The World as Will and Representation

It is assumed that the identity of the person rests on that of consciousness. If, however, we understand by this merely the continuous recollection of the course of life, then it is not enough. We know, it is true, something more of the course of our life than of a novel we have formerly read, yet only very little indeed. The principal events, the interesting scenes, have been impressed on us; for the rest, a thousand events are forgotten for one that has been retained. In consequence of our relation to the external world, we are accustomed to regard the subject of knowing, the knowing I, as our real self. This, however, is the mere function of the brain, and is not our real self. Our true self, the kernel of our inner nature, is that which is to be found behind this, and which really knows nothing but willing and not-willing.

— Arthur Schopenhauer

Networks of Power

Man's making of the complex modern world is an appropriate subject for the twentieth-century historian. Creation of the material environment shaped by -- and shaping -- mankind is not a peripheral subject that can be left to narrow specialists. To direct attention today to technological affairs is to focus on a concern that is as central now as nation building and constitution making were a century ago. Technological affairs contain a rich texture of technical matters, scientific laws, economic principles, political forces, and social concerns. The historian must take the broad perspective to get to the root of things and to see the patterns. Scientists and engineers analyze the technical systems they build, but historians are needed to comprehend the complex, multifaceted relations of these systems and the changes that take place in them over time.

From one woman to another

During my very long layover in Istanbul to and from Montreal, I had the chance to finish reading the expunged diary of Anaïs Nin, a woman who is very different from my teenage mentor, de Beauvoir. A full review will be due in a month or so, after the frantic final period. Before that, I present you with a selection of quotes that I particularly resounded with, to give you a taste of what's upcoming.

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Am I only a medium of clarity and harmony through which others find themselves, each one finding his potential self, his vision?

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"Passion and violence never opened a human being."
"What opens human beings?"
"Compassion.
Henry laughed. "Compassion and June are absolutely incompatible. Absolutely absurd. As well have compassion for Venus, for the moon, for a statue, for a queen, a tigress."
"Strange irony, in Spanish, compassion means with passion. Your passion is without compassion. Compassion is the only key I ever found which fits everyone."
"And what would you say aroused your compassion for June?"
"The need to be loved..."
"You mean faithlessness..."
"Oh, no. Don Juan was seeking in passion, in the act of passion, in the welding of bodies, something that had nothing to do with passion and was never born of it."
"A Narcissus pool."
"No, he was seeking to be created, to be born, to be warmed into existence, to be imagined, to be known, to be identified; he was seeking a procreative miracle. The first birth is often a failure. He was seeking the love which would succeed. Passion cannot achieve this because it is not concerned with the true identity of the lover. Only love seeks to know and to create or rescue the loved one."
"And why seek that from me?" said Henry. "I don't even care to feed a stray cat. Anybody who goes about dispensing compassion as you do will be followed by a thousand cripples, nothing more. I say, let them die."
"You asked for a key to June, Henry."
"You also think of June as a human being in trouble?"
This is the kind of image Henry will not pursue. It must be returned quickly to the bottle of wine, like an escaped genie that an only cause trouble. Henry wants pleasure. Drink the wine, empty the bottle, return to it these images of tenderness, recork it, throw it out to sea. Worse luck, it would surely be me who would spot it as a distress signal, pick it up lovingly, and read into it a request for compassion."

p.52

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Man can never know the kind of loneliness a woman knows. Man lies in a woman's womb only to gather strength, he nourishes himself from this fusion, and then he rises and goes into the world, into his work, into battle, into art. He is not lonely. He is busy. The memory of the swim in amniotic fluid gives him energy, completion. The woman may be busy too, but she feels empty. Sensuality for her is not only a wave of pleasure in which he has bathed, and a charge of electric joy at contact with another. When man lies in her womb, she is fulfilled, each act of love is a taking of man within her, and act of birth and rebirth, of child bearing and man bearing. Man lies in her womb and is reborn each time anew with a desire to act, to BE. But for a woman, the climax is not in the birth, but in the moment when man rests inside of her.

p.106

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We talked with passion about our habit of condensation, rigorous sifting, our quest of the essential, love of essence, and distillations, in life, in literature. And not a premediated effort, simply faithfulness to our way of thought and feeling. We do not consciously try to condense. It is a natural tendency. When we condense and extract essences, we are approximating the true and normal functioning of our minds. I never saw as clearly as with Artaud what the meaning of poetry is: it is an abstraction, to match allegorical patterns.

p.209