language and Thought
9. Taylor: Philosophical Papers: Human Agency and Language
10. Strauss, Leo: The City and Man
11. Taylor: Source of the Self
12. Xenophon: Conversations of Socrates
13. Nietzsche: The Basic Writings of Nietzsche
14. Thomas Mann: The Magic Mountain
15. Heidegger: Being and Time
16. Heidegger: Basic Writings
17. Kant: Foundations for a Metaphysics of Morals
18. Ricoeur: Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences
19. Pangle: The Ennobling of Democracy
20. Sophocles: Oedipus King
21. Foucault: The History of Sexuality: Volume I
22. Rousseau: Essai sur l'origine des langues.
Où il est parlé de la Mélodie et de l'Imitation musicale. and Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes
23. Cervantes: Don Quijote de la Mancha
24. Dostoyevsky: Crime and Punishment
25. Machiavelli:  The Prince
26. Freud: On Metapsychology: the theory of Psychoanalysis
27. Pangle: Political  Philosophy and the God of Abraham
28. Faulkner:  As I lay Dying
29. Shakespeare Hamlet
30. García Márquez: El amor en los tiempos del Cólera
31. Angel: Misia Señora
32. Camus: Myth of Sisyphus and other Essays (specially Return to Tipasa and Caligula )
33. Sontag: On Photography
34. St. Augustine The Confessions
35. Marcus Aurelius: Meditations
36. James Joyce: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
37. Saphho: Poetry
38. Carson:  Eros the Bittersweet
39. Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings
40. Various: World Writers Today: a collection of short stories


(I have omitted many  extremely important authors and books, for example -----–academically speaking--- Hegel’s Phenomenology of the Spirit and his Philosophy of Right or Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. I have also omitted, and less seriously, the first book I ever consciously read, Emilio Salgari’s El Cosario Negro. His adventures through the Orinoco River in South America turned me into a life-long adventurer. I have also omitted the amazing work of Schopenhauer, and  Nussbaum, and MacIntyre, and brilliant Simón Bolívar, and Wordsworth, and Schiller, and Saint Thomas More, and Payán, and Locke, and Hesse, and humanist doctor Pellegrino, and all the MANY amazing interpreters of Aristotle and Plato and Socrates I have read in the last 2 years. I have also left out many art books dedicated to my favorite painters, Van Gogh. Kandinsky and Klee. And finally, I have omitted multiple books from the same authors; for instance, other works by Taylor or any of the others.)