The Nibelungenlied

This is a version of the legend on which Wagner's ring cycle is based. A. T. Hatto has translated the thirteenth-century poem - purported to be the greatest of German medieval epics - into businesslike prose. The narration is brisk and direct, with no use of suspense. Indeed the grim ending is given away in the first chapter:

In the land of the Burgundians there grew up a maiden of high lineage, so fair that none in any land could be fairer. Her name was Kriemhild. ...The time came when she was wed with honour to a very brave warrior... What terrible vengeance she took on her nearest kinsmen for slaying him in days to come! For his one life there died many a mother's son.

The doomed husband-to-be is Prince Siegfried, who travels to Burgundy when he hears of Kriemhild's beauty. With his matchless strength and his cloak of invisibility, Siegfried helps Kriemhild's brother, King Gunther, to win the fierce Icelandic queen Brunhild (and subsequently to woo her, in a scene which pretty thoroughly offends both chivalrous and feminist sensibilities). In return for this help, King Gunther agrees that Siegfried may marry Kriemhild.

This happy state of affairs does not last, for Siegfried impudently stole a ring and a girdle from Brunhild while he was invisibly assisting Gunther. A spat between the two queens reveals Siegfried's possession of the items, which has unseemly implications. Brunhild's allies murder Siegfried in retaliation for the scandal. Kriemhild eventually achieves her revenge, and the epic ends with a bloodbath that leaves over a thousand dead.

Reading the Nibelungenlied gives a glimpse into an alien culture, a society in which it is common courtesy to crowd around and jostle strangers to show that they are welcome. What caught my attention was the poet's emphasis on clothes. Clothes are brought up constantly: for example, a wedding is shown to be a grand event because every guest is wearing brand-new clothes. Before anything important can happen, the first step seems to be to put on splendid clothes.

Clothes are important for us, too. But as far as I can tell, in the Nibelungenlied clothes are not valued for self-expression, or fashion even. Clothes are important solely and supremely as a signal of wealth; of status.

And status has weighty implications for medieval kings and their vassals. So maybe a lesson that can be drawn from the epic is the potential fragility of the feudal system. After all, the catalyst of the entire tragedy is Brunhild's confusion about Siegfried's social standing. Tampering even slightly with the network of loyalties that is supposed to maintain stability has violent consequences.

A Canticle for Leibowitz

Now that the first semester of grad school is over (whoop whoop!), I thought I'd rejoin the conversation, too. Yesterday while I was sitting in the airport for seven hours thanks to a canceled flight to Oklahoma, I read A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller. It's a bleak futuristic novel set in a post-nuclear apocalypse North America. I generally don't read science fiction like this, but Dr. S recommended it when I was working on my senior project, so finally thought I'd give it a go.

The book is quite well-written as far as science fiction goes. It takes place in three sections, separated by time, over the course of which the human race repeats is nuclear mistake and blows itself up again. On the whole the book is quite grim. Humans carry not only their individual sins but the sins of the whole human race; the human race is doomed to repeat its futile search for perfection, becoming more and more jaded with the results of the pursuit of wealth and power until it destroys itself and starts over again.

Despite this pessimism, the book has a strong but very complicated thread of Christian theology. Its main characters are monks, dedicated to the preservation of human culture and learning through fallouts, wars, and plagues. Because of that, there's a lot of Latin in the book, and some of the story's most beautiful moments center on Christian imagery of crucifixion and redemption. At one point, the author makes the statement that humans can never be divine: we may have infinite power and wisdom, but we can never have infinite love, the third quality that makes God who He is (thankfully!).

Yet it's hard to know exactly what the author's position is toward Christianity. Does Christianity offer valid hope for a world full of human monsters? Or is it merely foolish idealism in the face of humanity's proven tendency toward evil? What's the use of hope if we're just going to blow ourselves up again anyway? Is the human race worth saving? The story doesn't provide easy answers to any of these questions, and on the whole I was left thoughtful but depressed.

On Bullshit

Since I was the one who insisted on reawakening this comatose blog, I'll be the one to break the ice, starting with a short, easy, and entertaining classic: Harry G. Frankfurt's On Bullshit.

If writing stuff like this is his job, then I want to be a philosophy professor at Princeton, too. This philosophical essay on bullshit traces the origins of the word, and words related to it, in the Oxford English Dictionary. It includes an amusing anecdote in which Wittgenstein ostensibly calls out a Cambridge college friend on her bullshit. He also referenced Augustine's essay, "Lying," which outlines eight different types of lies, none of which qualify as bullshit. (Frankfurt quotes Augustine to strengthen a distinction between lies and bullshit, but I mention it here because Augustine's essay sounds interesting in itself.)

According to Frankfurt, "the essence of bullshit" is a "lack of connection to a concern with truth" and an "indifference to how things really are" (33-34). The most memorable and important point he makes is his distinction between lies and bullshit: "The bullshitter...does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are" (61). [emphasis mine] Another defining element of bullshit is the purpose for which it is used-- to get away with something, or to convey a certain impression of oneself (23, 18).

Frankfurt leaves us to consider "the problem of understanding why our attitude toward bullshit is generally more benign than our attitude toward lying" (50).

Since bullshit is nearly as ubiquitous as the air we breathe, it would be difficult to take much offense to it. When exposed, a lie arouses a sense of betrayal and anger in those who were misled, whereas bullshit is just somewhat irritating. I think it's possible that all the bullshitters in the political realm exploit this to their advantage, scapegoating the liars so they can continue getting away with their bullshit.

Any thoughts on Frankfurt's question?

variety show

On our recent road trip to take my sister to university, I read The Case of the Late Pig, Police at the Funeral, and Tether's End, all Margery Allingham mysteries. The first two were good, but the last one was rather badly written. I'd be somewhat surprised if Allingham actually wrote it, but maybe she was just in a hurry.

Road trips are excellent occasions for doing a lot of reading. I also read Just Do Something by Kevin DeYoung, a good, basic, Christian common sense book about making decisions. It's short, simple, and easy to read, so even if you're looking for a quick read, this would be an excellent one. His point is surprisingly basic. Gavin, I think you would find his analysis of modern youth culture interesting after Honors last year. He deals with contemporary college students' propensity for drifting in a refreshingly Biblical way.

Also on the road, I read aloud Dealing with Dragons, by Patricia C. Wrede. It's the first in a series of young adult fiction. Charmingly written, full of little witticisms. It pokes loving fun at fairytales. Another good light read (though, of course, much different from DeYoung's book!).

From here on out, it's the Norton Anthology and GRE prep books for me!

Art and Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time, and Light

Leonard Shlain, a surgeon from California, began this project after visiting an art museum with his young daughter. He realized that in the cases of some modern works, he could not explain to her why they qualified as "art" at all! What, he wondered, was modern art trying to communicate, and why was so much of modern art difficult to comprehend?

Shlain concluded after extensive research that "the radical innovations of art embody the preverbal stages of new concepts" concerning the nature of reality. Art and Physics explores how different styles of art (from ancient times to the modern era) have treated space, time, and light; then compares the artistic vision to the work of scientists trying to grasp those same concepts. He believes that artists have often portrayed ideas about, for example, the nature of light or the relativity of space before physicists arrived at those same ideas.

If artists really are unknowingly creating works that anticipate cutting-edge physics, what could explain such prescience? (Pardon the pun.) That question pulls Shlain into metaphysical territory. He suggests that the existence of a universal mind -"an overarching, disembodied universal consciousness that binds and organizes the power generated by every person's thoughts" - could explain "how an artist can incorporate ideas into his or her work that have not as yet been discovered by physicists and that are certainly unknown to the general public."

The strengths of this book are that it is very readable and that it assembles incredibly wide-ranging material into a coherent narrative. However, I doubt that an expert in physics or in art would be entirely satisfied with Shlain's exposition. The book's subject is simply too broad for its thesis to be rigorously supported.

* * * *

I googled the author's name before posting this, and learned that Leonard Shlain died this year. He wrote three other books after Art and Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time, and Light. Each has an ambitious title: The Alphabet Vs. The Goddess: the Conflict Between Word and Image; Sex, Time and Power: How Women's Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution; and Leonardo's Brain: the Left-Right Roots of Creativity (the third book will be published posthumously in 2010). It sounds like he was a remarkable person who enjoyed synthesizing information to get a big-picture perspective on the human story.

Funny in Farsi

One of my roommates this year is from Iran. It has been very interesting to hear her talk about her life in her home country. She loaned me a memoir by an woman who moved from Iran to America as a child. The book describes cultural clashes and family quirks in a lively and humorous way. Even serious topics, like the suspicion that Iranian immigrants were subjected to during the hostage crisis, are treated with a light touch. Reading Funny in Farsi was a pleasant way to learn a little bit more about Iran's culture.

Mystery Mile

Actually, I read this book about a week ago, but then I had to put a moratorium on book reading for awhile so that I could finish some other work. Mystery Mile by Margery Allingham is the second in her series of Albert Campion mysteries. Allingham's mysteries are somewhere on the food chain below Dorothy Sayers but above Agatha Christie, in my opinion. Her detective, Campion, is a hilarious fellow, very colorful, with an even more colorful sidekick, Lugg, who is the requisite manservant. Allingham's dialogue is pure joy to read. I read some online reviews that were less than complimentary of her ability to construct a good mystery plot; nevertheless, her books are excellent light reads. They're set in roughly the same time period as Sayers's mysteries and concern roughly the same social class, but with much less of the Austin-esque social commentary. I plan to read more when I have a chance.