The Saunterer

Bernard DeVoto on how to write

    Here is Bernard DeVoto explaining how, and it’s true for any art:

Whatever his age in years, a writer is still young so long as he feels his work as an enhancement of himself. He is essentially frivolous about writing: it is a setting for or an adornment of his ego. A mature writer is one whom experience and reality have taught to subordinate himself to the job. His discipline is to determine the implicit requirements of the job and then to do it wholly in terms of those requirements, disregarding everything else, disregarding himself most of all. Let the chips fall where they may: what counts is the job. Not his satisfaction (though it may be great), not those who may praise or condemn it, not those whom it may infuriate or bore or delight, but the job as it may be of itself complete. He has no option, he is committed. He has sufficiently mastered his tools and he uses them toward a deliberately chosen end, the job that sets its own terms. Between him and that end nothing whatever can come except his limitations and the fallibility he shares with the rest of the race. Everything else is irrelevant; if anything isn’t, he has not grown up.

    (From Bernard DeVoto’s essay, “What Counts is the Job”; pages 52-57 in The Writer’s Handbook, by Udia G. Olsen et al., 1959.)
    For a brief biography of Bernard DeVoto, click here.

André Leroi-Gourhan on the nature of rhythm

    Rhythm plays a central role in Islam. How much so we learned in By Noon Prayer: The Rhythm of Islam, by Fadwa El Guindi. Berg: Oxford. 2008. Chapter 6 presents a theory of Arabo-Islamic Rhythm, that begins with André Leroi-Gourhan explaining the role of rhythm:

Rhythms are the creators of space and time . . . Space and time do not enter lived experience until they are materialised within a rhythmic frame. Rhythms are also the creators of forms.

    For a brief biography of André Leroi-Gourhan, click here. For Fadwa El Guindi’s website, click here.

Heinz R. Pagels on the why of mountain climbing

    He gives his reason in the conclusion of his book, The Cosmic Code (Simon & Schuster, 1982):

I used to climb mountains in snow and ice, hanging onto the sides of great rocks. I was describing one of my adventures to an older friend once, and when I had finished he asked me, "Why do you want to kill yourself?" I protested. I told him that the rewards I wanted were of sight, of pleasure, of the thrill of pitting my body and my skills against nature. My friend replied, "When you are as old as I am you will see that you are trying to kill yourself."
    I often dream about falling. Such dreams are commonplace to the ambitious or those who climb mountains. I dreamed I was clutching at the face of a rock but it did not hold. Gravel gave way. I grasped for a shrub, but it pulled loose, and in cold terror I fell into the abyss. Suddenly I realized that my fall was relative; there was no bottom and no end. A feeling of pleasure overcame me. I realized that what I embody, the principle of life, cannot be destroyed. It is written into the cosmic code, the order of the universe. As I continued to fall in the dark void, embraced by the vault of the heavens, I sang to the beauty of the stars and made my peace with the darkness.

    Heinz Pagels died climbing. For his obituary, click here.

Caspar David Friedrich on the value of the artist’s feeling

    Caspar David Friedrich put it:

The artist’s feeling is his law. Genuine feeling can never be contrary to nature, it is always in harmony with her.

    Quoted from page 246 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg. For a brief biography of Caspar David Friedrich, click here. For images of his art, click here.

Sidney Axinn on the reason for having laws

    This is Sidney Axinn explaining:

The point of having a law is not that it will prevent the action that it calls illegal. Many cities have a law against parking in front of fire hydrants; yet the law does not stop the practice. Laws against murder do not seem to stop that activity. The fact that laws do not totally deter crime does not mean that we should repeal them. The point of having laws was expressed nicely by Professor Roger Fisher of Yale Law School:
    “The essential talent of the law lies not in producing perfect order but in coping with disorder in an orderly way. Contract law, negligence law and criminal law ‘work’ not in the sense of producing a society with no broken contracts, no negligence and no crimes, but by telling us how society should respond when things go wrong.” (Quoted from page 70 of A Moral Military, by Sidney Axinn. Temple University Press. 2009.)

    For a brief biography of Sidney Axinn, click here. For a brief biography of Roger Fisher, click here.

Valentine de Saint-Point on the essence of lust

    This is what she says:

Lust is to the body what the ideal is to the spirit - the magnificent Chimera, ceaselessly sought after, never captured, which the young and the avid, intoxicated with the vision, pursue without rest. LUST IS A FORCE.
    (Quoted from page 181 of Inventing Futurism: The Art and Politics of Artificial Optimism, by Christine Poggi. Princeton University Press. 2009.)

    For a brief biography of Valentine de Saint-Point, click here.

The United States’ National Flower

    Lewis Mumford identified it:

Our national flower is the concrete cloverleaf.
    (From Quote Magazine, 1961.)
    For a brief biography of Lewis Mumford, click here.

Akim Volynsky on the prominence of the vertical in classical ballet

    What is the source of the Washington Monument’s greatness, which is the greatness of all obelisks? Why do churches have spires? Is it because obelisks and spires lead the eye up, higher and higher, heavenward? And not just with architecture but with ballet is the stress on the vertical. This is what Akim Volynsky says:

This is the ideological scale that classical ballet contains within itself - an art of the conscious spirit in its highest moral and individual soaring. It would seem at first glance that before us a spectacle unfolds that is not entirely comprehensible and is even artificial in its outer appearance. These dancers, running around on their toes, doing pirouettes on pointe with the help of their partners, cutting across the stage with floral patterns again on pointed toes, as their feet curve upward, these dancers seem to be the fanciful creations of fairy tales, when in reality we have here the expression of the highest vertical tendency that exists within us. Such a tendency is inherent in us from childhood and runs through our entire life: to rise on our toes whenever we feel profound emotion, uplift, or joy. If ballet, which is equipped with verticality as its most intrinsic instrument, is deprived of this singular quality, this exaggerated ascent upward, this dynamic and lively standing on one’s toes, all of its lofty magic would disappear, and with this, the essence of its classicalness would be undermined. (Quoted from page 85 of Ballet’s Magic Kingdom: Selected Writings on Dance in Russia, 1911 - 1925, by Akim Volynsky. Translated and edited by Stanley J. Rabinowitz. Yale University Press. 2008.)
    For a brief biography of Akim Volynsky and a review of the cited book, click here.

Thomas Jefferson on a necessity for excellence of government

    Thomas Jefferson contended:

Every people have their own particular habits, ways of thinking, manners, etc., which have grown up with them from their infancy, are become a part of their nature, and to which the regulations which are to make them happy must be accommodated. . . . The excellence of every government is its adaptation to the state of those to be governed by it. (Quoted on page 194 of Pragmatism and Social Hope, by Judith M. Green. New York: Columbia University Press. 2008.)
    For a brief biography of Thomas Jefferson, click here. For a bit about Judith M. Green, click here.

Joseph Conrad’s creed

    This is how it goes:

Everyone must walk in the light of his own heart’s gospel. No man’s light is good to any of his fellows. That’s my creed from beginning to end. That’s my view of life - a view that rejects all formulas, dogmas and principles of other people’s making. These are only a web of illusions. We are too varied. Another man’s truth is only a dismal lie to me. (Quoted from page 206 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg.) For a brief biography of Joseph Conrad, click here.