The Saunterer

Tom Regan on why it is wrong to kill animals

    A lion catches a zebra, which bellows and dies. A deer falls into a sinkhole, and that is the end of it. Hurts and deaths caused by nature are natural, not wrong. Wrong is when we rob creatures of their lives, their futures they would enjoy, because we think we have the right to do anything we want to them. Tom Regan explains:

The forlornness of the veal calf is pathetic, heart wrenching; the pulsing pain of the chimp with electrodes planted deep in her brain is repulsive; the slow, tortuous death of the raccoon caught in the leg-hold trap is agonizing. But what is wrong isn’t the pain, isn’t the suffering, isn’t the deprivation. The fundamental wrong is the system that allows us to view animals as our resources, here for us.

    (Quoted from page 36 of Ethics and Animal Rights, by Lori Gruen. Cambridge University Press, 2011)
    For a brief biography of Tom Regan, click here. For images of or relating to Tom Regan, click here. To enter The Tom Regan Animal Rights Archive, click here.
    For Lori Gruen’s homepage, click here. For images of or relating to Lori Gruen, click here.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau on amour propre and amour de soi

    Jean-Jacques Rousseau makes this distinction:

Amour propre and amour de soi . . . must not be confused. Amour de soi is a natural sentiment which inclines every animal to watch over its own preservation. . . . Amour propre is only a relative sentiment, artificial and born in Society, which inclines each individual to have a greater esteem for himself than for anyone else.

    Both are self-love. Amour de soi is the natural and good kind. Cats and dogs have it. Amour propre is the artificial and bad kind. Cats and dogs thankfully don’t have it, or no one would love them.
    (Quoted from page 90 of Respect in a World of Inequality, by Richard Sennett, W. W. Norton & Co. 2003.)
    For a brief biography of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, click here. For images of or relating to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, click here.     For a brief biography of Richard Sennett, click here. For images of or relating to Richard Sennett, click here.

John William Mackail on poetry as an art

    J. W. Mackail, in his contribution about poetry to the Oxford English Dictionary, says this:

In general, the essence of poetry as an art is not so much that it is rhythmical (which all elevated language is) or that it is metrical (which not all poetry is, except by a considerable extension of the meaning of the word), as that it is patterned language. This is its specific quality as a ‘fine art’. The essence of pattern (in its technical use, as applied to the arts) as distinct from ‘composition’ generally, is that it is composition which has what is technically called ‘a repeat’; and it is the ‘repeat’ which technically differentiates poetry from non-poetry, both being (as arts) ‘composition’. The ‘repeat’ may be obvious, as in the case of rhymed lines of equal length, or it may be more implicit, to any degree of subtlety; but if it doesn’t exist, there is technically no poetry. The artistic power of the pattern-designer is shown in the way he deals with the problem of ‘repeat’; and this is true of poetry likewise, and is probably the key (so far as one exists) to any technical discussion of the art.

    (Quoted from Volume Two, page 165, of Life and Letters of Edmund Clarence Stedman, by Laura Stedman and George M. Gould. New York: Moffat, Yard and Co., 1910.)
    For a brief biography of J. W. Mackail, click here. For images of or relating to J. W. Mackail, click here. For a brief biography of Edmund Clarence Stedman, click here. For images of or relating to Edmund Clarence Stedman, click here.

Camille Saint-Saëns on the nature of music

    The Utah Symphony’s performance this May of Saint-Saëns’ Organ Symphony thrilled us, which led to Sauntering in the library and discovering Saint-Saëns’ remark:

Music is one of the most delicate products of the human spirit. In the recesses of his intelligence, mankind possesses a particularly intimate sense, the aesthetic sense, by means of which he perceives art: music is one of the means of setting this sense in vibration. Behind the sense of hearing, with its marvellous capacity to analyse sounds, to distinguish the differences in their intensities, timbres and qualities, there lies, inside the complexities of the brain, a mysterious sense that responds to something quite different.
    You know the Pastoral Symphony. You’ve heard that peasants’ round dance, which gradually gains pace to the point of giddiness, of madness. At the climactic point everything suddenly stops and, without a transition of any kind, the double basses play pianissimo a note outside the prevailing key. This note, almost inaudible, is like the sudden spreading of a black veil; it is the shadow of implacable fate appearing in the midst of the festivities, an indescribable anguish that no one can escape. From the point of view of the ear and its “physical pleasure”, or even of cold reason, this note is absurd because it destroys the tonality and logical development of the movement. And yet it is sublime.
    It appeals therefore neither to the ear that wishes to be caressed, nor to that short-sighted reason that battens on to phrases which are as regular as a geometrical figure. There must then be something in the art of sound that passes through the ear like a porch and through reason like an entrance hall, and that goes on further. All music that lacks this something is to be despised.

    (Quoted from page 19 Camille Saint-Saëns: On Music and Musicians, edited by Roger Nichols. Oxford University Press, 2008.)
    For a brief biography of Camille Saint-Saëns, click here. For some images of or relating to Camille Saint-Saëns, click here. For Roger Nichols home page, click here.

What good is playing with dolls?

    Could it be that doll play helps shape the adult to be? --

The routine of doll play creates deeply ingrained perceptions of appropriate behaviour towards others which will, eventually, enter the real life of a child. The important point is that dolls provide a range of different components that a child uses to build up ideas of who he or she is, who others are, and how she or he would behave towards others. Furthermore, objects such as dolls allow (encourage even) children to play out narratives of the self and the other. By manipulating and orchestrating ensembles of dolls a child practices and experiments in the basic social scenes of life.

    (Quoted from page 25 of Unearthed: a comparative study of Jōmon dogū and Neolithic figurines, by Douglass Bailey, Andrew Cochrane, and Jean Zambelli. Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures, 2010.)
    For a brief biography of Douglass Bailey, click here.

Barbara Tuchman on quality

    What it comes down to is that quality is as much or more about creators than about the things they create. Hear Barbara Tuchman on this:

    “As I understand it, [quality] means investment of the best skill and effort possible to produce the finest and most admirable result possible. Its presence or absence in some degree characterizes every man-made object, service, skilled or unskilled labor - laying bricks, painting a picture, ironing shirts, practicing medicine, shoemaking, scholarship, writing a book. You do it well or you do it half-well. Materials are sound and durable or they are sleazy; method is painstaking or whatever is easiest. Quality is achieving or reaching for the highest standard as against being satisfied with the sloppy or fraudulent. It is honesty of purpose as against catering to cheap or sensational sentiment. It does not allow compromise with the second-rate.”

    Going on, she describes Michelangelo’s project of painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Intolerant of the lesser standards of his five assistants, he dismissed them and for four years worked alone to shape the masterpiece. She concludes, “That is what makes for quality - and its costs - and what helped to make Michelangelo one of the greatest artists, if not, as some think, the greatest, of all time. Creating quality is self-nourishing.”
    Examine the words she uses to explain quality. They are about a human, a creator, not about a painting: “investment of the best skill and effort possible” - “you do it well or you do it half-well” - “reaching for the highest standard” - “honesty of purpose.”
    Holding the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in view is like watching a fresh comet render those that came before it less fit to dwell in the heavens. Michelangelo’s painting, the outer excellence he produced, delights our aesthetic sensibilities. But the fresh comet that gives the spirit life is not so much this immaculate object of our outward-looking eyes, but is what must have been Michelangelo’s inner excellence, his immaculately engaged self which we catch through our inward-looking spiritual eyes, his place in the enshrined constellation of great creators, turning on in us respect for what may be called “creator-hood.”

    (Extract from “Where Quality Comes From,” page 44 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg. Xlibris, 2001.)
    For a brief biography of Barbara Tuchman, click here. For some images of or relating to Barbara Tuchman, click here.

Marcel Proust on memory

    Memory lets us pull our past pleasing times into the present moment, pleasing us again and again, as often as we reestablish them. In the replaying, said Marcel Proust, memory takes us outside of time:

I compared these various happy impressions with one another and found that they had this in common, namely, that I felt them as though they were occurring simultaneously in the present moment and in some distant past, which the sound of the spoon against the plate, or the unevenness of the flagstones, or the peculiar flavor of the madeleine even went so far as to make coincide with the present, leaving me uncertain in which period I was. In truth, the person within me who was at this moment enjoying this impression enjoyed in it the qualities which it possessed that were common to both an earlier day and the present moment; and this person came into play only when, by this process of identifying past with present, he could find himself in the only environment in which he could live, that is to say, entirely outside of time.

    (Quoted from page 81 of The Society of Mind, by Marvin Minsky. Simon and Schuster, 1986.)
    For a brief biography of Marcel Proust, click here. For images of or relating to Marcel Proust, click here.     For a brief biography of Marvin Minsky, click here. For images of or relating to Marvin Minsky, click here.

Stephen Hawking’s advice to the disabled

    In an interview reported in The New York Times (10 May 2011), Stephen Hawking gave this advice for people with a disability:

I don’t have much positive to say about motor neuron disease. But it taught me not to pity myself, because others were worse off and to get on with what I still could do. I’m happier now than before I developed the condition. I am lucky to be working in theoretical physics, one of the few areas in which disability is not a serious handicap. My advice to other disabled people would be, concentrate on things your disability doesn’t prevent you doing well, and don’t regret the things it interferes with. Don’t be disabled in spirit, as well as physically.

    To read Eleanor Roosevelt’s similar advice - posted on the Saunterer under the title “Eleanor Roosevelt on drawing power from a physical disability” - click here.
    For a brief biography of Stephen Hawking, click here. For images of or relating to Stephen Hawking, click here.

Arthur Clutton-Brock on the power of scent

    In Arthur Clutton-Brock’s assessment,

Bluebells are beautiful flowers, but it is their scent even more than their beauty that evokes for us all the delight of woods in May, the songs of birds and the whisper of leaves in the wind, as well as the coloured light and shadow. And it is the faint odour of Primroses which most powerfully reminds us of the mossy places in which they grow and of the cool and fitful weather of their flowering time. In fact, scent is to sight what poetry is to painting; less definite but far wider in its power, moving us more by association than by a direct appeal, enriching the present not merely with visions but with sounds and emotions of the past, and seeming to involve all the other senses and the mind as well in one complex delight.

    (Quoted from page 260 of Studies in Gardening, by A. Clutton-Brock. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1916.)
    Here is a brief biography of Arthur Clutton-Brock from the Wilson Web bibliographical database --
    CLUTTON-BROCK, ARTHUR (March 23, 1868-January 8, 1924), English critic and essayist, was born in Weybridge, Surrey, the son of John Alan Clutton-Brock, a banker, and Mary Alice (Hill) Clutton-Brock. In 1882 he entered Eton on a scholarship and then went on to New College, Oxford University, where he studied "Greats": classics and philosophy. Despite his literary inclinations, he trained for the law and worked as a barrister for ten years before becoming literary editor of the Speaker (later the Nation) in 1904. Concurrently, he began contributing to the newly launched Times Literary Supplement and in 1908 he joined the staff as art critic, book reviewer, and general essayist. This association with the TLS lasted until his death; most of the essays on which his reputation rested, and which he periodically collected under various titles, originally appeared in that publication. . . . Clutton-Brock died at Godalming, Surrey, after a lingering illness. According to B. H. Streeter, "His last conscious act was to point out to his doctor the beauty of an iris."

Jimmy Durante and “Goodnight Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are”

    The first time I heard Jimmy Durante say this line I was seven and my mother and I sat near the stage on the left side of Radio City Music Hall, at a live radio broadcast featuring Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra, Rudy Vallee, and Jimmy Durante. What does the line mean? A touching lot. Hear Yip Harburg:

Not to have known Jimmy Durante is not to have known my favorite comedian. He was married to a lovely lady who died long before Jimmy did. It was a dear and darling marriage, and he had cute and endearing terms for her. He always called her Mrs. Calabash. And every time he was through with a program on television, he walked downstage and a spotlight hit him, and in the shadow of that spotlight he’d always say his parting words, “Goodnight Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.”

    (Quoted from page 349 of Who Put the Rainbow in The Wizard of Oz?, by Yip Harburg. The University of Michigan Press, 1995.)
    For a brief biography of Jimmy Durante, click here.
    For images of or relating to Jimmy Durante, click here.
    For a short video of Jimmy Durante saying goodnight, click here.